Cross The Line WBG Score: 7/10 Player Count: 2-8 You’ll like this if you like: Card games with interesting layers and scoring. Published by: Gray Matters Games Designed by: Joe Barron, Brady Peterson, David Yakos This is a free review copy kindly gifted by VR Distribution. See our review policy here. Some party games live or die on whether they can get people talking, laughing and revealing just enough about themselves to keep everyone interested. Cross The Line understands that assignment immediately. It asks one player to place themselves honestly on a spectrum, then challenges everyone else to judge just how well they know that person. That can mean anything from how good you think you are at dancing, to how bad your road rage is, to how long you think you would survive an apocalypse. The questions are personal without usually becoming too uncomfortable, and the sliding-scale format gives them just enough structure to stop the game becoming a loose conversation exercise. It is easy to teach, quick to get moving and, with the right group, genuinely funny. The obvious comparison is Wavelength, and it is impossible to ignore. Cross The Line is operating in very similar territory, just with a more personal focus and individual guessing rather than clue-giving. That familiarity is both its biggest strength and one of its main problems. How To Play Cross The Line Cross The Line is for 2–8 players, plays in around 30 minutes, and the aim is to be the first player to reach 12 points. Each player receives three Confidence Bars and a scoring meeple, while the central device holds the question card and hides the answer line. On your turn, you draw a card, choose one side and read the question plus the five possible answers aloud. You then secretly slide the line on the device to the point that best represents your honest answer to your chosen question, before covering it with the screen. The other players then take turns placing one of their Confidence Bars where they think your hidden line sits. The bars come in different lengths. The shorter the bar, the harder it is to cross the hidden line, but the more points it is worth if you succeed. Once everyone has committed, the screen is removed, successful guesses score, and play passes clockwise until somebody reaches 12 points. It is a neat system because confidence becomes part of the decision. You can play safe with a wider bar, or back yourself to know somebody extremely well and go narrow. That little bit of risk is what gives the game more shape than simply pointing somewhere on a scale. The Fun Is In Being Wrong The best moments come when somebody you know well completely surprises you. You may be convinced that your partner thinks they are an excellent cook, or that your best mate was a genius at school, only to discover their own assessment is nowhere near yours. That gap between perception and reality is where Cross The Line works best. It naturally creates follow-up conversation, arguments, explanations and the occasional baffled look across the table. The game is less about winning through clever deduction and more about discovering whether the version of someone in your head actually matches how they see themselves. That is a lot of fun to me. As is the continual debate around that! That also means the group matters enormously. With people who are willing to answer honestly and have a laugh about the differences, it can be great fun. The rules explicitly rely on that honesty, which is important because a player could otherwise deliberately place the line somewhere misleading just to deny points. But that doesn't happen in this game in my experience. Honesty is always more fun! Familiar Ground The biggest issue for me is that Cross The Line feels very familiar. If you have played Wavelength, the comparison is immediate, and while the focus on personal questions does create a slightly different atmosphere, the core experience still feels heavily borrowed. That is not automatically a problem. Plenty of good games refine familiar mechanisms. But if you are going to work this close to something already established, I want to see a meaningful twist, a smarter system or a clear improvement. Cross The Line does not really provide that. It is fun, and I enjoy playing it, but I cannot honestly say it brings enough new ideas to make me choose it over Wavelength purely on design. However, I do like the questions in this game over simple categories. And the answers along the scale amuse me. Others have found this affects the game as people don't want to answer literally to these points. As, you can't really. They are quite specific. But I think you just need to understand it is a scale with some example answers along various points of the scale. Its a party game. You don't have to take it literally. One Clever Device, One Frustrating Flaw Ironically, one area where I actually prefer Cross The Line is the way the active player sets their hidden position. The device holds that answer neatly and securely, and I prefer it to the reveal in Wavelength, where I have occasionally found the marker can shift slightly when the target is uncovered, especially with slightly older, more worn versions of the game. The ones I usually play with in board game cafes! That is why the other half of the device is so frustrating. The Confidence Bars used by the guessing players slide around far too easily. If the device is tilted or passed between players, those carefully placed guesses will move. For a game like this, that matters more than it sounds. Cross The Line should be perfect for casual sofa play, coach journeys, or anywhere you can simply pass the device around like a book or tablet. Instead, you really need to keep it flat on a table, which unnecessarily limits one of the settings where this type of game should shine and makes that part of the game frustratingly annoying. Stiffen them up, and this game scores a whole point higher for me. That affects it so much. The Questions Do The Heavy Lifting There are 100 double-sided cards, giving you 200 question sides in total, and the quality of those questions is going to define your experience. Some are excellent because they reveal something funny or unexpected about the player answering. Others feel much more ordinary, and that inconsistency is always a risk with this sort of party game. So I like to give each player ten or so at the start of the game, and they are all double-sided, so they can find a couple they like and find amusing and work to their own lives. It makes the game flow better, faster, and in a more entertaining way. There are plenty of questions in the game; I see no reason to not always play like this. Still, the personal angle is what gives Cross The Line its identity. You are not trying to invent a clever clue or interpret an abstract concept. You are trying to work out how another human being sees themselves, and that makes even fairly simple questions more interesting. It also means the game can work surprisingly well with people you do not know deeply. Sometimes you are relying on years of friendship. Sometimes you are relying entirely on vibes. Both can be entertaining. Pros Easy to teach and immediately social. The rules disappear quickly and the conversation takes over. Confidence Bars add a nice risk-reward decision. Narrower guesses make successful reads more satisfying. The hidden-answer device works very well. I actually prefer this part to Wavelength’s reveal mechanism. Personal questions create genuinely funny surprises. The best rounds lead naturally into stories and debate. Cons It is extremely close to Wavelength. For me, it does not introduce enough that is new, clever or better. The Confidence Bars slide far too easily. A strange component decision that makes casual non-table play awkward. Question quality is inevitably uneven. Some prompts generate great conversation, others are much less interesting. Final Thoughts Cross The Line is enjoyable. It is simple, sociable and capable of creating exactly the sort of moments you want from a party game: surprise, laughter and arguments about whether somebody really is as good at karaoke as they claim. My problem is that enjoyment alone does not erase how derivative it feels. Wavelength already occupies very similar ground and, overall, I still think it is the better game. Cross The Line needed either a stronger mechanical twist or a cleaner improvement on that formula, and for me it does not quite manage either. There are still things here I genuinely like, especially the way the active player secretly sets their answer. Unfortunately, the loose Confidence Bars undermine what should have been a brilliantly portable social game. Good fun, easy to recommend to the right group, but held back by familiarity and one surprisingly irritating physical design choice.

When Kavango first arrived on my table, it became one of those games that reminded me why I love this hobby. I described it at the time as “a glorious, interlinked, cascading, connected puzzle that will fill your heart with every play”, and clearly I was not alone in falling for what designers Matt and Zara had created. Since then, Kavango has travelled far beyond that first crowdfunding campaign, selling around the world in five languages, picking up major awards and even helping fund conservation work across southern Africa. Photo Credit - https://www.mazazagames.com/pages/our-story So when I heard their next game was on the way, I was immediately interested. Scavengers stays within the Kavango world but heads in a very different direction, swapping the sprawling nature-reserve puzzle for a fast, highly interactive card game about vultures and other scavengers competing around a carcass in the Kalahari. Played across dusk, midnight and dawn, it is built around bluffing, bidding and trying to outmanoeuvre everyone else at the table, with action cards and even the threat of a lion ready to upset the pecking order. What makes Scavengers particularly interesting to me is that the story behind the game feels every bit as deliberate as the design itself. The idea came after Matt and Zara visited conservation partner Vulpro in South Africa and learned more about the vital role vultures play in preventing the spread of disease, alongside the considerable image problem these extraordinary animals still face. Before getting the finished game to the table, I spoke with them about where Scavengers came from, how Kavango changed their lives, why sustainability remains central to everything they make, and what comes next. Wow, Kavango has been just such a huge success. So many copies have been sold. Great reviews. And now a distribution deal with a major European manufacturer. You must be buzzing! Did you ever think your debut game would achieve such success? Thanks so much, Jim! You’ve been such a huge support since the start. We still remember when we read your review of Kavango and it really made us feel so happy to know that we’d connected with people in the way we were aiming for. We still remember it by heart: “It’s a glorious, interlinked, cascading, connected puzzle that will fill your heart with every play.” The thing that resonated most was “will fill your heart with every play”. That’s exactly what we wanted it to do. We wanted it to inspire joy and awe towards the natural world and help people feel connected to the amazing wildernesses in southern Africa. Your review was the first inkling we had that we’d managed to do that for some people and it meant so much. We couldn’t really have dreamt that Kavango would have the reach that it has. It’s now sold in five languages across the world, has won the Origins and Green Game Guide Award for Sustainable Product Design 2026 and we get the most wonderful messages from people all the time who love the game and who have these amazing personal stories of connection to nature and wildlife. We’ve also been able to financially support conservation charities that are doing vital work to protect nature and biodiversity in southern Africa with the profits from Kavango - this is incredibly important to us and we’re so honoured that we can contribute. It’s quite something to know that a game we have created from our minds and lived experience has resonated with so many people. It’s been the most fulfilling couple of years and gives us a lot of hope for the future of the natural world. It is clear to us every day, from the messages we get from people all over the world, that there is a huge global community that cares deeply about nature. We feel very lucky to be building this Kavango community where the focus is on joy, fun and connection with friends and family through a shared love of the natural world. So often the climate and nature crises are framed in such negative terms and there is only so much despair that we can sustain. We are proud to be contributing to joy and a positive hopeful message about nature in our own particular way. That is the ultimate success for us. Cards from Kavango I could not agree more. Often in life, people respond to things either with a push or pull. And I feel with sustainability and environmental issues, we need to see the hope and work we can do to repair what we broke. Not the despair of how badly we broke it in the first place. That often can make people feel hopeless, when there is so much hope. Back to the game, what do you attribute all this success to, what do you think made Kavango so special? Truly I think it is an excellent game, with a satisfying story arc and beautiful art. I think that is why it has continued to grow beyond the Kickstarter. But most people hadn’t played it when they supported our first Kickstarter. Over 3,000 people across the world backed us to bring our dream to life. How do we account for that success? I think that it’s ultimately a testimony to the amazing global board gaming community and their love and passion for the hobby. I think that reviewers and players saw two people who were trying to fulfil their dream and wanted to support us. We came to our first Kickstarter completely new. We had no board game industry insight, had no networks in the industry, we had never done crowdfunding, marketing, graphic design or art professionally before. Looking back it is quite amazing and we owe it all to the board gaming community and to people like you, Jim, for seeing what we were trying to do and believing in us and ultimately putting their hard earned cash behind supporting us. I think a lot of us in the community saw a great game made by great people with a great cause behind it. You deserve it all. Since then, what have you been up to? We did our second Kickstarter campaign in 2025 for the Lodges Expansion, Let’s Go Kavango and some new animal booster packs to add 21 new animals to your nature reserve. This has been really well received - including by you, thank you again! - and we’re really excited for people to start playing with the Lodges Expansion and relish the new puzzle it adds to the game. We’ve introduced 21 new animals through Captivating Cats, Brilliant Birds and our Animal Booster Pack and we’re really glad that we’ve got some of these animals into the game. Again this is a personal story for us. We made Captivating Cats in honour of our cat Precious Ramotswe who died in early 2025. We adopted her in Botswana and she was the third member of our team throughout the whole Kavango journey. She was a great cat and we wanted to immortalise her in shiny form. We love the idea that she is being played into Nature Reserves by people across the world. We’re also very proud of Let’s Go Kavango, which is a streamlined travel version of Kavango. It has all the strategy and all the animals but in a small box. As you know, the environment and sustainability is the no.1 priority for us with our games and that’s where the idea for Let’s Go Kavango game comes from. We wanted to update the decks of cards for our original Kickstarter backers because we had made some changes to the cards in a later edition and we wanted our original backers to have the best version of the game. However, we didn’t want people to throw out their cards and recycling services can vary based on where you live. So, we positioned this problem through the lens of the circular economy and decided that the best option was for people to be able to reuse their original cards. It tied in perfectly with other feedback that we’d been having that people wanted to take Kavango on holiday with them but the game was too big and heavy. And we also wanted to design a version of the game that we could sell more easily in southern Africa with a lower price-point and lower barrier to shipping. So this idea of making a travel edition of Kavango, which people could create themselves with their old deck of cards, was how Let’s Go Kavango was born and we included it as a free add-on for all of our returning fans in our Lodges Expansion Kickstarter campaign. Building on from Kavango, we are more committed than ever to our mission of inspiring people to protect our world’s biodiversity through the power of games. We’ve got a pipeline of games and so many ideas. We’ll talk more about Scavengers later but that is our next game which is a fun card bidding game that’s perfect for group game night. We’re working alongside this on our next big game offering, Beaver: Born to Rewild. We live in the Scottish Highlands now and Zara is working on Beaver reintroductions after 400 years of absence for our landscape. It’s been amazing to see how much positive impact the beavers have had on the landscape by recreating wetlands and supporting entire ecosystems returning to these landscapes. We became inspired to make a game about these incredible ecosystem engineers and tell this beautiful story of rewilding. In the game you will play as a family of beavers reintroduced to the Scottish Highlands and you’ll build your dam to create a mosaic of wetland habitats and reintroduce an array of native wildlife. Sounds great! I am excited to try it. But for now, tell me about your next game, Scavengers? We came up with the idea for Scavengers when we were visiting one of our charity partners, Vulpro, in South Africa in January 2026. We heard from them the importance of vultures to African ecosystems as a vital clean-up crew to stop the spread of disease. But they are difficult to conserve and protect because they have a PR issue. So we decided to make a game about vultures and other scavengers to showcase the beauty, power and importance of these animals. Scavengers is a new addition to the Kavango world. Over one dramatic night - split into 3 rounds: dusk, midnight and dawn - you'll play as scavengers in the Kalahari competing for food at the carcass. Bluff, bid and outmanoeuvre your opponents to win the most food for your scavengers. You’ll be dealt a hand of cards at the start of each phase of the night (dusk, midnight and dawn). Each round consists of five feeds, where you can bid to win food. The value of the feeds increases as the night progresses. Action cards can invert the power of your scavengers so even the underdog can win and beware the power of the lion who will scare away your scavengers and steal food from the carcass! It’s designed for 2-5 players, ages 8+, with a playtime of around 20-30 minutes. It’s an easy-to-learn, small-box, quick-playing card game in the same genre as games like Scout, Skull King, Flip 7 and Perudo, but with the bonus of some beautiful animals! It is a lot of fun and has high player interaction, making it perfect for group game night or family holidays! Well, I have been loving it myself, my full review is below. And I understand you are making this game in Europe to reduce transport emissions. How easy was that to change budget and logistics-wise? Sustainability is our no.1 priority and we are always looking for ways to improve. Scavengers is plastic free, made from 80% recycled materials (the rest is FSC sourced) and was manufactured in a factory that is powered by the Spanish sun! There’s no way of getting around the fact that transport is one of the major sources of emissions from our products. We wanted to try manufacturing in Europe to reduce these emissions by manufacturing closer to our European and British customers. It is more expensive but it also has a shorter lead-time so there is benefit in being able to get the product to customers more quickly. We’re working with AGR who are based in Spain and have a solar powered factory. They’ve been great so far and we are really excited that they’ve been able to make Scavengers in time for a release at Essen Spiel 2026. We’ll be selling the first copies at the convention and then will do a wider release in the weeks after Essen. I love this. Good on you for leading the way - again! Do you think others in the gaming sector can do more in this area? Others in every sector can and should do more in this area. We think a lot about a quote from the naturalist Dr. Jane Goodall: “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” We are very honoured to be able to make products that people want to buy and we take that responsibility with the utmost seriousness to produce products that touch the world as lightly as possible. A lot of people are doing this in the board gaming world and we’ve taken inspiration from other games. We’ve definitely seen increasingly more games embrace sustainable materials and manufacturing approaches. We’re trying to show that it is possible and help people reimagine what a good, high quality, sustainably designed game can look like. We want our games to be as sustainable as possible with no increased cost to our customers. It is possible. We are doing it - and we hope others will follow suit. Here here! So, what are your plans for the next few months? We are launching Scavengers at Essen Spiel in October 2026 which is very exciting. And we’re also extremely excited to see Kavango being played as one of the tournament games in Europe Masters at Essen Spiel! So those are two major milestones and moments for us. Once we’ve launched Scavengers we will go full on into the final development and art for Beaver: Born to Rewild. We are doing playtesting events at the York Environment Festival in October and plan to do a Beaver Tour of Britain in the new year where we take the prototypes to play with people and then visit beaver wetlands. More to come on that soon. What a delight to speak with you! (Let's hope our review of Scavengers is good, that could be very awkward!) You can check that out here.

Scavengers WBG Score: 7.5/10 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Card games with interesting layers and scoring. Published by: Mazaza Games Designed by: Matt Brown, Zara Reid This is a free review copy of the pre-production version. The box art will change, and some art and components may change a little. See our review policy here. There is something immediately compelling about Scavengers. Dusk has fallen over the Kalahari, a carcass is waiting, and every creature around the table wants a piece of it. Coming from Matt Brown and Zara Reid, the designers of Kavango, this is a very different proposition from their previous game, but it shares the same fascination with the natural world and the same desire to turn real ecological behaviour and learning into something playful. This time, rather than building a nature reserve, you are fighting over dinner. Across one night, split into dusk, midnight and dawn, players send scavengers towards the carcass, bluffing and bidding for increasingly valuable piles of meat. The subject matter may be a little grislier than your average family card game, but that is part of its appeal. Scavengers are a vital part of healthy ecosystems, and I like that the game does not shy away from showing that side of nature. It is also a much smaller and faster game than Kavango. Scavengers plays in around 20 minutes, supports two to five players and can be taught very quickly. The box is compact, the cards look excellent, and the meat tokens give the whole thing just enough physical presence to make the central carcass feel like something everyone genuinely wants to fight over. How To Play Scavengers A game lasts three rounds: dusk, midnight and dawn. Each round contains five feeds, with the amount of meat available steadily increasing as the night progresses. At the start of each round you receive scavenger cards and four action cards, and that hand has to see you through all five feeds, so spending everything too early can leave you badly exposed later. On your turn, you can bid with scavenger cards, play certain action cards instead of bidding, or withdraw from the feed entirely. Your bid must equal or exceed the current highest value, but bids are not cumulative. If someone overtakes you, you cannot simply add another card to what you have already played. You need to make a completely new bid, which is where much of the tension comes from. Scavengers of the same species can be combined into sets, while action cards can completely change their value. Marabou Storks can be added to certain sets, Gregarious cards multiply the strength of weaker scavengers, and the Watch and Wait Vulture card lets you remain involved without committing another bid immediately. Then there is also the Lion, who can scatter the whole feed, send scavengers back to players' hands, discard action cards, and remove meat from the carcass before bidding starts again. But this happens rarely. There are only two Lion cards in the deck, one with lower player counts. Eventually everyone except the highest bidder withdraws and the winner takes the meat. Tied players split the available food, while cards used during the feed are discarded. After five feeds you move into the next part of the night, draw new cards and once dawn is finished, the player who has collected the most meat wins. The More Scavengers, The Better Scavengers works at two players, but this is absolutely a game I would rather play with three or more. At two, the bidding can feel slightly processional. There is less uncertainty around what the other player is holding, fewer people capable of disrupting a feed, and bluffing inevitably becomes more straightforward. Add another player or two and everything changes. Suddenly you are wondering whether somebody is genuinely strong or simply trying to push everyone else out, whether that apparently weak bid is hiding an action-card trick, and whether you should spend your best cards now or let somebody else burn through theirs first. Bidding and bluffing games generally thrive on additional personalities around the table, and Scavengers is no exception. The increasing value of the feeds helps enormously too. Early meat is useful, but throwing your strongest cards at everything can leave you watching helplessly while everyone else fights over the more valuable carcass later. There is a satisfying rhythm to knowing when to push, when to withdraw, and when to let somebody else overcommit. Lions, Underdogs And Chaos The action cards are where much of Scavengers' personality appears. Gregarious can suddenly make a collection of weaker animals surprisingly formidable, while Marabou Storks create extra possibilities when building sets. These are simple effects, but they introduce enough uncertainty that you cannot always judge a bid purely from the numbers already sitting on the table. The Lion is considerably less subtle. When one appears, carefully constructed plans can collapse immediately, meat disappears and everybody is effectively thrown back into the fight. It can be brutal, but it suits the game because Scavengers is never trying to be a perfectly controlled bidding exercise. That unpredictability also feeds into the bluffing. Sometimes you really do have an excellent hand. Sometimes you are simply hoping everybody believes you have something they do not want to challenge. The rules are straightforward, but the people around the table create the interesting decisions. Theme With A Purpose I particularly like the theme. Scavengers could easily have been an abstract auction card game with numbers and colours, but vultures, hyenas and other animals competing around a carcass give the mechanics context. The hand-drawn artwork is lovely, and physically collecting meat tokens makes winning a feed feel considerably more satisfying than simply writing down points. There is also something worthwhile about focusing on animals that do not normally receive the cute treatment in nature games. Scavengers perform essential ecological work, clearing carcasses and helping prevent the spread of disease, and the designers have deliberately chosen to shine a light on that role. It may not be a theme for everyone, but I found it fascinating rather than unpleasant. That environmental thinking extends to the production itself. The game is plastic-free and uses predominantly recycled materials, continuing the sustainability approach Matt and Zara established with Kavango. It fits naturally with the wider message behind their games rather than feeling like a marketing badge stuck onto the box. Pros Excellent with three or more players. More bidders create much stronger bluffing, uncertainty and interaction. Distinctive theme. The scavenger ecosystem gives a familiar bidding mechanism plenty of personality. Quick and approachable. The basic rules are easy to grasp while the cards still create meaningful decisions. Great presentation. The artwork and meat tokens bring the Kalahari setting to life. Cons Two players is noticeably flatter. It functions perfectly well, but much of the social tension disappears. Some swings are deliberately chaotic. The Lion can undo plans very quickly, which will not appeal to players wanting complete control. Its depth depends heavily on the group. The mechanisms are straightforward, so much of the fun comes from the people doing the bidding. Final Thoughts Scavengers is a very different game from Kavango, and I think that is a good thing. Rather than trying to recreate the same experience in a smaller box, Matt and Zara have taken the same interest in wildlife and built something faster, sharper and much more confrontational. The result is an accessible bidding game with a strong identity. For me, player count is the important caveat. With two players, I enjoyed it but could feel the missing personalities around the carcass. Get three, four or five scavengers involved and the bluffing becomes much more interesting, the action cards become harder to predict, and every decision about whether to stay involved or back away carries more weight. There is nothing hugely complicated hiding underneath Scavengers, but there does not need to be. It is attractive, thematic, quick to teach and genuinely entertaining with the right group, while also introducing players to an often overlooked part of the natural world. A good game that becomes considerably better as more hungry scavengers arrive at the table. Find out more about the game here.

This is a preview copy sent to us for our early opinions. No money exchanged hands. Some art, rules or components will change in the final game. Find out more here. There is something immediately appealing about the idea behind Excursions. Take the systems and iconography of Galactic Cruise, streamline them, make turns simultaneous, and aim for a game that still feels meaty but plays in a fraction of the time. That is very much what Excursions is trying to do, and from my plays so far, it largely succeeds. This is a preview rather than a full review, as the game is still pre-release and the final components and presentation are not yet locked. I am therefore judging the gameplay, flow and current prototype experience rather than the finished production. That distinction matters, especially because some of my reservations are around the current visual presentation rather than the underlying design. Setup and First Impressions Excursions is a medium-weight game built around a rotating central station, seven action spaces and individual player boards. Each player starts with ships, upgrade potential, developments, resource tracks and secret goals, while the central board handles action selection, technologies and company goals. The game ends once somebody reaches 50 points, at which point everyone gets a final opportunity to act before final scoring. The rulebook currently makes the game look more complicated than I think it really is. It covers everything thoroughly, and there is plenty of useful iconography support, but the actual flow becomes intuitive very quickly once you start playing. If you already know Galactic Cruise, much of the language and symbology will feel familiar, but even without that background, I found the game settled into place during the first few turns. I am less sold on the current main board visually. The layout is clear, the rotating middle is a clever and practical feature, and the whole thing functions well, but the current light blue presentation feels more abstract than thematic to me. The space-cruise setting never really came through strongly during play, and I wonder whether a little more visual space for artwork with a larger board might help sell that theme more effectively in the finished version. How the Action System Works The centrepiece is the simultaneous action system. On your turn, you choose one of seven actions around the station, and every player gets to perform that action. The active player also receives an additional bonus, with the strength of that bonus changing according to the position of the rotating station. That immediately keeps everyone involved. There is very little sitting around waiting for your turn because somebody else choosing an action is still relevant to you, and often useful. The rotating bonuses also mean timing matters, because the same action might be merely decent now but considerably stronger a few turns later. The clever part is how your flexibility develops. By placing developments between action spaces, you can eventually gain access to neighbouring actions when another player chooses something that does not quite suit you. That means the system begins relatively restrictive, then gradually opens up as your own network improves, which is a really nice bit of mechanical progression. Planning Your Excursions The main engine of the game revolves around preparing and launching trips, the excursions in the game. You collect guests, play excursion and days-in-space cards next to your ships, gather the required resources of food and fuel, upgrade your capabilities, and then eventually launch when you have everything lined up. Excursion cards have guest requirements to fulfil and can even be stacked to reduce fuel costs, so you can do two at one stop. However, that may increase the guest requirements you need to fulfil, as each guest can only do one excursion per stop. There are only so many hours in the day, after all! Launching is deliberately demanding. You need the right guests, enough food, enough fuel, the cards you want in place and a return-home card ready to go. Food is based on the number of guests, while fuel is based on the number of stops, including the trip home. That creates the kind of frustration I often get from efficiency Euros. Sometimes an opponent picks Launch and you realise you are one resource short to do so yourself, and it can feel like a wasted opportunity. But that is also the point, because when you have planned ahead properly and everything clicks at exactly the right moment, it feels great. You therefore need to keep one eye on your own engine and one eye on everyone else. If you can see another player getting close to launching, you want to be ready to take advantage too. That makes the simultaneous system more interactive than it first appears, because the value of other players' choices depends heavily on how well prepared you are to follow them, and do what they do at the same time. Can you be ready? Guests, Cards and Upgrades Guests come in three types, and once placed into a ship they are committed to that trip. The active player gets greater control over which guests they take, picking openly from the bag. While others draw randomly. But ad tokens can later be spent to temporarily convert guests into another type for scoring purposes if you are forced to board the wrong guest. There is a nice amount of control here without the game becoming overwhelming. You are constantly making little choices about which guests to recruit, which cards to play, which upgrades to prioritise and when to commit resources to a launch. None of those decisions are individually difficult, but together they create a satisfying puzzle. This is an efficiency puzzle. What do you do first. What do you prioritise. What route to the many scoring options do you take. The upgrades are also important because they gradually make your player board more capable. And there is a fair bit of choice. You probably wont upgrade it all, and the order you do this is also crucial. You can increase ship capacity, improve trading, expand your hand limit, create a lounge for holding guests and enhance various funding bonuses. The dual-layer player boards keep all of this tidy, with everything slotting neatly into place instead of sliding around as the game progresses. Scoring and the Endgame Scoring is one of my favourite parts of Excursions. Early in the game, the end game trigger target of 50 points feels a long way away because you are scraping together small amounts here and there. Then the engine starts to build, your launches improve, your bonuses compound, and suddenly the scoring accelerates much faster than you expected. Once somebody hits 50, the game does not simply stop. Everyone gets a final action, ships still in space get one last chance to advance, and then final scoring adds points for leftover resources, upgrades, developments, company goals and secret goals. That final scoring can be enormous. It is entirely possible to go around the scoring track again, which makes the endgame genuinely exciting because the player who triggered the finish is not necessarily safe just because they were ahead at that point. Secret objectives are particularly important because they can deliver significant points that the other players cannot fully account for, so there is always some uncertainty going into the final tally. Simultaneous Play The simultaneous structure is mostly a big positive for me. It keeps the game moving, keeps everyone engaged, and makes even other players' turns relevant. That helps Excursions feel much quicker than something with this amount of planning and scoring might otherwise feel. You are always making some progression. Some steps forward just feel a lot bigger than others. There is a trade-off, though. At higher player counts, the table does become harder to follow, especially if everyone is resolving bonuses and side effects at once. If you are the sort of gamer who likes to track other players turns, then it can become a little chaotic. For me, the main benefit outweighs that concern. I would rather have the constant involvement and occasional need to check what somebody else is doing than spend long periods waiting for my turn. Presentation and Table Presence The player boards are excellent in their current form. They are dual-layered, everything fits exactly where it should, and components stay put even as you manipulate ships, upgrades and resources. It is one of those practical design choices that makes the game noticeably nicer to play. The game does take up more table space than the central board initially suggests. Your cards spread out above and to the right of your player area as you build itineraries, so each player needs a decent footprint. That may explain why the main board itself is relatively compact, and mechanically the overall layout works very well. The main board art is where I am less convinced at the moment. It is functional, readable and intelligently laid out, but it feels a little too clean and abstract for a game about luxury cruises through space. Since this is still a preview build, I am interested to see whether the finished production pushes the theme harder. Final Thoughts Excursions is a streamlined game, not a simplistic one. There is still plenty to think about, but the simultaneous action system and more focused structure keep it moving at a much better pace. You are constantly making decisions, constantly reacting to other players and constantly trying to prepare for the moment when the right action appears. The scoring curve is especially satisfying. What begins as a slow crawl towards 50 points gradually turns into something much more explosive, and the final scoring gives everyone a real reason to stay invested until the end. Add in the excellent player boards, strong action flexibility and rewarding cruise-planning puzzle, and there is a lot here that already works. The current rulebook feels more complicated than the game itself, and the visual presentation does not yet fully sell the theme to me, but both of those things can still evolve before release. As a gameplay experience, though, Excursions is already fun, clever and impressively efficient, and I am very interested to see where the final version lands. Find out more here.

Distilled: Cocktails WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Viticulture, The Networks Published by: Paverson Games Designed by: Dave Beck, Richard Woods This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Distilled: Cocktails is not a small expansion. This is another full box of stuff, and unlike Africa & Middle East or Cask Strength, it genuinely changes how Distilled feels. I really like it, but I can absolutely see why some people will decide they preferred the cleaner base game. There is a lot of stuff on the table when you add all this in. But does it make the game better? What appears to be the headline is the addition is the second washback, which lets you pay to distil a second spirit in the same round. The cost rises each time you unlock it, but it gives you far more flexibility and dramatically increases what your distillery can produce. But there is a lot more below the surface. On top of the second washback come cocktails, mixers, collectors, renown, a world map, more scoring opportunities and more reasons to care about exactly which spirits you are making. Lets get it to the table and see how it plays. More Game, More Decisions Cocktails are the biggest shift in the game mechanics and flow. You can now buy cocktail orders, collect mixers and later serve those orders using spirit labels you have already earned, gaining Renown and spreading your influence across the world map. Collectors then add another reason to make higher-value spirits, rewarding specific tiers and opening up extra end-game scoring based on the labels you have accumulated. Its delightfully connected and crunchy. That all means you are doing more every round. Your spirits now feed into more systems, your decisions branch in more directions and there are more ways to build a strategy. Once you understand how everything links together, that extra decision space is where the expansion becomes genuinely interesting. And if you felt the base game was good, but lacked a bit of depth and complexity, well this expansion could well be for you. I can just about set up a two player game on my table! Better, But Bigger! The important thing to note at this point is that Distilled was not broken. The base game already worked brilliantly, but it was a little simple. Cocktails is not fixing a problem, it is asking whether you want a bigger, busier and slightly more complicated version of something you already enjoy. For me, the answer is a resounding, "sometimes". Once you have learned the new systems, they start to feel natural and you find yourself doing more interesting things with the spirits you produce. The cocktails and collectors give you fresh reasons to shape your distillery in different ways which I find to be very interesting, and make the game feel quite fresh against the base game. But there is a cost. There is more setup, more table space, more to teach, and more to think about. A two-player game only just fits on my table! Hence, I have not tried this with the full expansion beyond two yet! The rulebook itself recommends introducing the second washback alone first before adding cocktails, Renown, and Collectors, which tells you how substantial this expansion really is. I certainly would not teach a new player with this. And I won't always use it myself. There is just too much to sort out now. But when I have the time, I will always add it all in because the game is simply better with this all. It's just a fair bit of pre-game admin now. Beautifully Integrated The reason I liked the base game of Distilled was the sense that every round you are making something. Even if something goes wrong, you can make something. It is not always the thing you want, and that can be tough when you remove the cards you desperately need in the distilling phase, but there will still be a nice juicy mix of points and money up for grabs. A sense of progression every turn. And the chance to develop your engine to make more point-worthy batches in a later round. This all exists in Cocktails, but it feels dialled up to eleven! The chance to make two drinks some turns. The opportunities to get your hand on the gorgeous new cocktail glasses and fulfil an order there too and ramp up your points. It all feels just so satisfying. Production-wise, though, it is excellent. The new boards, cards, tokens and artwork feel completely at home alongside the base game, and visually it all slots together far more seamlessly than the sheer amount of additional content might suggest. And I love the new dice. They look and feel (other than not being cold) a bit like ice cubes! Mechanically, it all flows seamlessly, and this is important because it could easily have felt like a bolt-on, being this big of an expansion. Instead, once everything is laid out and you know what you are doing, it feels like a larger, better, more satisfying version of Distilled rather than a different game awkwardly attached to it. You block off some spaces in the two-player set-up Pros Adds much more strategic variety and decision-making. Second Washback is an excellent addition. Cocktails and Collectors make your spirit choices matter in new ways. Production and artwork integrate beautifully with the base game. Cons Adds a lot of setup, table space and rules. Not necessary if you prefer Distilled's original simplicity. Too much to throw at a brand-new player immediately. Final Thoughts Cocktails makes Distilled a little better, but asks quite a lot from you to get there. You are adding another box of components and several new systems to a game that was already very good, so I completely understand anyone who decides they do not need it. For me, though, the extra depth is worth it. I would not use it when teaching someone their first few games, but from game three or four onwards I would be very happy to bring it in, and once players understand the extra systems I suspect most will want to keep them when they have the time, or I am setting up for them! If you love Distilled and want more to do, more to plan and more ways to shape your distillery, this is the expansion that changes the game the most. It makes a good game better and offers me options I am delighted to have.

Distilled: Africa & Middle East WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Viticulture, The Networks Published by: Paverson Games Designed by: Dave Beck This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Distilled was already a game I rated highly, so an expansion did not need to reinvent the still. What I wanted was more variety, more interesting combinations and a reason to keep exploring a game I already enjoy. Africa & Middle East does exactly that, although anyone expecting a dramatic new way to play should temper those expectations immediately. There is another expansion that will do that for you! This is very much a “more Distilled” expansion, and I mean that positively. Six new distillers arrive alongside new signature recipes and ingredients, market cards, upgrades, goals, awards, flavours and six additional tasting flights. The headline additions are four new spirits, Akpeteshie, Arak, Boukha and Grogue, bringing Africa and the Middle East into a game that already celebrates distilling traditions from around the world. What's New? Almost everything simply slots into the existing game. You can shuffle most of the new components straight into Distilled even when you are not using the expansion-specific tasting flights, although regional goals and awards need to be redrawn if their region is not represented in your chosen flight. There are three new balanced tasting flights and three more specialised options focusing on Africa and Middle Eastern spirits, non-aged spirits and aged spirits. There are only two genuinely new mechanisms. Double Sugar ingredients show two sugar symbols, count as two sugars and therefore generate two Alcohol cards when you distil. Wild Sugar, currently represented by Glucose Syrup, can count as grain, plant or fruit when satisfying a recipe requirement. Neither requires much additional teaching, which is exactly what I want from this sort of expansion. They simply give you more options within systems you already understand rather than stopping the game to introduce another board, phase or currency. More Choice, Same Game Double Sugars are probably the more interesting of the two additions. Getting two sugars from a single card can help you reach more demanding recipes efficiently, but that efficiency comes with a lovely little dose of Distilled's existing push-your-luck. Lose that one card when you remove the top and bottom cards of your spirit stack and you have potentially lost two sugars at once. Wild Sugar offers the opposite experience. Rather than increasing the risk, it gives you flexibility when the market has not quite offered what you wanted. It can help you pivot between potential spirits, and anything that lets you make a slightly smarter decision without removing Distilled's uncertainty feels very natural here. There are other nice touches scattered through the cards too, including more flexible barrels, ingredients, bottles and upgrades. The expansion also introduces a fourth geographical region for bottle collecting, with a new eight-point reward for displaying bottles from all four regions. None of this transforms the game, but collectively it gives an already variable system more combinations to explore. Do You Need It? That really depends on how often you play Distilled. If the base game only reaches your table occasionally, there is already plenty there. This expansion does not fix a fundamental problem or add some missing mechanism that suddenly makes Distilled complete. The core experience remains almost entirely unchanged. But that is also why I like it. I did not want Distilled to become heavier, longer or harder to teach. I wanted more recipes, more distillers and more interesting cards appearing in the market, and Africa & Middle East adds all of that without disrupting the game I already enjoy. The regional focus is also particularly welcome. Distilled has always benefited enormously from its theme, so bringing in spirits such as Akpeteshie, Arak, Boukha and Grogue feels more meaningful than simply throwing another stack of generic cards into the box. The expansion broadens the game's cultural scope while remaining completely recognisable as Distilled. Pros Adds plenty of variety without making Distilled meaningfully more complicated. Double and Wild Sugars create useful new decisions inside the existing distillation system. New spirits, identities and tasting flights strengthen an already excellent theme. Integrates almost seamlessly with the base game. Cons It does not substantially change how Distilled plays. Players who only occasionally play the base game probably do not need more content yet. Adding another region creates a few minor setup and scoring considerations around goals, awards and bottles. Final Thoughts Distilled: Africa & Middle East is exactly the sort of expansion I am happy to mix permanently into a game. It does not demand attention every time you play, nor does it make you relearn anything significant. It simply increases the number of interesting things that can happen. The Double Sugar and Wild Sugar cards are clever additions, but they are seasoning rather than a new recipe. The real attraction is the increased variety, particularly if you already know Distilled well and want new distillers, spirits, upgrades and combinations to explore. I like this expansion. It does not dramatically improve Distilled, but it makes a game I already enjoy broader and more replayable without getting in its way, and sometimes that is exactly what an expansion should do.

Distilled: Cask Strength WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Viticulture, The Networks Published by: Paverson Games Designed by: Richard Woods This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Cask Strength is a small expansion that does exactly what I want from this sort of box. It makes Distilled a little richer without making it noticeably heavier. There are four modular additions here, and all of them slot neatly into a game you already know. Stronger Ingredients, Better Decisions The star is the set of upgraded Premium Ingredients. They now have their own effects and rewards, giving you more reason to care about which ingredient you buy rather than simply its sugar type and value. They cost a little more, but that extra investment can lead to better combos and more satisfying spirits later. You can simply replace the previous premium ingrediants with these or go half and half. Up to you. The Dynamic Market adds another nice wrinkle. Prices of ingredients rise and fall, certain regions become more profitable, and importantly you can see what is coming next round. It adds some useful forward planning without turning Distilled into an economics game. The new Upgrades and Flavour cards are smaller additions, but they still create a few interesting moments. Some let you bend the usual rules around ageing or take another chance on a poor Flavour card. None of this changes the game dramatically, but collectively it gives experienced players more to think about. A Little More, Not Too Much That is really the appeal of Cask Strength. Where the Africa & Middle East expansion mostly adds variety, this one adds a touch more depth. Ingredient choices matter more, timing matters more, and there are a few extra opportunities to build clever combinations. I would not necessarily use every module with brand-new players. Distilled already has enough going on, and these additions become more interesting once you understand the base game. For anyone who already knows it well, though, this is an incredibly easy expansion to throw in. Pros Upgraded Premium Ingredients are an excellent addition. Adds more planning without much extra complexity. Fully modular, so you can use as much or as little as you like. Cons Nothing here radically changes Distilled. The Dynamic Market will appeal more to some players than others. Better for experienced players than first-timers. Final Thoughts Cask Strength makes Distilled slightly deeper without making it harder to enjoy. The upgraded ingredients are the highlight, while the Dynamic Market adds just enough extra planning to keep familiar decisions interesting. It is a small expansion, but a very easy one to recommend if Distilled already gets regular table time.

Which One Deserves Your Love? AI Grass was used - my own grass is too depressing (see below pictures!) Board games are wonderful, but every now and then the sun comes out, somebody lights a barbecue (when safe), and sitting around a table suddenly feels like a terrible waste of the sunshine. That is where garden games come in. The best ones keep the accessibility of a party game but replace cards and cardboard with throwing, aiming, catching and, occasionally, making yourself look ridiculous in front of the neighbours. I have been trying a lot of very different outdoor games over the last few months to find the very best garden game and have narrowed down my favourites into a top 5: Bat & Trap, Cornhole, Rope Quoits, Canoff, and Mölkky. I have also included one other extra surprise honourable mention for more able garden gamers! Some are centuries old, some feel distinctly modern, and one surprised me by becoming easily my favourite of the lot. They all share one important quality though: you can explain them quickly, hand someone the equipment, and start playing almost immediately. Masters Traditional Games kindly loaned me the Bat & Trap, Cornhole and Rope Quoits sets featured here, while Canoff supplied the Canoff crew for review. Mölkky and the other games I tried were my own sets, or ones I tried with friends. There was no obligation to provide positive coverage and, as always, these arrangements have had no knowing influence on my opinions. You can read our full review policy on WhatBoardGame.com. So, lets get playing and find out which are our Top 5 Garden & Beach Games. And from these, which is our favourite and the best garden game! Bat & Trap Bat & Trap feels like someone unearthed an old English pub game, polished up the wood, and dropped it straight into my garden. It is an ancient relative of cricket and, some say, the inspiration for the classic summer team sport. It has a wonderfully eccentric combination of batting, fielding, and bowling that immediately gives it more character than most modern lawn games. There is something enormously satisfying about playing a game with this much history using equipment that looks as though it belongs in an old village pub, but plays so well. It's proper craftsmanship. How to set up The centrepiece is the trap itself, a rectangular wooden mechanism placed at one end of the playing area. At the opposite end are two posts forming the target area, with the fielding team standing behind and between them. You will need to supply your own posts with most sets, but it really can be anything. Stones, twigs, chairs. Two grandparents! Whatever you want. And it's nice you can adapt the width to suit your preferences. Traditionally, the game uses teams of eight, with each player batting once and the team totally their score. Although in a garden there is absolutely nothing stopping you from adapting numbers, distance, and scoring to suit whoever happens to be available. We played one vs. one plenty of times. The Masters Traditional Games Bat & Trap set I used is beautifully made.. The wooden trap is substantial, the mechanism feels reassuringly solid, and there are thoughtful touches designed to keep everything stable during play. It is the sort of object that looks good simply sitting around, although you will need somewhere sensible to store it because this is not lightweight garden equipment. It's pretty heavy, and you wouldn't want to just leave it out to become weather damaged. It's too nice! How to play The batter places the ball over the hole then strikes a lever on the trap, launching a hard rubber ball into the air, then attempts to hit that same ball with the bat towards the opposite end of the pitch. Get it through the target area and avoid a catch from the fielders and you survive the first part of the turn. Miss the target or send the ball directly into somebody's waiting hands and you are out. Then comes the clever bit. A fielder returns the ball towards the trap, aiming at the small hinged black target on its front, and if they knock that wicket down the batter is bowled out. Miss it and the batting side scores a run, with the same batter continuing for another attempt. Cricket's strange garden cousin I really enjoy Bat & Trap because the two halves of each turn work beautifully together. Launching and striking the ball is satisfying, but then suddenly you are watching the ball bounce back towards a tiny target knowing your entire innings depends on the bowler missing it. It creates a surprisingly entertaining rhythm. Distance also becomes an easy difficulty setting. Better players can stand further away, while children or less confident players can move closer, meaning the game adapts naturally without needing a complicated handicap system. Scoring and team sizes can be loosened up just as easily, which makes the traditional eight-a-side format far more practical for family play. There are drawbacks. You need a decent amount of space, the equipment is large and heavy, and this is not something you casually sling over your shoulder for a walk to the park. It transports perfectly well in a car, but compared with most garden games this is very much a piece of proper equipment rather than a portable toy. The hard rubber ball also has a personality of its own. On my less-than-perfect lawn it bounced around like it had somewhere important to be, making accurate returns considerably harder than they would be on flat ground. Rather than spoiling things, that unpredictability became part of the fun, although anyone expecting pristine sporting precision may want to mow the lawn first. Pros Beautifully crafted equipment with loads of traditional character. Easy to adjust distance, scoring and team sizes for different players. The combination of batting and bowling gives everyone something to do. A wonderful history and story to tell. Cons Large, heavy and expensive compared with simpler garden games. Needs a fair amount of playing space. Enjoyable, but ultimately a little one-dimensional after repeated plays. Bat & Trap is beautiful, unusual and steeped in history. It may not have enough depth to become an every-week obsession, but as something different to pull out with friends or family it has considerable charm. Cornhole Cornhole might be one of the most straightforward games here to explain, but there is slightly more lurking beneath the surface than throwing a bag towards a hole. Its popularity in America makes complete sense because this is exactly the sort of game that can sit alongside food, drinks and conversation without demanding everyone's complete attention. The problem is that the full-size version also occupies roughly the same amount of space as a small dining table. How to set up The game uses two raised wooden boards with a hole towards the far end, together with eight throwing bags. Players stand at the opposite end and take turns throwing their bags towards the board. The rules are simple enough that most people will understand what they are doing after watching a single throw. The Masters Traditional Games Cornhole set is a full-size wooden version and it feels suitably substantial. Unfortunately, substantial also means very large and very heavy. Although it comes with a protective carry bag, I never really thought of this as something I would want to carry any meaningful distance. We mostly played this one in our own garden. How to play Get a bag through the hole and you score three points. Leave one resting on the board and you score one. Everything else scores nothing. That sounds almost suspiciously basic, but the board creates the game's most interesting moments. Bags can skid across the surface, stop in front of the hole, knock earlier throws into scoring positions or interfere with an opponent's bags. Suddenly you are not only aiming for the hole but thinking about what your throw might do to everything already sitting there. Bigger than expected in more ways than one Cornhole is undeniably fun. Throwing games work because missing is funny, succeeding feels good and everyone can immediately tell whether you have just produced brilliance or embarrassment. The possibility of using one bag to shove another into the hole gives the game just enough tactical interest to keep things competitive. My biggest issue is simply the physical product. These boards are huge, heavy and awkward to move, and whenever I carried them around I found myself worrying about damaging the wood. For a permanent garden setup, fête, fair or organised event that is not necessarily a problem, but it removes much of the spontaneous portability I normally associate with outdoor games. The game itself also reaches its ceiling relatively quickly. There is skill in judging distance, angle and power, and the blocking possibilities add a welcome tactical layer, but fundamentally you will spend the evening throwing bags at the same board. Whether that is enough depends entirely on how competitive your group becomes. Pros Extremely easy to teach and immediately accessible. Sliding and knocking bags creates more tactics than expected. Excellent for relaxed social play. Cons The full-size wooden set is exceptionally bulky and heavy. Awkward to move and potentially vulnerable to knocks during transport. The gameplay can feel repetitive fairly quickly. Cornhole is a good garden game trapped inside a very large piece of furniture. If you have the space and can leave it somewhere convenient, it is easy-going fun, but I would not choose it when portability matters. Rope Quoits Rope Quoits has perhaps the nicest origin story of the five games here. Sailors fashioned quoits from rope and threw them towards suitable targets aboard ships, with versions of the game later becoming familiar on passenger liners and cruise ships. There is something rather lovely about bringing that same simple activity into a modern garden. How to set up The Masters Traditional Games Deck Quoits set uses a wooden stake and rope rings. Set the target at whatever distance suits the players, divide up the quoits and you are essentially ready to begin. Like most traditional outdoor games, the exact scoring can be adjusted depending on how formal you want proceedings to become. The set itself makes a strong first impression. The rope quoits feel pleasant in your hands, the wooden components look attractive and the whole thing suits a garden aesthetically far better than brightly coloured plastic equipment. It is also much easier to move around than either Bat & Trap or Cornhole. How to play At its simplest, players take turns attempting to throw their rope quoits over or as close as possible to the target. Different versions use different scoring systems, and traditional Deck Quoits itself has never been completely standardised. That informality suits the game perfectly because nobody is going to spend ten minutes debating the finer points before throwing a rope ring across the lawn. And that is really all there is to it. You aim, you throw, you either celebrate or retrieve the ring and try again. The challenge is entirely about distance control and accuracy. Lovely, but lightweight I enjoyed Rope Quoits. The equipment feels nice, it looks good in the garden and there is something relaxing about repeatedly trying to land a clean throw. It is the kind of activity you can teach somebody in seconds and then casually play while chatting. But there simply is not much underneath it. Unlike Cornhole, where bags can interact with one another, or Canoff, where the defending side remains involved, Quoits is largely just repeated target throwing. That is fine for a quick diversion, particularly with children or during a gathering, but it struggled to hold my attention for long. Pros Attractive, tactile equipment. Exceptionally easy to teach. Quick, relaxed fun for mixed groups. Cons Very little tactical depth. Repetition arrives quickly. Better as a short activity than a main event. Rope Quoits is pleasant rather than compelling. I am happy to own it, happy to play it, and equally happy to move onto something else after ten minutes. Canoff Canoff was the game I expected the least from and enjoyed the most. When somebody explains that you are going to throw a flying disc at a can balanced on a pole, it does not exactly sound like years of development went into the concept. Or that you need the official set! Then you start playing and discover that this ridiculously simple idea produces laughter, spectacular misses, frantic catches, and constant involvement. And the official kit is wonderful. How to set up Two teams each have a pole with a can balanced on top, with the teams positioned opposite each other. Players stand at least one metre behind their poles during play, and one flying disc travels backwards and forwards between the sides. The whole setup is compact enough to work in a garden, park or on the beach. Canoff supplied the set I used for this review. The format is much more portable than the larger wooden games in this feature, which immediately makes it easier to imagine taking somewhere rather than merely owning it at home. It all packs down into a small supplied mesh bag. That proved particularly useful when we played on the beach. How to play Players throw the disc towards the opposing team's can. Knock the can off cleanly and you score two points, while hitting the pole and causing the can to fall scores one. If the defending team catches the can after the pole is hit, however, the attacking side scores nothing. Knocking the can off after hitting the pole too low in the red zone also scores nothing. There are additional opportunities for chaos. Knock your own can off by mistake and you lose a point, while bad throws or dropped catches can earn whatever penalty your group decides is appropriate. The official suggestion that players keep one hand behind their back, or hold a drink in it, tells you almost everything you need to know about the intended atmosphere. Why is this so much fun? The magic is that Canoff keeps both teams engaged. With a normal throwing game, the defending side mostly stands around watching someone else take their turn. Here, the moment that disc leaves someone's hand, the other team is preparing to react because even a poor hit can suddenly turn into a desperate attempt to catch a falling can. Throwing a flying disc is already enjoyable on its own, but giving it a target makes every throw more interesting. You begin trying different angles and powers, while the defending side watches the flight knowing they may have to move instantly. The simplicity that initially made me suspicious turned out to be exactly why it works. When we played on the beach, this was easily the game that attracted the most attention. People watched, laughed and clearly understood what was happening without needing any explanation, which is perhaps the strongest endorsement an outdoor party game can receive. It creates a spectacle without trying particularly hard to do so. Most importantly, Canoff creates moments. A perfect direct hit feels brilliant, a ridiculous miss becomes funny, and a last-second catch can produce more celebration than it has any right to. Out of all five games, this was the one I most wanted to keep playing. Pros Constant involvement for both attacking and defending teams. Brilliantly simple yet surprisingly exciting. Portable, social and superb at creating memorable moments. Cons Disc throwing ability can create a noticeable skill gap. Probably at its best with a lively, competitive group. Canoff is the surprise package of the entire test. I expected a throwaway garden distraction and found the game I would most happily take to the beach, park or barbecue tomorrow. Mölkky My friend Tom, looking heroic on Woolacombe Beach Mölkky might be the smartest game in this group. The Finnish throwing game begins like a straightforward skittles challenge, but within a few rounds the pins have scattered across the playing area and suddenly every throw feels like a small tactical decision. It combines accessibility, skill and just enough arithmetic to make reaching the finish genuinely tense. How to set up Twelve numbered wooden pins are arranged tightly together, with players throwing from roughly three to four metres away. The throwing pin is tossed underarm towards them, making the basic physical action accessible to almost anyone. Younger children or less confident players can simply stand closer, which is an easy way to balance the game without changing anything else. One warning though: give yourself more room than the initial setup suggests. The starting formation is compact, but the game will not stay that way for long. By the later rounds, the pins can be scattered surprisingly widely. How to play Knock down exactly one pin and you score the number printed on it. Knock down multiple pins and you score only the number of pins that fell, so flattening pins three, seven and 12 gives you three points rather than 22. After every throw, the fallen pins are stood upright again exactly where they landed. That final rule transforms everything. Early on you can simply launch the throwing pin into a tightly packed group, but gradually individual numbers become isolated and awkward to reach. What begins as something resembling skittles evolves into a precision game where you are hunting specific targets. Traditionally, reaching exactly 50 points wins, with different versions handling overshooting in different ways. I particularly enjoy playing a harsher variant where going beyond 50 eliminates you completely. It creates genuine tension late in the game because somebody sitting on 47 suddenly needs to find that isolated three and absolutely cannot afford to hit anything higher. We also play where if you miss entirely three times in a row, you are out. Just for more tension. (and it was in the rules that came with our friends version). Simple rules, excellent development I love Mölkky. It works brilliantly in a garden or on the beach because players understand the basic idea immediately, yet the changing board state means the challenge constantly evolves. There is a satisfying transition from carefree early throws to increasingly deliberate attempts to hit one particular number. It is also wonderfully adaptable. Moving less experienced players closer keeps everyone competitive, while stronger players can stay further back without anybody feeling as though they are playing by completely different rules. That makes it an easy game to introduce at family gatherings where ages and abilities vary. Most importantly, Mölkky creates stories. Someone inevitably needs one exact pin, another player accidentally sends it flying into the distance, and suddenly the next throw looks impossible. Those little moments are what turn a simple lawn game into something you remember afterwards. We call the game Hatutappi, don't ask me why. And we have a whole ceremony around giving the stick you throw to the next player, with bows and repeating of the word "Hatutappi." It makes it a lot more fun - for us! Pros Brilliant scoring system creates increasing tactical tension. The spreading pins make every game evolve naturally. Easy to adapt for different ages and abilities. Cons Requires considerably more space as the game develops. Larger groups can mean longer waits between turns. Some scoring variants work better than others. Mölkky is a superb example of getting a lot from very little. It starts as throwing bits of wood around the garden and somehow ends with grown adults intensely calculating whether they can hit a seven without touching the nine. Honourable mention: Spikeball - Best Team Game! Spikeball, officially known as Roundnet, feels less like a traditional garden game and more like a proper sport that happens to fit beautifully into a garden. Two teams of two gather around a small trampoline-style net, with each side allowed up to three touches before smashing the ball back down onto it. Once the serve is in play, there are no fixed sides of the play area, so everyone can move 360 degrees around the net, which makes rallies fast, frantic, and brilliantly unpredictable. It's like volleyball but the net is on the floor and bouncy, and the court can be anywhere you can bounce the ball off the net too. That freedom of movement is what makes it such good fun. You are constantly setting up your partner, chasing awkward rebounds and trying to find an angle the other team cannot reach. It is easily one of the best team experiences here, and while it works perfectly well in a garden, I actually prefer it on the beach where the soft sand makes diving for a desperate save feel considerably less stupid afterwards. And diving for a ball is always fun! Spikeball deserves an honourable mention rather than a place in the main ranking because it sits in a slightly different category. It asks more physically of the players, feels more competitive and athletic, and has enough depth that people play it as a serious sport rather than just a casual lawn game. For the right group, though, it is absolutely brilliant. Pros Fantastic team game with constant involvement. 360-degree play makes rallies fast and unpredictable. Even better on the beach where you can properly commit to dives. Cons More physically demanding than the other games featured. Really wants four players to shine. 2v2. Skill gaps can become obvious quite quickly. Honourable mention If the rest of these games are about relaxed garden fun, Spikeball is the one that might have you sweating, diving and arguing about whether that ball clipped the rim. And that is exactly why it is so good. Which garden game wins from our Top 5 Garden & Beach Games? Six games in, the biggest lesson is that complexity has almost nothing to do with how entertaining an outdoor game can be. Bat & Trap has history and beautiful craftsmanship, Cornhole provides relaxed competitive throwing, and Rope Quoits offers an elegant traditional diversion. All three have something worthwhile about them, but all three also reveal their limitations fairly quickly. Mölkky is different because the game itself develops as you play. The spreading pins, changing targets and exact scoring create genuine decisions, while its accessibility means almost anybody can join in. It is easily one of the best garden games I have played and exactly the sort of thing that can quietly consume an afternoon. Spikeball is a the best team game and wonderful with younger more active players. But can be limited if you are not willing or able to run and dive about! I adore it - it short bursts! But Canoff wins. It is my favourite garden game. It’s my favourite beach game. It is not the prettiest game here, it’s not the oldest game here or even the cleverest game here, yet it produced the most laughter, the most interaction and the moments I remember most clearly. Sometimes all you need for a great game is a flying disc, two cans and several adults becoming far too invested in catching one of them before it hits the sand. Apparently, the secret to excellent outdoor gaming really was just learning how to Canoff. Big thanks to Canof and Masters Traditional Games for their help with this feature. https://www.mastersofgames.com/ https://www.canoff.co.uk/ Also big thanks to the Llewellyn family who played a lot of Spikeball, Canoff, and Hatutappi (Mölkky) with us.

Tend WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 1-6 You’ll like this if you like: Twilight Inscription, Hadrian's Wall, Scratch Cards Published by: IV Studio Designed by: Max Anderson, Zac Dixon, Austin Harrison, Toby Sarnelle This is a free review copy. See our review policy here By Steve Godfrey It's typical. You finally land on an alien planet excited to discover all of its mysteries and new life forms and the first thing they get you doing is gardening! It's like, wow, do you even want me to enjoy this new planet!? How to Tend your Garden If you clicked on this page because some AI search about gardening led you here; then I’d suggest you look up Alan Titchmarsh instead. If however you want a brief overview on how to play the board game Tend then stick around. To set up, give everyone their two sheets, pencils, scratch cards (not the lottery ones; it's not that kind of game) scratch coin, a resource conversion board and two neighbour cards for each side of their sheets for which players will pick one for each side. Then set up the season cards as per the rulebook and place five of the starter cards face up in a row. Then place the season cards in two decks above the two right most starter cards and flip the top card of each deck face up. Each round is played simultaneously and during a round you will pick 2 of the five cards on display and perform those actions. Early cards will just have one action on them and as the game progresses cards may have multiple actions to pick from and will also have another action/resource you can use if you satisfy the conditions on the card to get them. At the end of the round discard the five cards, fill in three cards from the main deck and then pull the two face up cards down to make five cards in the row then flip the cards on top of those decks face up to give you some insight for the next round. After rounds 6, 10 and 12 you’ll score the objective cards for that round. What are the actions I hear you cry as you milk your space pumpkins and put soil over your space cows (yeah I shouldn't work on a space farm) Well it's an excellent question. But first let me go over a couple of concepts real quick. First, resources have to be used in that round. You can't store them up and use them in one hit later. There are plenty of ways to use them on your sheets to get upgrades etc. You also have a trading board (basically a conversion chart) and rather than use them on your sheet you may trade a resource for coins or you can store them in your cargo as coloured Tetris shape pieces. This is a space on your second sheet in which you’ll have three sections to put these shapes in. Each space you fill will be worth one point at the end of the game. However, one section will give you zero points for a particular colour and one section will give you 2 points per space of a particular colour. You also have neighbour cards and when you gain a resource that's on one of these cards you can instead give it to the neighbour on that side of you rather than spending it for yourself. When you do, you mark the next space in that side's progress track and gain the resources. These tracks are also used in endgame scoring against your neighbour. Before the next round starts you can spend any gained neighbour cards resources. Now onto the actions. The Road Goes Ever On. The Mining and the Chopping action both work pretty much the same. They both have their own section on the scratch card. For each action scratch off one space for that action and gain the resource and any upgrade. Each section has a road going through from top to bottom and this is generally the quickest route to the bottom of that section. You’ll want to do this because as you dig or chop down you can move onto the second chopping/mining area. This costs two actions to scratch a space you will get much better resources. The road will give you basic resources but going off the beaten track will yield better results. When fishing you'll roll the black and the white dice. Each one relates to an edge of a grid of resources. Find the space where these two cross over and get that resource. Be careful though because some spaces don't have resources in the basic grid. During the game you can upgrade your fishing card and rod for better resources and a bigger target area so you don't miss out on resources. Tending lets you till soil, which you'll then be able to plant crops on. The more soil you till the bigger the crops you can plant by placing dice on your farm. Dice will tick up each round and on certain faces you'll be able to use the resources. At the end of their cycle they will be discarded. You can also use the tend action to water and tick up those dice and all dice adjacent to them. In this same field you can also use free actions to spend resources to build paddocks. Once complete you can place animals in them. These will also tick up to give you resources, the difference being that these will not get discarded after they complete their cycles, It’d be a pretty dark game if they did!. Instead they'll reset. At the end of the game you’ll score the objective points, points for filled spaces in your cargo and points from the neighbour tracks. For every space further up a track more than your neighbour you'll score three points A garden so big even Ground Force would hesitate. You’re going to be overwhelmed by Tend to start off with. As you look upon the two sheets and the scratch card and this whole cacophony of symbols it’s hard not to be. I’ll be honest, this gets worse once you’ve learned the game! Before, these symbols didn’t mean anything and you didn’t have to worry about them. Once you know the game you now have to do something with them and that’s the tricky part. Luckily the rules or a good teacher will have you covered. They tell you to focus on just a couple of the main actions and this advice is key because as nice as it is to have all those options, it’s nicer to have permission to ignore about half of them, it's like the weight of a massive space cow has been lifted from your shoulders. The great thing about tend is that it gives you enough turns to get your head around the gameplay, especially if you heed the above advice so by the end of the game you’ll have a good understanding of how it all works, or at the very least, the actions you chose to focus on this game. I’m not saying you’ll necessarily be efficient in your first game but you should definitely be able to identify where you went wrong and what you’ll need to do in your next, and believe me you’ll want another game. As much as some gamers complain about ‘beat your own score’ solo modes in games, there’s something very different about doing it when it’s part of a competitive setting and it keeps you coming back to try and do exactly that. Yes you want to beat your opponents but if you do or you don’t you’ll secretly just be happy if you can beat your score from last time. Whether you take a similar line as the first game or veer into a different path the game seems to reward that extra touch of knowledge you brought over from your previous game. That's not to say that you can’t be competitive in your first game, trust me I've been destroyed by people who after a couple of turns got this game and ran with it. In a hobby where we spend so much time banging on about replayability having so many options to and paths to victory must be great right? Well, yeah, of course. It may be overwhelming but just having all those buttons to push and levers to pull is gonna appeal to anyone, unless your name is Yzema then it's understandable that you've got an aversion to levers. A lot of your turns can be a litany of choices and everyone you pick will set up a multiverse of other future choices which in turn will set up another and another and each can turn into satisfying combo after satisfying combo. It makes for a game that you keep wanting to come back to time and again to try new paths. Like most games of its ilk, Tend ramps up as the rounds go on and that’s most evident as the season cards change and the previous cards cycle through the deck. When you first look at those action cards with the pre requisites on you’d be forgiven for wondering why such lofty goals have been placed on these very early cards. However as they get cycled through the deck those goals are more easily achievable. With that comes more resources with which you can do even more things on your turn. I really like that the next two season cards are visible during the current round. If you’re having trouble deciding where to make your next mark then these may give you a little bit of an incentive, especially if doing so will help you get those in the next round. Whilst we all love the satisfaction of pulling off those big combos I don't want to sit here and claim that every turn is going to give you those. Your first rounds will see you laying the groundwork for these for example but even later turns have the possibility to feel sedate compared to others around the table and I'd be lying if I said it didn't feel a bit crummy having to sit there while others take much longer turns than you. Again, a bit of experience with the game can certainly alleviate this. Everybody needs good neighbours It's nice to help others, occasionally. Depending on the neighbour cards you have, you can gift resources on that card to a neighbour. Decisions on giving away resources are a mixed bag. Sometimes it may be a no-brainer. If a resource is just gonna give you a single coin or mark on your cargo sheet or doesn't fall in line with your current strategy then giving it away for a boost on that track is well worth it. It’s when you have to give away those more hard earned resources that the decision becomes a bit harder. Subsequently, gaining those resources could be the difference you need to get an all important upgrade. Having the neighbour cards and those tracks be part of end game scoring is a great way to make sure that people are encouraged to share. Sharing is caring right? Even if you are competing against Ted in the neighbouring garden about who can grow the biggest mutated space pumpkin in the soon to be announced county fair. Do alien planets have county fairs? They do once the humans have colonised them! There are still a few caveats to this though. Depending on what cards you get depends on how often you have the opportunity to share. If you get a card that gives you a resource that you're just not getting then you’re not going to be able to give that card and move up the track. Conversely, if your neighbour on that side is getting all the easy stuff and gifting cards every round then there's no way you can even think to compete for that track potentially losing you a ton of points. Considering that these tracks make up one of three major end game scoring conditions it’s even more devastating if you're locked out due to a bad card draw. Luckily you are able to discard any neighbour card that you don't like but you don't get to redraw new ones until the neighbour phase. It doesn't alleviate the problem all together because it can still put you behind and play catch up but it's better than being locked out completely. It doesn't mean you should give up altogether as the tracks do contain some juicy bonuses. The non sunny side of the garden. Every action will get you something and all have this great sense of escalation as the game goes on and you start to upgrade your gear. All except fishing. I’d say that this may be the only action you don't want to touch until you’ve upgraded your fishing rod; because boy does this feel rough when the dice don’t roll your way and you don’t get a resource for it. It feels like such a waste of an action and early game that can be a big hit. I get that it’s thematic to actual fishing and it encourages you to upgrade the rod early but it puts me off using it until I’ve upgraded. The problem is, once I’ve put the effort into upgrading, I’ve probably pushed too far into other actions and fishing may be the least profitable of the actions at that point. I’ve said before that this game can be overwhelming to look at but also be aware that can also be the case as your turns get more overwrought. With that chain of ever cascading resources it can sometimes be hard to keep track of which you've used and which you've still got available. I love how productive those turns feel but don’t necessarily love just how crazy they can get. Maybe some kind of wipeable resource tracker could be useful? But this would just be more space on the table and another addition to the cost of the game. Speaking of cost. At £73 for a retail copy, Tend is not a cheap game in the flip n write category and many other categories as well. Don’t get me wrong, you’re getting A LOT in this box and it’s really well produced. You’re getting a ton of dice, scratch cards, sheets and pencils for six players. With that you’re obviously going to get a ton of replayability from this box before you even need to think about getting new packs of sheets. More so if you play with fewer players. Plus you can also use the app instead of using the scratch cards to squeeze more value from these. This is still a high price point from the off and while value is obviously subjective I do think it’s worth doing your research to see if this is a game for you. I’d even recommend playing it first if you can to get a feel for it, doubly so depending on your feelings on flip and writes. There are upgrades you can get for it as well like the playmat and the marker set which you’ll most likely have seen. These don’t come with the game. I was lucky enough to be sent a set with my review copy. These are very cool but a full set is gonna set you back a decent chunk of change. If this is gonna be a regularly loved game on your table then that price tag will just be a drop in the ocean for the enjoyment that you're getting from it. If however your used to the more travel sized and cheaper priced games in this genre then the more involved gameplay and the cost may be more of a hurdle to overcome hence the suggestion that you do a bit of research before jumping in to this admittedly enticing box. If you want something with a bit more meat on the bones from the flip and write genre then Tend is a great step in the WRITE direction (I’m not apologising for that.) The theme will appeal to more of the community (gamers love farming right) and while initially daunting with a load of options, its actual rule set is pretty straight forward so it makes the game that nice step up into more heavier games in this category, not that there are that many of them. Right, I need to go and see if there's a way I can get out of all this gardening. I think I saw Matt Damon around here earlier, I hear he’s quite good with some science and a few potatoes.

Tend WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 1-6 You’ll like this if you like: Your flip & writes to have some real bite and substance! Published by: IV Studio Designed by: Max Anderson, Zac Dixon, Austin Harrison, Toby Sarnelle This is a free review copy. See our review policy here There is something slightly intimidating about opening Tend for the first time. The box is big, heavy and packed with sheets, dice, scratch cards, pencils and boards, while the rulebook spends a good amount of time explaining concepts before you even reach setup. It gives the impression that you are about to learn some sprawling farming simulation when, in reality, the core of Tend is much cleaner than that first encounter suggests. That contrast became one of the things I liked most about it. Tend is a classic case of easy to learn, hard to master, not because the individual systems are especially difficult, but because there are so many perfectly valid things you could be doing. The challenge is learning to ignore most of them. We have already covered Tend once on What Board Game in Steve’s View, where he digs into areas such as the neighbour system, fishing, price, replayability and the slightly overwhelming first impression. Rather than simply repeat those points, this is Jim’s View, focusing more on how Tend teaches you to specialise, how those satisfying chains of bonuses develop, and why the game somehow manages to feel both busy and rather relaxing at the same time. This game is too good for just one review! What Is Tend? Tend is a simultaneous flip-and-write played over 12 rounds, with everyone developing their own farm, projects and cargo while choosing from the same evolving display of task cards. Each round, players choose two of five available task cards, resolve them independently, then move through the game’s other phases involving growth, neighbours and seasonal scoring. The four main tasks are Tend, Chop, Mine and Fish. Tending lets you plant and water crops or prepare soil, while chopping and mining involve scratching through forests and mines to reveal resources and bonuses. Fishing uses dice and different fishing locations to determine what you can catch, with upgrades widening the area available to you. Everything feeds into everything else. Resources can be used to complete projects, buy upgrades, purchase animals, build your farm, gift to neighbours, sell for coins or fill your Cargo Manifest. Crucially, you cannot simply hoard them for later, because resources must be used when they are gained. That one rule keeps the game moving and forces decisions immediately, rather than letting you build a giant stockpile and work it all out later. The Biggest Lesson: Stop Trying To Do Everything The rulebook and teaching material make one point very clearly: you cannot do everything in one game. That is not a warning buried in the small print either, it is probably the single most important strategic lesson Tend has to teach. My first game became dramatically easier once I accepted that. I focused almost entirely on mining and chopping, which are mechanically similar enough that I only really had to learn one style of play twice. Instead of staring at the entire farm sheet and wondering what every icon meant, I had a clear purpose and could largely ignore huge sections of the game. That was not just useful for learning the rules. It made my strategy clearer too. I knew which cards I wanted, which upgrades mattered to me and what resources I was hoping to uncover, so each round became a much simpler decision. Later games then became opportunities to branch out. I could focus on a different area, learn how that system scores, understand how its upgrades interact and work out whether I actually enjoyed that route. It makes learning Tend feel almost modular, with each play teaching you another piece of the bigger picture. Easy Rules, Difficult Choices Once you understand the basic flow, Tend really is quite straightforward to teach. Choose two cards, perform those tasks, use resources immediately, improve your engine and gradually fill your sheets with marks, crops, animals, projects and cargo. The complexity comes from the number of options, not from obscure rules. That distinction matters because Tend initially looks considerably heavier than it plays. The huge number of printed sheets in the box adds to that intimidating first impression, even though the reality is simply that the publishers have given you plenty of consumable copies. You only use one farm sheet and one cargo sheet during a game, but lifting a weighty box full of paper does not exactly scream “easy teach”. Once you have played a few times, however, the difficulty starts to shift. You now understand all those systems, which means you suddenly want to use more of them. Ironically, Tend can therefore become more mentally demanding as you get better, because the temptation to chase three, four or five different ideas grows enormously. That is where discipline becomes important. You still need to pick your main focus and perhaps one secondary route, even when you know perfectly well how to exploit everything else. The game constantly whispers, “you could do this too”, and succeeding often means learning to say no. Combo Time The reward for that planning comes when Tend starts chaining things together. You cross off one requirement, which completes a row, which gives you a reward, which lets you finish another project, which unlocks something else, which gives you another resource, which suddenly means you can complete something you were not expecting to touch this turn. Those moments are fantastic. Steve makes a similar point in his review, noting that Tend can produce satisfying cascades of choices and bonuses, even if every round will not explode in quite the same way. When the stars do align, though, Tend becomes enormously satisfying because one modest action can suddenly turn into a much larger sequence. There is a downside. Keeping track of everything can become surprisingly difficult. The game gives you a nice simple round tracker so you know whether you have taken zero, one or both of your selected tasks, but the bonuses inside those tasks can spiral. Once you start triggering extra resources, extra tasks, upgrades and project rewards, it becomes easy to wonder whether you have already taken something, forgotten something, or accidentally resolved something twice. Oddly, this does not necessarily improve with experience. In some ways it gets worse because experienced players create bigger chains. Your turns become more efficient and more exciting, but therefore also harder to mentally audit. Scratch That The scratch-off forest and mine are one of Tend’s most charming ideas. Scratching away a square and revealing a resource, bonus or upgrade opportunity is just intrinsically satisfying. It is a physical little moment of discovery that you rarely see in modern board games, and it suits the exploration theme beautifully. The box gives you plenty of scratch cards, more can be purchased, and there is also a free digital alternative if you prefer not to use the physical ones. I do have two annoyances with them. First, the squares are small enough that you have to be quite careful while scratching. If you reveal the edge of a neighbouring square, you may not be able to see exactly what it contains, but seeing whether that adjacent box is shaded can still give away whether an upgrade is hiding there. It is not game-breaking, but I would rather be able to scratch enthusiastically and move on. Second, the debris goes everywhere. I am one of those people who wants the gaming table to stay neat, and tiny scratch-off flakes scattered across felt are absolutely not my idea of a relaxing evening. I will happily use Tend on a normal tabletop or with a protective covering underneath, but I would not put those physical scratch cards directly onto my felt gaming surface. A Very Pleasant Place To Spend 60-90 Minutes Despite everything going on, Tend has a surprisingly calm atmosphere. There is something inherently pleasant about filling in your farm, growing crops, developing animals, scratching through forests and slowly colouring your sheets with progress. The simultaneous structure also means there is very little conventional downtime, because everyone is usually working through their own puzzle at roughly the same time. The scoring helps too. Cargo, badges, neighbours and seasonal objectives give you different ways to generate points, while the Cargo Manifest itself has a satisfying spatial element because resources occupy different shapes and certain stalls can change their value. You are constantly looking for ways to make the next little decision work harder for you. I also have the upgraded marker set, which is absolutely not essential but does improve the physical experience for me. Instead of colouring with the pencils from the base game, you can press down neat little coloured icons in one satisfying stamp, leaving the finished sheet bright, orderly and vibrant. It is a small thing, but Tend is exactly the sort of game where watching your sheet gradually fill up is part of the pleasure. Pros Huge strategic variety without especially complicated individual rules. Specialising in different systems makes repeated plays genuinely rewarding. The cascading combo turns can be incredibly satisfying. Scratch-offs, colourful sheets and the whole farming presentation give the game a wonderfully tactile, relaxing feel. Cons The first learn looks far more intimidating than the actual game deserves. Bigger combo turns can become difficult to track accurately. Scratch-off squares are fiddly, and the debris gets everywhere. The sheer number of tempting routes can make later games surprisingly overwhelming if you refuse to specialise. Final Thoughts Tend is one of those games that gets much friendlier once you stop looking at the whole thing at once. The box, rulebook and enormous sheets suggest a monster, but the game itself is really a collection of fairly simple systems joined together by one key decision: what are you actually going to focus on this time? That is also why I am so keen to keep playing it. My first game taught me mining and chopping, later games let me explore the other systems, and every play gives me a better understanding of where points can come from and which routes I enjoy most. It creates that lovely feeling where you finish a game already thinking about what you would do differently next time. There are rough edges, especially around tracking larger combos and the physical scratch-off system, but neither comes close to spoiling what Tend does well. It is clever, satisfying, colourful, surprisingly peaceful and full of little rewards that make progress feel constant. I am giving Tend 8.5/10. It is very close to a nine for me already, and I am particularly keen to try the expansions. If they add meaningful variety without overcomplicating what is already here, I can easily see Tend making that final jump.

Kulami WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2 You’ll like this if you like: Wooden abstracts Published by: Helvetiq, Steffen Spiele Designed by: Andreas Kuhnekath-Häbler This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Some abstract games look intimidating before you even make the first move. Kulami is the opposite. It is inviting, tactile and ridiculously easy to understand, but there is just enough going on beneath the surface to keep each five-to-ten-minute game interesting. At its heart, this is a two-player area-majority game played across a modular board of chunky wooden panels. Each player has 28 glass marbles, and the aim is to control as many panels as possible by having more of your colour on them than your opponent. The larger the panel, the more points it is worth. Setup and How to Play The board is built from 17 wooden panels of different sizes. You can arrange them into a neat 8×8 square or create a more irregular shape, so the layout can vary from game to game. Even before you start, that modular setup gives Kulami a nice bit of replayability without adding any real rules overhead. The first player can place a marble anywhere. After that, every new marble has to go in the same row or column as the previous marble, but not on the same wooden panel. From then on, the two most recently used panels are both off limits. That one restriction is basically the whole game, and it is what makes Kulami interesting. You are not simply choosing where you want to score. Every move also dictates where your opponent can go next, so you are constantly balancing your own gain against the opportunities you are handing across the table. Simple Rules, Interesting Choices Kulami is one of those games where the rules explanation takes almost no time, but the board starts asking better questions as the spaces disappear. Early on, there is plenty of room and the game can feel quite open. Later, the available rows and legal panels shrink, and suddenly you can start seeing two or three moves ahead. That is where the game becomes most satisfying. You may spot a move that lets you claim a valuable panel, but it could also send your opponent towards another tile where they need just one more marble for the majority. Equally, a seemingly harmless move might narrow their options enough to force them somewhere they absolutely do not want to go. The game can even end before all the marbles are used if somebody has no legal move left. That means there is a subtle endgame layer where you can sometimes steer your opponent towards a dead end, or deliberately force the game to finish if you think you are already ahead. Scoring Basic scoring is refreshingly clean. At the end, you simply separate the wooden panels and give each one to the player with the majority of marbles on it. A six-space panel is worth six points, a four-space panel four points, and so on, while tied panels score nothing. There are also advanced scoring options. Level 1 adds points for the larger orthogonally connected area of marbles, while Level 2 also awards points for same-coloured chains of five or more marbles horizontally, vertically or diagonally. These can add another layer if you want it, although I think the basic game already does enough for something this quick. That is probably one of Kulami’s biggest strengths. It does not need the extras to work, but they are there if you want a little more to think about. It Feels Lovely to Play The production deserves a lot of credit. The wooden tiles are chunky, solid and satisfying to handle, while the glass marbles feel equally well made and fit the game perfectly. This is a very tactile game, and that matters. It also looks really good when set up. In fact, Kulami is exactly the sort of game I would happily leave out on a coffee table rather than pack away immediately. The wooden panels and bright marbles are attractive enough to almost work as decoration, while also making the game immediately accessible whenever someone fancies a quick match. That accessibility is helped by how little table space and time it needs. Despite an advertised playtime of around 30 minutes, my games are generally more like five to ten minutes. There is virtually no downtime either, because your opponent’s move directly determines your next set of options. What Might Not Work for Everyone Kulami is still a very traditional abstract game at heart. There is no theme, no asymmetry and no dramatic card play. If you want narrative, big swings or lots of different systems, this is not going to provide them. It can also feel quite reactive. Some players may find that you spend too much time responding to the previous move rather than building a grand strategy of your own. That criticism came up repeatedly in other players’ reactions, with some finding the opening especially quiet or symmetrical. For me, though, that back-and-forth is part of the appeal. Kulami is less about constructing a long-term engine and more about making a series of small positional decisions that are just slightly better for you than for the person opposite. Pros Extremely easy to learn and teach. Fast, with almost no downtime. Lovely wooden production and tactile glass marbles. Clever positional strategy from a very small ruleset. Cons Can feel reactive rather than deeply strategic. The opening is less tense than the endgame. Very abstract, with no thematic hook. Some players may find the basic scoring too simple without the optional rules. Final Thoughts Kulami is simple, but it is simple in a good way. The rules disappear almost immediately, leaving you to focus on the actual puzzle: where can I score, where will that send my opponent, and can I give them a slightly worse option than the one they are giving me? It also benefits enormously from how quick it is. A bad game is over in minutes, a close game invites an immediate rematch, and the changing board layout keeps the same tiny ruleset feeling fresh enough to revisit. I would much rather play several fast games of Kulami back-to-back than stretch one match out for half an hour. Add in the excellent production and you have a game that is easy to leave out, easy to pick up and easy to recommend. It is not trying to be the deepest abstract ever made, but it is attractive, satisfying and consistently fun.

Alto WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 2 You’ll like this if you like: Wooden abstracts Published by: Helvetiq, Steffen Spiele Designed by: Joel Escalante, Rafael Escalante This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Some abstract games arrive with the air of something you need to study. Alto does not. It is bright, tactile, easy to understand, and gives you just enough to think about while still remaining relaxing, absorbing, and fun to play. Designed by Joel and Rafael Escalante, Alto is a two-player game built around 16 double-sided tiles and 18 wooden discs, nine red and nine white. The aim is simple: build your discs higher in the stacks than your opponent, because the higher a disc sits, the more points it will eventually score. Setup and How to Play The board starts as a random 4×4 grid of tiles, all on their bright side. Players alternate placing their discs into the notches of those tiles, leaving one disc aside simply as a reminder for their own player colour. From there, the game becomes a constant exercise in movement, stacking and trying to anticipate how the board will change. Each tile carries a movement symbol, and that symbol determines how the disc sitting in its notch can move. Some let you move the top disc orthogonally, some diagonally, some in any adjacent direction, while others move an entire stack, rather than just the top one. The important clarification, confirmed by the designer and publisher, is that you follow the symbol on the tile corresponding to that disc, regardless of whether it visually appears above or below it from where you are sitting. You can also move any disc on the board, not just your own. That is the first moment where Alto reveals a bit more bite than its friendly appearance suggests. Moving an opponent’s disc can be useful if it improves one of your stacks, disrupts theirs, or changes which tile gets used and therefore which part of the board is about to evolve. The Board Keeps Changing The clever part of Alto is what happens after a move. If you move from a bright tile, that tile flips to its black side. If you or the other player later move from that same tile again, it is removed from the game completely. That means the board gradually dismantles itself while you play. The spaces still exist and can still be moved into even after the physical tile has gone, but without a tile there is no longer a movement symbol to use from that position. So you cannot move from an empty space. Suddenly, every move is doing two things at once: changing the stacks and changing the future movement network. That gives the game a satisfying sense of progression, and players really do need to try and think ahead. Early turns are open and flexible, while later turns feel more constrained as tiles flip and disappear. You are constantly asking whether you want to use a strong tile now, whether you can afford to make it vanish later, and whether removing one particular option will hurt your opponent more than it hurts you. Simple Rules, Proper Decisions Alto’s biggest strength is that it never asks much of you mechanically. The rules are straightforward, turns are quick, and there is almost no downtime. Yet there is still a decent amount of strategy because the decision space is wider than it first appears. You are thinking about stack height, tile state, movement type and timing all at once. You are also thinking about both colours because moving your opponent’s discs is often just as important as moving your own. It creates a nice tactical push and pull without making the game feel remotely heavy. That is the sweet spot for Alto. It is not trying to be some vast, cerebral abstract that needs 20 plays before it makes sense. It is trying to give you meaningful choices quickly, and it does that very well. Scoring The scoring is clean and intuitive. Once no legal moves remain, each disc scores according to its level within a stack: one point for the bottom level, two for the next, three for the third, and so on. The tie-breaker looks at who has more discs at the highest level, then the next highest, and so forth. It reinforces the whole purpose of the game nicely because you are rewarded not simply for having large stacks, but for getting your own discs into the most valuable higher positions on the stacks. There is something pleasingly immediate about that. You can look at the board and broadly understand who is doing well without needing a separate scoring track or complicated endgame maths. Production As with the rest of this Steffen-Spiele range, the production is part of the appeal. The wooden discs feel solid and well made, the tiles are clean and functional, and the whole thing has a simple, modern look that suits the game perfectly. It also benefits from being compact. There is no unnecessary clutter, no oversized box and no excess componentry getting in the way of the game itself. You get a small, focused package that looks good and feels good to play. That matters more than it might sound. Abstract games live and die partly on tactility, and Alto gets that side of things right. What Might Not Work One criticism I can understand is that Alto has a slightly messier decision space than some purer abstracts. Because tiles flip and their reverse sides are not known in advance, there is an element of uncertainty that means you cannot plan everything perfectly from the outset. For some players, that will make it more interesting. For others, especially those who want a fully deterministic abstract where every future state is visible, it may make the game feel a little less elegant. The other thing to bear in mind is that this is still a very small game. The depth is good for the size, but you should not expect endless layers or a huge strategic arc. Alto is best judged for what it is trying to do: give you a sharp, tactical two-player experience in a short amount of time. Pros Very simple rules with a good amount of strategy. Fast turns and minimal downtime. Clever use of tiles that flip and disappear. Good-quality components and a clean presentation. Cons Hidden tile backs add uncertainty that some abstract fans may dislike. The broader decision space can occasionally feel less elegant than purer abstracts. Limited in scope compared with deeper two-player strategy games. Final Thoughts Alto is another good example of how much game you can get from a very small ruleset. It is easy to teach, quick to play and gives you enough interesting decisions to make the whole experience feel rewarding rather than slight. I particularly like how the board changes under you. Tiles flip, disappear and alter your future options, while stacks grow and scoring becomes increasingly important. That keeps the game moving and gives it a nice sense of momentum without ever slowing the turns down. The result is a clean, attractive little abstract that does exactly what it needs to do. It may not be the deepest game in the range, but it is clever, quick and consistently enjoyable.