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Tokaido WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Simple games, that play quickly, but offer a nice choice Published by: Stonemaier Games Designed by: Antoine Bauza This is a free review copy. See our review policy here . Tokaido was first published in 2012. It was a bit of a cult classic. Beautifully produced. Simple but gorgeous art. And a clean and wonderfully flowing gameplay experience. Recently, Stonemaier, the publisher behind games such as Scythe, Wingspan, and Tapestry, has acquired the rights to the game and produced their own version. There are a few minor rule tidy-ups and component enhancements. But the main change is the addition of a solo player mode. If you own the base game, you can buy just the solo-mode rules and components required for this, along with the new Panorama cards, which have been printed on a better card stock; and as such, included in the solo mode. So, that anyone who wants just these added to their base game can acquire them cheaply. But is this game any good? Does it stand up to 13 years of change in the board game industry? Let's get it to the table and find out. How to Set Up Tokaido To set up the game, which is a breeze, begin by placing the game board on a flat surface. Next, lay out the Achievement cards face up beside the board. Shuffle each deck of cards separately: the Souvenir cards (with a black back), the Hot Spring cards (light blue back), the Encounter cards (purple back), and the Meal cards (red back). Place each shuffled deck face down near the board. Next, organise the Panorama cards by type; Sea, Mountain, and Paddy, and arrange them in ascending order by value, placing the '1' card on top, followed by '2', then '3', and so on. Position these resulting piles on their designated spots on the board. Then place the coins next to the board to serve as the bank. Now, each player selects a Traveller piece along with the corresponding coloured marker and colour token. Place the marker on square zero of the Journey point track. This now runs around all four corners of the board, rather than just the top. Then, each player draws two Traveler tiles at random, chooses one, and places it face up in front of them. For first-time players, there's an option to simplify the game by starting with 7 coins instead of selecting a Traveler tile. Note, each card grants you a specific unique power. Next, place your colour token into the hole of your chosen Traveler tile to mark your colour. Return all unselected Traveler tiles to the box, as they won't be used in the game. Each player then receives coins equal to the number indicated in the upper right corner of their chosen Traveler tile. Finally, randomly place all Traveler pieces in a line at the leftmost inn (Kyoto). Alternatively, players may choose to start at the rightmost inn (Edo) and move from right to left throughout the game. Crazy huh! For two-player games, introduce a third, neutral Traveler to the starting inn. This neutral Traveler is controlled by the player whose Traveler is ahead on the road and follows specific movement rules we will cover later. You are now ready to play. How to Play Tokaido In Tokaido, the player whose Traveler is furthest behind on the road takes the next turn. If multiple players share the same space, the one closest to the edge of the board goes next. On your turn, you move your Traveler forward toward Edo, (if you are going that way!) choosing any unoccupied space up to the next inn. You can skip over spaces if you wish, but you cannot move beyond the next inn. Once you land on a space, you immediately gain its benefit, such as collecting a card or earning coins. More on that soon. After your move, the player now furthest behind takes the next turn. If you remain the furthest back after your move, you get another turn immediately. This turn order system encourages strategic planning: moving further ahead might secure a desired spot but could allow other players multiple turns before your next move. Balancing the timing and distance of your moves is key to maximizing your journey's rewards. But there is only one spot available at each destination. Although, in Tokaido, some board locations have double spaces, which are used in the four or five-player games. The first traveler to arrive occupies the space on the road; the next traveler uses the adjacent space, considered slightly further along the journey. This is not available in a two or three player game though. So, what can you do along the way, and how do you score points. Let's look at them all one-by-one. The Shop : When you stop here, you will draw the top three Souvenir cards and place them face up. You can choose to buy one or more of these cards by paying their listed prices, which range from one to three coins. Any cards you don't purchase are placed face down at the bottom of the deck. Souvenirs come in four types: small objects, clothing, art, and food & drinks. Collecting different types in a set earns you increasing points: One point for the first unique type, three for the second, five for the third, and seven for the fourth, totalling up to 16 points for a complete set. You can start new sets at any time, and there's no requirement to complete a set before beginning another. Note that you must have at least one coin to stop at a Village, but you're not obligated to buy anything. Hot Spring : Landing on a Hot Spring space allows you to draw one Hot Spring card and add it to your collection, scoring two or three points immediately. Temple : When you stop at a Temple space, you must donate between one and three coins to the temple, placing them in the area corresponding to your colour on the top left of the board. For each coin donated, you immediately score one point. This donation contributes to your total at the end of the game, where the most generous donor receives 10 points, the second seven points, and the third four points. All other donors receive two points each. If multiple players tie for a rank, they each receive the points for that rank.  Encounters : In Tokaido , when you land on an Encounter space, you draw one Encounter card and apply its effect. Afterward, place the card face-up in your collection. These effects vary and include: Shokunin (Artisan): Draw a Souvenir card and add it to your collection, scoring points immediately. Annaibito (Guide): If you haven't started the depicted panorama, gain a value 1 card of the appropriate type. If you've started it, gain the next number in ascending order. If completed, start or add to a different panorama of your choice, scoring points as usual. Samurai: Immediately score 3 points. Kuge (Noble): Gain 3 coins immediately. Miko (Shinto Priest):   The player immediately gains one coin and places it as an offering in the Temple on the area corresponding to their colour. They score one point for this donation. Inn : Inns are mandatory stops where players can purchase Meal cards. Each Meal card costs one, two, or three coins and provides six victory points upon acquisition. The first player to arrive at an Inn draws a number of Meal cards equal to the number of players plus one, selects one to purchase, and places the remaining cards face down for other players to choose from. Subsequent players may purchase one of the remaining Meal cards, provided they can afford it. A player cannot purchase more than one Meal card per Inn and is not obligated to buy one. Additionally, a player cannot choose the same culinary specialty more than once during their journey. If you cannot afford to eat, or cannot by a new unique meal, you miss out! There is a benefit to getting to the Inn early, but do not rush there, you will miss out on important stops along the way. Getting this balance right is key. Players will leave the inn in reverse order to which they arrived and continue their journey. When you reach the final inn, the game continues for other players and ends when all players have reached the final inn and chosen their final meal. Players then add points for four awards. The Collector : Awarded to the player with the most Souvenir cards. The Gourmet : Given to the player who has the highest total coin value on their Meal cards. The Chatterbox : Granted to the player who has collected the most Encounter cards. And finally, the Bather : Bestowed upon the player with the most Hot Spring cards. finally, Travelers earn extra points based on their donor ranking to the Temple. The most points wins! The two-player game uses a dummy third player. This is controlled by the player in the position closest to the start of their journey. When the neutral traveler lands on a Temple space, the player who moved them must donate one coin from the bank to the Temple, placing it on the space corresponding to the neutral traveler's colour. This action impacts the final Temple donation scoring, as all coins donated to the Temple are considered during the end-game calculation of additional points for Temple offerings. At Inns, the first player to arrive draws four Meal cards. When the neutral traveler stops at an Inn, the player who moved them takes the Meal cards and discards one at random, placing it face down at the bottom of the pile without revealing it. Otherwise, the game plays as usual. This simply adds some extra tension, as more spaces will be blocked to you along the way. The solo game works using new Automa cards. Set up as usual, but then set up two separate Automa players. Do this by selecting a colour and placing the corresponding Traveler piece and colored marker for each one. Then, set aside space for coins and cards next to each Automa. Then, place the Automa's colour token and one coin into their play area, immediately scoring one point for the coin. Note that the Automa does not receive a Traveler tile. I won't go into full detail here how this plays out, but you then play as normal, drawing a card for each of the Automa's turns, telling you where to place it. They will score points based on the amount of each thing they get, card or coin. The type of card they get isn't the point. It is the type. So they are encouraged to visit the same thing as often as they can, mirroring the way human players prioritize a few things in the game, as you cannot go for all areas of scoring in this game. It is a very clever, simple, intuitive and enjoyable system. Is it Fun? Tokaido Board Game Review Playing Tokaido is delightful. The decisions are straightforward yet rich with strategic depth. The game presents a constant dilemma: Should I advance quickly to secure a specific space, or take my time to explore more options, potentially missing that one crucial chance? This balance between speed and thoroughness adds a layer of excitement and replayability, as each choice feels significant and impactful. Tokaido offers a delightful blend of simplicity and strategic depth, making it an engaging experience for players of all levels. The game's mechanics are straightforward, allowing for quick learning and smooth gameplay. A two-player game can be completed in about 20 minutes, while a three-player game typically wraps up in under 30 minutes. This efficiency makes it an excellent choice for short gaming sessions or as a warm-up to more complex games. But you will still feel like you have played a game after this. One of the game's core decisions revolves around choosing between advancing quickly to secure a desired spot or taking a more leisurely pace to gather additional experiences along the way. This decision-making process is simple yet impactful, providing a satisfying sense of agency without overwhelming complexity. Especially when players are chasing different goals. But the game truly shines when players pursue similar objectives, leading to increased interaction and strategic competition. In these moments, paying close attention to opponents' moves becomes crucial, adding a layer of depth and excitement to the journey. This dynamic encourages players to adapt their strategies and enhances the overall enjoyment of the game. Tokaido is a beautifully crafted game that combines ease of play with meaningful choices, offering a serene yet engaging experience that comes alive through player interaction and thoughtful decision-making. It stands up still after all these years, and this new production is wonderful. If you don't have the game yet, I would heartily encourage you to check it out if you enjoy set-collection games. If you won it and fancy the solo mode, give that a go. It's a very simple game. Maybe too simple for some. But I enjoy the different ways to play and score. I do favour the Panorama cards, simply because they look so nice when complete. I get a real sense of satisfaction simply by gaining all cards in each one so I can see the complete panorama before me. Tokaido really is just that type of game. Stonemaier has done a wonderful job with this new edition. The game keeps the core mechanics, tidies up the rule book a little, adds the solo mode, and brings in other simple changes, such as detailing the powers of each of the Traveler cards so you don't need to refer to the rule book. The front of the cards is the same with the same icons, but on the back you now have the detail. This simple change summarises the craft and class this reprint has seen. Everything has been done with the game's original core beauty in mind, simply refining a few edges. Well done to all.

This is a preview copy sent to us for our early opinions. No money exchanged hands. Some art, rules or components may change in the final game. You can follow the crowdfunding page here . This is a bit different for us here at WBG, as we haven’t reviewed a book before. But this one is something quite special. At the end of each of the book’s five chapters, you play a mini game linked to what you’ve just read. It’s an intriguing blend of traditional reading and print-and-play mini games, which fits beautifully within the theme the writer has created. The experience unfolds by reading each of the five short chapters; each taking roughly 5–10 minutes depending on your reading speed. After finishing a chapter, you move on to its corresponding print-out and play two mini games. The first game in each of the first three chapters is a simple dice-rolling game, where over five turns you try to cover as much land as possible to collect items. These items will be used in the second part of the mini game, where you face a challenge based on the chapter you just read. No spoilers here, but be prepared for a few fights! These are also resolved through dice rolls, but with added depth: you’ll have options, powers, and the items you collected earlier, all of which come into play. It all links together beautifully, works seamlessly, and creates a unique and rewarding experience. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this book. Initially, I read each chapter and played the accompanying mini-games on my own. After the first two chapters, my son showed interest, so I re-read those chapters with him and replayed the games. Revisiting the early parts of the book helped reinforce my understanding and didn't feel like a chore, rather, it was a delightful experience to revisit these pages and cement my understanding of the early chapters The world crafted within this book is rich and full of wonder. The writing style is soothing and immersive, making it a relaxing read. The seamless integration of storytelling and interactive gameplay creates a unique and rewarding experience that I highly recommend. And the great news for you, is that this book is currently fully funded, and on Kickstarter right now. So, if you want to get your own copy, you absolutely can! Just head here . The full production comes with a fully printed hard cover book as you see here, with laminated print outs for the mini games. There are beautiful dice and a simple dry erase pen too. There is also a digital version for your own print-and-play fun. Or a full all-in with some beautiful art prints. Whatever you taste of budget, you can find something to suit. But is this for you? I very much enjoyed it and can see myself backing future books. I would like to see what the author does with the idea and potentially even, this world. All I know, is I love this idea, I want to support this sort of innovation in the game world, and I think this particular book/game hybrid is wonderful.

This is a prototype version of the game and does not represent the final quality or look of the game. Corps of Discovery Board Game Preview - More info here Mind MGMT is a fantastic game. One of my favourites from 2023 in fact. It was published by Off the Page Games who specialise in developing ideas inspired by graphic novels. Bringing the ideas off the page, into games. Get it? Their second game Harrow County: The Game of Gothic Conflict recently fulfilled after a successful Kickstarter, and is gaining favourable reviews. The third game from these fans of comic/game fusions is Corps of Discovery. A game based on the Manifest Destiny comics . It has the same look and feel as the comics, as is the style with this publisher, but how does it play? Mechanically speaking, the game is a delightful puzzle of deduction and contract fulfilment. Thematically, it is about exploration. Playing the game, you will get a sense of all of this. A classic mix of mechanics and themes. And yet, the game feels fresh and unique - albeit in a familiar way. The game plays out in an ingenious way. There are multiple maps for each chapter, and a number of chapters available in the base game along with a few expansions in the pipeline. Each one follows the same basic core mechanics but introduces new ways to win the game. Defeating monsters, finding hidden objects, defeating giant killer plants! It's all here. The setup: first, you must choose which map you want to play. Slide it into the game board with the cover sheet protecting you from seeing the layout. This would spoil the game. There is then a bit of setup admin, where you need to fill each hole with a face-down sun token. I find it is best to just chuck them all onto the board and then rearrange them into the slots. When this is done, you can slide out the cover sheet, and the board is ready. Smart, right? The game plays by you working your way around the game board, removing sun tokens one at a time, trying to uncover specific terrain and items. You start at a different point for each map and have a different goal each time. But in Chapter 1 - Fauna; that I will focus on here, the goal is to find and defeat three Minotaur's . But first, you must find the Settler's Forts, so you can learn the techniques needed to slay the beasts. But, you can't just walk around, uncovering every space at random times. As you play, each token you uncover is placed onto the current challenge, which will have between two to five spaces until it is full. At this point, if you cannot meet that card's specific requirements of items, you will suffer the consequences of a failed challenge. Generally losing resources and water. Run out of water, and you will lose the game. So, for example, in the below challenges, for the Rainstorm card, you need to have a Shelter built after three turns, otherwise, you will lose two fires, one water, and be forced to add a Sample token to your backpack. Filling an otherwise useful space with a redundant object. More typically, as you can see in Strong Wind and School of Fish, you need to discard items that hopefully you have found and stored in your backpack, in order to gain benefits, and avoid losing water. But try not to become too distracted with fulfilling just these challenge cards. Your challenge in this chapter is to find the Forts, learn the skills required to defeat the minotaur's , then find the beasts' lair, and kill them. Only then can you win this chapter. Each minotaur needs a different methodology of termination. Making spears, ammos, and traps can only be done once each time. And each action needs specific items, things you have found along your path. So, just walk around and gather things to complete challenges and kill monsters. Easy right? Wrong. You can only hold six things in your bag, total. Only four before you get exhausted and start losing water for each completed challenge card. You need to plot your route carefully. But how do you go about finding each thing you need? This is a 7x7 grid. There are 49 spaces to visit. And time is of the essence. You cannot simply run around hoping to find what you need. This is a game of deduction. Well, this is where this game moves from pretty and interesting to genius. Each chapter has an associated reference board that offers you clues as to where everything may be. At first, you will be going in a little blind, but as you start to see the lay of the land, a picture will form in your head. Puzzling this part of the game out will be make or break. This determines how much fun you will have. And I found it to be quite the split experience. In solo, I was left adrift. Unsure where to go and often making quick guesses based on limited thinking time. It was luck-based, lacking in any kind of satisfaction, and causing me some frustration. In two-player, where I think this game shines, I was awash with joy. Puzzling this sort of thing out in my head is not for me. But debating it out loud with another person is thrilling. Genuinely. We played a game where we were down to the final move. We knew the next turn would either take our final water with a failed challenge or deliver the final resource we needed to win. We had a one in six chance of getting the thing we needed. But we used the available clues to deduce exactly where we should go. We got it right and cheered like our team had just won the World Cup. It was amazing. In that regard, it's sort of like a deeply thematic Sudoku. And I am all in for that! As you can see above, we know in this map, there is only one wood per column and row. Wood will be orthogonal to water. As is water and rock to mud. It's sort of like algebra too, in that way. If A is B, but only when B is C, etc. I don't fully understand algebra. It just sounded smart. But playing this game sure does make you feel clever as you play. Getting those big decisions right, finding what you need just when you need it by noodling out the available clues - it's a great feeling. The other chapters all offer clever twists on the base game's mechanics such as in Chapter 2, where the hunt for the minotaur's is replaced by a clever pathway goal. Here, you need to find specific land types in a set order to gather crew and resources to fight a giant mutated flower! It adds another level of suspense to the timing of the game that elevates it to another dimension. There still may be some monsters to fight along the way, but the challenge now is about tracking the "end-of-level" boss, getting the tools you need to defeat it, and taking it down before all is lost. It feels more like a linear progressive ramp-up in tension compared to the ups and downs of Chapter 1, which suits my style a little more. And it's incredible how different each chapter feels from this small change. Corps of Discovery is a game that appears to embody discovery and adventure. And it does. But the heart of this game resides in the deduction and overall efficiency puzzle. This is why I describe it at the start as feeling unique but in a familiar way. It does not necessarily do anything new. But the entire production is impressive, the execution of each composite part so seamless, that as you play Corps of Discovery, you will feel like you are discovering a new game each time. Which leads me to my only concern with this game. Knowing where things are on each map is a problem. This is why the game goes to such effort to stop you from seeing the map during set-up. But after a few plays, could you not memorize the location of the key items and areas? Well, no. I don't think you could. First, there will be plenty of maps to play, learning them all will be tough. Each map is double-sided, and there are multiple chapters, and expansion maps are also planned. To simply play the same map over and over just to learn it, well, sure. It's possible. But would anyone really do that? I don't think so. And if they do, that's their choice, and a different way to play the game I suppose. But the game as is, provides enough variation, enough maps, and enough prevention of seeing the maps before you play to make this problem irrelevant. Designer, Jay Cormier commented on this point, "w e'll be offering new maps to download and print at home - so we'll have unlimited maps!!" I don't think learning the maps will be an issue! "Corps of Discovery" is a brilliant board game. I usually fall for games on the first play as the new and exciting is overpowering me. I often cool a little in games 2-4 as I try to learn the strategy. And then settle on my final thoughts around game 5 onwards, as I can then play the game without the new game excitement, or the early game confusion. "Corps of Discovery" was very different. I really did not enjoy my first few games. Not as I struggled to learn the strategy or rules. No. It was simply as I chose to play it solo. I am happy playing games solo. But not this. This is a shared experience game. Like "The Mind," the joy in "Corps of Discovery" comes when you make a bold but correct decision and the team benefits from this. As a group, this feels wonderful. In solo, this fell flat for me. When I then moved onto playing this game with a second player, the curve of excitement and enjoyment leapt up unexpectedly to a ten right from the off. And has not gone away yet. I now must pass this game onto another person to preview, and I do so with mixed emotions. I cannot wait to see what other people think of this game. But I also want it back on my shelves to play again and again. I want to try the other chapter. I want to try this with other people. It is a fantastic game and one that will live long in my memory, until I can get my hands on it again! Until then, you can find more info on the game here . It is alsop worth noting that as part of the Kickstarter, they will also be offering deluxe editions of MIND MGMT and Harrow County during the Corps of Discovery campaign. The publisher offers those games via their website, but can only ship within North America. So now, European fans can easily get hold of these games too.

Mythwind: Friends & Family WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Stardew Valley , a hot cup of Coco with a blanket by the fire. Published by: Open Owl Studios Designed by: Nathan Lige , Brendan McCaskell This is the reviewer's copy after I backed both of the Kickstarter's for the base game and this expansion; but the publisher sent me a play mat and Sprite miniatures upgrade for free. See our review policy here .  I have played the game with all four available characters, but there is a fifth expansion character I don't have. I have played in solo mostly, but also two-player. If you want to read about how you play the base game and what we think of that, head here . The summary is, I love the game, and this love has only grown over time. I enjoy all the characters, although probably the Ranger the most. I have continued to enjoy unlocking and revealing new secrets and surprises as I have spent more and more time with this unique, relaxing, explorative, and never-ending game. How To Set Up Mythwind: Friends & Family OK, so what about this new expansion? The second for the game. Well, it adds a few modules that you can add to the game at your pleasure. But the star of the show is the new Friends and Family additional board. It sits to the right of the existing boards and can be added to any game at the end of any season. Slotted into anyone ongoing campaign, no worries at all. You will find inside the box a few revised building tokens. They link to these new friends you are about to make. Swap all the tokens out from your original building cards, including any buildings you may have already built. Then, for these buildings, the ones you have already constructed within your Village, add in the corresponding friend card to the new friends board. When you do this, read the back of the card for some flavour text about this new friend you just met. Now place the new Friendship tray alongside this, with the Child Dice, Heart Tokens, and all the new cards inside. There are a few other cards to update, such as a replacement Sun card for the Weather deck, which has some additional symbols on it. And the new Interaction cards and some character-specific cards if you are currently playing with the Ranger or Innkeeper. How To Play Mythwind: Friends & Family The main change is when you interact with one of the new building tokens that have a character depicted on them in your daytime action phase. When this action is done, you can then take the new Socialise action. Here, you can roll your Sprite and Villager dice to try and increase your level of friendship with the associated friend card. The card will show the roll you need to match or beat. This will be based on your player count and the current level of friendship you have with them. All Friends join the game as an Acquaintance. You can advance them all to Pal, Best Friend, and then Companion. All players joining in with this Socialise action can roll any of their hired workers to try and meet this requirement. If you do, place a Heart from the supply on the card. Each level of friendship will have a level of hearts required to advance that card to the next stage. If you fail, you simply do not add any hearts onto the card. All dice used this way are returned to their character afterwards, keeping the same number of pips shown on the die. They cannot be used for another action that day now. Any dice showing zero pips are rerolled at dusk as usual, and added back to the tower. When you meet a desired level of hearts, that card is immediately upgraded to the next level. Find the new card in the deck, replace the old one, and read the back of the new card. This will add some new flavour text. This upgrade will also come at a cost. The cost will depend upon which character you are playing, and the level of upgrade. It is shown in the rule book, but each character will have to give up some of their resources to do this. You can hold off paying this cost if you don't want to, or cannot afford it yet. And the point of all this? Well, to get married, of course! Not all friends can get to this level, but they can all reach Companion status. It is shown on the front of each card what is possible for each new character. Companion is the top level and will be a unique ability to you and your village. When you use a town linked to a Companion, you can use this new ability. When buildings linked to Friends leave your Village, so too do the Friends, losing any unspent Hearts if present. But when you reach Marriage level, the Friend stays with you for life. When your marriage-eligible Friend becomes a companion, the new companion card will tell you to shuffle an adventure card from this new Expansion linked to that character into the adventure deck. Then, when you resolve that adventure, you can marry this friend. You will have a choice when you do this; you do not have to. I won't show the cards here or go into it too much, as that would be a spoiler. But it is down to you. You can even say no for now, and then maybe change your mind later. But if you say yes, there are benefits coming your way. Any married friend will then have their card from the Friend board moved and placed face up near the player's character board. They are now permanently linked with that player. Players can now use this companion using workers as usual during the day phase, taking advantage of their abilities. You can only ever marry one friend in the game. So choose wisely! Later on in the game, married players can have children. This will be activated through Event cards. Children come in the form of the above dice and can add extra workers during the day phase. You will roll your Child dice at Dawn and gain either an additional villager or sprite worker, or lose one coin. Like in real life, kids can help a lot! But they cost money! The other main addition in this expansion is the Interaction cards. These allow players to buy and sell goods to and from each other. During setup, gather the cards with the pictures of the characters that are in the current game and distribute them to their owners. Then, as a daytime town action, you can place your mini onto the card, the alignment is shown in the top right, and resolve an interaction instead. To do so, simply pay the cost shown on the top of the card; you pay to the other player, so this is a good way to keep money in the game between players, rather than giving it back to the bank all the time. Then, they will provide you with a good or service they specialize in. This will convert to town resources, money, skills, or other beneficial items. Is It Fun? Mythwind: Friends & Family Expansion Board Game Review I will always include this in the game when I play now. I have added everything in. I play mainly solo, so I won't use the interaction cards as much, but I like them, and they work well. The main addition, though, is the Friendship Board and Tray. It feels like a lot to add, size and components-wise, as it is two whole new things to add to the table. But it really doesn't change the game much and adds only a small additional amount of choice and time to the game. The changes are a little disappointing, I would say, at first. But like everything in Mythwind, good things come to those who wait. This is a slow build, and as it should be. These friends come as strangers. They build up to companions and then maybe even married partners with children. And then you get all the benefits and changes you wanted to see in this expansion. The challenge to get to marriage with each of the characters you are playing with in the game is a delightful, well-timed, and rewarding one. It may just initially seem like very little has happened. But that's the point. It takes time to win people over, get to know them, and become their proper friend. It is worth noting as well that the game has taken a lot of care to be fully inclusive with this expansion. There are multiple pronouns within the new friends. It seems the designers have made a big effort to make everyone feel included and represented within the lore of this game. Much like the base game, everything in this expansion sets up and puts away very simply. I have heard some complaints about that, which confuse me, as it is all very quick and simple, just like the base game. There are some major printing issues, though, where characters have other characters' text printed on the back of their cards. You need to work out who is mixed with whom and find the right card to read when you display the front of the other side of another card. It was all a bit confusing at first, but I have figured it out now. But it's a shame a game of this production quality, that clearly has had so much heart and soul poured into it, has gone to print with so many drastic and frustrating printing errors. I would suggest the game needs to see future expansions focused more around two things: new characters and new events and adventures. This is the part of the game I sense is the most popular, and what I like most about it: developing and growing new characters, and going on new adventures, with new things happening in the town. I do think the Ranger could be expanded in an exciting way too. The expeditions they go on feel a little mechanical. I would be interested in an expansion just for that character where you get to move onto other new boards, discover new land, expand your town, and maybe even meet and interact with other nearby, and maybe even far away, towns and characters. That would be epically fun in this humble reviewer's opinion. But if you are looking for new content for this game, and are a fan of the base game, I think you will find this fits seamlessly into your gameplay and enhances the multiplayer experience. The opportunities to become married with children, to gain additional dice, and additional benefits from your companions is a welcome one. Just do not expect it to have a big instant impact. Nothing else in this game does, so why should this? But I know that, and was still a little disappointed at first, and now I really like it. I just want you to go in with your eyes open unlike me! It is also a little disappointing that the friends do not have much impact on you until you become their companion. It feels like a missed opportunity to see some kind of benefit from the friends as you grow your relationship with them. This is why the score is a little lower, as I just wanted a bit more of an impact.

This is a preview copy sent to us for our early opinions. No money exchanged hands. Some art, rules or components may change in the final game. You can follow the crowdfunding page here . Dragon Dawn Productions is quickly becoming one of my favourite publishers. They have made some amazing trick-taking games, the brilliantly intricate Factory 42 , and my personal favourite, Beyond the Rift . I was excited to see what they had coming next, so jumped at the chance to play this preview copy of Beasts & Diplomacy from first time designer Mike Kribel . Mike also did the art, which was mostly done using an AI tool. Lots of work went into the art after the initial AI-generated images, but it is worth noting the origins. You can tell it is AI, but it looks incredible, as AI art can often do, but with that computer-generated feel. That said, when one person designs a game and does the art as well you can understand this being used. And in the current financial climate, this may become more and more common place. The most important thing, I feel, is that the publisher declares it. And any review or previewer too. So consider this AI mater 'John D Claired'! OK, well what is this game all about? This is a card drafting, pattern matching, tableau-builder, with a point salad scoring system, fantasy theme, and incredibly quick game play. I have finished two player games in 25 minutes. Initially, it looks quite complicated. The rule book is good, but doesn't look the most appealing, and its very long! But it reads well, with lots of explanations, and everything is laid out in a nice way. I learned it quite simply myself. But found I could teach it a lot quicker than I taught myself, or compared to how it looks. Let me give you the basics. The game runs over three days (rounds) and each day has five distinct phases. Dawn, morning, etc! The first thing you will do in the first phase is chose some quests. You are dealt two cards you need to pick one from, which will determine a large part about how you will score in the game. We found after a few game, that in this point salad of a game, the quests were the areas we scored this most in. So, pick wisely! Your choices will be based on two things: the score you get each time you complete the Quests mission, as shown on the top right, and the mission itself, as indicated by the icon on the bottom. Get used to icons; there are a lot in this game! They can come in many different guises, but generally, you just need to collect a certain thing. For example, the Herbitheon Quest rewards five points for every two sets of grass icons you collect in the game. Power rewards three points for completing a level two Diplomat card (more on them soon), and Elegance, that reward three points for every grey Beast you collect. Each round, you will get two more Quest cards to pick from, and you need to end with one more Quest in your possession than the previous round. This means you can discard the one you chose in round one to keep both of the Quests you were dealt in round two, if you like. By the end of the game, you will have three Quests to score from. The next phase is where players will draft cards. You start with four workers to do this with, and then in each subsequent round you will gain one additional worker to work with. At the start of this round you will place down six Diplomats, Traders, and Personnel cards, and 12 Beast card. Any remaining from previous rounds are discarded and replaced with a fresh batch each time. So, you wont know what is available until this point. Meaning you pick your first Quests a little blind! But some icons are more common that others, and there is a handy sheet to tell you all this information. You can make four free picks of any combination of the cards. But you will want to find Beasts that match your Quests icons, if possible, and then Traders that match the symbols of other beasts. You can sell to them, you see. They are looking for one fixed must-have attribute and two other nice-to-haves. If you can sell to a Trader with all matching, that's a lot of Ore. You will need Ore later. You will also want to acquire Diplomats that are looking to be entertained by the Beasts you are acquiring, as they too will provide you with Ore. There will be six choices of Personnel cards that offer many rule-bending powers. The first few choices in each area, depending on player count, will reward you with King Favour tokens. Three of these, and you can exchange them for a King's Medal. These will reward you with points at the end of the game. So, you will want to find the cards you need, in the areas that still have King Favour rewards, before the cards go, the spots go, and other players take what you need. Once you have made your choices, you can then discard two cards you don't want or five Ore to move a worker and take another card. But this may leave you short on Ore for later in the round. The first player to pass gains one Ore, and when all players have passed, the game moves forward to the third phase, Noon. Players will now place down all Diplomat cards they have in their hand that they want to welcome to their play area. Place them down in a vertical pile, with the bottom part still visible, so you can see what type of Beast each Diplomat is looking to see. Play then moves to the afternoon in the fourth phase, where players will now play all the cards in their hands that they wish to play. Any Beasts introduced this way will instantly gain you Ore rewards for any Diplomat in your area looking for any matching symbols. You will also need to house all Beasts into an Environment, or your one starting Cage. Any new environment bought will cost three Ore. You can buy as many as you like, but you cannot leave any empty after this day is out. Any previously placed Beasts can be moved at this point, to maximize the efficiency of your environments, and any powers they have. You can now also sell any Beasts you wish to any Traders you acquired in the draft phase, instantly scoring the Ore from the matching symbols, and then placing the Trader into your completed trade pile for more end game scoring. Any Beasts you cannot sell to a Trader or house must be sold at its maintenance cost or two Ore, whichever is lower. You can also play any Personnel cards you wish to at this point to gain their powers. This is all turn in turn order so each player can watch what each player is up to! The Beasts you house have multiple symbols that may be required by your Quests and wanted by Traders and Diplomats, as seen on the right of the card. Each Beast has four attributes, a colour, and a Habitat symbol. It also has its end game points on the top left, and maintenance cost on the bottom left. You need to be looking at all these symbols on all cards as you play. And each round you have 30 new cards to study! When all players are done, the phase moves to the final fifth phase, Evening, where players will now count up and pay their current exhibitions' maintenance cost, as shown by the maintenance cost seen on all Beasts and the environments that they are in. Some Personnel adding powers to your beasts may add to this too. If you cannot pay your costs, you must take actions to reduce your cards or gain more Ore. Once all players have paid their running costs, the round ends. Players will play three rounds/days and the person with the most points after three rounds is declared the winner. The game runs very smoothly through these five phases. The game board shows you what to do on the top left and there is this handy sheet to use for each player to reference. But after a few rounds, you will be flying through without the need of this. It is all quite intuitive. Draft cards, sell some of them. Collect the others for points. Everything is based around matching symbols on cards and find cards that work well together. Particularly the Quests. You will end the game with just three of these and the bulk of your points could come from these if you manage to fulfil them all a few times. Finding cards that work with your Quest, but also the cards you want to sell too, and the cards you want to impress to gain the much needed Ore is crucial. The better cards require more Ore per round to keep them running. But Ore is scarce. And getting more may mean you need to sell more. Each round you need to delicately balance these needs and find cards that fit all your goals. And of course all the other players will be trying to do the same thing! This game quickly becomes about hand management, tableau-building, and efficiency. Finding the best cards that work well together to maximize your Ore production and end game points. The player that can do that the best will win the game. If you enjoy pattern matching and efficiency based card game, then this could well be a winner for you. There are so many cards in this game. This handy guide will help you with working out what each one does. The symbology is clear, but sometimes the cards will have unique symbols, and if you only see that card once every three games or so, and play this game every few weeks, this guide will quickly become essential. I sometimes wonder why cards can't just have written on them what they do. It's not like the text on this sheet is much bigger than it would have been directly on the card! You can also see the frequency of each type of symbol on the game on the left of this. Very handy if you want to work out the likelihood of a certain thing coming up in your early games. And this is where the game can be a little frustrating. There is a small element of luck to this game. Sometimes the cards you need come up. Other times they don't. They can be frustrating. But it's a quick enough game for this not to matter too much. And as they tell you the percentages, you can manage your own risk and try to hedge your bets as best you can. This will be an interesting Kickstarter to follow. With all that is going on in the world right now with tariffs and shipping affecting productions like this, and the potential backlash to the AI, I will be hoping for a simple and successful process for this game. Because it is a lot of fun. It packs a lot into a short sub-hour game time. And I enjoy the challenge of trying to maximize the few cards I will get to use each game.

Kinfire Delve WBG Score: 8.5/10 Player Count: 1-2 (4* with second copy) You’ll like this if you like: Something small deliver somehting that feels bigger Published by:  Incredible Dream Studios Designed by: Kevin Wilson This is a free review copy. See our review policy here . Kinfire Delve uses characters from the Kinfire world, as seen in Kinfire Chronicles and Kinfire Council. There are three games in the Delve system; here we are looking at two of those: Callous' Lab & Scorn's Stockade. They all work the same, offering two heroes known as Seekers to play with, and one bad guy to fight, known as Masters. They are all standalone 1-2 player games but can be combined simply to offer more variety or to boost the game up to a four-player experience. So, with that said, let's get these to the table and see how they play. How To Set Up Kinfire Delve First, separate all the different cards, as shown by their different card backs. There will be three cards for the Master; shuffle them up and pick one at random, placing your chosen one face down in the centre of the play area. Now, take the Well deck, which will be the biggest one. Give this a good shuffle and remove the top three cards. You can remove more for a shorter game if you wish. Then place four cards face up surrounding the Master card, above, below, and on either side of it. Place the rest of the Well cards in a face-down deck next to this. Now find the Master's four final Gauntlet cards and set them aside on the table to use later. Next, set aside the progress tokens, and place them in two separate piles to the side along with the dice. One of the dice, the black one, represents your health. Set it to 10 for a normal game, 8 for a hard one. This is a group collective health so doesn't change with player count. If you took more than three cards out from the Well deck for a shorter game, you must now remove two from your health total. Now, place out the Exhausted cards, shuffled in a face down pile. Finally, each player takes one of the two characters. Or, you can use characters from other boxes if you prefer. Remove their character card, placing it face up in front of you, and their Lantern card, placing it face down beside this. The Lantern card is a powerful card you can use when charged up. This will be self-evident, generally by doing something as shown on one of your other cards, but you will generally only get to use it once or twice if you are lucky per game. Then shuffle the remaining 18 cards and draw seven into your starting hand. One more for a single-player game. One less for a three-player game, and two less for a four-player game. You are now ready to play. How To Play Kinfire Delve Players will now take turns interacting with one of the four cards surrounding the Master card. These will either be Event cards or Challenges. Event cards will detail what they do and how they work on them. To interact with them, simply do as the card says on your turn. When you choose a challenge card, it will have either a red, green, or blue border. On the top left, it will also show the challenge score you need to equal or beat. There will also be some text on the card that details more effects of how the challenge works. If the text is in bold, this card will have an effect in play all the time the card is here, whether you challenge it this turn or not. It could affect other challenge totals, so be sure to read all bold text out when you play any new challenge card down. OK, now that you have picked which challenge card you want to interact with, you can make a choice. Do you want to play one of your cards from your hand to help complete this challenge? The challenges will come in all types: Combat, Obstacles, Puzzles, and Traps. You can only play a card that matches the colour, but it could be any type. Although, some cards and characters do better against certain types of challenges. If you play a card, it will have a number on the top left that will reduce the challenge card number by the same amount. If you play a card, and you don't have to, the other player(s) can now choose to boost this card if they want. In a solo, you can boost yourself. In multiplayer, only other players can boost. You can boost with one or two cards. No more. If you boost, you are looking at the boost score on the bottom of the card. Everything else on that card becomes redundant. Again, you need to match the colour of the challenge with the colour of the boost card. Note, white is wild for all effects like this. Any boost played at this point will add to your total of what you are chipping away at against the challenge card's total. Now finally, you MUST roll the dice. Whether you played a card or not, whether you had your card boosted or not, you must always roll dice. The dice faces show colours matching the challenge cards, as well as one that shows a white and black face. The whites are wild and can be added to any matching colours rolled to add to the total of your attempt at that challenge. The black dice may have a counter effect. Check the current challenge card's text, the face-up text on the Masters card, and on any other cards you may have played at that point. If you successfully meet or exceed the challenge, then you will gain the reward as shown on the card. This will mostly be to discard a certain number of cards from the Well deck, to delve down deeper, quicker. If you did not, add challenge tokens to the total you met to the card to show the progress you made. Your attempt was not in vain, but the card will show a fail effect that you must now take. This could be to lose health, discard cards, or some other effect. Once this is done, replace any of the four cards around the Master that may now not be there with the top card from the Well deck, and play moves to the next player. Note, there is no drawing back up to your hand limit or anything like that. Players need to manage their hand carefully, using various powers to draw back up cards and help their fellow Seekers gain additional cards. If you ever run out or decide you want to get more cards, you can draw back up to your hand limit, but you must also draw the top Exhausted card, read it, and place it face up for all to see. These are always bad and can sometimes mean you immediately lose the game if you get too many. If you do this, you can then take your turn as usual. It does not replace a normal go. If you ever get to a point where you need to replace a Well card and there are none left, then you can discard any remaining Well cards left face up in the play area, and replace them with the four Gauntlet cards you set aside during setup. Place these around the Master and flip over the Master card to reveal which of the three Masters you are facing this time. Read the text on all cards to see how you will defeat the Master. Each one has a different effect, strength, and weakness. If you can defat the Master you win the game. If at any pint you run out of your health, or a Exhausted card tells you, you will lose the game. Is It Fun? Kinfire Delve (Callous' Lab & Scorn's Stockade) Card Game Review The cards in this game look absolutely gorgeous, showcasing a vibrant array of colours and intricate designs that immediately capture the eye. The attention to detail is evident, making each card not only functional but also a visual delight. The lovely, matt card stock used contributes to a premium feel, along with the foil effect present on the back of some cards. This shimmering detail adds a touch of elegance and sophistication, enhances the visual appeal and also creating a tactile experience that is pleasing to the touch. The game comes packaged in a thick, sturdy box that is designed to withstand the rigors of transport and storage. Its actually a little hard to pry open due to the thickness of the stock, but feels great. The dice are nicely screen printed, which adds another layer of quality to the game components. However, it is worth noting that, while the printing is sharp and clear, players should handle the dice with care. Over time, I have found dice with screen printing can wear off if not treated cautiously. The method of tracking health with a D10 is somewhat rudimentary. While it serves its purpose, some players may find it lacks the sophistication or ease of use that more advanced tracking systems could provide. A more innovative approach to health tracking could enhance the gameplay experience, allowing for smoother and more engaging interactions during play. The challenge tokens, while functional, are a little basic in design. They serve their purpose but do not stand out in terms of creativity or visual appeal compared to other components of the game. I would be keen to an upgrade on the challenge tokens and dice one day! Overall, despite some minor critiques regarding the health tracking system and the design of the challenge tokens, the production quality of this game is amazing. The combination of beautiful cards, sturdy packaging, and well-made components creates an impressive package. The attention to detail in the design and production process reflects a commitment to quality that is commendable and enhances the overall enjoyment of the game. Game wise, this experience is nothing short of amazing. With just 18 cards at your disposal, the possibilities are extensive and varied. The depth of strategy that emerges from such a compact deck is truly impressive. Hand management becomes a crucial aspect of gameplay, as players must skilfully navigate their strengths and weaknesses of their character and current hand, while also considering those of their teammates. Players can easily adjust the difficulty to suit their preferences or the experience level of those involved. This adaptability ensures that both newcomers and seasoned players can enjoy the game without feeling overwhelmed or underchallenged. The different sets offer different challenges too. As you race through the well deck, it becomes evident that you will only encounter approximately 25% of the cards during any given game. Roughly speaking! This limited exposure means that each session feels unique, as you are likely to encounter cards you haven't seen in quite some time, or ever! The element of surprise is amplified by the timing and combination of cards that surface, creating an unpredictable and exciting atmosphere. This unpredictability enhances the replay value of the game, as players are encouraged to adapt their strategies on the fly. Some cards need others to come up to come into affect, either for you or against you. This unpredictability is a brilliant addition to the dynamic of the game. The inclusion of three different master cards in each box adds another layer of complexity and excitement to the game. Each player's experience can vary significantly based not just on which master they choose to face, but also on which master card they draw, creating a delightful sense of anticipation each game. The uncertainty of which master card will appear when you reach the bottom of the well, keeps players on their toes, as they cannot fully plan their endgame strategy until they are right in the thick of it. This dynamic interplay of cards further ensures that no two games are ever the same, further enriching the overall experience. The clever card play mechanics are truly genius. Each card is designed with intricate details that enhance gameplay, featuring unique bonus effects and smart interactions that encourage players to think creatively. The ways in which cards can be played and combined open up a myriad of tactical possibilities, rewarding players who take the time to explore the nuances of their options. This clever design makes the game stimulating, allowing players to feel a sense of accomplishment and intelligence with every successful move they make. Its truly wonderful! This game is structured in such a way that it can be played in under an hour, (or much less if you lose fast!) making it an ideal choice for both casual gatherings and more serious game nights. The setup process is quick and straightforward, and teaching the rules to new players is a breeze. With its engaging mechanics and the continual surprise of new card interactions, added to the combination of strategic depth, customisable gameplay, and clever design elements not only makes this game a joy to play but also ensures that it will be revisited time and time again by anyone who gets their hands on a copy. I am delighted I have two! I must seek out the third now! The only reason I do not rank this higher, although 8.5 is pretty high, is that the games can be very tense. And that is great! But then, after an hour, if you lose on one unlucky roll, or one unlucky card draw, it can be tough to take. This doesn't happen much. Once in ten so far for us. But it was frustrating. Generally, you make your own luck in this game. And games are short, and easily played again when things like this happen. But I would like some more dice mitigation. There is some, but not much, and not for all characters. Also, the Exhausted cards in some games are a lot more interesting then others. Some just kill you if you have too many. That felt lazy to me. Others, actually have some interesting affects in you as you play.

Beyond the Rift: A Perdition's Mouth Card Game WBG Score: 9/10 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Campaign games with clever card play. Published by:   Dragon Dawn Productions Designed by: Nikolas Lundström Patrakka This is a SPOILER FREE free review copy. See our review policy here . Perdition's Mouth: Abyssal Rift came out in 2016. It is a much-loved miniature-based dungeon crawler. It tells a story over a campaign of 'diceless' adventures! Well worth checking out if you enjoy that sort of thing. I have not played it myself, but heard good things. Anyway, Beyond the Rift carries on the story right from the point the previous game ended. The tutorial game for Beyond the Rift seems to be moments after the story had previously ended. If you played Perdition's Mouth and enjoyed it, this may be something to look out for. But for those of us who have not played that game, this is a standalone game, and you do not need any prior knowledge to enjoy this game or the story it tells. But I do sense it would be better having played both. So, with that said, let's get this to the table and see how it plays. How To Set Up Beyond the Rift There are a number of scenarios to play out in this game. Pick the one you want to play, ideally in order! And then set up the game according to the chosen scenario's instructions as shown in the scenario book. You will not be able to play certain scenarios unless you meet the shown criteria. Generally speaking, having played the scenarios leading up to this one. Start by shuffling and placing the Enemy Deck and Terrain Deck as directed by the scenarios specific set up. There will be different Terrain and Enemy cards in each scenario. Then, shuffle and place the Wound Deck, followed by the Fatigue Deck. Position the Threat Sheet and set the Threat level by placing a wooden cube on the appropriate space of the Threat track. Shuffle and place the Response Deck. Each player now selects a hero and takes the corresponding Hero Board and Hero Deck, there is a bespoke deck of cards for each hero, along with a matching wooden cube. Now, shuffle your Hero Deck and draw your starting cards equal to your current hand count as dictated by the player count. All Hero Boards start on their standard sides—alternate sides can be unlocked during campaigns, indicated by a red glow on the hero’s name or globe. Players then set their Action Points to the starting value as shown on their Hero Board by placing the wooden cube accordingly. Finally, ensure there is enough space for each player’s Hero Area, the Quest Area, and individual discard piles for each deck. Once everything is in place, you're ready to begin! How To Play Beyond the Rift The game runs through five distinct phases until the specific criteria in the chosen scenario are met. In the opening scenario, you are trying to defend against the attacking enemies while moving through the various terrain, specifically doors, until there are no more doors left to move through. This simulates you running out of danger, through various rooms, and into freedom. It's a very cool system. If you are ever to draw another terrain card and there are none left, and your threat level has not risen beyond a specific point, the heroes win! Essentially, you got through all the rooms. Clever huh! Other scenarios use a similar techniques to simulate time passing, moving from room to room, or various stages of battle. The first phase is the Hero Phase. This is where you will do all the cool things with your cards that you want to do each round. Each Hero has their own number of Action points, represented in the game by a star surrounded by six small dots. You can spend these Action points now to play cards, largely to attack enemies, but also to destroy terrain and more. Each Hero will have their own Special Action as shown on their Hero board, which they can carry out one time per round. You can also pay Action points to discard cards to draw more if you don't have the right hand. There are also plenty of cards that let you gain additional Action points, so you will find your turns can become quite exciting and complex quite quickly! When you play an Attack card, you need to consider the position of the enemy you are attacking. If they are in the central area, they are two spaces from you. You can pay action points to draw an opponent into your action area, or use a ranged attack to target them where they are. You will then need to play an Attack card with a primary attack cost. Action points are shown on the top left of the card in order to use the card. Other cards will have secondary costs, and they can be used to supplement this attack and make it stronger. There are also secondary cards you can use to gain additional cards and action points as part of the attack, and some cards that can be reused if you are successful with the attack. Take note to read each card's text carefully. You will then target a specific enemy, unless you have a card allowing you to attack multiple foes, and then draw a response card for each enemy you are attacking. This will amend their own defence, seen on the enemy cards next to the shield. Total their complete defence against your attack value, and if you have a higher score, your attack succeeds. Draw a wound card for each enemy you successfully attack this way. This is slipped underneath the enemy's card, with the bottom part visible, thus altering the enemy's stats. If their health drops to zero or below at this point, the enemy card is removed from the game. If not, they remain in play, now with reduced stats, ready for a second attack. Players can take as many turns as they like, using cards in this way, until they either decide to stop or run out of action points. You can take turns, have one hero run fully until the next begins. Whatever works for your group. Heroes can also aid other heroes' actions by playing primary cards within range of the attack in the usual way. You can also play this game solo very easily, either with one or two heroes, or however you wish. It is all very flexible, and each scenario has a great setup guide for the number of heroes in the game and the difficulty level you want to play. The second phase is when the Enemy has their chance to attack you. If none are left, they do nothing, but if any remain, then look at the scenario you are playing and draw a response card to see what the enemies will do. There will be a table for each scenario that will detail the action of any remaining enemy, based on what response card you draw. They may engage with you, disengage if already engaged, or more commonly, attack. Actions will happen in later scenarios. When they do, draw a response card for each enemy that attacks you, and compare their attack value on their card and the response card against any shield cards you may have left to play. If they are successful, draw one of the same Wound cards that you use when you attack them, but this time add it to your hand. And you won't just add one for each successful attack. You add a card that represents the difference between the enemy's attack and your defence. These cards stay in your hand and clog up your opportunities. You can play them, moving them into your discard pile, but they won't do good things! If ever you draw a hand of nothing but Wound or Fatigue cards, more on that soon, your Hero, and therefore, entire missions, fails. Phase 3 is the Quest Phase. Here, you will follow the scenario book again, and based on the current Threat level, you will do a specific thing, generally bringing more enemies and terrain into the mix! More will happen in later scenarios, but no spoilers here! Next is the Draw Phase. Here you will check the number of unused cards you had from the previous round and then reset your Hero's action points. This will be their starting points, plus one extra for each unused card. However, one hero gains two per card. Then draw your hand limit again, even if you have leftover cards. Now discard down to your hand limit from the leftover cards and recently drawn ones, forming a new hand for the next round. If you don't have enough cards to draw your full hand, shuffle your discard pile and go again, but this time adding in two Fatigue cards into your deck. These will clog up your deck in a similar way to the Wound tokens. Then finally, it is the End Phase where typically the Threat level will increase. Players will cycle through these phases until the scenario comes to an end, either through a hero dying, or the scenario criteria being met. You will then read through the end of the scenario text, gain any end of scenario benefits, then move on to the next scenario. Heroes' decks continue from scenario to scenario, so wounds, fatigue, and any items you pick up may well stay with you, but there are ways to get rid of the bad stuff and gain more good stuff! The scenarios offer narrative choices at the end. You can either move on to scenario 2a to do one thing, or 2b to do another. This will change your path permanently in the game, but you can of course go back and replay a mission and make other choices if you want to reset things, which is easily done. You can change heroes in between missions or keep the same one. Changing player count is also very simple. Is It Fun? Beyond the Rift: A Perdition's Mouth Card Game Review This is a fantastic game. The card play is amazing. Quite simply, genius. I adore how the scenarios play out and how, when you think you are out of cards or action points, something happens where you find a way to do one more action. Cards spiral into others, and actions fall into a beautiful combination of multiple hits, attacks, and enemies defeated. It's so clever, so fast, so simple, and so satisfying. The storytelling in the scenarios is great as well. The text is interesting, well laid out, and short. You will find the story adds to the game and does not take an age to get through. It is a little odd when it talks about a hero you are not playing with, but that obviously cannot be helped. Each of the characters has their own unique deck, as well as their own special power and unique ability to advance in the game (by flipping their character board over to reveal new powers). They also all have their own cards. It makes the game feel incredibly rich and makes each character, obviously, feel very much like their own different entity. As you play, you can work together, sparring off each other's moves, or focus on different enemies and plans. You can assist other players' attacks, or in solo, just do your own thing. Both work, and both experiences are smooth, enjoyable, and absorbing. I have found some missions to be quite simple, but it is so easy to adjust the difficulty setting as you improve and always set the game to be at the right level of challenge you are after. Others are much harder. If you lose, which I did a fair few times at the beginning (at the end of the first mission), I found the experience to be challenging. It made me want to play again. I felt no frustration or like it was a waste of time, as I often do in other campaign games where you have to replay missions. Rather, here, I was left energized to try again and think of ways to get better. The final battle at the end of the first scenario took three attempts, for example, so early on in the game, I was challenged to either get better or give up. I had a 100% sense of purpose to just get better. The game really grips you. But it is those endless turns that make this game feel so special to me. When you think you are coming to the end of your turn, either your cards are running out, or your action point total is dwindling, you can often find ways to just keep going. Ideally, you will not leave enemies alive, or things not done. You can do as much as you want on your turn, so long as you have the action points or cards to do so, and the enemies and game don't have a chance to react until you end this phase. So, do all you can. And often, one card that gives you action points, or one attack that gains you more cards can do just that. You can keep going for one more attack, or two, or more! It's amazing what you can do once you get the hang of your character's cards and how they combo with each other. It is genuinely so satisfying! I still have a bit of the campaign to do, and some characters I have not used as much yet. But I plan to eke out as much gameplay from this box as possible. And when I am done, I will go again. This is not a once and done. Sure, the story can only be told once, but the spiraling branch of the scenarios means you can go back and do them again, and take different paths, play with different characters, and have a completely different experience. But even if I play the same mission over and over with the same character, I will still have fun. This is just such a well-built and well-constructed game with brilliantly tight mechanics, tension, card play, and game length. I am amazed this game is not well known. I can only surmise it is the art style. The cards are quite bland, mostly with just text. And the things with art, it's all a little brown, beige, and generic. The enemies are straight out of "who are the baddies in this fantasy film again?" and there is not a lot of original thought in the lore. But take that aside, the game itself is fantastic, and I love it.

Birdy Call WBG Score: 6 Player Count: 3-6 You’ll like this if you like: Making silly noises and laughing with your friends! Published by:   Identity Games International B.V. This is a free review copy. See our review policy here . Birdy Call is a silly, funny, and noisy party game where you need to impersonate Bird noises. You will either love it or hate it. But I would challenge anyone to watch others playing it (who are enjoying themselves) and not laugh! It is that sort of game. SO, let's get it to the table and see how it plays. How To Set Up Birdy Call Decide if you want to play with the advanced Eggstra birds or not. I suggest taking a few out, but more on that later. Shuffle the remaining cards and deal them out to the players based on player count Seven each for a three player, Five for a four player game, and four each for five to six players. Place the 25 eggs into the centre of the table, and you are now ready to play. How Play Up Birdy Call Players now play in real time, looking at all of their cards at once. First, check for any pairs in your hand. If you do have any, place them down and claim an egg. Then draw back up to the hand limit. If you don't, pick one and start making the noise as described by that bird's call on the bottom of the card. You can do this however you feel is best. Up to you! Whilst you are doing this, you must be listening out to the other players' calls and trying to find a match to the call you are doing. You can move onto another card whenever you wish, and start trying a new call. But if you hear another player make a call similar to one you previously made, quickly find that card in your hand again, and make that call again to see if you have a match. If two players think they have a match, place your cards face down on the table in front of each other, flip them, and if they are indeed a match, both players claim an egg. Draw back up to your hand limit again, and go again. This continues until all eggs are claimed and the player with the most eggs wins. There are five Eggstra cards. I recommend using just two of them. Here is how they work. Waven - This is not technically an Eggstra bird, but it sure is different. Wave at other players instead of making a noise. Simple fun. Throw it in the deck. Parrot - You can mimic any other player's call when you have a Parrot in hand. When you reveal your cards and you reveal a Parrot instead of the actual card, the tricked player takes their card back and must pay you one egg. The Parrot is discarded. I do not get this at all. The other player can do nothing about this. It is just annoying. Very strange decision to include in this game. It winds kids right up. This card alone brings this game down a full mark in its overall score. Sure, you can just take it out, but its inclusion annoys me that much. Hawkward - Fantastic name, annoying mechanic. When you have this card, play it face up in front of you, and start counting down from ten to zero, in silence. If each other player notices this (which they always will) and also falls silent and places their cards face down on the table, then this card is discarded. But if someone does not notice and keeps playing beyond these ten seconds, they must then lose two eggs. Not as annoying and mean as the Parrot, other players do have some agency here. But as I found, most players mostly notice, bar younger gamers, it is just pointless, slows the game down, and on the rare occasions it does work, just annoys people. No one gains anything. Some players may just lose something. Terrible addition. Another point lost from the overall score. Peacock - OK, finally, a fun card! When you play your Peacock, hold your cards above your head like a group of feathers and shout the Peacock's call. The first player to respond with the same action and call receives an egg, with the player who played the Peacock also gaining an egg. They don't need a Peacock card themselves to do this; it's simply a race. It's fun, players gain things, and it is funny. Great card. Robin - Play it, try and steal an egg from another player. If they spot you, you have to return it. If not, it's yours. Zero jeopardy. You either steal or don't. The person defending gains nothing from spotting you. It's just annoying and feels like organised cheating, but not in a fun or clever way. Is It Fun? Birdy Call Party Game Review I want to love this game. We have had some games where we were all in hysterics. And I can see myself taking this with me to many holidays, parties, dinners, and events and having a blast with it. I just hate the fact that three of the extra birds are so bad. I mean, really bad. Sure, just take them out. But wow, come on. Who thought this was a good idea for a family-level party game? Who in testing thought that was a good idea? Take-that can be fun at times, but it needs some thought. Some two-way jeopardy. Not just a chance to steal stuff with no consequences. Or a card where you can flat out lie to another player about a card you have and then take an egg from them when they fall for it, with them having zero chance to block, defend, or know this is what is happening. Utterly ridiculous. I may simply burn these cards and pretend they never existed. Because the rest of the game is joyous, innocent fun. And these cards do not belong in this game at all. It blows me away that these cards were chosen to be included. Some other cards could very easily have been added in that add positive effects that are funny, then benefit all players. Why anyone thought these effects added to the game genuinely blows me away, and honestly annoys me. As such, I am giving this a six. I wanted to give it an eight. For a party game, if you like simple, silly fun, where you are happy to make silly noises and laugh at others doing the same, whilst they all laugh at you doing it too, this is perfect! But it does lose those marks as I should not have to remove cards from a game to make it better. The cards are optional, but their sheer existence annoys me that much. And other cards that offer mutual benefits and more fun would have been welcome. the game needs extra cards to add to the wrinkles. And it sadly now doesn't have them due to this lazy and uneducated design work. OK, rant over. I think you get the message. Great fun game. Cute, bright and vibrant art. Decent card stock. And worth a look if you like this sort of thing. And do tell me if you try those other cards and find a different experience. I would love to know.

Station to Station WBG Score: 7.5/10 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Choo-Choo trains, engone-buiding and pick-up-and-deliver! Published by:   Alley Cat Games Designed by: Steven Aramini , Jonny Pac This is a free review copy. See our review policy here . Trains games. Love them or hate them. They are everywhere! I suppose it's the fusion of two perceivably "nerdy" cultures; board games and trains, that makes this theme so prevalent in our wonderful hobby. Especially games seemingly set in simpler more analogue times. Which I am all in for. But it does mean any new train-themed game coming out does need to stand out. Otherwise, it will simply get washed away in the huge tide of other similar games. Does Station to Station do that? Well, it certainly doesn't with the name or box art. That is all very train generic, isn't it? But how does it play? Well, let's get it to the table and find out. How To Set Up Station to Station Place the board in the centre of the table and give each player their own player board and all coloured pieces: Train, score marker, and two Route Markers cubes. Each player will take one Coal piece and eight money as well. The game revolves around collecting tiles from the board. These are themed around Summer, Autumn, and Winter. There are also a few Countdown tiles to indicate the end game. Remove a set amount of tiles for each of the four groups based on player count. You can see the number in the table in the rule book. Now place the Summer tokens into the bag and give them a shake. Place the others in separate piles to the side; you will use them later. Next to these, place the Caboose tokens, face up in order of value with the most valuable token on the top, the least valuable on the bottom. Now, shuffle the two Crew card decks separately, and place four of each out above and below the Crew Market Board alongside the main board. Shuffle the Route cards and place these next to this in a face-down pile, flipping over the top two cards for now. Now, place all the resources next to this in separate piles. Create a space for the four Cargo tokens, the Coal, and the Cash tokens. Now, shuffle the starting Route cards, and give one to each player, placing any unused ones back into the box. Each player checks their card and places their Train onto their starting spaces as shown on their starting Route card. Each player now places one of their Route Markers onto this space on the starting Route card as well, to remind themselves they have visited this location. This way, when they get to the other destination on their starting Route card, they can see they have completed this route without leaving any trail on the board itself. They will then gain the shown benefits. And for the starting Route cards, you will also gain one wild ticket. A ticket valid for any of the four regions. Each player now draws two standard route cards, discards one, and keeps the other. These are placed to the left of the player boards. You can mark one station with your Route Marker on this new route card if one of the stations on it happens to be your current starting city. Now, draw Summer tokens from the bag and fill each empty space without a Train token in, to complete the starting board. Be sure to put any tokens with a Summer and Autumn side with the Summer side face up. The leaves aren't falling from the trees yet! When this is done, choose your starting player and you are ready to begin. How To Play Station to Station Players will now take turns to run through a five-stage sequence until all the tiles have been drawn. Let's go through each stage one by one. Market : First, players will decide if they want to buy anything. They have three choices. First, coal. This costs $3 per coal. You can hold nine on your player board. Coal is used to import goods and travel further on your turn. More on both shortly. Second, the location of your train will show two goods symbols. These can both be bought for face value. Each good comes in two's, and the cost is shown on the bottom left of the board. You can buy as much as you can afford, but you can only hold eight Cargo in total. The Cargo is stored on your player board, in a line, behind your train at the top of the board. Third, any other Cargo you want to buy, you can do so at this point, you just need to add in one Coal per Cargo to import the item in. This again, is shown clearly on the table on the bottom left of the board. Travel : Now, you must move at least one space. Shift your train along the shown lines on the board to one neighbouring city. If you want to go further, simply spend one coal for each extra space you wish to travel. You can move onto a space occupied by another player, but you must then move off it after you have completed your next station action. Station : Now you will carry out the action at the station you have just moved to. This will be one of four things. First, if the station shows an Order token, as indicated by tiles with Cargo symbols in the top left, you can pay these required Cargo (if you have them) to remove the tile and gain the benefit shown on the bottom. Generally, a choice between money, coal, and points. Take the money early on, and points at the end. Then, flip the tile and it will show a ticket symbol. Place this now with the ticket symbol showing on your player board, in the area that matches the area you are currently in: North, South, East, or West. If it is a Supply token, with icons on the bottom of the tile, simply take these resources as shown—coal, money, points, etc.—and discard the tile. It is a quick fix, but no ticket for you. If the tile is a Railcar token, showing an image of a Railcar, add this to the back of your train on your player board. This will now offer a once per turn discount of the shown Cargo. Your last option when at a station is to Work. This again is shown on the bottom left of the board (shown above) and is a last resort if you do not want to or cannot do any of the above actions for any reason. You can take two coal, one coal and two money , or five money. Simple. If the station you are in has a Wave symbol in, when you are next to the East or West coast, you will also gain one free coal at this point. Crew : Your next step is to decide if you want to hire any crew. This is a way where you can enhance your skills in the game, permanently. Or at least, until you discard that crew member! Check the Crew board set up during the beginning of the game. The top row has the cheaper basic workers, the bottom shows the more advanced but expensive skilled workers. Each costs one specific ticket from the region the Crew are in, or two tickets from any area. The bottom are the same, but with one extra generic ticket added to the cost. You can hire any worker, no matter what area you are in, but you must place them into the area they came from on your player board. If you have a worker in that area already, you can discard this worker and upgrade them if you wish. Tickets come in the form of completed Order tokens, completed starting Route cards, and the workers themselves. Note the ticket symbol in the top right. So when you discard one for another, they do help contribute to this upgrade themselves. Sacrificing themselves for the greater good! The Crew offer various powers to gain additional benefits and points in the game as you carry out various actions. They are all pretty self explanatory, but there is a handy guide at the back of the rule book for any that are unclear. Each crew can use their power once per turn. At this stage, you can also spend one ticket from each of the four regions and take the top Caboose token for straight points. But you may want to only do this near the end of the game. It's a high cost, and you may need those workers for the game. Cleanup : Finally, draw a new tile from the bag and place it into the empty space you vacated at the start of this turn. And place now moves to the next player. Be sure to place the tile with the right season showing. If you draw the final tile from the bag, then the season has changed. Keep all existing tiles on the board, but flip all the Railcar and Supply tokens to their reverse side, and add the next season tiles into the bag. If this is the end of Winter, add in the final Countdown tiles. Each player now has one final turn. When the final Countdown tile is drawn and placed onto the board, this is the end of the game. This way, all players should have even turns. At the end of the game, you will score a few points, but not many. Most points come from the in-game actions. You gain one point for each two Coal you have remaining, and one point for each four remaining coins. That's it. Most points wins. Is It Fun? Station to Station Board Game Review Pick-up-and-deliver is not my favourite mechanic in board games. There is something about its inherent structure that feels overly procedural and somewhat inevitable to me, leading to a gameplay experience that seems a bit too prescripted. Turns seem obvious to me. Go to the nearest location you need to go to. However, when this mechanic is effectively mixed with other gameplay elements, such as in this particular game, it can elevate the overall experience significantly. In this case, the combination of engine-building and set-collection intricately combined with the pick-up-and-deliver mechanic adds layers of strategy and agency that keep players engaged. But, does it deliver on its promise? The answer is mostly yes. It works in varying degrees. The game offers moments of fun and satisfaction, providing a gameplay experience that is very simple to grasp, which is ideal for newcomers to the genre. The turns are quick, allowing players to maintain a brisk pace throughout the game. However, despite these positive aspects, I can't help but feel that the experience may not appeal as much to more experienced gamers. There are moments of excitement, but they are a little generic, leaving me concerned about the game's long-term replay value for people more used to modern games. That said, for an entry-level family weight game around the theme of trains, it certainly meets expectations and delivers a solid experience. The gameplay flows smoothly, often much quicker than one might initially anticipate. Station to Station tends to conclude sooner than one might expect, sometimes, even before they have had the chance to fully realise their engine-building potential. This can create a sense of urgency and excitement, as players race against the clock to optimise their strategies, recruit the Crew they want, fulfil the missions they want to, and complete the journeys they hope to end. Visually, the game is stunning, with gorgeous artwork and components that enhance the overall aesthetic experience. The design elements draw players in, making the game not only enjoyable to play but also pleasing to look at. In summary, while the pick-up-and-deliver mechanic may not be my preferred choice, when it is combined with other engaging mechanics, it can certainly create a compelling and enjoyable game experience that is well-suited for families and casual gamers alike. When I am looking for a quick, light, fun evening game, this may well be the one I gravitate towards. There certainly is a whimsical sense of nostalgic American train travels inspired by this game that makes the overall experience one I will enjoy over and over again.

The Gang WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 3-6 You’ll like this if you like: Poker, The Mind Published by: KOSMOS Designed by: John Cooper , Kory Heath This is the reviewer’s copy. See our review policy here By Steve Godfrey “So I’ve got this poker game” “Sorry mate I don’t gamble and I’ve got no money” “It’s ok, it’s cooperative” “Oh, right, that’s weird but ok, at least that means we can have a chat while playing” “Nope, we’re not allowed to communicate” “Wait, really?” “And it’s about staging a heist” “Are... are you ok mate?” How to plan a heist Set out the three Vault cards and the three Alarm cards. If you’re using them, also set out the challenge and specialist cards next to each of them as well. For each of the colored chips, take all of the numbers up to your player count. Place the white chips on the table, then shuffle and deal out two cards to each player and give them a reference card that shows the different types of poker hands. Now, everyone looks at the two cards in their hand and decides how good they think their hand of cards is at the moment. Players then have to convey this information by simultaneously taking a numbered chip to reflect this. So taking the one chip, for example, will say that your hand isn’t great. This is the only form of communication you can give. You are allowed to take chips off another player if someone has, say, taken the five chip and you know your current hand is really that good. This will go until everyone is relatively happy with their chips. Then, the yellow chips are brought out and three cards are laid out to create the start of the river. The same happens again, but now you have three more cards to consider, and at this point, your hand could have gotten better or worse. When those chips have been taken, bring out the orange chips and put another card in the river. When that round is over, bring out the red chips and one last card. This will play out the same as the other rounds. These red chips are the important ones. The previous rounds have just been information gathering, but this is the big one because now, when the chips have been locked in, players will reveal their hands of cards from the lowest chip to the highest. If you manage to have gotten the hands in the right order from worst to best, you flip over a vault card. If you get any of them wrong, then you flip an alarm card. If you flip all three vault cards, then you win as a team. If you flip all alarm cards before that happens, then you lose. If you're playing with the challenge and specialists, when you flip a vault card, you then reveal the top card of the challenge deck and put it into play for the next round. This will make the next round a bit harder. If you flip an alarm, then you draw a specialist to help you in the next round and will make the round a bit easier. These cards get discarded at the end of the round.  So, it’s cooperative poker? Cooperative poker; it’s a weird concept, right? It’s taking something that we’ve all grown up knowing is a competitive game and turning it into something that we now play WITH each other. It almost seems sacrilegious! What next, are we going to make motor racing cooperative by tying the cars together and having them tow each other to the finish line?! It all sounds bizarre, but yet it works... the poker thing, not the motor racing. That’s maybe a bit too out there... but I am gonna pitch it just in case.  I was taught this by Jim, and this was the last game we’d played after an epic game day. We’d played loads of great games, big and small, and most of them either made my wish list or made me want another play. I’m telling you all this because I want you to know that even after a game day full of great games, The Gang managed to stand out above all of them for me. So much so that I went and bought a copy within a couple of days and immediately introduced it to my game groups. There were mixed reactions across both, and I’ll get more into who and why a bit later, but it generally leaned more positive, unanimously so with one group. This was a massive relief because there’s nothing worse than finding a game you love and no one else gets on with it. You can’t read my poker face, so we’ll use these chips instead. The Gang is a game that I liken to getting a band together, although it’s easier to get rehearsals in and it’s a lot quieter, for a while anyway. Whenever you play with any number of new players of any skill level, it’s going to take a few goes before you find a rhythm between you. Sure, there are going to be a few mistakes, but when it comes to this game, even the mistakes are part of the fun. What I love about it, though, is the amount of tension and second-guessing (yourself and others) and most of all the amount of back and forth you get from it. You read that right, a game that has no communication can have great back and forth, and it’s funny! That moment where you watch someone take a chip, only to have someone else immediately shoot them a look and snatch it off them is hilarious. There are great moments, like a pretty slow first couple of rounds as people aren’t sure which chip to take, only to have the next card be “the one they were waiting for” and all of a sudden three people almost dive across the table to grab the five chip. It’s a thing of pure joy, and if you told me I was only allowed to watch this being played, I’d absolutely sit and watch it.  As I said earlier, there’s almost a synchronicity you get when you play enough with the same people. You start to know how they think in terms of how they prioritize hands of cards and how good they are at deducing others' hands. That doesn't make the game an easy ride, though, because there are still those close calls. I can’t tell you how many times two people have fought over the bottom two chips because they both only have high cards, but their high cards end up being like a 7 and an 8. Both are valid in wanting to go low, and they both kinda know that all they’ve got is a high card, but it’s just a case of which is worse/better. It’s those kinds of reveals that bring the sighs of relief or the cries of “ah no,” and it’s brilliant.  If you find the game is getting a bit easy, don’t worry because there are ways to change that up. First is a change of players. That’s not me saying to ditch your mates for new ones, but even adding one new player will be enough to change the dynamic. Changing player count will also increase the difficulty. I mean, we’re gamers; we all know how difficult it is to organize people for a game night/day. The same principle exists here. Getting three players to coordinate isn't always easy, but six? That’s definitely going to add to it. The game, though, has one more ace up its sleeve: Challenge and Specialist cards. Each of these gives a subtle but interesting twist to the game. One challenge card, for example, says that on round two, if any of the cards drawn aren’t a court card, then the player who had the 1 chip from the previous round discards their cards and draws two new ones. Another has you skipping the first round of chips completely. The specialist cards, on the other hand, have effects like everyone saying how many court cards they have in their hand, or one player showing another one of their cards. Out of context, they may not sound like much, but they definitely have an effect. There are a couple of other modes in the book as well to keep you on your toes if you need the extra difficulty. We haven’t had a call to play them yet, so I can’t really talk about them. Heisting for newbies The Gang has a familiarity and an accessibility that helps it easily draw more people in than a lot of other hobby board games would. The simple pitch of “it’s poker but we're just working together” instantly intrigues people and makes them feel a bit easier about it because at least it's a game they’ve heard of and possibly even played. It might not draw everyone in, though. The idea of poker may put people off, and while you may be able to draw them in with the lack of gambling and the co-op nature of it, it still may not be everyone's glass of whisky (that’s what you drink when playing poker, right? Or have movies failed me again?) Alternatively, you may get some odd looks from the die-hard poker players of the group as they look at you like you’ve just torn up their favorite deck of cards because you’ve used the words “co-op” and “poker” in the same sentence. Oftentimes, in both of these cases, a quick couple of goes is enough to get people on board, but not everyone. For example, in one of the groups I spoke about earlier, there were a couple of people that didn’t really know how to play poker and struggled a bit with learning how the hands worked and getting the flow of the game and how to evaluate their hand. It didn’t help that we were playing with six players as well, so the wins weren’t exactly forthcoming. That's not to say that you can’t learn poker through this game and still have a great time with it because, being that it’s co-op, it’s easy enough to play a couple of dummy rounds and coach people through it. One thing I do want to address, and it’s only because it’s been said to me many times, is the statement: “Well, you could play this with a normal deck of cards and stand in for the chips,” and yes, yes you could. Personally, I love the production on this. The theme is neither here nor there, but everything else looks the part, and it is all tied to the theme. The cards, the chips, and the addition of the challenge cards add to the overall package for me and for a decent price. I paid around £15 for mine, and you get some good quality chips and a good quality deck of playing cards, which can be almost a tenner just on their own. Plus, it feels nicer to bring this box to the table, even if it was notoriously difficult to photograph for this review. I made this game my number one game of 2024, and it was my most played game of 2024. Mainly because I wanted to take this everywhere and play it at any opportunity I could. But another factor is that you can’t just play this game once, especially if you lose. Someone around the table will more than likely say, “One more?” and if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m always up for one more.  The game for me has all the addictive qualities of regular poker but without the potential for crippling debt (well, in my case anyway). Right, I’m off to see if I can rob a bank by forming a gang and playing poker in front of the safe! Huh, maybe the theme has made an impact after all.

Planet Unknown WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 1 - 6 You’ll like this if you like: Barenpark , Isle of Cats Published by: Adam's Apple Games Designed by: Ryan Lambert , Adam Rehberg This is the reviewer’s copy. See our review policy here By Steve Godfrey Earth has run out of resources, and we are yet again tasked with developing an unknown planet with the goal of saving humanity. Have no fear, though, because this time we’ll have the help of SUSAN, checks notes sorry, Lazy Susan… Sorry, explain why this is an advantage again? How to voyage into the unknown Place the S.U.S.A.N in the middle of the table. This is the name of the spinning device that’s used in the game. If you happen to have your friend Susan playing, please do not put her on the table; at the very least, it makes for a very awkward conversation. Give everyone a planet board and a corporation board. There are two sides to each, a standard side and an asymmetric side. For at least your first game, use the standard side. Populate the board with life pods in the marked spaces, then place a public objective card in between each pair of players. Each player will be working towards two different objectives with the two players next to them. There’s also an option to use private objectives as well, which you’ll give out now if you're using them. Each person will then put one of their arrow tokens in front of the section of the Susan that they are sitting next to or nearest.  On your turn, you’ll be rotating the Susan (the spinny thing in the middle of the table. Please don’t start rotating your friend Susan in her chair) until you find a section with a tile that you want to take. Take one of the top tiles in your chosen section and place it on your board. At the same time, each other player will take a tile from the section that ends up in front of them and place that tile onto their board as well. Your very first tile of the game must be placed touching one of the edges of the planet, and on subsequent turns, it must be placed adjacent to an already placed tile. If you place a tile over the top of a life pod, then it's destroyed. Some tiles will have asteroids marked on them. If you place one of these tiles, add an asteroid token onto that tile. Each tile will have two resources on it, and when you place it, you’ll move your markers on the corresponding tracks on your corporation board. These will eventually trigger certain effects. The Civ track will eventually get you a choice of different levels of cards that house bonuses or end-game scoring. The rover track lets you move your planetary rover around the board. When they drive over an asteroid or a life pod, then they’re collected and placed on your corporation board. Life pods are worth one point each at the end of the game, and asteroids are worth one point per three collected at the end of the game.  The bio track can get you single square biomass patches that can be placed to fill in those empty squares; these must be placed immediately unless you have the tech that lets you store them. Speaking of which, the tech track will unlock special abilities when you pass certain levels, like, for example, the ability to place tiles anywhere on your board rather than adjacent to a tile. Each track will also have victory points and wild spaces that will let you move up on a different track as well when you land on or pass them. Once either one complete section is out of tiles or one player can no longer fit a tile on their board, the game will end.  You score any civ cards, points from tracks, and objectives. You’ll also score points for completed rows and columns on your planet board, each one being a slightly different point value.  Any asteroids on a row or column will mean it doesn't score, regardless of whether it’s complete or not.  Not just a fun toy It’d be so easy to look at that S.U.S.A.N in the middle of the table and assume that it’s a gimmick and that it’s there purely for the toy factor and, yes, maybe there is a world where it doesn’t have to be quite as elaborate as it is. But all thoughts like that simply fall away once you play the game and you soon start seeing it for what it actually is, a functional and fun addition to what is, at its core, just a really great game. From the first turn of the game, this satisfying spinner device gives you the first hit of tension every round. When you're not the active player, then watching it is like watching the wheels on a fruit machine or if you’ve ever seen it, Michael McIntyre's The Wheel (try not singing the theme tune next time you play Planet Unknown). Except of course here it’s another player that’s in control of your fate rather than random luck. Before it’s turned, you generally get a good feel for what tile you want from those currently available, and it’s going to be genuinely hard to not show your emotions as those tiles are turned to the perfect position or, even worse, spin frustratingly past you. Now a truly evil player would see this and take advantage, but I’ve genuinely found in my plays that you're too focused on your own board and goals to worry about what other people need. The only time it may become a concern is if you can see that someone can't fit certain tiles on their board and you don’t want the game to end just yet. That concern becomes even less so if they’re not sitting next to you and sharing goals.  Combos and tracks and rovers oh my! It’s the actual decision around tile placement that really makes this game shine. Now generally, aside from your turn, you don’t get any decision over which two tiles you get to choose, and this escalates as the player count goes up. Now I can legitimately see this being an issue for people who don’t like that lack of control, especially if you end up getting a choice of tiles that have the same resources on them. For me, though, it’s the puzzle of how you use what you're given that makes this game stand out, and let’s face it, if you could choose what you wanted every turn, then it’d be boring. Which tile you choose and where you place it could have multiple implications. Do you place it to help you complete a row? Is it best placed for an objective? Should you even take the one that places an asteroid? And best of all, which tracks do I want to advance on? There’s even an argument to be made that your “off turns” are actually better because you don’t have to sit in an analysis paralysis stupor deciding which of the plethora of tiles you want to pick, because sometimes, picking from just two can be enough of a decision on its own.  The two-player and solo variant throw in a rule that says that on your turn, instead of picking any tray to take time from, you only move the Susan one space to the left. I’ve not played at two, but I have played solo. While this doesn’t give you the freedom to choose (and potentially stitch up other people) as in other player counts, it does give you more of a strategy as you’ll know what’s coming your way for the next couple of turns, more so for the solo game as the bot doesn’t take tiles. So if the luck of the multiplayer game doesn’t appeal, then maybe the two-player game will give you the strategy you're looking for. Track, tracks and tracks oh my! Once you’ve placed your tile, it’s time to advance on those oh-so-satisfying tracks. As mentioned earlier, each one will give you different benefits and bonuses as you move up them, and this in itself leads to a ton of replayability. One game you may choose to focus more on the tech track, and another you may go rover heavy. That’s not to say that they’re limiting, though, since you're usually getting up multiple tracks in a game, but invariably one or two are going to fall behind. My favorite part on each track is those wild spaces. When you hit or pass these spaces, you get to advance one space on a track (the same or different), and that can trigger some fantastic combos, especially if you can engineer it so you hit a couple of those spaces on a turn. They may not happen a lot in a game, or even at all, but when they do, it feels really good. Something I have noticed, and I’d be interested in how this goes for you, is one of the technologies, more specifically the one that lets you place tiles anywhere on the board without them needing to be adjacent. Now, I don’t know if it’s the years of being told as a gamer that tiles “HAVE TO BE ADJACENT TO EACH OTHER” that means my brain can’t comprehend that I’m now allowed to break this well-ingrained rule. So much so that even though I’ve unlocked it on many occasions, I’ve taken advantage of it only once! On said occasion, it completely messed me up because now I had to try and deal with two poorly placed sets of tiles instead of my usual one. I know other people I’ve played with have forgotten to use it as well, and they are a lot smarter than me with better spatial awareness, so I’d like to see how often other people take advantage of this one. “I think we should see other planets” Each of the planet and corporation boards has its own unique map and tracks on their reverse side. I’ve not delved into every one of these, and I’ve only played them solo, but they each bring their own weird and wonderful flavours to the game. On one of the corporation boards, rather than being a regular straight, this water track snakes through the others. Some planets have placement restrictions and a whole host of unique flavours. The variants that I’ve played with have been fun in their own right, and each combination offers its own unique puzzle. Given that there are many potential combos, you're going to get your money's worth for the replayability here alone. However, I couldn’t speak to how balanced they’re going to be in multiplayer games. Because they are so wildly different, there’s got to be some kind of overpowered or difficult combination somewhere. If you are going to try these outside of the solo mode, I’d go into it letting people know that it may not be the most balanced game. That being said, if you fancy playing a game where you don’t really care who wins and just want to experiment with the combos, and all others are on the same page, then it’s fun seeing what the combos bring to the table. The correlation between the private and shared objectives can sometimes contradict each other, with one telling you to have the largest area of a resource type and the other saying you need the smallest. It’s annoying, to say the least, because now you have to decide which one to go for rather than both of them, and it’s basically taking potential points away from you before you’ve even started. My advice would be to swap out one or both offenders until you have a situation where you can reasonably achieve all of them, just to make things fairer. When you first suggest playing Planet Unknown and you present people with that huge box, it's not uncommon for them to look at you with a face full of existential dread as they wonder what they’ve let themselves in for. Once you get into it, though, they soon realize that what they’ve actually let themselves in for is a pretty straightforward and, more importantly, fun planet-building polyomino game.  Right, I’m off to spin Susan… not the lazy Susan in the game, my friend Susan. She really loves those roundabouts at the park.

SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence  WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Lost Ruins of Arnak Published by : Czech Games Edition Designed by: Tomáš Holek This is a SPOILER FREE free review copy. See our review policy here   By Steve Godfrey In SETI, you’re able to scan for and receive signals from the far reaches of the galaxy, and this technology has always fascinated me. The fact that you can receive signals and images from the depths of space is incredible. Heck, even James Cameron can tweet from the bottom of the ocean. We have all this amazing technology that lets us see and communicate from seemingly impossible places… and yet I still have trouble listening to music while driving through a small village. I’m not saying I want a space agency’s worth of tech, but it would just be nice to listen to David Bowie’s "Starman" while driving through rural England. How to SETI up and play Give every player a player board, their tokens in their chosen colour, one of the game's excellent player aids, and their starting income card. The reverse of this card will show you your starting resources, which include 5 cards from the deck, one of which you’ll tuck under your income card, immediately gaining that resource as well as adding to your income every round.  On the board, randomise the setup of the outside ring, then build up the rotating board in its three layers and then randomise its setup either yourself or scan the QR code on the rulebook and get a randomised setup. Lastly, take the five alien races, shuffle them face down, and then place two of them in their slots on the board, still face down.  On your turn, you’ll take one main action and any number of free actions in any order. First, I want to talk about cards. Cards have multiple uses in SETI; you can discard them as a free action for their ability in the top left of the card. As an action, you can pay the cost on it and use the action on it. Some cards also have grey mission abilities, which you play in front of you, and they trigger when the condition is met. There’s a symbol on the top right, which is generally used in conjunction with the scan action. Lastly, the cards can be tucked under your starting income card in the same way as setup to be used for future income turns.  Sending out a probe puts one of your probes on Earth. At this point you can pay energy to move one adjacent space per one spent, or you can spend a card with a move icon on to move round as well, gaining any popularity for any planets you move through. If you're on a planet you can use the orbit action to place your probe in orbit around that planet and gain the bonuses there. In much the same way you can land a probe on the planet which will cost more but the bonuses and points could be better. You can land on the moons around it but you’ll need an upgrade before you can.  The scan action first lets you scan for data in earth's sector. This is where you collect a data token from that sector and replace it with one of your tokens. The collected data goes into your computer. You can then scan in another sector by looking at the coloured corners on the top of the three cards in the display and scanning in one of those sectors and then discarding that card.  You can spend six popularity points to upgrade the actions on your board. Take the upgrade you want, gain the bonus on the back and slot it into the appropriate place on your board. There’s a load of things this tech can do like making landing on planets cheaper, letting you land on moons, letting you put more than one probe out at a time and even improving your scanning. When you gain a tech then you must, in true Numberwang style, rotate the board. Which of the three sections you’ll rotate will depend on where the rotation marker is. Rotate that part one step and then move the rotate token round as well. This will obviously change the alignment of the planets and board.  Adding data to your computer not only gives you bonuses at certain points, including letting you tuck cards for income, but, if you fill your computer with data then you spend an energy, removing the data and gaining a life trace. Throughout the game you’ll gain different coloured traces and when you get one you can put one of your tokens in one of the matching slots below one of the two alien boards. When one has all three slots filled then congratulations! You’ve discovered alien life and the board flips over. Get that aliens rules card, card deck and any tokens from the box . Give a card to everyone who contributed a token (one per token placed) and read out how this particular race works. Each race will have their own deck of cards which work the same as regular cards but are more powerful and may work in line with the aliens rules. The new boards will also have new and more spaces to put trace tokens when you get them. These usually vary in points and may even have a cost to pay before you’re able to place them. The game will end after five rounds at which point you’ll score any end game goals on cards you played and then score the public endgame objectives.  All of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will - where do you want to start? As per usual when I write any review I’ll finish the overview and then ask myself “right, where do I start?” This time isn’t any different, except for the fact that this is the exact same question I ask every time I start to play SETI. In fact that’s the one question I kinda dread new players asking me because my answer is always going to be “I don’t know, what would you like to do?” Part of that is me not knowing what the heck I’m going to do, let alone anyone else. It’s also partly because I don’t want them to blame me for accidentally tanking their game on the first turn. I love that that question even needs to be asked because it means that, straight from the off SETI gives you so many potential options and doesn’t follow a linear path every time.  The beauty of SETI is that there are so many paths to explore and it’s up to you which one to choose. Which you choose could purely be because you fancy doing something different from the last game or maybe If you’ve got a hand of cards that synergize well with a particular path, well then, maybe go that way. If you fancy going down a more planetary exploration route this time, go for it! What makes the starting choices all the more difficult is that they’re all good! Even better is that they all interconnect just enough that you’ll need to touch on everything to be really efficient, but can also be separate enough that you don’t necessarily have to go hard down all routes. So if you find that you aren’t scanning as much as other players maybe because, thematically, your agency had to unplug the scanner to plug in the kettle, then it’s not that big of a deal. It’s on the cards Yep, I’m an absolute sucker for multi use cards in general and when designing SETI I can only imagine that there was an objective to create cards so multi use that they could coin the phrase, “the Swiss Army knife of multi use cards”. (I wonder if I can trademark that?) If that was the case then they’ve nailed the brief. I don't know if this is the most multi use a card has ever been with technically six uses it can give you, but whatever it is, I love them. Not only does it give you those fantastic choices of, “I want to use the card for this later on…..oooh but this bit could be really handy now” but I love that they’re not only one time use either. The end game scoring serves to give you that extra end game push but the grey triggerable missions act as little side quests to focus your game on should you wish to. They can help towards stretching out your turns by giving you little resources boosts. Of course the best bit about multi use cards and these ones in particular, is how they can lead onto some awesome, satisfying combotastic turns.  Some nice Aliens but where are the Quagaars? Unless all players somehow manage to ignore all the life trace symbols then it shouldn’t be long before you discover the first of the two races of aliens. Each one has similarities to each other in as much that you’ll have coloured areas to place your tokens when you find life traces and open up a new path to scoring victory points. Most importantly is that they'll all play differently and add their own thematic spin to the game without adding a ton of complexity to the game. This is a blessed relief when you’ve already been through a decent length of teaching and people have got to grips with the rules. The last thing you want to do is fry their brains with two more vastly different rule sets. These new discoveries will each give you new opportunities to place traces and score points (some come with a cost) and their own unique deck of cards which will be more powerful than the regular deck. I love the idea that you don’t see which two are being put out each game, it adds to that sense of discovery especially when you're just exploring the game yourself but also stops people from planning ahead based on what’s coming. Each new discovery will lead to a change of pace and tactics amongst the players; as players either try and adapt to what's been presented or just carry on as they were and plan on touching on the new discovery later… or wait until the next one.  Each alien race is brilliantly thematic to its own back story. I won’t mention any specifics here as I know some people want to discover them as they come up in the game. But if you don’t mind knowing or want to revisit these as you discover them then it’s well worth watching the specific alien videos on CGE’s you tube channel. Jupiter Ascending Speaking of ascending, SETI is a game of escalation. Your first round will probably feel comparatively short with only limited starting resources at your disposal. But as the game goes on and you increase your income, improve your actions with tech and play cards that improve your lot, you'll find your rounds being filled with more options to play with. That being said, SETI does something that I love in games in that it makes you try and squeeze every last drop out of every turn. This escalates as you reach the last throws of a round and even more so at the end of the game because you don’t want to leave any space rock unturned. You want to go out knowing that you did as much as you could. As much as your round will expand as the game progresses, you’ll want more, and so as people get to the end of their round you’ll see them trying to math out every possibility. “If I can just get one more popularity, then that gives me one more turn to get a tech, then I can fill my computer with data and that gets me two credits so I can play this card…” And so the muttering continues. You’ll soon get used to this as a regular occurrence - and what previously sounded like your friends, now muttering incantations in the hope to magic up more resources, will,  before you know it, become background noise. Which is good, because it gets worse, especially in that last round. At the same time though, I love that sort of puzzle and when you finally crack it, it’s like you’ve actually successfully landed a probe on a planet… I’d imagine. It won't surprise you to discover that I’ve never set foot near any space agency, which is probably for the best. We’re gonna science the potato fertilizer out of this game.  As you may have guessed this game can be prone to a little AP (analysis paralysis) as people try to figure out their turns and it’s not necessarily with people who are usually prone to that sort of thing. It just means that some games may work out a little longer than expected which is why I’d say three players is probably the sweet spot, especially when you’ve got all new players round the table but if your group tends to play quick anyways you’ll probably be fine. That being said you may not notice as much downtime as you’ll be too busy working out your own game.  This is less of a negative and more of a tip I suppose? It’s easy to get caught up in a game of follow the leader and my advice will be, don’t. If one player is running off ahead in points because they’re game is based around landing on planets then it’s all too easy to panic, change strategy and do the same thing to try and catch up. In the games I’ve played I’ve found sticking to your guns works much better as things do start to even out if you're playing your own game well. You spin me right round. Let’s talk about the big orange orb of heat in the room. Because let’s be honest, it’s a big ol’ gimmick designed to draw people to the table and sell games because it's a cool spinny thing... right? Of course it isn’t (although I don’t think it hurts things) but I can see why it might evoke that response. It’s a really clever, thematic and fun way to add to the puzzle of the whole game and, let's be honest with ourselves, it’s just really cool when we get to spin it round. How often it rotates is dependent on how the game plays out, but it's usually enough that you can’t rest on your laurels and just assume that it’s going to be the same on your next turn. It’s also never constant enough that it’s moving round like you’ve just let your kid take the controls on the teacup ride. It’s not all gloom though because having that one rotation happen between turns might even be an advantage. One turn could be the difference between spending precious resources to get to Mars, to all of a sudden it’s parked itself next to you! It’s such a clever piece of design. The final countdown. There’s so much I could talk about when it comes to SETI because I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface. I love how your choice of tech can go a long way to enhancing the particular path you're taking but again, because you want to try and do a bit of everything, you don’t necessarily want to go all the way on, say upgrading your probes. The scanning has a nice little race element as you fight to keep the majority to gain life traces and points but also collect that all important data to fuel your computer with upgrades and resources.  SETI didn’t make my top ten (new to me games) of 2024 because of how late in the year I got it but this has now rocketed into my top ten games of all time; and I’m pretty confident in saying that this will be in my top ten of 2025. SETI is a fun thematic game that floods you with choices and asks the important question “how do you want to play” and more importantly gives you the tools to do so and really, what more can you ask than that? Right I’m off to try and get a signal and see if I can finish listening to Starman, I need to find out how that bad boy ends.