Table of contents for Issue 63 in Tabletop Gaming

Welcome NOW PLAYING… Tunnel Goons from The Haunted Almanac Welcome to an issue celebrating the many worlds that our hobby offers us. Firstly, our cover story, a profile of Cubicle 7 and how they went from making Dalek-based roleplaying games to being the only place we get to glimpse Warhammer’s Old World on our tabletops. For the time being, anyway. Next we explore two conflicts – one of the diplomatic struggle for power in the 10th Century Middle East (Crescent Moon), and the other of personal struggles in during the Vietnam war (Purple Haze). Beyond that we spring into the fantasy Japanese world of Sankokushin: Five Sacrifices – a boss battler that brings psychology to a giant sword fight. All of these games give you a living world to kick…

FIRST TURN FABIO LOPIANO The Italian designer of Merv and Ragusa reflects on his Renaissance-set debut, 2017’s Calimala Interview by Dan Jolin BACKGROUND “I’m a software engineer and I began playing modern games – like Puerto Rico and St. Petersburg – about 15 years ago, when I started working for Google in Zurich. Then in 2013 I moved to London and joined the London On Board group, where I met a few designers and started playing prototypes and unpublished games. It was there I had the idea of trying to design a game myself.” COMPONENTS “Calimala started as a simple card game and then eventually grew. I began with the core idea of a simple worker placement, where you place your worker between two randomly set-up actions, and do both…

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STUDIO PROFILE: CUBICLE 7 THE FLAME OF THE OLD WORLD FLICKERS We talk to Cubicle 7’s founder, Dominic McDowall, about taking our most loved stories to the tabletop and keeping the embers of the Old World alight Words by Christopher John Eggett “We worked out the other day that I’ve got something like 400 credits,” chuckles Dominic McDowall when we ask him to introduce himself to our microphone at a busy Dragonmeet 2021. He is the founder of Cubicle 7 Games, a now Ireland-based roleplaying game publisher best known for The Doctor Who roleplaying game and holding the banners for roleplaying in the worlds of Game Workshop’s Warhammer series. And on that front, the company, and Dominic’s own writing in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Fourth Edition, is one of the few…

around the world in 80 plays MADAGASCAR Words by Chad Wilkinson Off the eastern tip of Africa lies the fascinating island country of Madagascar. Often referred to in ecological circles as the ‘eighth continent’ due to its astonishingly high numbers of endemic wildlife, Madagascar has long been a source of wonder and curiosity – but has this enticing diversity spread to its gaming culture? Madagascar is the second largest island country in the world, coming in just behind Indonesia – a country with a thriving game cafe scene. Whilst not reaching the heights of Indonesia, Madagascar’s capital city of Antananarivo is nonetheless home to a number of cafes aiming to introduce the country to the hobby. KalyBar à jus is one of the most successful, with games such as Cockroach…

SIDEREAL CONFLUENCE: REMASTERED EDITION Trading that’s out of this world Designer: TauCeti Deichmann Publisher: Wizkids 120+m 4-9 14+ £70 Just look at this game’s contents. Look at how much is crammed in. That isn’t a typo, there is actually an alien race called “Kjasjavikalimm,” who don’t even have the silliest name. What even is this game? In short, Sidereal Confluence is the biggest trading game in existence, certainly one of the most impressive. 4-9 players (and best of luck getting nine players around most dinner tables) each play as an alien civilization looking to bring their culture to the stars, as you all compete for fame and attention across six rounds of trading, producing and, well, space conventions. Each round starts with open trading. Players begin with a smattering of…

PLAYED LAST MESSAGE Competitive Where’s Wally Designer: Juhwa Lee & Giung Kim Publisher: iello 15m 3-8 8+ £20 Hats off to the artists behind the sprawling landscapes that make up “hide and seek” activity books. We’ve all spent hours staring dumbfounded at scenes crammed with zany individuals and action, trying to spot bespectacled individuals in striped clothes. It’s surprising it’s taken this long for a board game to capture this challenge, especially one that delivers on it as well as this. Last Message is a social deduction game like no other, requiring a minimum of three players to take the roles of Victim, Criminal and Detectives (the latter being the role all other players take.) Each game starts with the Victim and Criminal sitting behind a screen and choosing one…

RESIDENT EVIL 3: THE BOARD GAME – CITY OF RUIN Designer: Sherwin Matthews Publisher: Steamforged Games 60-90m 1-4 14+ £55 Resident Evil 3: the Board Game - City of Ruin continues the story of the main characters from the base game after they have escaped Racoon City and found a refuge in the safety of the hospital. Who are we trying to fool? This is Resident Evil; nothing is ever safe. Indeed, players will face new types of zombies and bosses, including the Grave Digger that adorns the box in all of its gruesome glory. If you owned expansions from other Steamforged games, like Dark Souls, then the format of City of Ruins will be immediately familiar. It spices up the base box offering with additional enemy types, tiles, weapons…

CRIME ZOOM: BIRD OF ILL OMEN Designer: Stéphane Anquetil Publisher: Lucky Duck Games 45-60m 1-6 14+ £15 A suspicious death, and some unusual responses, Crime Zoom perhaps unsurprisingly begins with a crime, and sends you off to investigate it. Mechanically, that means you’ll be overturning cards, and making decisions based on those, and in this pocket investigation specifically, you’ll find a young woman seemingly murdered, with a life that points to a number of potential suspects. You’ll decide what to do next by picking a number, which corresponds to another card in the deck. There are some nice bits to how this is done. I like that you’ll sometimes be prompted to lay out multiple cards, seemingly offering you a wider view of a scene, but equally giving you a…

MITROPIA Go…by the grace of gods Designer: Andrzej Jarzyna, Kerrie Saephanh, Steven Willmott, Piotr Zuchowski Publisher: Timewarp Labs 30-90m 2-5 10+ £44 War would be a lot less messy if we settled our quarrels by ascending our most accomplished warriors and tacticians to the magical fields of the gods for a bloodless battle of wits. But alas, war never changes. Thankfully though, Timewarp Labs have harnessed this lofty idea for their successfully Kickstarted area control game Mitropia. Off the bat, I can confidently shower the designers with kudos for not plaguing their Kickstarter with miniatures, as the real beauty of Mitropia lies in its simplicity. Indeed, its grand thematic backdrop belies a refreshingly simple design heavily inspired by the classic game of Go. Much like Go, players are aiming to…

CARTAVENTURA: VINLAND Designer: Thomas Dupont, Arnaud Ladagnous Publisher: Hachette Boardgames 45m 1-6 10+ £12 Choose your own path games are fun for a reason – create a sprawling narrative that twists and turns with your own autonomous decisions, what’s not to love? We see it used in numerous games to great effect, and Cartaventura employs the technique nicely. You’ll overturn a card, follow the instructions (whether that’s make a decision, lay out additional cards, or obtain an item), and inevitably overturn another card that will take you down a story from that decision. With five separate endings available, and a grand tale of Vikings at its helm, all of the potential is there with this game… but the storyline lets it down. The elements really are all there. Mechanically, it…

PLAYED UNDAUNTED: REINFORCEMENTS The back-up we’ve been waiting for Designer: Trevor Benjamin, David Thompson, David Turczi, David Digby Publisher: Osprey Games 45m 1-4 14+ £35 The Undaunted series has racked up two Must-Play ratings from this magazine in the past. It’s a simple fact that there’s few tabletop wargame experiences that come close to hitting exactly the right notes as this series has. A mix of dice chucking for combat resolution, deck building and winnowing to represent your forces, and a traditional scenario-based approach to setting the game up make it something that nearly everyone should try. That is, if you have a games night that’s a twosome, or your partner doesn’t mind trudging around the to-be-muddied battlefields of Normandy for an evening. Ultimately the only complaint people could really…

THE RIVAL NETWORKS The Ratings War Lives On Designer: Gil Hova Publisher: Formal Ferret Games 45-60m 2 14+ £30 I’m not sure when this trend of “two-player version of a bigger game” started, but I can say I’ve found another charming addition to the list. The Rival Networks takes the television spoofing set-collecting from The Networks and chisels it down to svelte duelling game, as players fight for supremacy on the small screen, developing shows with star-studded casts to help snatch the most viewers and awards available over the course of three “seasons.” Each player’s turn begins with selecting one of the three available shows to broadcast on their channel, gaining genre bonuses if for example this was their third or fourth Sports show and also earning ratings for the…

PLAYED SOULBOUND: SHADOWS IN THE MIST Doom, Gloom and Glory Designer: Various Publisher: Cubicle 7 225 11+ £42 Stuffed with darkness, danger and ever-present doom, the first major campaign for Soulbound is an avalanche of interlinked adventures centred around a mist-choked port rife with corruption in every sense of the word. Though some may chafe at the rather linear design, the simple and direct structure lends itself to some delightfully pure gamemastering. The general idea behind the Shadows in the Mist campaign is that the heroes – a bunch of divinely-appointed agents of order – are sent off to try and sort out some of the many, many problems plaguing the city of Anvilguard. This sets them off into a parade of mysteries and battles that act as a kind…

PHOTOGRAPH Designer: Saashi Publisher: Matagot 20m 2-4 12+ £12 Nicely paired with last year’s Saashi designed Remember Our Trip this new edition of Wind The Film returns from Matagot with similar vibes. This time you’re trying to create a run of good holiday snaps for your personal collection. It’s a set collecting card game with some really rigorous rules that make it a bizarrely tension-filled experience. Players set out a market of cards, based on the number of players at the table, and then each take turns picking some cards from the grid, adding them to (one side) of their hand, and ‘winding the film’ (rearranging one card). All of this is done without changing the order of cards entering your hand. You select them form either edge of the…

IN ISSUE 64 ON SALE 25 FEBRUARY 2022 20 Years of YU-GI-OH The card game celebrates 20 years since it’s English language release, and we go hunting for our EXODIA! moment PLUS Unfathomable Painting Guide – painting deep ones, even if you don’t know who they are yet The Soloist – we delve into pocket dungeons, but will we make it out alive? How to Play a Harry Potter RPG without a Harry Potter RPG Reviews of: Elector Counts, Merchant’s Cove, Chronicles of Avel, Caper: Europe, and Many More SUBSCRIBE NOW NOT TO MISSOUT! ttgami.ng/ttg-sub22…

10 OF THE BEST EXPANSIONS …Or rather, the games that deserve them. More, bigger and better is very much the standard rallying cry of tabletop gamers – and when it comes to expansions we’re spoiled for choice. With Undaunted: Reinforcements (p72) and Destinies: Sea of Sand (p80) reviewed in this issue, now is a great time to celebrate some of the best expansions out there. Words by Christopher John Eggett 1 TERRAFORMING MARS: PRELUDE There’s no contest. You cannot ask anyone about expansions without hearing that this is the best example out there. For weight-to-impact ratio, there’s few better examples. Prelude adds some cards of the same name to your starting options – keeping two of the four dealt to you. These do two things – firstly they kickstart your…

The Soloist SOLITAIRE PRINT AND PLAY We explore the world of solo gaming one move at a time. This month: the solo print and play Words by Christopher John Eggett Print and play is a similarly mysterious part of the hobby to solo gaming, or at least, it was. Nearly two years of people being forced into finding new ways to game has seen a blooming of the ‘arts and crafts’ side of our community. They also go together simply because there is a strong overlap between the two areas of the hobby, after all if you’re making a print and play, you’re probably going to want to test it quickly, and a solo mode is always going to be a priority. This month I sat down with freshly printed…

THE HISTORY OF WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAY Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has been through multiple incarnations, let’s take a quick wander through its history WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAY FIRST EDITION (1986, GAMES WORKSHOP) The first edition of the game plunged players into the world of Warhammer Fantasy for the first time. Like many roleplaying games launched at this time, it looks fairly opaque and occasionally bonkers by modern standards. But here lies the roots of it all, fate points – a way to make players powerful and ‘special’ without having to make them superheroes, and the sense of being connected to the world around them through the intricate machinery of life. WARHAMMER FANTASY ROLEPLAY SECOND EDITION (2004, GREEN RONIN) This edition follows in the footsteps of the first, but with much of the…

Ludological Lamentations NO TAKESY BACKSIES Each month our in-house agony aunt, Ben Maddox, answers your ludological lamentations Words by Ben Maddox Q. Dear Ben, Where is the accountability? Not on the wind hugged shores of fair old blighty I can tell you that much. This is not the proud nation that I grew up in. In my day, if you made a mistake you took the consequences on the chin which is why the royal family are famous for not having one between them. In these blighted times though, not only do people shirk the responsibility of their own ineptitude but they expect to be given a second chance. Take my gaming group (of which I am the most popular member). Thursdays used to be a joy. A gentle buzz…

SANKOKUSHIN: FIVE SACRIFICES THE FINAL BOSS We sat down with Enrica and Francesco of Axis Mundi to talk about their bombastic psychological miniatures game coming to Kickstarter Interview by Christopher John Eggett We all love a boss battler, and with games that are all about taking down the big bad, there’s one thing we want for sure: big minis. The other thing we want is a reason to keep fighting. That’s where the bright and bombastic art style of Sankokushin: Five Sacrifices comes in. We got in touch with the game’s design duo – Enrica and Francesco – to discuss their upcoming Kickstarter smash hit. Would you mind introducing yourselves? We are AxisMundi Games, a board game company based in Italy. Even though we’re best known for our work on…

PLAYED SAVE PATIENT ZERO Battleships, but make them tiny Designer: Cédric Martinez Publisher: Helvetiq 30m 1-7 10+ £34 Save Patient Zero simulates the wonders of modern pharmacology as two labs race to discover the cure for a new pathogen that threatens humanity. But you’re privately-owned, so your teams are hiding their findings from each other. The only way you’ll find out what they’ve discovered in their potentially life-saving research is through corporate espionage. People are dying! Time to earn that Nobel. This means a head-to-head deduction game where you’re trying to find the 3 molecules that comprise the cure from a grid of 25. You play research tools from a deck which allow you to gain fragments of information and eliminate molecules from your enquiries. One, for example, allows you…

TERRAFORMING MARS: ARES EXPEDITION A change of space? Designer: Sydney Englestein, Jacob Fryxelius, Nick Little Publisher: Fryx Games, Stronghold Games 45-60m 1-4 14+ £50 Roll up your sleeves, fire up your breathing filters, form an asteroid mining consortium and embrace the tardigrades… It’s time to terraform Mars again, but (slightly) more quickly. For die hard Terraforming fans (like myself) playing Ares Expedition feels like greeting an old friend that’s had a bit of an odd haircut. There’s much that is familiar: Mars is considered terraformed when the temperature, oxygen and ocean cover have reached viable levels; you produce and use mega credits, plants and heat; and many of the cards are almost identical to the original. But there’s been some major streamlining. Energy has been abandoned, cities are a thing…

THE BOOK OF GAUB Designer: Paolo Greco Publisher: Lost Pages 104 14+ £20 We’re suckers for spellbooks. Much like a bestiary, they can tell you a lot about the world that you’re inhabiting – if done right. Often overlooked as mechanically useful, but a bit like pausing a fighting game to look up how to do the special attack, they can suffer from excessive crunch. The Book of Gaub does not have this problem. The Book of Gaub is a mix of spell mechanics, fiction, and fragments focusing on the lore of Gaub’s seven fingers. Each finger is a ‘school’ of magic, offering on-theme bouts of stomach-churning spells. They’re all undeniably creepy, powerful, and subjective. There are times when a spell giving another character hypochondria, or one where the victim…

WORLD OF WARCRAFT: WRATH OF LICH KING Designer: Justin Kemppainen, Alexandar Ortloff, Michael Sanfilippo Publisher: Z-Man Games 45-60m 1-5 14+ £60 It may be set in the frozen continent of Northrend and infested with ghouls and other nasty minions of the Lich King, but at its heart, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King is still very much a Pandemic game. As players, you will be whizzing around the map trying to desperately contain the outpouring of enemies through simple dice-based combat. There are multiple ways to lose the game and only one to win – complete all quests – which requires tight teamwork, multi-tasking and some careful pre-planning. If you like solving the Pandemic puzzle – being good at anticipating where disasters are about to strike and positioning…

PLAYED THE DARK CRYSTAL: ADVENTURE GAME Gamesmaster of puppets Designer: Janet Forbes & Jack Casar Publisher: River Horse 290 11+ £35 The latest addition to River Horse’s array of puppet-inspired gamebooks-cum-RPGs is a delight to read and play. It’s moody and sentimental by turns, with just enough rules to provide players room to grow and GMs to flex their creativity. As with its predecessor, Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, this tabletop take on Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal is both a game system and a campaign in a single volume. It sees a band of gelfling heroes – this will all make sense if you’ve seen the movie or the TV series, and none at all if you haven’t – summoned together to perform a grand quest. They need to journey…

PLAYED ASCENSION: SKULLS & SAILS All hands on decks! Designer: Justin Gary Publisher: Stone Blade Entertainment 30m 2-4 13+ £40 Just two years after the gamechanging arrival of Dominion in 2008, a group of Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour champs, including Justin Gary and Rob Dougherty, got together and created their own deckbuilding franchise with Ascension. This epic-steampunk-fantasy themed game is similar to Dominion not only in its use of the mechanism invented by that game’s creator Donald X. Vaccarino, but also in the sheer volume of expansions since published: 15 to date, with Gary’s nautical-flavoured Skulls & Sails the 14th of the franchise. The bulk of Skulls & Sails’ gameplay is deckbuilding at its most fundamental: play cards to either recruit new crew for your Severed Sea-sailing battleship or…

MACHI KORO 2 So good they gamed it twice Designer: Masao Suganuma Publisher: Pandasaurus Games 30m 2-5 10+ £25 You may well have played the original Machi Koro, a popular gateway game that always felt like it just missed out on making the pantheon of breakthrough classics. The heart of the game is simple: you’re all building cities, made up of cards with different ‘establishments’ on, like cafes, orchards, bakeries. Roll one or two dice. If one or more cards in your city have that number at the top, you get some coins. Use those coins to buy more cards for your city. The first to build four landmarks wins. Machi Koro is a solid, light gateway game. There are three core types of establishments: green, which earn you coins…

PLAYED MINI ROGUE Delve. Die. Repeat Designer: Paolo Di Stefano & Gabriel Gendron Publisher: Nuts! Publishing 30m 1-2 14+ £25 Roguelikes have had their meaning diluted. While in vogue for video games in the last decade, the term has simply come to mean a kind of permadeath – or as many of us would recognise from early games consoles, arcade mode. Mini Rogue is more purely a conversion of games like Nethack – randomised dungeons, brutal and unfair spikes of difficulty, and most importantly, genuinely surprising moments. The thing players enjoy about these experiences is not that they die on 80% of their dungeon runs. It’s that for each room they explore, depending on its context, there might be a twist coming up. Mini Rogue, then, does this in the…

SUSPECTS The impossible must be possible in spite of appearances Designer: Various Publisher: Studio H 60-90m 1-8 10+ £25 Think games like Detective: A Modern Crime Game, the Unlock! series of games, and perhaps a choose your own path game, add in some Agatha Christie style flair, shake it up, and out pops Suspects. What’s not to love? The game follows Claire Harper, an adventurous traveller with a Cambridge based back story, and three mysteries she finds herself in the midst of. It plays by way of cards – you’ll have your set up on a large card, explaining what’s taken place and why you’re being asked to solve it, a few additional bits of flavour in the form of evidence, and then a pack of cards and an envelope.…

PIER 18 Designer: Rory Muldoon Publisher: Alley Cat Games 10-20m 2-3 10+ £7 I don’t know if it’s just me but I feel that the romanticism usually associated with piers has dwindled over the years. Perhaps it’s their proclivity for falling into a state of disrepair, or maybe it’s just Piers Morgan. Nevertheless, Pier 18 is reigniting this romanticism admirably and all within the limiting confines of just eighteen cards. Designed and illustrated by Rory Muldoon (Skora and the upcoming print at home roll and write Voyages), Pier 18 is a leisurely card drafting set collection game tasking players with constructing the greatest Victorian seaside pier. From game to game players will be attempting to attract various visitors and workers to their piers such as Poets and Fisherman, and scoring…

NEW RELEASE – AZTEC WARRIORS! WAR GAMES ATLANTIC STING OF THE ATLATL! CUT OF THE MACUAHUITL! From the highly ritualistic Flower Wars that were fought to take sacrificial victims, to the brutal battles against the Spanish Conquistadors, the Aztec Empire produced some of the finest warriors of the New World. This hard plastic box set allows you to build up to 30 warriors equipped with bow, atlatl, machuahuitl, spears, slings, and more along with a variety of bodies and heads to build many of the warrior types and full command. 30-figure box set $34.95/£25 facebook.com/wargamesatlantic DESIGNED ON BOTH SIDES OF THE POND VISIT US AT WWW.WARGAMESATLANTIC.COM…

We asked… While the weather outside is decidedly gloomy, we asked you for your favourite places to pick up new games. You said… I always pick a few up at conventions when I get time away from the stand. Tim Roberts I live in London but always make a point of dropping into Static Games when I’m visiting Glasgow. Simon Harris 4th Planet Games every time. Sad I haven’t been there since Covid kicked in, Mark who owns it is awesome. Steve Davies Excelsior! GAMES, Bristol they have brilliant stock at all times and know that they’re talking about. Rich Oxenham Asgard Games UK is my go to for board games, hot chocolate, burgers and having the best time with some beautiful people Gavin Hicks Board Game Extras has some…

the independent shelf ROCKY MOUNTAIN MAN We flip through the pages of the solitaire magazine game, Rocky Mountain Man Words by Charlie Theel Rocky Mountain Man is a peculiar game, a solitaire experience arriving at the height of the global pandemic. It’s a magazine game with a paper map and sheets of cards you have to cut out yourself. This is nothing new for designer Nate Hayden who, for several years, has released annual horror folio designs under his publishing imprint Emperors of Eternal Evil. Rocky Mountain Man isn’t a horror game, however, it’s a revelatory and introspective experience of exploration and discovery. The first thing to note is how primal this feels. You make your way across a map depicting parts of Colorado and Nevada in the United States…

PLAYED BRIAN BORU: HIGH KING OF IRELAND Now for Peer Sylvester’s next trick… Designer: Peer Sylvester Publisher: Osprey Games 60-90m 3-5 14+ £45 At first glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking Peer Sylvester’s Brian Boru is another new take on his 2007 debut King of Siam, which was recently re-reskinned as The King Is Dead Second Edition. After all, both titles involve a historical map-based board (Siam/medieval Britain and Ireland circa 1000 CE, respectively), area majority, wooden discs and card-driven actions. However, Brian Boru does something very different with its card element – though no less innovative than the King games’ tense, hand-burning system. It just involves one potential mechanical hurdle: trick-taking. For some (this reviewer not included, for the record), trick-taking can be an instant turn-off: a dusty, hoary…

PLAYED RESIDENTIL EVIL 3: THE BOARD GAME Don’t shoot in Raccoon City Designer: Sherwin Matthews Publisher: Steamforged Games 60-90m 1-4 14+ £95 Resident Evil 3: The Board Game is the next instalment of the Steamforged cooperative survival horror game series that also closely follows the events of its video game namesake, released in 1999. The game inherits both the core mechanics of the previous board game installations and the video game’s story. Characters like Jill Valentine, Carlos Oliveira and their main adversary, Nemesis, appear heavily in the game, which takes place in the streets and sewers of Racoon City, ending in that Clock Tower (we will say no more!). While the game has all the main staples of the typical dungeon crawler – modular board, dice-based combat, item management –…

PLAYED KYOTO Turning climate change into a big deal Designer: Sabine Harrer & Johannes Krenner Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 30-45m 3-6 10+ £20 In Kyoto, you play as representatives of different countries meeting to discuss the thorny issue of climate change. Can you pass resolutions that will save the world from mass extinctions, soaring temperatures and deadly pollution? But oh – you’re secretly in the pocket of a variety of corporate lobbying groups, representing everyone from the steel industry to big game hunters. Maybe some of those people care less about a habitable planet than making bank – if you want to stay in power, you might have to bend your principles slightly to please your funders. Kyoto is a negotiation game where you take it in turns to present environmental…

PLAYED NEUROSHIMA HEX: YEAR OF THE MOLOCH Hexceptional Designer: Michał Oracz Publisher: Portal Games 30m 2-4 8+ £85 Congratulations, we can add Neuroshima Hex to the list of fictionalised apocalypses with outdated start points. We can enjoy this lovely anniversary edition of this long standing hex-based wargame for two or more players, instead of getting crushed under the 2020 mechanical uprising. Each game starts with players placing their base hexagon on the board. Whoever can pile on enough damage to destroy their opponent’s base first, wins. Players take turns drawing up to three tiles, then choosing to either play them, discard them or hold them for a later turn. Each army in Neuroshima Hex is comprised of exactly 34 hexes and one base, each with their own unique pool of…

DJ JAZZY JEFF AND THE FRESH PRINCE: SUMMERTIME Designer: Omari Akil, Hamu Dennis Publisher: WizKids 20m 2-4 10+ £17 Sometimes a song can trigger a sense of nostalgia so strong that amidst the melodies and memories, feelings of actual warmth arise. For many a nineties child, Summertime is irrefutably one of those songs. With its absolutely spot on aesthetic, this colourful card game inspired by the 1991 hit admirably evokes these same nostalgic stirrings, inviting players to unwind and take a trip back to a more vibrant, innocent time. In this simple conflict resolution game, players will be cruising the streets of Philly, making regular stops at the hottest ‘Spots’ and playing cards with the hopes of proving that you’re the coolest in the crew. The winner of Spots such…

STRIXHAVEN: CURRICULUM OF CHAOS Can you spell ‘adventure’? Designer: Various Publisher: Wizards of the Coast 224 11+ £40 The latest addition to Dungeons & Dragons’ pantheon of hardbacks is a strange duck. It’s packed with fun new ideas and roleplay-focussed rules, but struggles to deliver on its promise of wizard-school-but-D&D hijinks. The book introduces its readers to Strixhaven, an arcane college first explored in a Magic the Gathering set. It’s nominally based on the rather hazy plane of Arcavios but you can easily paste it into the world of your choosing. Honestly, though, it barely matters where you decide to stick the school, as once your players pass through the gates they’re going to have very little to do with the outside world. Indeed, the book operates with the expectation…

PLAYED WELCOME TO THE MOON Ascend to the moon and mark yourself among the stars Designer: Alexis Allard, Benoit Turpin Publisher: Blue Cocker Games 25-30m 1-6 10+ £35 After teleporting players to the suburban bliss of 1950s America and to the blitz of Las Vegas casinos, the Welcome To… series takes us to the next logical destination, the moon. This trip, however, will be a lot less glamorous because the survival of humanity is at stake. An asteroid storm is threatening to obliterate Earth, and you along with your fellow players are on the first rocket out to establish the moon colony. While you are all working on the same tasks, the organisation that funds your heroic endeavour believes that competition is the key to success and therefore will be…

THE SIEGE OF RUNEDAR Gold – always believe in your troll Designer: Reiner Knizia Publisher: Ludonova 60-90m 1-4 10+ £40 In The Siege of Runedar you play a group of grizzled dwarven gold miners who found a hitherto untapped seam in the ancient clan mines. You’re just about to head home with the spoils when an army of orcs, trolls and goblins rolls up to take the gold for themselves. Cue a desperate siege where you alternate between trying to dig an escape tunnel while seeing off hordes of marauding enemies surging over the ramparts. The moment you get it out the box, The Siege of Runedar has a striking table presence – a vacuum-moulded fort sits inside the lower half of the box, complete with walls, towers and a…

PLAYED DESTINIES: SEA OF SAND Destined for greatness Designer: Michal Golebiowski, Filip Milunski Publisher: Lucky Duck Games 2-3hrs 1-3 14+ £25 Five minutes ago I finished my first solo run-through of all three scenarios contained in Lucky Duck Game’s Sea of Sand expansion for Destinies. As I write, there’s a familiar twinge coursing through my mind. Not quite that feeling one gets upon finishing a good book – but perhaps more akin to emerging, eyes asquint, from an uncharacteristically spellbinding blockbuster. Could I be exaggerating? Maybe, but regardless, Destinies: Sea of Sand weaves a certain kind of narrative tabletop magic that is both engrossing and concise. In this decidedly more exotic expansion to the excellent app-based adventure game, characters are exploring, investigating, and surviving the scorched deserts of the North…

PLAYED THE PRINCESS BRIDE When I was your age television was all books Designer: Ryan Miller Publisher: Ravensburger 90m 1-4 10+ £30 The Princess Bride game, based on the film of the same name, comes to us with no shortage of good will. The film is a classic nonsense tale of daring-do, inconceivable plot twists, and forced mawwage. It’s full to the brim of jokes both in-world and meta, and has a kind of pantomime silliness to it – framed by the conceit of a grandfather telling his grandson a wild tale. Games generally have a problem with not being able to contain a narrative in the way we’re used to in TV, film and literature. The best storytelling games are those who let you build your own. The Princess…