It’s earlier this past summer. I have a moment and something gets lodged in my skull. This is a common enough occurrence, but today we’re talking about a particular moment. Dune. Yes, that game many still talk about from that group of designers who created one of the best games ever crafted – Cosmic Fucking Encounter. But…
And I thought writing about Root was difficult. Yellow & Yangtze is the sequel to Tigris & Euphrates no one asked for. When Grail Games announced this peculiar title, I cocked my head and sort of mumbled to myself. Yeah, that happens frequently enough, but here it was with purpose. Reviewing a game can be…
It’s not a stretch to refer to the current board game era as a narrative renaissance. We’ve seen a groundswell of story-first designs including Time Stories, Legacy of Dragonholt, and excellent new printings of the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective series. Hell, I recently played the cardboard take on Big Trouble in Little China and even…
Some nights I struggle with feeding the machine. Some nights I look at the calendar and spend a whole 10 minutes worrying what I’m going to write about for Monday. Some nights I spend too much time listening to Fun and you get paragraphs like this. Of course I’ve been playing and writing, playing and…
When I heard Tiefe Taschen was getting a North American release, I literally fist pumped. It was a Tyson-esque thrust into the air that would have knocked a sucker clean out. This is a big deal. Fabian Zimmermann created a spectacular design that deserves wider recognition. It was finally coming. Then I heard it would be called…
It’s time to fess up: until recently, I had never played a Ryan Laukat release. I know, I can feel your gasp reverberating through my keyboard. I’ve rectified that with both the largely hyped Near and Far and the lesser aggrandized Empires of the Void II. The former is for another day, but let’s take more than a…
It’s the third day of Gen Con. This means I’m half-dead, my brain numb from extended wars in the Imperium and ancient Japan, my consciousness slightly adrift as I struggle to remember the resulting peace from a full night’s sleep. But it’s the third day of Gen Con – sleep is for the buzzards circling…
I love a quality escape room tabletop experience. Unlock, Exit, Escape Room: The Game – bring ’em all on. The main conceit of all of these designs is that you can’t replay them. You finish a scenario, possibly shredding the components, and you toss it out in the garbage like a dream you’ve forgotten before…
“That it’s, I’m melting your people’s faces off.” I reach for the little facsimile of Fat Boy, nestled in a cluster of seemingly harmless wooden shapes. Then I grab a green cube from the pile. Aaron always plays with green. Except this isn’t just a cube – it’s really a missile. “See this little Spongebob-shaped square?…
There’s something about Mark Herman that consistently draws me to his designs. He’s a master at linking a fascinating historical narrative to a compelling framework of mechanisms. While an outsider could describe wargames as dry and uniform, Mark’s work tends to push outside the genre’s boundaries and establish unique story-driven personalities. Games like Churchill, Pericles,…
Player Elimination 