Undaunted: Stalingrad is a powerful experience. It takes Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson’s acclaimed system and marries it to a campaign format that is engrossing and transcendent. The battle of Stalingrad is captured with such purpose and intimacy that I felt as if I was wandering through an HBO miniseries immersed in dramatic action. I’ve…
Eight men, spread far enough apart to minimize casualties in the case of an explosion, yet close enough together to keep their fears in check. They snuck through the French countryside in search of danger. Sgt. Gillick wasn’t green, but he also wasn’t grizzled. Unfortunate circumstances led to his squad performing reconnaissance on the sector.…
Giant mechs beating the hell out of each other in verdant fields. Asymmetrical loadouts and special technology. Weapons expressed through custom decks. Action programming tickled with a dramatic damage system. Vibrant illustrations and inspired mecha designs. What’s not to like? Embryo Machine. This is not a terrible game. Rather, it’s disappointing. Embryo Machine is a…
Shapers of Gaia is a goofy game. The cover is a bit loopy, it’s a game for strictly two or three players, and the systems are foreign yet also vaguely familiar. Designed by Ian Cooper and Jan M. Gonzalez, it’s important to note that this is a Wizkids game. I continue to belabor the point…
Final Girl is widely considered Van Ryder Games’ best title. This was evident with the ‘Series 2’ Kickstarter campaign crossing the two-million-dollar threshold earlier this year. That’s wild capital for a game that is parted out in $15 slices of content. Supremely wild. The energy behind this second Kickstarter campaign was immense. The game was…
Dark Souls: The Board Game is a noteworthy historical footnote. Some may jest for its failure to deliver its limitless heap of expansive content in a timely fashion. But of greater significance is that this game was one of the watershed moments in the fattening of crowdfunding miniatures heavy titles, particularly those based on established…
Cole Wehrle’s John Company knocked the wind out of me in 2017. It’s remained one of my favorite games since. I’ve never written about it. I have written about Wehrle’s other recent efforts, including Root, Pax Pamir, and the mighty Oath. His work is brilliant, all the way down. My challenges of writing about John…
V-Sabotage originally debuted in 2016 under the title of V-Commandos. At the time it was an unknown game from an unknown publisher. It received a small amount of positive press but mostly was content operating in the shadows, white-knuckling a KA-BAR and waiting to strike. That initial push was enough to gain some momentum which…
Tiny Towns is a Peter McPherson design from way back in 2019. It’s a polyomino builder where you place cubes in a grid. The aim is to make shapes that then convert into little buildings. It’s a very comforting activity, stylistically and mechanically. There’s a serenity in these types of experiences, doing your own thing…
Five years is quite the gap between debut and expansion, particularly for a game that’s grown such a cult following. Part of it is that Sidereal Confluence took some time to really find its audience. Part of it is that as a design, it’s a very tightly woven and intricately balanced machine. The math behind…
Player Elimination 