Five months have passed since my original review of The Old King’s Crown. While the outside has grown colder and darker with winter, the inside is a different story. My appreciation for Pablo Clark’s ambitious game of throne-seeking has ignited. It’s stuck with me, claiming a seat in my top 10 of the year and…
Spooooktacccular. An amusing name to wail? Right-o. Killer movie poster box cover? Absolutely. Asymmetric player powers that inevitably draw a negligent comparison to Root? Hell yeah. Level 99 Games is known for their eccentric lineup. Millennium Blades is totally mad. Argent: The Consortium is likewise ill. Bullet♥︎ and Empyreal and many others fit this unconventional…
The Old King’s Crown is beautiful. It’s a lavishly illustrated craft with peerless style. This charisma reverberates in the game’s excellent writing, with passages leaping from the page in order to set the scene of a King Lear-like situation with a vacant throne. Expectedly, the gears of the work are likewise dashing, powering the entity…
Arcs is vicious. That was the subject of part one in my ongoing discussion of Cole Wehrle’s latest work. This space oddity’s jagged edge extends beyond the base experience and into the thorny recesses of the campaign. Here, mechanical additions emerge from their stasis with alacrity, the particles of grand stories shed from their animation…
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…
I wonder how the crew at Leder Games feel about every asymmetric post-2018 game being directly compared to Root. Cole Wehrle’s bellwether design has become the genre reference point, for better or for worse. Here though, it’s totally appropriate. A competitive bout between anthropomorphs. Check. Asymmetric factions with unique player boards and distinct mechanisms. Check.…
There’s a mystique about Crescent Moon. Some of this is attributable to the Eastern setting, and some to its strategically dense ecosystem. This is an opaque game, one that can be difficult to discern, but it possesses an inviting presence that is deceptive. These are the types of titles I seek, ones I can fall…
Far to the east through the narrow pass and beyond the salt flats is where it was found. I didn’t know what it was at first. It was a book yes, but it was something peculiar. It read like books do but it also didn’t. Its cover worn and faceless. Its pages cryptic. Its words…
Player Elimination 