Sanibel WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Shells and Chills Published by: Avalon Hill Designed by: Elizabeth Hargrave The reviewer bought this copy for themselves. See our review policy here A gentle stroll with a sneaky puzzle underneath Sanibel looks like the kind of game you play with a cup of tea and zero stress. And to be fair, that’s partly true. But after a few turns, you realise there is a surprisingly sharp little puzzle hiding beneath the sandy surface. It is not trying to overwhelm you, but it absolutely wants you to think just enough to feel clever. The hook is simple. You are walking along a beach, picking up shells, and dropping them into your bag Tetris-style. The twist is that turn order is dynamic. Whoever is furthest back goes next. That single rule quietly drives the entire game. Do you grab three tiles now and hand your opponent two turns in a row, or take one and control the tempo? In one of my plays, I greedily scooped up a chunky set of tiles, only to watch my opponent take two perfect turns back-to-back and completely ruin my careful shark tooth plan. Lesson learned. What really works is the balance between drafting and placement. Choosing shells feels easy. Fitting them into your bag is where the game lives. Tiles fall down, spaces can get blocked, and suddenly that “perfect” piece does not fit anywhere useful. The lighthouse moment halfway through adds a nice shift in gears, giving you a mini objective and forcing you to rethink your layout. It is not ground breaking, but it is clean, clever, and very easy to enjoy. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. How to Set Up Sanibel Setting up Sanibel is straightforward, although there's a reasonable amount of tile sorting involved. The three sections of the main board form a long beach, beginning with some beach chairs, stretching towards a lighthouse and eventually bringing everyone back again. The different shell tiles are separated by shape, with hexagonal and diamond tiles placed into their respective draw bags. Starting shells are then distributed across the beach sections according to the symbols printed on the board, with slightly fewer available in a two-player game. Each player takes a personal bag board and matching wooden token, along with two randomly dealt lighthouse tiles. These special tiles introduce individual scoring opportunities that become relevant later in the game. Everyone also receives a small collection of starting shells, which they arrange in their bag before the first turn. The starting positions are randomly determined, and a wave token is placed on the beach, ready to replenish the shoreline throughout the game. Give everyone a scoring reference card, and you're ready to start collecting. How to Play Sanibel The objective is simple: collect shells, arrange them in your bag and finish with the most points. On your turn, you move your token forward along the beach to an unoccupied footprint, travelling at least into the next beach section but potentially skipping several sections entirely. Each footprint shows how many shells you can collect from that particular stretch of beach, generally between one and three. The further you travel, the more opportunities you might bypass, but sometimes the perfect collection of shells is worth the journey. After collecting your tiles, you must fit them into your bag (onto your player board). Shells need to be supported from below, either by the bottom of the bag or by shells already inside it, and you cannot place anything outside the grid. You must also avoid creating inaccessible spaces that can no longer be filled from the top. Importantly, shells placed on previous turns cannot be moved, although you can rearrange those collected during your current turn before committing to their positions. This means an early placement that looks perfectly sensible can become rather inconvenient later. The beach is not a static collection of tiles either. A wave token moves along the path, and whenever it becomes the furthest behind, it takes a turn of its own, washing fresh shells onto the beach. There are also sand crab tiles, which allow you to collect an additional shell from another beach section rather than adding the crab to your bag. These little interruptions keep the available choices changing and prevent the drafting from becoming entirely predictable. Eventually, everyone reaches the lighthouse, which cannot be skipped. Here, players choose between different rewards, potentially adding one or both of their special lighthouse tiles to their bag, sometimes alongside additional shells. These lighthouse tiles introduce extra scoring opportunities, rewarding particular patterns, collections or placements. After visiting the lighthouse, everyone continues along the return journey towards the beach chairs, where a final reward awaits. Once all players have completed their walk, the game ends and everyone scores their collection. Scoring is where the real puzzle reveals itself. Ceriths reward collecting larger quantities, bivalves score through matching shells, and snails benefit from connected groups containing different varieties. Coquinas prefer separate pairs, while shark teeth score through their largest connected group, with bonus points for players who collect the most. Echinoderms, meanwhile, can reward collecting different varieties and keeping them separate. Even the small triangular spaces around the edges of your bag matter, as you can fill them with bonus shell tiles when properly supported. There are several ways to earn points, but each asks you to arrange your collection a little differently. The game with this very handy score guide - you'll use it a lot! Sanibel Review: More Than Just a Pretty Beach The first thing that strikes me about Sanibel is just how inviting it all feels. The colours are warm, the artwork is lovely, and the subject matter is wonderfully refreshing. There are no monsters to defeat, armies to command or complicated economies to manage. You're simply walking along a beach collecting shells, and somehow that is more than enough to make the game appealing. Elizabeth Hargrave has a real talent for finding interesting subjects in the natural world and building engaging games around them, and Sanibel continues that tradition nicely. But pretty components will only get a game so far, and thankfully there's plenty more happening here. The dynamic turn order is easily my favourite mechanism, because it makes every movement decision feel meaningful. You might spot three tiles that would work beautifully together, but taking them could mean jumping so far ahead that another player gets several turns before you act again. Equally, moving cautiously might give you more opportunities, but there's no guarantee the shells you want will still be available. It's a brilliant little balancing act between greed, patience and positioning, all delivered without adding any real complexity. What I particularly enjoy is that the best decision isn't always the most obvious one. Sometimes collecting fewer shells is genuinely better, either because you can preserve your position in the turn order or because the tiles fit your existing strategy more efficiently. A large haul can feel exciting, but if those pieces don't work together, you've potentially sacrificed several future opportunities for very little benefit. Conversely, taking one perfectly placed shell might complete a valuable scoring combination while leaving you in a strong position for another turn. This creates a satisfying sense that you're making clever decisions rather than simply collecting whatever happens to be available. The tile placement is equally engaging, and arguably becomes the main focus as the game progresses. Early on, your bag is relatively empty, and there's plenty of freedom to experiment. You start building groups, keeping certain shells apart and leaving yourself room for future discoveries. But as the space fills, those initial decisions begin to matter. Suddenly, a shell you desperately need cannot fit where you want it, or a beautifully connected group has accidentally blocked access to another scoring opportunity. There's something immensely satisfying about squeezing a tile into exactly the right space, especially when it completes two different objectives at once. I also really like how the scoring systems encourage different approaches. Shark teeth want to be connected, coquinas want carefully separated pairs, and bivalves are interested in matching varieties regardless of where they sit. These competing demands mean you cannot simply fill your bag randomly and expect a great result. There are genuine decisions about which scoring opportunities to pursue and which to abandon. I found myself focusing heavily on one particular collection in one game, only to realise towards the end that I'd neglected several easier points elsewhere. It's a nice reminder that having a plan is important, but knowing when to adapt it matters just as much. That said, the scoring is also one of my small criticisms. There are quite a few different conditions to remember, and during the first game or two, you'll probably spend a fair amount of time checking the reference guide. Some categories also feel more satisfying to build than others, and I found myself naturally gravitating towards familiar approaches. There is variety here, particularly through the lighthouse tiles, but the core scoring strategies don't change dramatically between games. It's not a major issue in something this light, although those looking for deeper strategic development might eventually find the experience a little repetitive. The lighthouse is a particularly nice addition because it creates a natural turning point in the game. You've spent the first part of your journey collecting shells and establishing a rough plan, and suddenly you're presented with another scoring opportunity that might complement what you've already built. Choosing whether to take one or two lighthouse tiles, and potentially sacrificing other rewards, creates another interesting decision. I like that these tiles provide some individual direction without completely changing the game. They add enough variety to encourage different approaches, but keep the experience focused on its central puzzle. Player interaction is relatively gentle, although it's certainly present. You're not attacking anyone or directly interfering with their bag, but you're constantly watching which shells other players might want and deciding whether to claim them first. The shared beach and unusual turn order create little moments of competition, particularly when several players are chasing similar scoring opportunities. At times, however, the competition can feel limited, especially when the available tiles don't overlap with your plans. I don't particularly mind that, because Sanibel isn't trying to be confrontational, but anyone hoping for tense, cut-throat drafting may find it a little too friendly. I think the game also handles different player counts nicely. With fewer players, the turn-order puzzle can feel more deliberate, as you have a clearer idea of how your movement might affect your opponent's next opportunity. With more players, the beach becomes busier, the available shells change more frequently and planning quite so far ahead becomes harder. Neither approach fundamentally changes the experience, and the opportunity to begin placing your shells while another player takes their turn helps everything move along. For a game that takes around 45 minutes, it strikes a lovely balance between giving players meaningful decisions and keeping everyone engaged. Most importantly, Sanibel is simply enjoyable to play. I've played plenty of games that offer far more complicated puzzles, deeper strategies and tougher decisions, but they don't always leave me wanting another go quite so readily. Sanibel has that wonderful quality of being easy to bring to the table, pleasant to spend time with and just challenging enough to remain interesting. It doesn't demand your full concentration every second, but it rewards you when you give it a little thought. Sometimes that's exactly what I want from a board game. Pros Clever turn order: A simple movement system creates genuinely interesting decisions about timing, opportunity and how much to collect. Satisfying tile placement: The different shapes and scoring conditions make organising your bag rewarding without becoming overwhelming. Beautifully integrated theme: Lovely artwork and a relaxing seaside setting make the whole experience approachable and appealing. Accessible but engaging: Easy to teach, smooth to play and enjoyable across different player counts, with enough strategy to reward repeat plays. Cons Scoring takes some learning: The different shell conditions mean frequent reference to the scoring guide during early games. Limited strategic variety: Despite several scoring routes, games can begin to feel similar once familiar approaches emerge. Gentle player interaction: Competition for tiles exists, but those seeking direct conflict or constant tension may find it lacking. Occasional tile frustration: Sometimes the shells available simply don't suit your plans, and earlier placement decisions can leave you with few useful options. Final Thoughts on Sanibel Sanibel is a charming game with considerably more going on beneath the surface than its relaxed presentation initially suggests. The dynamic turn order is excellent, the tile-placement puzzle is consistently satisfying, and the different scoring methods provide just enough strategic direction to make each collection feel purposeful. I particularly enjoy how the game encourages you to think about the consequences of taking more, rather than automatically rewarding the biggest haul. It's simple, but there's a cleverness to it that gradually becomes more apparent the longer you play. There are limitations, of course. The scoring takes a little getting used to, player interaction is relatively light, and the game doesn't offer enormous strategic variety. But I don't think it needs to. Sanibel knows exactly what it wants to be, and succeeds because it delivers that experience so comfortably. It's relaxing without being boring, accessible without being simplistic, and attractive without relying entirely on its appearance. For me, the real strength is how effortlessly it combines a gentle theme with meaningful decisions. There's something wonderfully satisfying about building a carefully organised bag of shells, finding the perfect tile at just the right moment and watching your scoring plans come together. It's a game I'd happily recommend to families, casual players and anyone looking for a lighter puzzle that still rewards a little thought. I came for the beach, but stayed for the clever gameplay underneath. A real shore thing.

Vengeance Roll & Fight WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Vengeance, 90's computer games, Escape: The Curse of the Temple Published by: Mighty Boards Designed by: Gordon Calleja, Noralie Lubbers, Dávid Turczi Vengeance came out in 2018 and received mixed reviews. It was essentially the board game version of living in a Quentin Tarantino inspired film. Kill Bill the board game! Some people loved it but others criticised the ruleset and said it may suit a roll-and-write style game more. Interestingly, it seems the designer Gordon Calleja may have listened to this because he then teamed up with Noralie Lubbers and Dávid Turczi and created Vengeance Roll & Fight a roll-and-write version of the game. Cleaning up the rules. Simplifying the game play. And adding in what others felt was missing. Let's set it up and see how it plays. Set Up Each player must take a player board and random den board, choosing one side to play on, along with an erasable marker. Then lay out 24, 35, or 46 dice depending on if there are two, three, or four players at the table. Each player will then choose from one of the four hero's to play as, and take the eight ability tiles, four items, the one hero trait card, and hero piece of their chosen character. They will play the hero piece on the start space on their den board, and lay the items on their player board with the ability tiles alongside it. Then shuffle the nine boss cards, and deal one to each player. Each person will then mark the health for their selected boss on their den board. Finally place the three flashback dice onto the flashback tile, and place this in the middle of the table for all to see. Play is ready to begin. How to Play The games works in four phases. The first is the flashback phase. This is where the three flashback dice are rolled and placed onto the flashback board. Players can then take the three flashback dice benefits, as well as adding one final benefit of their choice. This will allow players to either purchase a new ability to replace one of the four on their board. Or, players can increase their training or loot by marking of two or one space on the respective track. Alternatively, you could heal two injuries previously incurred or improve your total health by one. Or finally, 'recon' one ability, meaning you can mark it, to use it in phase three without having to assign dice to activate it in phase two. Increasing your training will allow you to add more advance abilities in later rounds. There are also points available at the end of the game if you reach the later stages of the training track. Purchasing allows you to activate one of your items to use in a later phase three. Looting is all about end game points, and getting as far up the track as possible. When all players have made their choices and upgraded as many abilities as they want to, phase two begins. All players will take four dice from the pool, and when all players are ready, begin rolling them, over and over, in real-time. There is no turn order here, and players can re-roll as many dice, as often as they want. Players are looking to match the symbols on their active abilities, so they can use them in phase three. All players begin with the same basic four abilities, but can upgrade them in phase one as discussed. In order to ready an ability to use in phase three, such as the DASH action, you need to roll two SPRINTS symbols, now in phase two. If you do, you can move those two dice close to your board so show it has been activated, then take two more dice from the pool so you have four again, and then start trying to roll dice to match another ability. Players can keep rolling like this until one of three things happen. Either players will roll all the dice needed for all four of their active abilities. Or the dice pool runs out, and you cannot draft back up to four again. Hence, players wanting to roll as quickly as possible so other players do not take all the dice first. Or, finally, players could roll too many blood symbols. When you roll a blood symbol, that dice cannot be used again. So, you will be down to three dice. However, if you ever roll more than one blood symbol at once, you can place one of them onto your health tracker on your board and get all the other dice back. This will force you to loose one health at the end of this phase, but keeps your rolling options alive to meet the requirement for any abilities that need two or three dice. When you match dice to an ability, you can then also take back any blood dice not placed onto your health tracker. So, this is how you can roll blood but then later try and achieve abilities that need four dice. This also shows how dice can be cycled through quickly and the group pool can run out. So, you better roll quick! When the rolling round is over, players will then use any abilities they activated in phase two, or any abilities they were able to activate in phase one with the RECON ability, now in phase three on the Den Board. Players are looking to move through rooms, clearing out any Minions, completing the Objectives, collecting loot, and finally reaching and defeating the end-of-level boss. Players will be doing this by moving, hitting, shooting, and other upgraded skills they acquire to get through the Den as efficiently as possible. There are multiple rooms and only four rounds to do this in. For your first few games, you will wonder how this is possible! But after learning the mechanics of this game, you will see how to become more organised and methodical with your actions. It comes together quickly. After all players have used all available actions, then the final Resolution phase begins. Here players will remove any Recon abilities they circled, and collect any Loot from new rooms they visited this round. When you enter a new room you will mark off that room on the board, and if that room has a white star in it, you can mark that off now, and also one loot on your player board for each star marked on your den board. Or, you can choose to take a loot flashback action, the available options in the first flashback phase. Any henchmen or boss still alive in the room you are in, or any gunman in an adjacent room will force you to loose one health at this point. If you fill your health track, you can clear all your wounds, but you will now be forced to use one less dice in the next rolling phase. Do this again and you will be dead. It is rare that this will happen, but there are only four rounds to get through. So, if it does, you won't have too long to wait. After the forth round, all players will score for how far they were able to advance in their loot and training tracks. They will score for all health taken from the boss, with a further five bonus points available if you were able to fully defeat the boss. Each completed room objective will score you additional points as shown on the Den board. Finally, players will loose one point for every enemy still alive in any room they visited. Work out your score, and the highest points total wins. Is it Fun? Vengeance Roll & Fight is a beautifully crafted game. The phases and rounds move incredibly smoothly and you will fly through each game in no time at all. We found that after a few games, after we were used to the rules and mechanics, we were taking between 20 and 25 minutes for each game. This felt perfect for a game like this because it feels so akin to a a video game, both in looks but also gameplay. You want a game like this to be fast, frantic, and full of fun. Vengeance Roll & Fight certainly delivers on all of that. The different Dens do not feel that diverse, but offer some variety game to game. Each of the four playable characters has a nice little twist to their weaknesses though. This is where the main replayability, other than you own desire to get better comes in. This game is less about positive variable player powers and more about asymmetric negatives. Each hero character has a unique trait that makes fighting with them harder. As much as I like gaining benefits in games, having a negative characteristic in this way works well. Everyone has flaws right? Why not in games! it is a clever way to make playing as each character a unique puzzle to work out. Each phase gives it's own individual sense of excitement to the game. Phase one is all about strategy and forward planning. It's nice to forward plan through all four rounds of the game. Thinking about how you best want to score this game. Phase two is all about thinking fast, getting lucky, and rolling quickly! Can you fulfil all four of your actions before the dice pool runs out, or you roll too many blood symbols. Phase three is all about careful planning of your route, whilst thinking about how you can maximise your points. There are a lot more rooms than you can initially get through, so you need to decide which rooms will score the most for you with your available actions. Each phase plays very different. But feel very connected. As you move from your main board to your player board, it's a little bit like moving from the save screen and sorting your items and character set up to the main action screen in a video game. So, as much as the two boards are separated, they do not feel disconnected. What does feel a little disconnected though is your own game with the other players around the table. The only time you interreact with the other players is during the rolling phase, where it may be that they take dice that were initially available to you away from your grasp. I suppose it wouldn't work being on the same Den as players would take enemies and items away from other players, but a larger Den board, with more items and bad guys to fight, in a co-op seems like a very cool idea. However, there is an option there... Having now played this game, I am very intrigued to try the original Vengeance but also, very keen to see how the recent kickstarter for Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan plays. Fateforge utilises some similar game mechanics to Vengeance Roll and Fight in a story-driven, co-operative, scenario based RPG, where all players are playing together on the same board. I would also like to get the second season, a stand-alone game, which adds more characters, items, bosses, dens, abilities and the opportunity to play this game in an eight! I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys roll-and-write games, was a fan of 90's and noughties side scrolling video fighting games, but enjoys the process of absorbing themselves into the game, without relying too much on other players and interaction with other people around the table to enjoy their game time. I very much enjoy the process of playing this game. It is very satisfying to develop my skills, and improve my score. Which is something that I have seen happen to most people who have played this. A few people will get this right away. But most will improve their skills and understanding of the mechanics over time, and will see a steady progression in their points game after game. Vengeance Roll & Fight is one of my favourite roll-and-write games. I love the theme, and the integration between the gameplay, mechanics, and setting is seamless. I very much enjoy developing my understanding of this game, and scoring well is wildly satisfying. Every game ends with me wanting to play again, and in fact, that's exactly what I am going to do now!

Temple Of Cthulhu WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 3-12 You’ll like this if you like: Social deduction party games with hidden traitor roles Published by: Luckish Entertainment Designed by: Simon Hessling Oscarson, Erik Nilsson This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Some social deduction games make you sit through night phases, close your eyes, wait for an app to tell half the table what to do, and then spend the next ten minutes trying to remember who supposedly murdered whom. Temple of Cthulhu strips almost all of that away. Deal the cards, discover your secret allegiance and start lying to your family. Temple of Cthulhu is an independently produced social deduction card game for three to 12 players. It comes from a new designer, has launched with a limited first print run, and there are already plans for future expansions if the game finds its audience. You can find out more at TempleOfCthulhu.eu, and I hope it does find that audience because underneath the Lovecraftian artwork is a beautifully simple idea that becomes much better once everyone understands how to exploit it. Temple of Cthulhu Review: Easy to Learn, Hard to Read Everyone secretly belongs to one of two teams, the Investigators or the Cultists. Each player receives a hidden role and starts with five cards, which they look at before shuffling and placing face down in front of themselves. Somewhere among those cards are Elder Signs, Cthulhu Idols and, depending on how you build the deck, either harmless junk or various Effect Cards. The Investigators want every Elder Sign revealed. The Cultists need to prevent that from happening or uncover every Cthulhu Idol instead. If either of these conditions happens, the game immediately ends and one side claims victory. Nobody knows exactly who is on their side, which means every useful claim comes with the immediate question of whether the person making it is telling the truth. To begin, one player begins with 'The Pick'. They choose another player and select one of their face-down cards, but before doing so everyone is free to talk. You can claim you have three Elder Signs, insist you have nothing useful, accuse someone else of lying, or desperately encourage the table to draw from somebody else instead. None of it has to be true. 4-player set-up Once a card is chosen, it is revealed and remains visible. The player whose card was selected receives the pick themselves and chooses the next card to reveal from any other player other than themselves. You keep doing this until the same number of cards have been revealed as there are players in the game. It doesn't have to be one card per player; they could all come from just two players. It's simply who the person with the pick chooses each time. All the Idols and Elder Signs revealed are placed into separate groups so they can be tracked. Other cards revealed are put into a separate pile. All other as yet unrevealed cards are shuffled up and redistributed back to each player, now with one fewer card. This continues between rounds unless a win condition is met, otherwise the number held by each player gradually falls until every player has just one card each. That creates a lovely tightening effect because early claims can be vague, but later on, everyone has enough information to start remembering who said what and questioning why somebody made a particular choice. If you get to the later rounds the game really starts to sing. Junk, Effects and Chaos The game can be kept remarkably simple. You can use the required Elder Signs and Cthulhu Idols and fill the rest of the deck with junk cards, which literally do nothing. We started this way, and it makes complete sense for your first game because everyone can concentrate on bluffing and deduction without worrying about additional powers. By our third game, though, we had effectively removed the training wheels. And when I taught other groups later, I always started with zero junk cards. You can replace as much junk as you like with Effect Cards, and I ended up preferring a deck with no junk at all every game, instead using exclusively the effect cards. The powers rarely blow the game apart, instead nudging information around the table, letting you inspect cards, changing who receives The Pick, or interfering with cards that have already been revealed. The All-Seeing Rabbit, for example, lets you inspect all but one card in another player's hand. That gives you useful private information about whether their previous claims were nonsense without ever providing total certainty. But you can of course share what you learnt with the group. But who do you trust!? Other effects can redirect The Pick, swap cards or undo progress made during the round. The Gauntlet of Fate lets you draw three times in succession, although its effect immediately ends if you uncover an Elder Sign or Cthulhu Idol. These cards add tactical disruption without overwhelming the actual social deduction, which is exactly how these sorts of powers should work. More importantly, how somebody chooses to use them can reveal just as much about their allegiance as the cards themselves. There is even an optional Spiritual Bomb card if your group wants something nastier. Reveal it and that player is removed from the card-playing part of future rounds, although they can still talk and accuse everyone else. But before they go, they get a huge final decision over whether their remaining cards are exposed or returned to the deck unrevealed to be used in later rounds, making their departure potentially very important. I often remove this card as I don't love its affect. but it can be fun if it comes at the right time. I am just not a fan of players being eliminated in the earlier rounds. Learning How to Lie The actual rules take just a few minutes to understand. However, teaching someone how to play Temple of Cthulhu is considerably easier than teaching them how to play Temple of Cthulhu well. Our biggest hurdle was not understanding The Pick or remembering the win conditions, but figuring out what on earth we should actually say to each other when the game begun, and I think most new players will find this. That is normal for social deduction games. New players often sit there wondering what they are supposed to bluff about until somebody tells an outrageous lie, gets away with it and suddenly everyone understands the assignment. Temple of Cthulhu improves noticeably as the same group plays repeatedly because you begin learning not just the game, but each other. Who talks too much when they are lying? Who suddenly becomes quiet when they feel guilty? Why is someone desperately trying to make you choose their card? And why is the person who claimed to have two Elder Signs now doing everything possible to stop anybody drawing from them? My son found the deduction difficult initially because the game gives you very little hard information about people's allegiance. In something like Werewolf, certain roles can generate concrete clues. Some players can math out the game with this limited information if you can correctly piece it altogether. Here you are primarily reading claims, actions, behaviour, and the cards gradually becoming visible. This takes a round or two to come into play. Round one, you are all going off pretty much nothing! That will not suit everyone, but it is also one of the game's strengths. There is no role that suddenly solves half the table for you. You have to watch people, remember what they said and decide whether their behaviour matches the story they are trying to sell. Five Minutes Later... Again? What surprised me most was how naturally Temple of Cthulhu encouraged immediate rematches. Individual games can be incredibly quick, often around five minutes, and the first time I played with my family we played four games consecutively. The next time, with five, we immediately played another six games over the next two days. We were all hooked. Nobody needed persuading into one more game because resetting takes almost no time. More importantly, everyone wanted another chance to prove they could read the table better. That repeated play is where Temple of Cthulhu really starts showing what it can do. Our games actually became more tense as we gained experience. Players became better at bluffing and much more careful about which cards they encouraged others to reveal. Several games eventually reached situations where the entire result effectively rested on one remaining card, with one draw handing victory to the Cultists and another winning it for the Investigators. Those endings are excellent. Everyone understands exactly what is at stake, yet nobody knows who is telling the truth. Better With More The game worked across the smaller player counts we tried, although I would unquestionably rather play with more people. Four players worked well and five was better. We even tried three just to see whether the system survived, and it did, but at that count somebody inevitably feels more isolated because of the team structure. But there is a clever way to set up so you never know if it is two Cultists or one. Temple of Cthulhu plays up to 12, and that is the player count range I am most curious to explore next. More people should mean more claims, more conflicting information, more questionable alliances and considerably more opportunity for people to talk themselves into trouble. Based on my games so far, this feels like a design that benefits from having more personalities colliding around the table. You can technically play it in a relaxed setting around the sofa, but I think a table works better. Having everyone's face-down cards clearly visible makes the information easier to follow and gives the game more of a communal focal point. The physical footprint is tiny, though, so there is plenty of flexibility in how and where you play. The Yellow Brother Once everyone knows the basic game, there is another lovely wrinkle available in the Yellow Brother. This optional role replaces a standard Cultist and introduces the Yellow Sign card. If that card is revealed during the game, the Yellow Brother remains loyal to the Cultists. If the Yellow Sign survives hidden until the final stage, however, the Yellow Brother changes allegiance and becomes an Investigator. Suddenly somebody who may have spent most of the game helping the Cultists has reason to want the opposite result. That uncertainty gives everyone another behaviour to watch and another card whose appearance matters. You can technically use the Yellow Brother without adding the Yellow Sign, or even when it may be in, or maybe not. No one knows! Then the Yellow Brother might actually end up being an Investigator for certain in the final round, but won’t know for sure beforehand, since the Yellow Sign hasn’t been revealed before the final round. The fun comes from watching players mysteriously encourage or discourage the discovery of one particular card while nobody is completely certain why. It adds another layer without making an already simple game difficult to follow. Simpler Than Werewolf, and Better for It Temple of Cthulhu reminded me of a simplified Werewolf, but I actually found its immediacy refreshing. There is no app required, nobody needs to close their eyes, there is no lengthy night phase and nobody spends half the game waiting for their special role to become relevant. Everyone is involved almost immediately. That accessibility made it easy to put in front of my entire family, and they all enjoyed it. The mechanics rarely get in the way of the conversation, which means the game becomes about the people rather than the rules. That is exactly what I want from social deduction. The bigger consideration is personality. Temple of Cthulhu needs people willing to talk, accuse, bluff and occasionally lie directly to somebody they love. Quiet players or people who dislike deception games may never completely click with it because the cards deliberately do not create all of the entertainment for you. Pros Extremely quick to learn, teach, reset and replay. Gets noticeably better as players learn how to bluff and read each other. Flexible deck construction lets you choose between pure deduction and more chaotic effects. Excellent tension when games come down to the final few hidden cards. Cons Players wanting concrete deduction clues may find the information too behavioural. Three players works, but the team structure feels stronger with a bigger group. Very dependent on the personalities around the table. First-time players may initially struggle to understand what useful table talk looks like. Final Thoughts Temple of Cthulhu is one of those games where the first play teaches you the rules and the next few teach you the actual game. Mechanically, almost nothing is difficult. The skill comes from learning how much information to reveal, when to lie, who to trust and whether somebody's behaviour matches the role they appear to be playing. That simplicity made it incredibly easy to put in front of my family and friends, and the fact we repeatedly played several games back-to-back says more than any complicated analysis could. We enjoyed it immediately, but I enjoyed it more once the junk cards disappeared, the Effect Cards arrived and everyone became comfortable enough to start properly deceiving each other. It will not suit everybody. Temple of Cthulhu asks the players to create much of the entertainment themselves, and anyone wanting deduction generated through hard evidence may find it too loose. Give it a table full of people willing to bluff, argue and remember exactly what you claimed a few minutes earlier, though, and this small independent card game becomes wonderfully tense, very funny and dangerously easy to play again and again!

Erune WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Dungeon crawlers, app-driven games, and fighting monsters! Published by: Arkada Studio Designed by: Quentin Deleau, Adrien Smondack This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Erune is the sort of game that could easily lose me before the first miniature hits the table. A dungeon crawler built around talking to an app sounds like exactly the kind of ambitious idea that might turn a perfectly good board game into a frustrating tech demo. Yet after spending time with this new Ultimate Edition, I came away thinking almost the opposite. The app is not perfect, and the dungeon crawling underneath it is fairly traditional, but together they create something distinctive, atmospheric and far more natural to play than I expected. This new edition is important context because Erune has had a slightly rocky history. Earlier versions attracted criticism for app problems, rulebook issues and awkward voice recognition, while the newer version introduces a redesigned application, improved rules, enhanced scenarios and a significant visual overhaul. It still absolutely remains an app-driven game, though, and that technology sits right at the heart of the experience. And in truth, I have had mixed experiences with it. So strap in for the full de-brief. SETUP AND GETTING STARTED At its heart, Erune is a fantasy dungeon crawler for one to five players. You choose from adventurers with their own characteristics, skills, and magical abilities, tracking health, mana, stamina, experience, equipment, and progression on character sheets similar to those used in many RPGs. Characters start relatively modestly but develop quickly with new skills, spells, improved equipment (so much cool equipment!), and experience gained during quests. The physical production makes a very strong first impression. Modular dungeon tiles, detailed miniatures, customisable character decks you can use to upgrade your skills with and plenty of furniture and scenery give Erune exactly the sort of table presence you want from this genre. The newer edition also benefits from strong artwork throughout, while the miniature sculpts have plenty of movement and personality rather than simply standing there looking vaguely threatening. Where setup becomes interesting is that you are not simply opening a scenario book and building the entire dungeon before you begin, copying a map setup from a picture. Rather, the app reveals rooms, encounters, and information as you explore, which means the dungeon grows organically during play. The initial setup is often just one room with a few items in it. This means you start each game pretty much instantaneously. You only see what your character can see. For me, that is one of the strongest arguments for using technology here, because it reduces setup while preserving the simple pleasure of genuinely not knowing what is behind the next door. There is a genuine sense of exploration often lost, simply due to logistics. Here, the tech fixes that. Much for the better. HOW TO PLAY Each round follows a straightforward three-part structure. The Spirit of Erune (the app) acts first, introducing events and changing conditions, followed by the Adventurers phase where each adventurer then gets two basic actions alongside any number of free actions, then the Master of Shadows phase (the bad guys, either controlled by the app or a human, your choice). In cooperative play the game handles the opposing forces, while in the asymmetric mode another player can take control of the Master of Shadows, controlling all the bad guys that spring up. Those actions cover the familiar dungeon-crawling essentials: moving, attacking, searching, investigating furniture, detecting traps, and interacting with whatever the dungeon throws at you. But here, when you search, for example, you don't draw a few cards from a deck and pick something; rather, the app generates a random encounter, different for each game. So you could find a short sword and gold, or maybe something far more rare. Combat uses opposed dice pools, with the weapons you have found or bought determining the attack dice you can use, and various protection speels, gear or clothing providing the defence, while stamina generated during play (seen on most dice) can fuel the growing collection of skills your character unlocks. Spells add another resource-management decision because mana is limited and individual spells can only be used once during a quest. The app sits over all of this and handles a surprising amount. You simply press a button, or you can speak commands to search objects, open doors, trigger events, and interact with the world, while it delivers narration, random discoveries, loot, and story consequences. Searching the same location across different games will produce different results, which gives exploration a welcome sense of uncertainty, and each game will feel quite different in terms of what you find and what happens. This random event and loot selection is another huge benefit only really made possible by the app. THE ERUNE EXPERIENCE The obvious question is whether all that talking to your phone actually works. In my experience, yes, and much better than I expected. There is something initially slightly ridiculous about announcing that your adventurer searches a cupboard, but after a short while it becomes surprisingly natural, particularly because the app is doing something useful rather than simply replacing a deck of cards with a screen. And it all happens quite quickly, and from my experience, mostly smoothly. The voice actors are great too, and bring real life to the story. The AI generated main voice is a bit clunky though. There are lots of voices to choose from, but most are terrible! More importantly, I like what the app allows Erune to do. There is a common argument against app-supported board games that asks what happens if the app disappears one day, and that is a perfectly legitimate concern. This game would not work without the app. But if we let that possibility stop designers experimenting with technology altogether, we also close off a whole area of what tabletop games could become. And with this app, the game is much better. MUCH BETTER. I would rather judge Erune on whether the technology improves the game while I am actually playing it, and here I think it does. The biggest benefit is exploration. In a traditional dungeon crawler, somebody often has to consult a book, build the next room, and inevitably see information the rest of the group does not. Or indeed, everyone sees it, and it's the same every time. No randomization. No hidden rooms. No unexpected encounters with delightfully voiced character actors bringing it to life. It's a massive upgrade here with the app that offers all this. The app can simply tell you what appears when you reach it, allowing the dungeon to retain all its mystery without requiring a dedicated game master. It also makes setup faster and keeps plenty of administration away from the players. The app is not flawless. It requires precise wording to work for the voice activation, and previous versions were criticized heavily for bugs and awkward navigation. While this new version has fixed the voice activation from my experience, it still has quite a few bugs. The app can crash mid-game, forcing you to spend time away from the game, messing about with logging in and out to try and fix it. This doesn't always seem to work again after a short period. I have never lost a game. But it's five minutes away from the immersion, fiddling with tech. It completely takes you out of the game and destroys the flow the game has otherwise so successfully built up. Strip the app away, and Erune becomes a much more conventional proposition. Movement, dice-based combat, monsters, searching, treasure, and character progression will all feel immediately familiar if you have played HeroQuest, Descent, or any number of modern dungeon crawlers. So the app is crucial to this game's success. It is not necessarily a criticism that the game is a little basic without the app, because the fundamentals are solid, the combat moves quickly, and the steady stream of abilities gives your character satisfying development without turning every attack into a spreadsheet. But you have played it before. And it is available in many other forms. But with the app, it feels fresh, unique, exciting, and, in places, ground-breaking. The addition of the app is crucial to this games success. But the functionality and stability of the app does need to improve. I asked the publisher about all this and they told me "that the app is central to the experience, so its stability really matters to us, and we’re actively working on the bugs... We're tracking [all these issues] and want to iron [them] out... a full, thorough review of the English version is planned very soon, to fix it properly once and for all." So they are on it, and I expect it to be fixed in the future. And I have heard this new version is already much more stable than the old one, so they are on the right path. Back to the game, I particularly like the stamina system. Your dice are not only about succeeding or failing because certain results can generate stamina too, and that stamina powers later skills which increasingly define how your adventurer behaves. There is a nice rhythm to building up resources, spotting opportunities, and then spending them on something more exciting than another basic attack. The spell system works similarly well because limited uses make casting feel like an actual decision rather than something you automatically repeat every turn. And the things you can do are exciting and fun to implement. You feel like a true hero destroying a few bad guys at once with a well-timed use of a powerful spell, and the subsequent good roll! And the campaign of levels that you play through is meaty in substance and interesting in story. The levels feel varied and offer a great, lasting, memorable, and enjoyable experience as you play through. It's one I will play again with new characters, and I am keen to try the other expansions and levels available. It is frustrating that I cannot play through a full campaign here, as some levels need to be unlocked with other expansions. I don't mind other levels not being available for other missions or quests, but here they make levels within the one campaign I can play inaccessible. I can play levels 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 15, 17, and 18 from the main missions, but not the others. That seems off to me. PROS The app genuinely adds mystery and makes dungeon exploration easier to manage. When the app works, it is fantastic! Excellent production, artwork, miniatures and table presence. Strong character progression through skills, stamina, spells and equipment. Familiar dungeon-crawling foundations make it surprisingly easy to get into. CONS The entire experience still depends heavily on the long-term reliability of the app. And it doesn't always work. Voice commands can occasionally demand more precise wording than you would like. The underlying dungeon crawler itself is solid rather than particularly revolutionary. FINAL THOUGHTS Erune could have been a gimmick. An app-driven, voice-controlled dungeon crawler is exactly the sort of idea that sounds brilliant on a crowdfunding page before becoming considerably less brilliant when somebody is repeating the same sentence into their phone for the sixth time. Thankfully, that simply was not my experience. The technology settles into the background surprisingly quickly and, more importantly, earns its place by making setup easier and exploration more mysterious. And ultimately, the game is much better. I admire the ambition behind it. Board games do not need technology, and I certainly would not want every game I own asking me to download something before I can play it, but that does not mean designers should stop experimenting with what technology can bring to the table. Erune uses it to reveal its world gradually, manage information, and allow the physical game to concentrate on miniatures, dice, characters, and adventure. I really want to support this sort of innovation. But it does not always work, and it does need to be fixed and become more stable before I can fully recommend this. I am giving this a 7.5 because of these issues. A great score still. But it would be a 9.5 without the app bugs. That all said, underneath the clever integration sits a solid, enjoyable dungeon crawler rather than a revolutionary one. The combat works, progression is satisfying, the production is excellent and the app gives the whole thing an identity it probably would not have otherwise. It has imperfections, but I had fun with it and came away appreciating both what Erune already achieves and what it is trying to push forward. Find out more about the upcoming new crowdfunding here.

Lost Ruins of Arnak: The Missing Expedition WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 1-2 You’ll like this if you like: Lost Ruins of Arnak, The previous Arnak campaign Published by: Czech Games Edition (CGE) Designed by: Elwen, Mín This is a review copy. See our review policy here By Steve Godfrey As usual with an Arnak expansion this comes with a bunch of new Item and artifact cards, new assistants, sites guardians and idols. It also comes with two new research tracks. A lot of these will be discovered and used throughout the campaign but you can also mix them in and use them throughout your normal games. The campaign also comes with two new leaders and there will also be a few components that can only be used for the campaign. How to search for your mentor I’ll try and keep spoilers to a minimum so I’ll only give you a brief rundown of how a scenario works. You can play either solo or with two players. Regardless of how you play you’ll still need to set up the solo bot as well and this will work the same as the regular solo opponent. Choose a leader/s to play with. You can use the leaders from this box, some basic leaders with some items cards included in the deck or, if you've got the expedition leaders expansion you can use any leader from there. Set up the game as per the current scenario and take a campaign sheet. Each one will come with an overview card which will tell you your win condition for that game and some objectives to complete to gain bonuses at the end of the scenario. The win condition and the objectives will change slightly depending on your player count. Then play the game as per normal taking into account any scenario specific rules. If you're playing two player co-op you’ll each have access to a pigeon token. Each can be used once per round to send a resource to your partner. Each scenario will give you ways to gain encounter cards in the form of completing minor objectives. These will give you a bit of story and two options to choose from. Each will give a boon of some sort, one immediate and one to use at a later date. At the end of the game check to see if you meet the win condition. If you do then calculate your score and the bot’s score. Minus their score from yours to get your campaign score for this game. If you lose you have two choices. Either play the same round again or choose to accept the loss. If you accept the loss then set your score for this game to minus ten and you can then go to the next scenario. Each encounter card option you choose and objective you complete will give you a resource that you will mark on your campaign sheet. When you mark off particular spots on the sheet you'll be asked to read a section of the campaign book that may get you little bonuses for the next game. Anyone else getting Deja Vu? If you’ve been playing Arnak for a while then you may already be familiar with an official campaign that came out a few years ago online. I sat and played through all four games in one day and it was great. It used the existing components in such a clever way and told a cool story to boot. Well it must have been a big enough hit with fans because here we are a few years later with a physical version, but with enough changes that you can play this new version and have a different experience with it. One of the first things that strikes you about this campaign is, like its predecessor, how well it uses the components of this and the base game to tell a story. Essentially this is the story of the disappearance of your old Professor, Kutnil and the rescue mission you organise to Arnak to find him. In the first scenario specific cards, sites and guardians are used to bring the story on the page to life on the board. Not only that but to make you feel like you're actually doing the thing you're supposed to be doing. For example (minor spoiler for the first scenario) The story talks about a crashed plane and you'll be using the crashed plane site from the base game as an objective in the scenario. Everything is so well designed and so cleverly thought out that you can’t help but get sucked into the story like that guy from Lost getting sucked into the plane's engine. They do such a good job of making each scenario feel so different that you don't ever feel like you're just playing another game of Arnak with a bit of story tacked on. You feel like you could be discovering new parts of the island. The original campaign had to make do with utilising just the base game components to craft the story meaning that it was kinda limited, which actually made it even more impressive with how good it was. With the missing expedition being designed from scratch it means that along with those creative uses of components, the designers could also utilise new, bespoke elements to craft the story how they wanted with fewer restrictions. The Missing Expedition takes the campaign from 4 to 6 scenarios and is able to tell a more in depth story and really open out the scenarios to their full potential. It makes the whole thing feel so much more free. It's the same, but different. Let's talk about the scenarios. Each one brings a different and oftentimes big change to how you win/end the game but crucially, not how the game is played. Again, a potential minor spoiler, one game will end as normal, however you’ll need to reach a certain point on the research track to actually celebrate a win. What I love about this, and the whole campaign in fact, is just how much it asks you to adapt the way you play Arnak. Some scenarios will shift the focus more on the exploration side of the game, others more on the research track. It keeps the game fresh for every scenario. Now, being able to adapt to the scenario may not require too big of a change, after all, all you may be doing is shifting focus and it's not like the game itself is changing. This is where those minor objectives come into play. Each scenario gives those tantalising nuggets to draw you away from the main goal. It’s the board game equivalent of your mate eating a big bowl of cheesy chips in front of you while you're eating your boring healthy salad because you WILL get into those jeans again. Each of those little side quests aren't too much off the beaten path and all are achievable while still getting your main goal, but not always easily. In fact some of them prove enough of a distraction that it could derail your main objective plans if you're not careful and clever with how you go about them. So, why do them in the first place? Well for one, they’ll give you rewards when you complete them in game (which may go to help you complete your main objective) Second, they’ll give you icons for your story path at the end of the chapter. This is another neat little addition. It's more motivation to go for those extra objectives and getting a little bonus for the start of the next game gives you that nice little dopamine hit. Objectives aren't the only way you get these though. During each game you’ll have ways to get those event cards. Aside from the in game bonuses they’ll give you a different icon to cross off of the campaign sheet at the end of the game. Generally you’ll pick the bonus that best suits your game, but there will definitely be times when you’ll be leaning towards the other option because of the advance it gives you on the campaign sheet. To Solo (like Raiders of the Lost Ark) Or play with two (like the Last Crusade) The campaign can be played either solo or co-operatively and each scenario set up and objectives will be slightly different depending on your player count. Nothing drastic, just a change in how many of something you'll need for particular objectives. If you like the extra challenge though you can change the difficulty. I played through this solo and I personally didn't feel as though I was missing having the extra player there. Socially it would have been good but I didn't ever feel like having someone there to pass resources back and forth or help with the objectives was needed but I put a lot of that down to how well balanced down the objectives were between player counts. Like any good campaign you can absolutely play this through again or just play scenarios as a single game. Even better, almost all of the components can be used in your regular games of Arnak, including the encounter cards. Yep, it's a more stuff expansion as well so even if you didn't want to play the campaign you still get enough out of this to help justify the cost. Speaking of more stuff, you also get two more leaders but you can also use leaders from the Expedition leaders expansion if you have it. Plus you can change leaders in each scenario which may not be a bad move as you read each one. A couple of the scenarios have aspects that may lean towards particular leaders. That's not to say you can’t win with any others but lets just say that some have a particular set of skills that lend themselves to that scenario. I’m sure it wasn't designed that way but you can certainly see some advantages. That being said, maybe not taking the one with the advantage could be a good challenge. Talking of leaders. What do these ones do? The Mechanic The Mechanic has a cool little cog wheel on her board with silver bonuses and some space to slot gold bonuses tiles. Some of her cards let her activate the silver or gold widgets on her wheel. Whichever one you activate you rotate the wheel 90 degrees and if silver, choose one of the silver bonuses on either side of the arrow to gain that resource. If it's gold, do the same but activate the gold bonus at the arrow. She’ll gain two new gold tiles at round 1,3 and 5, choose one and put it to her wheel. She also has space for three assistants and on round three she’ll also gain her monkey assistant which will let her activate the silver or gold rewards depending on if it's upgraded or not. The Journalist. The Journalist will quite happily write before gathering all the facts and because of this his notebook can move one space above his magnifying glass. Before you all come at me this is pretty much the description from the rulebook……but I don't disagree. At the start of the game place article tokens beneath each level one and two sites and 2 / 3 in the notches of their board, then put two of the newspaper tiles into their board. To write an article (collect it) you must pay the travel icon on a site with your archaeologist to put it into your supply. To publish an article, use an action (free or not depending on the space) and put that article on your newspaper and take the rewards. Both new leaders are fun new additions, with the mechanic being my favourite but not by much. I like trying to manipulate the wheel to get the right resources at the right time but I'd happily play with either of them. It’s also nice to have a couple of new leaders in rotation. Adventures are great, but you still need to pack and unpack. Setup and to a slightly lesser extent, teardown are my biggest bugbears of this campaign. Like I mentioned earlier, each scenario has its own unique setup, then you need to find the scenario cards (but they're all together in the deck so its not that bad) and any particular cards and sites specific to it and then player set up and then the solo opponents whose stack of tiles could change each time. There's a lot of parts that need to come together to set up each scenario. It’s a lot to set up and if you have the game split between two boxes like I do then it's a lot of back and forth finding the specific things you need. Same with tear down since you're trying to keep campaign stuff separate until you’ve had at least one play through. Normally I’d say to keep this setup between games if you can, however I’ve tried doing two scenarios back to back and it almost feels like you're starting setup again each time anyway so I doubt it will help. I don't have the big box so I can't really say if it's any easier if you have that. This campaign is great. It takes a game that you already love, throws in a fun, interesting story and takes the time and care to give you well thought out and thematic scenarios. If your main player count is 1-2 then this is a worthy addition to your game of Arnak. Couple that with the fact that it also doubles as a more stuff expansion and it would almost be a must buy. What about if 1-2 players or a campaign isn't your thing? Is it still worth it? I’d say it's worth looking at. I reckon at least 90 percent of this expansion can be added to your regular game and it's a touch cheaper than the expedition leader box. Sure you only get two leaders instead of six and you may or may not use the encounter cards but there could be enough in here to justify a purchase. If you have played the previous online campaign then I would still say you can play this and have a great experience. The scenarios are different enough to give a different challenge and while the bulk of the story is similar there are enough added touches to keep it fresh. Right, I'm off to look into this new type of journalism. Writing without having to research the facts is a game changer. I’ll get so much more done. I’d better get on this early before other journalists start doing it.

Sniper Elite: Escalation WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Sniper Elite, Good dogs Published by: Rebellion Unplugged Designed by: Roger Tankersley, David Thompson (I) This is the reviewer’s copy. See our review policy here By Steve Godfrey Escalation adds a few different modules, or as they refer to them, ‘edges’, to your games of Sniper Elite. They come in different flavours, which I’ll talk about in a bit. At the start of the game, you need to decide how many of these you’ll each be playing with, up to a maximum of three. Who chooses first will be determined by the map you're playing. Speaking of maps, all of these will work on any of the maps aside from one module, which is map-specific. Since this is an expansion for the base game, I won’t be talking about how to play Sniper Elite, just what it adds to an already great game. The Snipers Edge (How they didn’t name the expansion this baffles me. Rebellion, call me for future game titles) Upgraded Loadout Cards When you choose one, you replace the base version in the deck with the upgraded one. These may give extra movement, let you injure defenders in multiple spaces, or even let you use another loadout card after using it. These have been game-winning for the sniper in the past. One space of extra movement can make all the difference, and that moment where you can trigger a mine that can take out multiple opponents can be game-changing. These do exactly what they say on the tin; they’re the cards you know with some extra, exciting oomph. Escalation Missions These are special asymmetrical abilities, and the sniper has their own two, and so do the defenders. The Sniper has one called Kill Shot, which essentially lets you take out a second defender in one shot if they are both in the same line of sight. However, being able to pull this off depends on how many recoil tokens you also pull from the bag. 0-1 and you can take out both; pull more than two, and you choose which of the two you take out. They also have the best of all the escalation missions, which is, of course, the Good Boy, which comes with its own dog miniature! I mean, is this even a choice to take this every time? When you inevitably take this mission (let’s be honest, you're a monster if you don’t), once per game, you can mark the dog on your board, and then on your turn, you can move the dog one space, and it alerts the defenders in the same way as the sniper. When you let the defenders know about the noise, you don’t have to tell them if it was you or the dog that made the noise. If the space with the dog is ever swept or spotted, then reveal the dog; it now can’t move again, presumably because it’s been distracted by everyone petting it. Kill Shot is fun, and having the opportunity to potentially take out two defenders is great, but this can also be very situational, and how often you actually get to pull it off could be quite rare. Especially if the defenders know you have that card and actively try to avoid putting themselves in that position. The Good Boy is genuinely one you'll want to take almost every time. Having a permanent distraction on the board is huge. Again, how well this works could be situational because it can only move one space, and if the defenders move away from it, then all you can do is move it slowly towards them again to make it useful. Overuse of making noise with the dog could make defenders suspicious that it is the dog rather than you being reckless, although you could use this as a clever double bluff. The Defenders Edge (the difficult second album) Elite Specialist Cards The defenders have their own upgrades. Let’s face it, it’d be a bit unfair if they didn't. They've got 6 Elite specialists they can choose from, and much like the sniper's loadout cards, they will give better abilities to the base defenders' specialists. For example, the elite sniper can now target a space up to three spaces away, or the elite medic can protect soldiers by giving them armour two. These elite specialists can still only use their main ability twice, but all of them now come with passive abilities that can be used all the time. An example of those is one that can move a unit in its squad if they’ve used the gathering intel action, which can be huge for an always-on ability. Escalation Mission Like the sniper, the defenders have their own two missions they can choose from. Flares give every defender a one-use flare token, which they can use on their turn as a free action. They can place the flare up to two spaces away, and on the sniper's turn, if they are in an open space within two spaces of the flare token, they add a recoil token to their bag and say if they are in one of those spaces (not saying which one) and remove the flare from the board regardless of if the sniper was affected. The other mission is Call the Hunter. This imposing figure gets placed on the board (whereabouts will depend on the map being played). This is now an extra squad for the defenders and can take one action per round: either move 2 spaces, move 1 and spot, move 1 and attack, deploy, or dismiss. Other squads can forfeit both their actions to give the hunter another action that he hasn't already used this round. He also has armour two, meaning taking him off the board isn't going to be easy. The other squads can give him an extra action by forfeiting their own action. Anything that lets you cover more ground as the defender is always gonna be welcome in my games. The flares are great for searching that couple of extra spaces, especially when you think you've got the sniper's position down and need that extra kick to find them. The Hunter is the equivalent of you deciding that your regular troops are biffing it, so you send in the Terminator to help out. He’s literally a one-man army and can make for an intimidating figure on the board as he stomps around looking for his prey, and given that he's got two armour, it makes him a tough cookie to kill from afar. I like that he can be given extra actions by the others. If he’s closing in on the sniper, then the possibility of him activating more than once gives an extra sense of dread to the sniper, who might otherwise have thought they were safe. Advantages The last thing the defenders have in their arsenal are Advantages; guess what they give you. Here you'll find things like giving the sniper only seven turns rather than ten to complete objectives, adding in the tanks, making particular spaces into difficult terrain, or making the sniper disclose where they entered the board on their second turn. Aside from the Accelerated Schedule (that gives the sniper seven turns), these advantages are map and expansion specific. For example, you can add the vehicles from the Operation Kraken expansion to a map from the Eagles Nest expansion using these cards, but this obviously requires you to have both expansions. These cards are a fun way to add new twists to your existing maps by bringing different elements in, but you may be limited depending on what you own. I think some of the language in the rulebook could have been explained better. You're told that to use this expansion, you need to play a ‘special op’. I’ll be honest, this confused me, and I went scouring through the original rulebook to see if this was a mode that was referenced in the base game or if it was something that you play in one of the expansions. It’s not; it's just a term they use for adding these modules, but that's never made clear. I also got confused by their use of the term ‘edges’, which is the collective term they use for these modules. They don’t outright say that this is their term for them, and when they come to the “select edges” section of the rules, they give a visual indication of them, but for some reason, this still felt a bit vague, and so our first game we threw in about 4 things each. Luckily, it didn't affect the game, and we did correct that from then on. The whole confusion with ‘edge’ could just be a me thing, and even if it isn’t, then hopefully this will have cleared it up for anyone reading this. In the world of modular expansions, it’s often the case that some modules will get used frequently, even all the time, and some will sit in the box desperately staring up into the light when the box opens, hoping and praying that this is finally their time to get used, and it never is. When it comes to Escalation, I can see myself consistently using all of these in some combination or another. It’s fun to just explore what each of these does, and as time goes on, you're bound to find your favourites amongst them, and while, yes, there will be certain things that your particular group will bury in the bottom of the box, there is plenty here for every type of player and group. This is one of those expansions that you can add to your games of Sniper Elite if you're not wanting to explore any new maps just yet but want to change things up. Subsequently, if/when you do pick up new expansions, this can be used to enhance those games as well. Aside from just being fun additions, these are also another way to balance the game. So if you find players consistently taking the win, then throwing one or two of these in can help address that and also present a fun challenge to those that are taking the wins because, let's be honest, those easy wins get pretty boring pretty quickly. Escalation is a great way to change up your games of Sniper Elite without breaking the bank and taking up more room on your shelf because, yes, this does fit in the base game box. Right, I need to go and paint my Good Boy miniature to make doubly sure that he’s the 'goodest' of good boys.

This is a preview copy sent to us for our early opinions. No money exchanged hands. Some art, rules or components will change in the final game. Find out more here. Galaxy Glitch is the sort of game that becomes more interesting the more people you put around the table. At its core, this is a competitive space combat game about upgrading your ship, surviving an increasingly dangerous galaxy and eventually taking shots at the Desolation Sun. But there is a wonderfully awkward problem sitting underneath all of that. You need the other players to help keep things under control, yet only one of you can win. There is no second place. No point scoring at all. Just one winner. Everyone else loses. That tension runs through the whole game. Ignore too many sectors and enemies start piling up, while allowing five cards to build in one location can trigger an Overload that punishes everyone still fighting for the good of the galaxy. So you are encouraged to deal with problems that are not necessarily the most profitable choice for you personally. Of course, everyone else is making exactly the same calculation, and that is where Galaxy Glitch starts becoming much more than a straightforward dice-chucking space battle. Although the dice-chucking part is unbelievably fun! SETTING OFF The game progresses through three stages, beginning with Flight School before moving into Deep Space and eventually Event Horizon. This is controlled by a deck of cards for each. Run out of the deck, you move on. But you could move on early if you clear all enemies in all five areas in any round. Players secretly choose where they are traveling using Wayfinder cards, reveal simultaneously, and then deal with whatever is waiting in those sectors. That simultaneous choice immediately gives the game some personality because you are constantly trying to work out what everyone else might do, whether a dangerous area will be covered and where your own ship can get the most value. Players must then fight whatever enemies lie in wait for them in the area they chose to fly to. In the final Event Horizon round, any unspent critical hits will be dealt to the Desolation Sun. Strike the final blow there, and win! Combat is based around dice, with normal hits, critical hits, and misses determining how effectively you deal with enemies. Your ship has primary and secondary weapons alongside a generator, shield, and armour, all of which can be improved as the game develops. You start throwing just three dice, but this very quickly ramps up. And ramps up big! Damage is not entirely negative either, because taking hits to certain parts of your ship can generate shards, giving you resources to spend on making yourself considerably more dangerous later. A mid-game roll! There is plenty to buy and discover along the way. After each player has fought in their area, you can then fly to one of five areas to buy upgrades, exchange goods, bet on resources, ship, or gain other upgrades. New ships, weapons, Augments (upgrades/[powers) and other fun things to discover, gradually transform what you can do, while defeated enemies can leave behind Husks and different locations give you opportunities to spend the resources you have earned. There is also a push-your-luck element to how long you keep going, because sometimes the sensible choice is simply to stop, secure an advantage of first player for the next round, and prepare yourself properly for what is coming next. BUILDING THE RIGHT SHIP One thing became apparent quite quickly in my games. Upgrading everything whenever the opportunity appears is not necessarily the best strategy. There is a real temptation to progress neatly from one improvement to the next, but doing that can leave you spending a lot of resources on things you are eventually going to replace anyway. I had much more success strengthening the weapons on my starting ship, saving heavily and then skipping some of those incremental upgrades altogether. Make a bigger jump into one of the stronger ships, then start investing seriously in that. It creates an interesting economy because the shiny new thing sitting in front of you is not always the thing you should buy. That becomes particularly noticeable at two players. Galaxy Glitch works very well at this count because it starts feeling like a proper race. Both players are trying to become powerful enough to begin damaging the Desolation Sun first, and if both understand that saving for those larger upgrades can be important, it becomes a tight contest over who can accelerate their engine fastest. There is perhaps a balance consideration hidden inside that, though. If one player upgrades steadily while the other saves and leaps straight towards the better ships, the more conservative upgrader can fall behind surprisingly quickly. That may change as strategies develop further, but from my early games it certainly feels like Galaxy Glitch rewards patience with your resources more than constantly chasing the next small improvement. GALAZY GLITCH? Then there are the Traitors, and this is where the game takes a particularly entertaining turn. Losing your ship during Flight School is recoverable, but once you reach Deep Space, destruction can change your allegiance completely. Instead of continuing to fight alongside the other players, you become a Traitor for the remainder of the game. Suddenly someone who was helping control the board is actively trying to make everybody else's lives more difficult. It is a clever way of dealing with player elimination because being destroyed does not mean sitting around watching everyone else finish. Instead, you effectively switch sides and become part of the problem. The possibility alone changes how a larger game feels. More players means more ships taking damage, more potential mistakes and consequently a greater chance that somebody eventually turns. You may spend the early game reluctantly cooperating with someone only to find that same person gleefully trying to ruin you half an hour later. SOLO AND SMALLER GAMES Galaxy Glitch works surprisingly well solo too. The basic systems still function, building your ship remains satisfying and working through the escalating threats gives you a proper puzzle to solve. I enjoyed playing it this way and would happily do so again. My main concern is that the solo game currently feels slightly inevitable once you understand how to approach it. Playing cautiously during the opening stage, building up your ship and avoiding unnecessary risks meant I reached a point where I felt fairly certain I would eventually achieve the goal. The uncertainty was less about whether I could win and more about how long it would take. That feels like something that could be tightened before the final game. A round limit, timer or some other escalating pressure could add considerably more jeopardy. The fear of losing your ship is there, but if taking things slowly and upgrading carefully removes too much of that danger, solo risks losing some of the tension that makes the multiplayer game interesting. THE FINAL SHOT And then we reach the part of Galaxy Glitch that people are either going to adore or absolutely hate. As we talked about, you do not win by contributing the most damage to the Desolation Sun. You win by delivering the final Critical Hit. Someone could potentially do nine points of damage, dominate the galaxy, build the strongest ship at the table and spend two hours looking like the obvious winner. Another player could have achieved very little, arrive at exactly the right moment, get a fortunate critical result and deliver number ten. Game over. That sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous. It is also enormous fun if you go into Galaxy Glitch knowing that this is exactly what the game intends to do. There is still plenty you can do to improve your chances. Before you can damage the Desolation Sun you need to survive the enemies in your sector, and only the Critical Hits left over after dealing with those enemies can hurt the boss. A powerful ship loaded with upgraded weapons is therefore far more likely to create the opportunity required to win. But likely is not guaranteed. Technically, everybody remains dangerous right until that final point of damage disappears, regardless of what has happened during the previous couple of hours. That keeps the entire table engaged and means nobody can simply look at another player's engine and conclude the result is already decided. It will frustrate some people enormously. If you want the player who performed best across the entire game to be rewarded with victory, Galaxy Glitch can absolutely pull the rug from underneath you. You need to know before sitting down that this is not necessarily a game about identifying the most efficient commander at the end. It is about who fires the killing shot. THE MORE, THE MERRIER For me, Galaxy Glitch is strongest with a larger group. The underlying mechanics do not suddenly change, but the atmosphere does. More players create more uncertainty around sector selection, more competing upgrade strategies, greater pressure across the galaxy and a much higher chance of the Traitor system entering the equation. Most importantly, the ending becomes harder to predict. At two players you are largely watching one rival and judging how close they are to being able to hurt the boss. With several ships circling the board, suddenly there are multiple potential winners and considerably more opportunities for somebody to emerge from nowhere. That suits Galaxy Glitch perfectly. This is not really a game that wants to produce a perfectly controlled ending. It wants somebody to roll the dice, spot a pile of Critical Hits and realise that against all expectations they may actually have just won. FINAL THOUGHTS Galaxy Glitch combines some familiar ideas in a way that produces a surprisingly distinctive multiplayer experience. Upgrading ships, rolling combat dice and fighting a giant end boss are hardly new concepts, but the shared galactic threat, simultaneous movement choices, Traitors and wonderfully brutal final-hit victory condition give the game its own personality. There are areas I would like to see refined before release. Solo could use more pressure, and the upgrade economy may need watching if skipping straight towards the strongest ships consistently proves more efficient than progressing gradually. Neither issue stopped me enjoying what is already here, though, and both feel like the kind of thing that can be adjusted during development rather than fundamental problems with the design. The most important thing is understanding what sort of game Galaxy Glitch wants to be. This is competitive, chaotic and occasionally deeply unfair. You might play brilliantly for two hours and lose because somebody else produced one ridiculous roll at precisely the right moment. And I think that is part of the fun. With two players it becomes a tense race to build the better ship first. Solo offers an enjoyable development puzzle. But put a larger group around the table and Galaxy Glitch starts throwing betrayals, competing strategies, overloaded sectors and potential last-second victories everywhere. That is where I think it really shines. Galaxy Glitch already feels like a game with a clear identity, plenty of personality and some genuinely fun ideas at its core. This is still a prototype, but I really hope it finds the right route to market, whether that is through a publisher who sees the potential, a successful crowdfunding campaign, or whatever path the designer ultimately chooses. There is enough here that deserves proper development, proper production and a wider audience. I hope Galaxy Glitch gets the chance to become a real game, because I think it deserves to.

Racing games often blend beautifully with a betting mechanic. Sometimes they are powered by dice, sometimes by cards, sometimes by clever hand management, and sometimes by little more than blind hope and loud optimism. But however they get moving, the best racing games all share one thing: they make everyone around the table care deeply about something that probably looked completely ridiculous five minutes earlier. This is a lively, chaotic and wonderfully noisy corner of the hobby. Horses, camels, cars, cyclists, or whatever else is hurtling towards the finish line, racing games have a brilliant way of dragging players into the drama. The lead changes hands, someone backs the wrong runner, a perfect plan collapses on the final bend, and suddenly the whole table is shouting. Like all categories, there are so many games I could have included. So let's start with a few honorable mentions. Consider these all in tied 6th spot! Strap in, there are a lot; I love this genre! Heat is a brilliant game that offers a genuinely tense card playing experience every time I play it. There are some really interesting tactics, and so many expansions now, this game will last for years. This missed out to Downforce for me due to Downforce's simplicity, and classic charm. Camel Up is hilarious, chaotic, family-friendly, and always fun. Its quick and simple to explain and set up, and works well with non-gamers who like the idea of betting. It teaches a few mechanics in this way brilliantly as a gateway game, and I have used it successfully as such many times. It misses out to Hot Streak that just does all this a little better! The Quest for El Dorado is the only racing game here where you are racing as people. There is an unbelievable amount of variety in the setup to keep this fresh. And the mix of racing and deck-building will appeal to many. It looks great, plays fast, and has some intriguing moments in every game. This missed out to Downforce as that feels more like a racing game, over this excellent deck-builder, simply because it has race cars in it! Thunder Road Vendetta is the game that came closest to making my top five. It looks stunning, has loads of variety in the setup, and the teach is a breeze. Games are fast, frantic, and often hilarious. But for what is quite a simple experience, it maybe seems lacking in depth simply because it looks like it will deliver a more complex, serious game that what you actually get. For this reason, it misses out to Magical Athlete, which does not hide its chaos and humour. Long Shot: The Dice Game is one of my favourite games to play in a large group when I want something fast, fun, interactive and funny. Its a tiny box, but packs so much fun and was a narrow loser to Ready Set Bet in this top five, which pipped Long Shot to the post through its table presence and slightly louder screams that it brings to the table. Flamme Rouge is the game to chose if you like riding or watching other ride bikes. If you don't like either of those things, try Downforce instead. But if you do, you will love it. It's as simple as that. But as the theme is more niche, it misses out here to a more general appealing car racing game. Pitch Car is genius fun. So simple. Flick cars around a track you build yourself. It has so many expansions and different track setups, it is a never-ending box of toys. But, it's hard to get availability-wise and very expensive when you do, so it misses out here. I don't actually have my own copy for these same reasons. But I would love to one day. OK, that's the best of the rest, now lets get to the best and look at the top five racing board games in this gloriously unpredictable sector. The Classic Racer: Downforce And the best to play if you want to play something simple. Current BGG rank: 526 Published by: Restoration Games Designed by: Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, Wolfgang Kramer WBG Rating: 8 Downforce has such a wonderfully simple core idea, but there is far more going on than first appears. Players are dealt a sizeable hand of cards, each capable of moving several cars around the track, usually favouring one colour more than the others. Before the race begins, you need to study that hand and work out which cars you are best placed to influence. Then comes the auction, where players bid to take control of the racing cars. You can own more than one, but you must win at least one, and because money is effectively points, overpaying can hurt you later. Each car also comes with its own rule-breaking ability, so you are constantly weighing up the strength of your cards against the power attached to the car itself. Once the race starts, Downforce becomes beautifully fluid. Players simply take turns playing one card at a time, moving the cars shown on it in order. Most cards will move several different colours, which means you are rarely only helping yourself, but that is where the cleverness comes in. Positioning matters enormously because cars can become trapped behind slower vehicles, squeezed into bottlenecks or blocked around tight corners. There is something deeply satisfying about playing a huge movement value on a rival’s car when it cannot move anywhere because traffic has completely boxed it in. The final twist is that you are not only racing the cars you own. At different points in the race, players secretly bet on which cars they think will finish well, and those bets can be placed on anyone. That means loyalties can shift as the race develops. If your own car gets stuck in a dreadful position, you may suddenly find yourself helping another vehicle because you have backed it instead. It creates a brilliant mix of racing, bluffing and opportunism, all wrapped up in something incredibly easy to teach and quick to get moving. And that is probably why Downforce works so well. It has the look and accessibility of a classic family board game, but the decisions, interaction and tactical nastiness feel thoroughly modern. It is fast, frantic, funny and constantly engaging, with almost no downtime and just enough strategy to make every card matter. A delight. The Assymetric Racer: Magical Athlete And the best to play if you want to play with non-gamers. Current BGG rank: 412 Published by: CMYK Designed by: Richard Garfield, Takashi Ishida WBG Rating: 8 Magical Athlete is bonkers. It looks bonkers, it plays bonkers, and that is entirely the point. It is wildly unfair, barely balanced (and that's being generous) and built around mechanics I would normally be wary of: roll and move, take-that effects and even player elimination. There is very little strategy here, and yet somehow none of that matters because it is stupidly fun. You will find yourself cheering on chunky, colourful dice rolls and becoming far more invested in this ridiculous procession around the board than you have any right to be. Before the racing starts, players use a snake draft to choose their four athletes from a vast array of wacky options. Then comes one of the few meaningful choices in the game: deciding the order in which those racers will compete across the four races. The points available increase as the game goes on, so you can save your strongest racer for later, try to counter what everyone else might be doing based on the other players drafts, or simply throw your best option in early and hope for chaos. Every athlete has its own absurd ability too. Some slow opponents down, some make them miss turns, and some can quite literally eat another racer and remove them from the game altogether. It is absolute nonsense, but glorious nonsense. Magical Athlete works because it never asks to be taken seriously. Instead, it taps into that hazy, nostalgic feeling of playing roll-and-move games in the eighties, back when your memory insists they were all brilliant, and somehow actually makes that feeling true. It is loud, chaotic, unfair and unpredictable, but also hilarious from start to finish. Sometimes that is more than enough. The Funny Racer: Hot Streak And the best to play if you want to a big toy factor! Current BGG rank: 328 Published by: CMYK Designed by: Jon Perry WBG Rating: 8.5 Hot Streak is one of the newer additions to my collection, and I bought it largely because of the hype and the ridiculous toy factor. Thankfully, it has justified both. This is a race between four deeply silly mascots where players draft bets, secretly slip one card into the racing deck, and then watch the whole thing unravel in front of them. Racers fall over, turn around, swerve into one another, crawl, get disqualified and occasionally remember that they are meant to be heading towards a finish line. What makes it work is just how open and approachable it is. You can teach this to non-gamers in seconds, and once one person knows how to run the race, everyone else can simply place their bets and enjoy the show. In that sense it feels a little like Magical Athlete, only with even less agency once the race begins. That sounds like criticism, but here it really is not. Hot Streak almost plays itself, and that is part of the charm because the entertainment comes from the noise around the table, the false confidence before a race, and the collective disbelief when your supposedly safe bet suddenly turns around and runs the wrong way. There is enough decision-making before the race to give you something to care about, especially through the safer and riskier betting options, but this is not a game about mastering a system. It is about buying into the spectacle. Hot Streak is colourful, immediate, silly and consistently funny, with the sort of table presence that makes people stop and watch even if they are not playing. It is one of those games that reminds you how little a game sometimes needs to do mechanically when it is this good at creating a shared moment. The Gambling Racer: Ready Set Bet And the best to play if you want real-time chaos! Current BGG rank: 445 Published by: Alderac Entertainment Group Designed by: John D. Clair WBG Rating: 9 Ready Set Bet is wild. It is fast, chaotic and almost guaranteed to turn a normal table of people into a shouting mob within minutes. One player runs the race, rolling and moving the horses at pace, while everyone else places bets in real time, fighting for the best available spaces before the call of “No more bets!” shuts the market down. You can also run it on the available free app, which is excellent. There is no turn order, no polite waiting and very little dignity once the horses start moving. The brilliant tension comes from deciding when to commit. Bet early and you might grab a juicy multiplier before anyone else, but you are doing so with almost no information. Wait and you can see which horses are moving well, but the best spaces may already be gone. Add in Win, Place, Show, colour bets, prop bets and Exotic Finish bets, and there is always something tempting you into one more terrible decision. I love the experience this creates. Ready Set Bet is loud, frantic and funny in exactly the way I want a betting game to be, and it creates those huge moments where an entire table suddenly erupts because one final movement changes everything. My only real regret is that I bought the standard version when I had seen how much better the deluxe production can be. A friend owns that edition and it absolutely elevates the spectacle, it's just hard to find! But even in its standard form this remains one of my favourite games when I want real-time chaos and a room full of people shouting at cardboard horses. The Outside Bet Racer: Unicorn Fever And the best to play if you want to mix gambling with card play. Current BGG rank: 2,563 Published by: Horrible Guild Designed by: Lorenzo Silva, Lorenzo Tucci Sorrentino WBG Rating: 8 I have a lot of bias towards Unicorn Fever, and I am very happy to admit it. My family has played this for years, and it is one of the few more substantial games my daughter genuinely enjoys playing with me, so every time it comes off the shelf it brings with it a bit more than just the game itself. That personal connection matters, but even without it there is a lot to like here. Unicorn Fever is bright, colourful, ridiculous and packed with betting, manipulation and just enough strategy to make the outcome feel like more than pure chance. Across four rounds, you are betting on unicorns, manipulating races with secret Magic cards, buying Contracts for permanent powers, watching the odds shift and trying not to bankrupt yourself badly enough that the Elf-Mob becomes a genuine concern. Win bets are riskier and scale with the unicorn’s current odds, while Show bets are safer but less explosive, so there is a constant push between chasing the big pay out and protecting your position. What I like most is that Unicorn Fever manages to be both silly and genuinely strategic. It gives you more control than many racing games in this list, but never loses the bright, ridiculous energy that makes the genre fun in the first place. There are always big laughs, dramatic swings and memorable finishes, and the whole thing has enough personality to carry the occasional bit of chaos or bad luck. For me, it is one of those games where the experience around the table matters just as much as the mechanisms, and because of the memories attached to it, I will probably always be a little softer on it than most. So, there we have it! Racing games work because they turn something incredibly simple into something wonderfully dramatic. Whether you are carefully managing cards, throwing dice, placing bets or simply hoping your chosen idiot reaches the finish line first, the best games in this genre create tension quickly and keep everyone invested until the very end. The five games here all approach that idea differently. Downforce brings clean tactical racing, Magical Athlete embraces glorious nonsense, Hot Streak turns the race into a ridiculous spectacle, Ready Set Bet delivers real-time gambling chaos, and Unicorn Fever mixes colourful silliness with more deliberate strategy. There is no single best way to do a racing game, and that variety is exactly why I enjoy the genre so much. What they all share is the ability to create big moments. A blocked car, a terrible dice roll, a late bet, a unicorn surging forward, or a mascot running completely the wrong way can turn a normal game night into something loud, funny, and memorable. That is what I want from a racing game, and all five of these deliver it in their own way. Which one is your favorite?

Fossilium WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Euros to be brown and about fossils Published by: Giant Roc, Sinister Fish Games Designed by: Julia Thiemann, Christoph Waage This is a free review copy of the original German version from Giant Roc. The new enhanced version from Sinister Fish is coming to Kickstarter soon. See our review policy here Fossilium is a clever, satisfying museum-building game that makes digging up dinosaurs feel far more strategic than simply pulling tiles from a bag. One important note before getting into it. The version I have played is the existing German edition of Fossilium, while Sinister Fish Games is preparing an enhanced English edition for an upcoming crowdfunding campaign. You can find out more about that here. It looks great! So this review is based on the game as it currently exists rather than any improvements, component changes or refinements coming with that new edition. But I was kindly given the rule book in English via PDF! What matters most though, is that underneath all that is already a very good worker-placement game, and one I thoroughly enjoy. Building Your Museum Fossilium puts you in charge of a natural history museum with a rather significant problem: the galleries are basically empty. Across five rounds you will excavate fossil pieces, assemble skeletons, attract visitors, generate income and gradually turn a sparse museum into something considerably more impressive. The game is won on Victory Points, but those points come from enough different directions that simply collecting the biggest dinosaur you can find is not going to do the job. Although, it is often my goal! Each player has their own museum board containing a gallery, storage area, shops and entrances. Fossils come in sizes of one, two, four or six tiles, and larger specimens need to be pieced together correctly before they form a complete skeleton. You can start exhibiting a fossil once you own at least half of its required pieces, which means your gallery can slowly develop rather than forcing you to wait until every bone has been found. Placement matters just as much as completion. Shops reward matching fossil types placed within their rows, entrances generate Guests from matching fossils in their columns, while Pedestals can add end-game value to the larger exhibits. This turns what initially looks like a straightforward tile-placement area into a spatial puzzle where the position of every fossil can potentially affect several different systems. Digging For Dinosaurs Every round follows four phases: Income, Actions, Opening and Excavation. Income rewards the museum you have already constructed, but the Action Phase is where most of your decisions happen. Here players take turns placing workers onto empty spaces on the Action Board and immediately carrying out the action shown in that row. Single spaces need one worker, double spaces need two, and some spaces also gain or cost Dino Dollars. The key thing to remember is that rows determine the action, while columns determine where those workers will excavate later. Actions include Exhibit fossils from storage into your museum, Build Info Panels or Donate fossil tiles to other players, Buy/Sell fossils through the market, Tour to gain Guests or Dino Dollars, use a costly Joker space to repeat an action in that column, or take a simple Management action for a Guest, Intern or Dino Dollar. The fourth column usually gives a stronger bonus version of an action, but workers placed there will not excavate later. The third part of each round is called Opening. Opening converts the crowds you have attracted into points, and Excavation gives you the fossils needed to improve everything next time around. It creates a satisfying cycle because almost everything you do in one phase influences something coming later. The Actions Board The Action Board is the star of Fossilium. There are rows for actions such as exhibiting fossils, building Info Panels, buying and selling, running tours and using more flexible abilities, but the column you choose is equally important. The first three columns correspond to different excavation sites, meaning you are simultaneously choosing what you want to do now and where you want to dig later. That creates some excellent little dilemmas. You might desperately need an Exhibit action, but the only available space sends your worker towards an excavation site containing very little you currently want. Alternatively, you may sacrifice the perfect action space because you know you desperately need pieces from another bag. It is a simple connection between mechanisms, but it gives virtually every worker placement more weight than it first appears to have. The Excavation Puzzle Excavation itself brings some welcome uncertainty. When you dig, you draw a number of tiles based on the workers in that column, but you may only keep a number equal to your own workers there. So other players can effectively improve the size of your draw without increasing how much you are allowed to take, creating moments where you reveal several tempting fossils and have to choose which ones matter most. There is obviously luck involved. Sometimes the perfect piece appears immediately, while another excavation can produce absolutely nothing you need. Crucially, Fossilium gives you ways to work around that randomness through the market, Interns, donations and other effects, so I rarely felt that the bags were simply deciding the game for me. Interns are particularly useful because they let you draw several tiles from a chosen excavation site and keep one, giving you another shot at the fossil you are hunting. Permanent Workers also make the excavation system more interesting as the game develops. New workers can be earned by completing objectives, and those extra workers eventually become permanently attached to excavation columns, strengthening your personal draws from those sites. They then return for use during the final round, which gives the system a nice progression from fairly modest early excavations to much stronger options later. Guests, Regulars and Momentum The Guest Track is another part of Fossilium I really like. Completing fossils, arranging exhibits and triggering other effects generates Guests, and during the Opening Phase those visitors convert into Victory Points. They normally disappear afterwards, but achieving the round objectives earns you Regulars who permanently remain on the track and therefore give you a head start in subsequent rounds. That gives the game a pleasing sense of growth. Early rounds can feel relatively restrained, but once your museum starts producing income, Guests and Regulars more efficiently, everything begins accelerating. There is a genuine feeling that the little collection you started with has become a functioning attraction, rather than your engine simply producing slightly larger numbers each round. I also like that incomplete fossils are not useless. They can already contribute towards your museum's income and visitor generation, and fossils placed on Pedestals can still receive the Pedestal bonus even when unfinished. That makes the hunt for the final piece exciting without making every incomplete skeleton feel like wasted effort. More Going On Than You Expect Fossilium looks fairly approachable when first laid out, but there is quite a lot happening underneath. You are managing workers, fossil sets, spatial placement, money, Guests, objectives, the market and several different scoring opportunities at the same time. None of the individual mechanisms is especially complicated, but understanding how they interact takes a little longer. That is probably the game's biggest hurdle. The iconography and quantity of bonuses mean the first play involves a fair amount of checking, particularly when dealing with Info Panels, fossil abilities and some of the objectives. Once those systems settle in, however, the game becomes much smoother because the core loop itself is logical and consistent. The physical footprint is also significant. Between the central boards, excavation bags, player museums, market, fossils and assorted components, Fossilium wants plenty of table space. The large fossil standees are fun and certainly add presence to completed exhibits, although mechanically they mostly serve as reminders and a secondary tiebreaker rather than introducing another meaningful system. Pros Excellent worker-placement twist. Choosing an action and an excavation destination with the same placement creates meaningful decisions throughout the game. The museum genuinely develops. Fossils, Info Panels, Regulars and income build into an increasingly satisfying engine. Luck is present but manageable. Excavation retains the excitement of discovering something unexpected without leaving you completely at the mercy of the bags. Strong spatial puzzle. Where you exhibit fossils can matter almost as much as which fossils you collect. Cons There is a noticeable learning curve. Several interconnected systems and plenty of iconography make the first game slower than the core rules initially suggest. It needs plenty of table space. This is not a compact museum. The excavation bags can occasionally frustrate. Mitigation exists, but sometimes the fossil you need simply refuses to appear. Some components feel more decorative than necessary. The standees look impressive, but they contribute little mechanically. Is this really a con?! Final Thoughts Fossilium succeeds because its theme and mechanisms genuinely support each other. Excavating does not exist as a disconnected mini-game, worker placement is not simply a list of actions, and your museum is not just somewhere to dump collected tiles. Everything feeds into everything else, which makes finding a fossil, placing it cleverly and seeing the resulting visitors arrive genuinely satisfying. There is enough randomness to make every excavation interesting, but enough control to make your decisions matter. There is also enough going on that I immediately wanted another play once I understood the systems properly, because Fossilium clearly offers several different ways to squeeze more value from the same five rounds. The German edition already provides a strong foundation, so I am particularly interested to see what Sinister Fish Games does with the forthcoming enhanced English release. Fossilium is an easy game to like once you get past its initial learning curve. It is thematic, thoughtful and full of satisfying little connections, particularly the excellent relationship between worker placement and excavation. If this all sounds like fun to you, the enhanced edition could well be something worth checking out. I certainly plan too!

Case Pursuit WBG Score: 7 Player Count: 1plus You’ll like this if you like: Deduction and True Crime Published by: Case Pursuit Designed by: Case Pursuit This is a free print and play review copy. See our review policy here. There is something wonderfully appealing about a murder mystery that arrives as a pile of documents rather than a box full of tokens, boards and miniatures. Case Pursuit is a digital-first investigation game where you download a case file, work through the evidence, build your theory and eventually submit your conclusion online. You can play directly from the PDF, but I printed everything out because, for me, half the fun of this sort of game is physically handling the evidence, spreading documents around and feeling like I am actually working through a case rather than scrolling through one. The first Core Series case, Last Call at Blackwood Lounge, revolves around the murder of a wealthy businessman and gives you a sizeable cast of suspects to investigate. Your job is to work out who killed him, how they did it and why, using the information scattered throughout the case files. It is familiar territory for anyone who has played this style of mystery game before, but Case Pursuit is less interested in elaborate puzzles and codes than it is in straightforward detective work. Opening The Case Once purchased, the case is available as a digital download, with both a full case packet and individual evidence files. There is also a printer-friendly version, which is very welcome because there is a lot here to read. You can keep everything digital, print the lot or mix the two approaches, so there is a useful amount of flexibility depending on how you like to investigate. The evidence itself takes several forms. You will read suspect interviews, inspect photographs, study security records and compare timelines built from phone calls, messages, emails and other documents. The important information is rarely delivered in one neat place, so you gradually begin cross-referencing statements and noticing when one person's version of events does not quite fit with something you have already seen elsewhere. There are online elements too, with certain details in the files allowing you to unlock additional evidence. Eventually, when you are confident you understand what happened, you submit your theory and reveal the official resolution. There are hints available if you become stuck, but the experience is clearly designed around giving you enough information to work things out yourself rather than nudging you constantly towards the solution. Deduction Rather Than Puzzles That distinction is probably the most important thing to understand about Case Pursuit. This is not really an escape-room-style experience full of ciphers, cryptic riddles and elaborate mechanical puzzles. Instead, you are doing something much closer to traditional detective work: reading carefully, establishing timelines, checking alibis, looking for inconsistencies and deciding which pieces of evidence actually matter. Personally, I liked that approach. There were moments where I noticed smaller hidden details that I suspect were not absolutely necessary to solve the case, but which helped strengthen the theory I was developing. Those touches reward paying attention without turning the investigation into a hunt for obscure tricks, and they fit nicely with the feeling that you are building a case rather than simply cracking a succession of puzzles. It also means there is quite a lot of reading. I played alone, which suited the experience extremely well, although there is nothing stopping several people working through the evidence together and debating their theories. For me, though, this became a surprisingly relaxing couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon, sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea, some favourite music playing and a large stack of suspicious documents to work through. Following The Evidence The pleasure comes from slowly understanding how everything connects. An interview may initially seem routine, only for a security log or message elsewhere in the case to suddenly make one particular answer much more interesting. A timeline starts to form in your head, suspects move up and down your list, and pieces of information that originally seemed insignificant gradually become useful. Case Pursuit's creator has professional experience around security operations, observation, incident reporting and surveillance environments, and you can see why that background suits this type of game. The documents are designed to feel like things you might genuinely encounter during an investigation rather than colourful puzzle sheets wearing a police badge. That grounding helps the case maintain its atmosphere even when you are simply reading another interview or checking another record. It is not, however, doing anything particularly revolutionary. If you have played other murder investigation games, the basic rhythm will feel immediately familiar, and I never encountered a mechanic or revelation that made me think the genre had suddenly been reinvented. Case Pursuit's strength is not novelty. It is taking the familiar true-crime investigation format and presenting it in a clean, logical and enjoyable way. A Different Kind Of Game Night One thing I particularly appreciated was the pace. There is no timer pushing you onwards, nobody waiting for their turn and no pressure to solve something before the evening runs out. You can reread interviews, rearrange your evidence and disappear down whichever line of investigation currently interests you. That also gives it quite a different atmosphere from many puzzle games. Rather than constantly chasing the next "aha!" moment, I found myself enjoying the quieter process of forming and testing theories. It is methodical rather than frantic, and that is exactly why it worked for me. The digital format helps too. There is no box to ship and no large collection of components required, so Case Pursuit can provide a substantial investigation without the price or physical footprint of a traditional boxed mystery game. The trade-off, of course, is that if you prefer physical play you will need to do the printing yourself, and there are enough pages here that this is worth considering before you start. Pros Logical, evidence-led deduction. The focus is on timelines, contradictions and reasoning rather than cryptic puzzles. Flexible format. Play digitally, print the case or combine the two depending on how you prefer to investigate. A surprisingly relaxing solo experience. It works particularly well if you enjoy slowly absorbing information and developing your own theory. Believable presentation. Interviews, logs, messages and evidence combine to create a convincing investigation. Cons There is a lot of reading. If you want constant puzzles or rapid interaction, this probably is not the right style of mystery game. It does not reinvent the genre. Most of its ideas will feel familiar if you have played similar detective experiences. Printing is substantial. The printer-friendly version helps, but physical players still need to produce a considerable stack of pages. Final Thoughts Case Pursuit succeeds because it understands what is enjoyable about this style of mystery. It gives you a believable pile of evidence, enough suspects to create uncertainty and enough contradictions to keep you questioning what you think you know. More importantly, it trusts you to do the investigative work yourself instead of constantly interrupting the experience with artificial puzzles. I particularly enjoyed how calm the whole thing felt. Sitting down for a couple of hours, reading through interviews and records and gradually piecing together a murder is not necessarily what everyone wants from a board game afternoon, but for me it was extremely satisfying. It appealed to exactly the same part of my brain that enjoys true crime, logical deduction and trying to understand how a story fits together. It may not break new ground, but it does what it sets out to do very well. Last Call at Blackwood Lounge is a solid, engaging introduction to Case Pursuit and has left me interested in seeing how future cases develop the format, particularly if the creator begins experimenting with more unusual evidence and structures while retaining this grounded, logical approach.

Bingo Slam WBG Score: 7 Player Count: 2-6 You’ll like this if you like: Fast, frantic Bingo! Distributed by: VR Distribution This is a free review copy kindly gifted by VR Distribution. See our review policy here. Some games win you over with clever systems, deep strategy or a dozen interlocking mechanisms. Bingo Slam wins you over by making everyone stare at a card, panic for half a second, then slap the table as fast as humanly possible. It is gloriously simple, taught in seconds, played in minutes and far more tense than a game built around bingo numbers has any right to be. At its heart, this is bingo turned into a reflex game. Each player takes a board and 20 counters, cards are flipped from a central pile, and if the revealed number appears on your board you race to slam the card before anyone else. Win the slam and you cover that number on your board, with the first player to complete a line of five counters in any direction winning the game. How To Play Bingo Slam The basic rules could barely be easier. Flip a card, check your board, and if you have the number, slam. Some cards show a single number while others show two, and if you happen to have both then there is a small decision to make about which one will help you most. That is about as tactical as the standard number cards get, but Bingo Slam does not pretend to be anything more complicated. The special cards introduce a little extra chaos. Wham Bam lets you remove a counter from another player's board, Bonus Slam allows you to place a counter anywhere on your own board provided it does not immediately complete a line, and Steal Slam can be kept for later and used to steal a slam you lost but really wanted. These effects are simple enough that they never slow the game down, but they add just enough interference to stop everything becoming completely mechanical. If two players appear to slam at exactly the same time, you simply judge who got there first, usually by seeing whose hand is lowest or most clearly covering the card. We found these moments were normally obvious enough that there was very little debate. Incorrect slams are punished too, with a counter removed from your board, while three false slams eliminate you from the game entirely. Fast, Frantic And Surprisingly Tense Bingo Slam has almost no strategy, and that is absolutely fine. There are tiny decisions around the two-number cards, where to place a Bonus Slam, or when to hold back a Wham Bam, but most of the game is about reactions, visual scanning and keeping your nerve. If you are looking for clever tactical play, this is not going to suddenly reveal hidden depths after five games. What it does have is tension. When two or three players are sitting one space away from completing a row or column, every card flip suddenly matters, and the whole table becomes ridiculously focused on a tiny rectangle of cardboard in the middle. The difference between calmly checking your board and desperately trying not to slam the wrong card creates exactly the sort of silly pressure that makes these games work. We also had very few incorrect slams. The challenge is not really understanding whether you have a number or not, because that is easy enough, but identifying it quickly enough before someone else gets there. That keeps the game frantic without making it feel random or messy. Colour-Coded Chaos One side of each board uses colour-coded numbers, which is a really smart little touch. If a green 13 appears, for example, you know you are looking for 13, but you can immediately narrow your search to the green spaces on your board. It speeds everything up, makes the slamming more frantic and gives players just enough visual help to keep the game moving at the pace it wants. But there are two types of green, as you can see. So it is not that simple! The reverse side removes the colours and is presented as the more difficult option. In reality, I would describe it as slower rather than more expert, because everyone is still playing under the same conditions and the decisions themselves have not changed. Where it becomes more interesting is in family play, because adults could use the uncoloured side while children use the colour-coded boards to even things out. Although, based on my own experience, that might need to be reversed. My kids have quicker reactions than me, so giving them the easier board may just make things even worse. Either way, having two sides gives families an easy way to tweak the challenge without introducing extra rules. One Small Physical Niggle The coloured side of the board is dual-layered, so the counters sit neatly in place and are less likely to move around during play. The expert side is flat, which means a particularly enthusiastic slam can jolt the board and shuffle a few counters out of position. It is not a major problem, but it is worth being aware of. The easiest fix is simply table positioning. Keep your board slightly to one side rather than placing it directly between yourself and the draw pile, and give everyone a little room to attack the centre without smashing into their own player area. Problem mostly solved, and nobody has to calm down, which would defeat the entire point. Pros Incredibly easy to teach. You can explain the whole game in moments and start immediately. Genuinely tense. Close games become surprisingly dramatic when several players are one number from winning. Excellent family appeal. The colour-coded boards help speed up play and make it accessible across ages. Fast and replayable. Games are short enough that you will often want another straight away. Cons Almost no strategy. Beyond a few special-card decisions, this is primarily about reflexes and reactions. The expert side is less secure physically. Counters can shift more easily during enthusiastic slams. Player elimination exists. Three incorrect slams knock you out, although in our games this rarely became an issue. Final Thoughts Bingo Slam is one of those games that understands exactly what it is and does not waste time pretending to be anything else. It is loud, fast, silly and almost entirely driven by reaction speed, but that simplicity is exactly why it works. There is no rules overhead, no downtime and no long-term planning, just constant little bursts of tension every time a card flips. What surprised me most was how invested we became in such a simple race. Once several players are hovering one number away from victory, you can genuinely feel the tension build, and every new card brings another little explosion of panic. The special cards add just enough disruption to keep things lively without ever getting in the way of the main idea. Bingo Slam is not clever in the traditional sense, and it is certainly not strategic, but it is really good fun. It is taught in seconds, played in minutes and delivers exactly the sort of noisy family chaos it promises. Sometimes that is all a game needs to do.

Skyjo WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-8 You’ll like this if you like: Family friendly card games Published by: Magilano Designed by: Alexander Bernhardt . This is a free review copy kindly gifted by VR Distribution. See our review policy here. Skyjo does not look like much. A deck of numbered cards, a 4×3 grid in front of each player, and a goal as basic as keeping your score low. Yet somewhere between revealing a twelve you absolutely did not want, desperately chasing a matching column, and deciding whether you dare end the round before everyone else, it becomes ridiculously compelling. What I like most is how quickly the game creates its own drama. You are never doing anything particularly complicated, but every replacement, reveal and discard can suddenly matter, especially once players start closing in on the end of the round. The threat of doubling your score if you finish first without actually having the lowest total gives the whole thing a wonderfully cruel edge. It is light, fast and very easy to teach, but it never feels completely throwaway. There is just enough risk, memory and timing to keep you engaged, while the unpredictable scoring means one round can be calm and controlled and the next can completely implode. That is exactly why I can see Skyjo coming back to the table again and again. How To Play Skyjo On your turn, you either take the top card from the discard pile or draw blindly from the deck. If you take from the discard pile, you must swap that card into your grid, replacing either a face-up or face-down card. If you draw blind, you can either use that card in the same way or discard it and simply reveal one of your hidden cards instead. That already creates plenty of small decisions because taking a visible low card feels safe, but drawing blind could give you something even better. Of course, it could also give you something much worse. You are constantly weighing certainty against possibility, and because you cannot look at face-down cards before replacing them, there is always a little risk involved. The cleverest rule is the vertical column clearing. If you ever reveal three identical numbers in a column, all three cards are immediately discarded and no longer count towards your score. That means a higher number can sometimes suddenly become very attractive if it lets you complete a set and wipe an entire chunk of points from your grid. When To End The Round A round ends when one player has revealed all of their remaining cards. Everyone else then gets one final turn before any hidden cards are flipped and scores are counted. That alone creates a nice race, but Skyjo adds one rule that makes the whole thing much more interesting. If the player who triggered the end of the round does not finish with the lowest score, their positive score for that round is doubled. That creates some wonderfully dramatic moments because finishing first is not always the same thing as finishing well. You may think you are sitting comfortably on a low total, only for another player to reveal a couple of negative cards and suddenly turn your brave finish into a disaster It also means the length of a full game can vary wildly. One brutal round can send someone racing towards the 100-point threshold, while another game can stretch across several tighter rounds with everyone staying relatively low. I like that unpredictability because it stops the scoring from feeling routine and gives every round a bit of jeopardy. This would score 11 Simple, But Never Dull Skyjo is not a deeply strategic game, but there is more going on than the rules initially suggest. You are watching the discard pile, trying to remember what other players might need, judging whether to reveal another hidden card and deciding whether clearing a column is worth chasing. None of those decisions are especially complicated, but they create enough interaction with the luck of the draw to keep things interesting. That is probably its biggest strength. There is almost no friction between setup, teaching and playing, so the game gets out of its own way immediately. You are not waiting for everyone to understand an unusual system or spending the first few rounds working out what you are supposed to be doing, because Skyjo makes sense almost instantly. And yet it still produces those great little moments where everyone suddenly cares enormously about a single number appearing. You find yourself hoping someone discards exactly what you need, desperately trying not to reveal another twelve, or taking a chance on ending the round because you think everyone else is in worse shape. For such a simple game, it creates a lot of table talk and tension. The Travel Game That Needs A Bigger Table Skyjo also feels like it should be the perfect travel game. The box is small, the rules are light and the whole thing has exactly the sort of easy-going feel that would work brilliantly on holiday, on a train or while waiting around somewhere. Unfortunately, the table footprint rather spoils that dream. Every player needs room for a 4×3 grid, and once you add the draw pile, discard pile and space for everyone to reach comfortably, Skyjo takes up much more room than you might expect. That is a shame because the game itself feels almost purpose-built for travelling. A genuinely compact or mini version would make a lot of sense. With enough space, though, that issue disappears. The game runs smoothly, the cards are easy to manage and turns stay fast enough that downtime is almost non-existent. It is exactly the sort of experience where you finish one game and immediately hear somebody say, “Again?” Pros Incredibly easy to teach and play. You can be up and running almost immediately. The round-ending penalty is excellent. Doubling your score for finishing first but not finishing lowest adds genuine tension. Highly replayable. It is quick, unpredictable and easy to bring back to the table. Simple decisions still matter. Column clearing and timing give the game more bite than first appears. Cons The footprint is surprisingly large. It is not as travel-friendly as the box suggests. Luck plays a big role. A few brutal draws can swing a round quickly. Strategy is relatively light. If you want deep control, this is not really trying to offer that. Final Thoughts Skyjo is a great example of how little a game actually needs to be entertaining. The setup is simple, the teach is simple and the turn structure is simple, but the combination of hidden information, column clearing and that wonderfully mean finishing penalty gives it far more personality than you might expect. I especially like how often the score creates drama. One player can look completely safe, trigger the end, then suddenly find themselves punished because somebody else sneaks underneath them. Those moments give the game energy and make every round feel different enough to keep you interested. Oh and did I say the England football team and Jude Bellingham, in particular love it!? Photo credit - https://toyworldmag.co.uk/england-players-bring-skyjo-to-the-world-cup/