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Undaunted: Battle of Britain WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 2 You’ll like this if you like: Undaunted Series, Memoir ‘44, Wings of Glory Published by: Osprey Games Designed by: Trevor Benjamin, David Thompson This is a free review copy. See our review policy here By Steve Godfrey Whenever a new Undaunted game is announced I’m always really excited, and a little bit nervous. Excited because I love this series of games and can’t wait to see what they’ve brought to this series. Nervous because I've been stung before with drop offs. I was there when Green Day released the stellar trilogy of Dookie, Insomniac and Nimrod before dropping the mediocre Warning. What I’m saying is that I’m nervous that at any point this next game could be Undaunted’s version of Warning. Don’t get me wrong, I have ultimate faith In David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin but let’s see if they’ve managed to skip their warning phase and actually made Undaunted’s answer to American Idiot? Honestly never thought I’d be writing Green Day comparisons in a review of a WW2 Aerial combat game but here we are! How to fly a plane? Set up by building the map and your decks per the scenario you're playing. You can play any of the scenarios or you can string them together as a campaign. If you’ve played an Undaunted game before then there will be some differences to what you're used to but are easily picked up and I'll mostly be going through the changes. But if you’ve never played an Undaunted game before then I’ll give the briefest of brief summary of how it works. Both players draw four cards from their decks and will choose a card to determine initiative by comparing the number in the top left corner. These cards will both be discarded. In turn order players will then play as many of the three cards left in their hand as they want playing one action on each card. These will see you moving and attacking whilst trying to achieve your individual objectives. Throughout the game you’ll be buying new cards that will go into your discard pile and will eventually get shuffled into your deck. If you’ve played an Undaunted game before then this will all be fairly familiar but there have been changes made so you may want to stick around for this bit. Each card will have a number of actions on them, of which you can play one of them from each card. However a new thing in Battle of Britain is a compulsory move action. Each plane has a move total and you will have to move at least one of that total to simulate the constant movement of a plane. Each plane will then have at least two other actions that you can play in addition to moving. The manoeuvre action will let you rotate your plane once in a hex either left or right but you can only do this after you’ve made a move. So for example you could move, make a manoeuvre and then you’d have to move at least one more hex if you want to manoeuvre again. One of the big differences compared to other games in the series is that this is a hex based map and you have to move the direction you're facing and manoeuvring is how you're going to turn your plane. The other action you can do is attacking. Because this and manoeuvre are actions you can only do one of them, not both. When you attack you can choose to attack before you move or after you’re done moving. Another change in this game is directional firing. Each plane has its own shooting limitations. Most can only fire out of the front whilst some can shoot in multiple directions. When a target is in line add up their defence value, the number of hexes between you and add any obstacles in the way (clouds, other planes etc.) and throw the number of d10s for your attack. If one meets or exceeds that number then you hit. You also get more dice for shooting at the rear. Another difference from previous games is that if the above totals more than ten then you can’t take the shot. Previously a ten would hit regardless. The previous games had the dreaded fog of war cards to, well, fog up your deck. In Battle of Britain these have been replaced with Discord cards, different name, same deck clogging effects. Fog of war cards were mostly gained from players scouting new areas but here you gain them by a different method which needs a lot more tactical planning to avoid. Your squadron leader cards and their actions all have a Wi-Fi symbol on them which relates to planes being “In Comms” If planes of the same squadron have more than one hex between them they are considered to be out of comms with anything else being In comms. If that squad is in comms then any of the actions on that card, including initiative can be played without penalty. Playing those actions when the squad is out of comms will net you a discord card. Trying to keep your planes in comms to avoid these can be half a game in itself, even more so when you're trying to juggle getting into position to take on your opponent. Take to the skies. One of the main draws of the Undaunted system is that if you know how to play one, then you pretty much know the fundamentals to play all of them. When this one was initially revealed I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry about this one losing that familiarity and simplicity. Purely because the changes that were being made to make it feel like a game of aerial combat, could easily have added a lot of complexity to what is usually a pretty straightforward system. It’s at this point I’d like to issue WhatBoardGame's first apology, from me, to designers David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin for ever doubting their ability to keep this instalment as fun and as simple as the previous games. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that this is probably the simplest game in the series in terms of ease of play. In terms of tactics though, I’d say that this is possibly the most tactical of the series so far. The simple move, manoeuvre system keeps that sense of constant movement and pace that other games in the series wont have because of the type of warfare they’re depicting. Because of the compulsory movement, you’re constantly having to think at least a turn ahead to not only get yourself in a good position either for shooting or avoiding being shot, but to stop yourself being on the wrong end of a barrage balloon. Colliding with a barrage balloon will instantly neutralise a plane! But you're not just thinking of what you’re doing, you’ll need to try and predict what your opponent could potentially do should they get the right cards in their hand. It gives the game a chess-like quality as you're both trying to outwit each other. The whole thing is like a well choreographed dance or fight sequence similar to that of a John Wick or THAT fight sequence from The Princess Bride as planes weave in and out of each other trying to find the best time to strike. (yep we’ve gone from Green Day to the Princess Bride this review is a roller coaster!) It will probably surprise no one to know that I don’t really know the first thing about the manoeuvrability of planes other than what films have taught me and I’m sure Hollywood won’t have taught me wrong…..right? But having to make those big turning circles to swing back around for another barrage of fire feel realistic. If you’ve just pulled off a successful hit and are coming back round for another go then they can feel like a victory lap. If, however, you missed your last attack then it can feel agonising and long as you work your way round for another pass. It’s like missing your turning on the M25 and having to go all the round again. What elevates it is that you have to manoeuvre OR fire (you could of course choose to do neither) along with your move. It adds tension as you manoeuvre into position to take your shot and then have that agonising wait to see if they’re still in position by the time you’re able to take a shot. Shooting head on even has its own problems to throw at you. Taking the shot may seem like the obvious choice, but if you’ve lined up a shot, then chances are your opponent has one too, so maybe manoeuvring out the way doesn’t sound like such a bad idea? Just when you think you’ve got enough to worry about through all the dodging and fighting you’ve also got to worry about keeping your squad together. The comms rule is a really nice way of implementing those deck clogging discord cards and gives another extra layer to your tactics. Splitting up a squad and taking a discord may be a good move at the time, but you’d better get them back together sharpish if you want to use the command ability to get those discords out of your hand. It’s especially fun if you can lure your opponent out of comms by cheekily flying past them and taunting them to get them to chase you. It’s REARly not that confusing. I said that this was the simplest of the series rules wise and it very much is, but there was one rule in the rule book that did have me scratching my head. The rule for determining rear attack was a bit confusing as it was written. Well, it confused me anyway. Luckily the accompanying diagram seems to explain it more clearly so hopefully this won’t be too much of an issue for people to get their head round. It can also get a bit confusing when you’ve got two or more planes sharing a hex, especially if more than one is facing the same direction. The hex’s aren’t really designed to have a lot of planes on them so you may find yourself having to carefully lift up tokens to see who's where on some occasions. I do appreciate the size of the hexes, any bigger and this would easily turn the game into an unnecessary table hog and break from the uniform box size of the standard games. Whilst we’re on the nit picky stuff (which the above certainly is) is that the tokens between the two sides squads can be a little close in colour. For example, the RAF will have a yellow and white token for one of their squads while the Luftwaffe will have yellow and grey for the same squad type. For your first game or two you may find yourself picking up your opponent's tokens but you’ll easily get used to the difference. It just works! Of course the most exciting thing about this game is what it could lead to. Battle of Britain is a resounding success in the way it’s changed the format and because of that it opens up so many more opportunities for different theatres. I’d even say that this system could easily work if they wanted to turn their attention to Naval battles. I really think both designers have taken a type of game which could easily get bogged down in complex rules and miniatures and boiled it down to its simplest form. It takes the feel and the pace of aerial combat and not only makes it work, but it’s easy to teach and a lot of fun. If you're a fan of the series and was hoping to save a bit of money with this one then I’m sorry, but you're gonna need this one too.

Turing Machine WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Decrypto, Break The Code. Published by: Le Scorpion Masqué Designed by: Fabien Gridel, Yoann Levet This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. Turing Machine has been billed as a board game where you are playing with an analogue computer. Intriguing, isn't it? I didn't quite understand the concept before I played, but quickly learnt. It is fairly simple, and I was instantly fascinated by this experience. It is certainly unique when it comes to board games, and in this Turing Machine Board Game Review I hope to delve into the depths of why this game is so absorbing. Let's get it to the table. How To Set Up Turing Machine The first thing to do in Turing Machine is decide which problem/level you want to do. Within the rule book you will find 20 to try, but online via the Turing Machine website you will find millions more! Once you have made your selection check the numbers associated with the criteria and verifier cards that are being used in your chosen problem and collect them from the deck of available criteria and verifier cards. Place these cards accordingly around the "machine" card on their correct locations, A-F. Give each player a player aid, note sheet and pencil (not provided) and place the punch cards in their holder intro a central area. You are now ready to play. How To Play Turing Machine Each player will begin to read the criteria cards in play. These cards tell you what you can "test" in this game, to find information out about a three digit code that you need to decipher in order to win the game. Understanding how these cards work together and what they can teach you will be crucial to your success in the game. These cards vary game to game. Some allow you to test how many numbers in the solution are odd or even. Others give you information about which number, the first, second, or third, will be the largest or smallest. You can learn if certain numbers in the sequence are larger or smaller than others, and if they are higher or lower to other specific numbers in the sequence. Checking the criteria cards before a game starts will give you an idea as to what number you want to test first. When players are ready they will write down their starting three digit number onto the first line of their note sheet and then when all players have done this, each player can "question" up to three of the criteria cards. Making a test involves taking the three numbers you chose from the punch cards, overlaying them to form one single punch card with just one available hole, and overlaying this on top of the verifier card you are testing. The reverse of the criteria cards shows a series of ticks and crosses. Based on your selection, the hole you are left with will then show either a cross or tick telling you if what you are testing is one thing or another. It takes a little of time to get used to this process. For example, if you are testing a verifier that says you can find out if the yellow square number is either higher than, lower than, or exactly four, and you put a three yellow and it comes back with a tick, this doesn't mean the yellow number is a three, it just means that it is under four. If it came back as a tick if you tested with a four, then that does mean it is a four. Because there is only one variable. It is either a four or not. But when testing if it is below a four and you get a tick, it could be three, two, or one. You have narrowed it down, but not deduced the exact number. Make sense? Each round you can test up to three verifiers, but you don't have to do that many, and you don't always want to because this is a race game, and the amount of tests you do could affect your victory. More on that soon. After everyone has tested as many verifiers as they like, you will now interpret what you learnt that round. You can make notes on your sheet, and cross out numbers you have ruled out for the solution as you go to help your thinking. Each player then needs to decide if they want to try and solve the puzzle at that point or go for another round. All players will present either a thumbs up or down on the count of three to show their intentions. If you think you have found the code then write it down in secret on your sheet and then check to see if you are correct. The answer is shown in the rule book for the 20 available there. Or online under 'test a code' if playing there. If the code has been correctly guessed then the game is over and that person wins. If two people are trying for the solution at the same time, and they both get it correct, then the person who has made the least test's wins. If no one guesses it correctly, the players who were incorrect are eliminated and the game will continue for the remaining players. If the code has not been correctly guessed and there is still at least one player left, then all remaining players will choose their next three digit code to test, and run through the process again. This continues until a player wins by correctly guessing the code the quickest, or all players are eliminated. Turing Machine Board Game Review Piecing together the clues and information you gather in this game to eliminate numbers to finally get the correct answer is highly satisfying. Not everyone will enjoy the process, or find it equally clear how best to do this. But getting there and getting it correct feels great generally for everyone. Putting this process into the game creates a race. Everyone will be able to eventually get the correct number, it is a process of elimination. But in the game, this is not about eventually, it is about how fast can you do it. This adds pressure. Under a mental challenge some people will not like this. It could make them feel stressed, frustrated, or even question their intelligence. This is a logic challenge. A puzzle. This is a board game in as much as Sudoku is a board game. It has board game components that make it feel more like a board game from the table presence it brings. But this is a logic puzzle. As such, the game is marketed as a deduction game to fit into the board game ecosystem but its very essence and lack of board game style mechanics will make it fall flat for some people. However, for those of us who enjoy this kind of challenge Turing Machine could become your new obsession. There is something very addictive to playing this game. It is the sort of puzzle that you either "see" or you don't. However, you can train yourself to get a more clear picture. For my first five games I was generally getting the code correct, but never the quickest, and often needing to use more tests than I should have. As I played more, I realised the overlapping clues you can take from the verifiers that are in the game. I started to make better choices with my first number and was able to greatly reduce the amount of tests I needed to get the answer correct. My son (Ten) however, saw this from game one, and was able to win most games we played using a lot less tests, and never guessing the number wrong. He said he could just see what he needed to do to eliminate as many numbers at once. Some tests will get rid of one number. Others will knock a load down. It's the equivalent of getting a yes for "Do they wear glasses" in Guess Who! Making choices to test something that eliminates more numbers than the other players can is how you do well in this game. I think most of us will know what sort of player we will be at Turing Machine. Someone who gets it right away and loves it. Someone who can learn how to get better at it and begins to really enjoy it. Or someone who just will not enjoy this experience at all. As such, this may be one of the easiest games to recommend or not as you will know by now where you may sit in this. Will you will enjoy this game or will it frustrate you more than entertain you? For me, I am loving the learning curve and challenge this game presents and can see a real progression in my understanding of how to play the game more efficiently. This pleases me and makes the process of playing Turing Machine an enjoyable one. I think the game is unique enough for it to be something that everyone should consider. But if you are the sort of person that would not enjoy this, perhaps it won't ever become fun for you. For me, this is a real winner and with the millions of codes to solve, perhaps will become the game I end up playing the most in my life.

Pyramido WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Kingdomino, Queendomino, Shifting Stones Published by: Synapses Games Designed by: Ikhwan Kwon This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. There seems to be a lot of marketing support behind this new release from Synapses Games. The game arrived months before general release in fancy packaging, with four exclusive play mats. That's quite a fanfare for a board game. Ikhwan Kwon has made some cool games, but is not a huge name, and this is not a big box legacy or miniature filled monster. Just your normal abstract strategy board game. So, why the internal hype? Well, lets get it to the table and find out in this Pyramido board game review and how to play. How To Set Up Pyramido Getting Pyramido to the table is a thing is pure simplicity. The same goes for learning the game. The rule book is one of the best I have ever seen. It is quite long for such a simple game. 12 pages in total. But that is with well over 50% illustrations, and a beautifully constructed flow. You will get through it with no questions in minutes. To set up, take all the tiles out of the box and give them a quick shuffle. Then separate them into four piles of roughly the same size, keeping three back, and pile them into a central area face up in a row of four. With the remaining three tiles, place these face up in front of the other four piles in the middle of each so you have three tiles in front of four piles. Give each player one of each of the six coloured wooden jewel marker pieces, and one of each of the three single tiles. You are now ready to play. How To Play Pyramido Starting with the last player to make a sand castle, players will now take it in turns to draw a tile from one of the three single tiles in the front of the other four piles. The chosen tile must be placed immediately in front of that player as they begin to form their own pyramid. You are working towards a 4x5 or 5x4 base. After you take a tile you must replace it with one of the two face up piles above from where you took your tile. You then must add one of your wooden Jewel markers that matches the symbol on the tile you just placed. Finally, if you want to, you can place one of your single tiles over one half of the domino you just placed if you want to change it. You only have three of these, and once placed they must remain in position until the end of the game. On your next turn, any subsequent tiles must be placed touching one of your existing dominos. Colours do not matter. But they must be connected with at least half of the tiles touching. No partial connections. What you are looking to achieve is to create coloured groups of as many jewel symbols as possible. At the end of the round, when all the players have formed their bottom layer, the first scoring round takes place. You will score one point for each jewel in any area with jewel marker present. You will also score your lowest area twice. Any group without a jewel marker does not score. If you have left any single space gaps you must use your single tiles to complete this. If you cannot do this as you have already used them you immediately lose the game. So, don't do this! The second round then begins where you will now build a second layer on top of the first layer in a 3x4 or 4x3 shape. Building up the pyramid shape leaving a gap on the outer edge of the previous level. At the end the second round you score as you did in the first, but this time, you can include the outer rim of the base layer that will still be visible. If any symbols on the base layer that are visible and connect to areas on the second layer of the same colour, these can be included in your scoring. Below you can see on the third level scoring the blue bird symbols connect all the way from the first level, through the second to the third. As does one of the green ones from the first level, even though there are not any on the second, the green area still connects. The placement of one of the single green tiles here has helped increase the green score by an extra three points. The final forth round see's players adding just one tile on the top of the pyramid. It can be a make or break round where with careful planning, you can score a lot more than other players if they have not been as forward thinking, and in truth, lucky with the final selection of tiles available to you. The below tile added to the top scores an extra six points but if the blue single tile was still available you could get ten more. It was already used on the base layer though, as you can see on the top row below. But if there was no blue or green tile available and you had used all your single tiles, the scoring options greatly reduce in this situation. After the fourth round, the four rounds of scoring are totalled up and the highest points wins. Pyramido Board Game Review Playing Pyramido feels very simple. Anyone who has played any domino style game before will very quickly adjust to the strategy and get into the flow of the game. You may miss the importance of placing symbols on the outside edges so they can continue to score for you through the rounds, but by game two you will be well aware of this. And from this moment on, you will realise that through the simplicity of this game, is a genuinely entertaining and rewarding experience. Grouping tiles together to score points is not unique in board games in any sense. Carrying over actions from round to round to affect later game scoring is not new. But the strategy to build up in this way, round-by-round, focusing on the outer edges and building groups of colour that connect across multiple levels feels fresh. It creates interesting strategic decisions. And makes the scormg exciting and when done well, very satisfying. As the area you build each round reduces in size from a 4x5 to a 1x2 in the final round, your scoring area stays the same. But you need to stay aware of the connection between the levels and how they interreact with each other because your ability to place down the jewel markers reduces and you can only score in the areas that these are present. In the final round you can only place one tile, and a maximum of two jewel markers so you need to maximise your chances and plan ahead. With this, the three single tiles become very important. They are double sided so you have access to each of the six colours, and holding them back to the final round can be very useful. Being able to manipulate your final choice can increase your score by quite a lot. Earlier in the game, you can make most tiles work for you. By the final round, your intentions are clear for all to see and the three tiles available to you may not score well for you without these single tiles to adapt them. Games of Pyramido take around 20 minutes in a two player match up. A little longer with more, but the game always feels fast. Turns are short and quick and the game will move at a real pace. The choice of which tile you move down into the available three is an interesting one. In a two player, you are often able to manipulate the situation to move tiles down that you want and can later use without interference. In a four player game, there are obviously more turns between your own, and the situation can change a lot more. This changes the strategy quite a bit. No longer are you able to manipulate your own situation as much, but you still need to pay attention to the player after you, to see what they need, and what tiles you can move down that would work for them or not. My only criticism of the game is the tiles themselves. In a game where you are building a pyramid, I would like more height. The tiles are of a decent quality and absolutely fine for the game. It would just feel more thematic and look better aesthetically if the tiles were a little chunkier and offered more of a sense of building up as you work through the levels. These pyramids are a little flat! However the game itself is faultless when it comes to rules, set up and gameplay. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys tile laying and abstract strategy games who is looking for something that plays quickly, whilst still offering a game of substance. I think this is why the publisher is putting more effort into the marketing for this release. It hits that sweet spot that can be very popular amongst the board game community. I can see this game on release selling out all over and this game becoming part of many people's collection.

Crazy Pilot WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 2-6 You’ll like this if you like: Jungle Speed, Dobble Published by: Helvetiq Designed by: Matteo Cimenti, Carlo Rigon, Chiara Zanchetta This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. I love the little boxes of joy that Helvetiq put out. Each one has been a hit for me. They always seem to pack in so much game into these tiny boxes. The slightly bigger "After Dinner" series that so far includes games like Art Robbery and Barrakuda has just added a new beauty to its line, Crazy Pilot. A real-time game with zombies. I'm in! Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up First, separate the five different card types, using the card backs to help you. Then shuffle the 94 situation cards and deal 20 to each player. In a five player game give each player 18 cards, and for a six player game, just 15. For two players you need to remove the zombie cards first, then deal 20 regular cards to each player, adding three zombie cards to each hand afterwards. Leaving each player with 23 cards in total. Shuffle these together for each player, then place a starting card on the top of each deck to block the view of the first card. It is best for each player to do this for another person, so you cannot glimpse your first card as you do this. Each player is then dealt a car card which they must place in front of them, leaving enough space to place a card in each space orthogonally around this card. Place the penalty points and finish card into a central area where all players can reach and you are now ready to play. How To Play When all players are ready, one person will say go, and all players will begin the game, playing simultaneously. First moving the starting card from the top of their personal deck to the bottom, revealing their top card and then working their way through their deck until they come to the starting card again. Players will be analysing each card as quickly as possible, trying to determine if they should place this in front of their car card as the road ahead is clear, behind it as they need to turn around due to an unavoidable obstacle, to the left or right of them as they need to change lanes to avoid a hazard, or to the bottom of their deck, meaning they need to stop and wait for a temporary hazard to clear before moving on. All players are playing at the same time, in real-time, so you can do this as fast as you like. There are no turns. But be careful not to make too many mistakes by rushing. Each card is quite busy, and it is easy to miss something. Here, have a try now, check out these four cards. Where would you place them? Once the first person has gone through their deck so they are back to their starting card, they will grab the finish card and all other players must now stop. Each player in turn will then go through each of the cards they managed to place, and check if they put them in the correct position. This is done by flipping them over to reveal the correct location. To check to see if you got the four above right or not, I will now flip these over to show you how this works. How did you do? Hopefully that all makes sense. The top two are straight ahead as there is no real obstacle on the road. Just a busy sidewalk. The top right could be placed either in a change lane to the left position or straight on, both would be correct. The bottom right you need to change lanes to the right to avoid the car. And the bottom left, you are not going anywhere for a while. Time to turn around. For each correct card you will score one point. For each card placed into the wrong location you will lose a point. The person with the finish card gains two bonus points. Most points wins! And that is pretty much the entre game, except for the small mater or the zombies! If you ever come across a Zombie in a card, and they are sometimes very easy to miss when playing at pace, you must shout "Zombies!" You will then slap you hand on top of the penalty deck. Each other player must stop what they are doing and slap their hand on top of yours. The player who cried Zombie now checks to see if there really was a Zombie or not. If there was, they can place this card under their car card and score one extra point at the end of the game. The person who reacted slowest and slapped the hands last takes a penalty card and score minus one at the end. Then play resumes for all players with the person who paused the game shouting "Drive!" If they were mistaken and there is no zombie, they must place this card face down beside their card and it will score minus one point at the end, and play will resume. Any zombie card that was placed anywhere else will score you a minus point at the end game scoring. They are hard to spot sometimes. Can you find all four zombies in the above cards? I find the ones in the windows very easy to miss when I play. Others are quite tricky as they look exactly like other cards, other than the addition of the zombie. Check out the one on the top left with the crashed UFO compared to the one earlier in the review that also has the crashed UFO. Tricky huh?! In the two player game, when you spot a zombie in one of your cards, you will shout "Zombies" as usual, but instead of then slapping the penalty deck, you will place it into the other persons player area. They must then check if there is zombie there or not, and place a penalty card over it. If there was a zombie there and they do this, then all is well. If they don't, they will lose a point. You could place cards without zombies in front of the other player just to mess with them. And of course, this is all happening whilst they are trying to get through their deck as quickly as possible. So any distraction to move their focus to a new card in a new location can be very distracting! This is the only change for the two-player game other than the 23 card set up. Is It Fun? Playing Crazy Pilot will be hectic, stressful, and perhaps a little overwhelming for some. If you don't enjoy real-time games where you are racing against other players, this will not be for you. But if that kind of game floats your boat then this could be a real winner. I love real-time games. I enjoy the focus this puts on my mind. I do not like it when I am rushed in my decisions that need real strategy or thought. Games like Escape: The curse of the Temple properly stress me out and I do not have fun when I play it. But games like Jungle Speed where you are under a time pressure, but the mistakes made because of this are not huge work for me. That's the balance at play here. Real-time is hard for more serious games where you play for an hour and everything could sway on something you miss due to the lack of time available to you. That is not fun. Games like Pendulum find a way to hit the middle ground by putting you under time pressure, but giving you just enough time to make the informed decisions you want to, and by keeping the decisions limited to a set number of things. It works like this with Crazy Pilot by keeping the decision to one of six things, but also lowering the jeopardy. A game of Crazy Pilot only takes a few minutes. If you lose due to a silly mistake, rack-em-up and go again! I can see this game being very popular with families, and couples who enjoy a bit of healthy head-to-head competition. My children have really enjoyed this one and keep asking to play, especially my son (ten) who very much enjoys it in two-player and the direct challenge it poses. It is fun to push yourself and try to make the decisions on each card as quickly as possible. There is a noticeable learning curve, and you can se yourself getting better each game, which is rather satisfying. Without the zombies, you really could fly through the cards after a few games of this. Once you become more familiar with the cards your pace will pick right up. The introduction of the zombies makes a big difference there. But if you are lucky with the shuffle and spot your three zombies early on, and are certain you were right, you can then fly through the rest of the deck with a lot more reckless abandon. I think the game would have benefited from more cards to avoid the ability to learn them like this. But I appreciate the publishers are limited somewhat by the size of the box they use. That said, I am over ten games in and I am not quite there yet. I have got to a point where I am fast, but it is still a process to get through them. And that process is enjoyable. If you want to have some fast, frantic, fun with your family in real-time then I can heartily recommend Crazy Pilot. Just watch out for those Zombies!

Block Party WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-6 You’ll like this if you like: Pictionary, Pictures. Published by: Big Potato Games Designed by: Ed Naujokas This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. Big Potato games are building a very strong catalogue of happiness. Every game they make hits the spot with me as they seem to build games with a simple philosophy. Fun + colour + simplicity = joy. You can check my review of some of their other games here. Block Party is the latest in the line of Big Potato releases, and it looks like this will be no exception to the joy equation. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Place the scoring board into the central playing area along with all the building blocks and the challenge cards. Each player then takes a building board in their chosen colour and places one building block of the same colour onto the starting space of the scoring board. Each player is dealt one building card and given one steal token. Choose a starting player and give them the guesser token. You are now ready to play. How To Play The guesser now reveals the top challenge card and reads aloud the challenge and allotted time for this round. Each player then chooses one of the ten things on their building card to try and build. You can only build each thing once, so think about what may be easier for other challenges and/or time frames in later rounds. Try not to leave yourself short. When everyone is ready, the guesser starts the timer on their phone, or any timing device, and everyone else starts building. You can only use one hand to take blocks and you can only take one block at a time. It is up to your group how tightly you police this! When the time is up, that's it, no more building. Well, get a few more bits done whilst no one is looking, obviously. But stop as soon as people start to point and shout. Then the guesser will go around the circle, trying to identify what each person has built. If they guess correctly from one guess, both they and the builder score a point. If they don't get it right, other players can use their steal token to have a guess of their own. But you can only use this token once per round. When everyone's construction has been guessed, the bonus point is award for that rounds challenge. You only qualify for this if your construction was correctly guessed. Players will be looking for the tallest object, or the fewest colours etc. Some work well with some objects, others less so! The guesser token moves around the table one space and the next round begins. You can play so everyone acts as the guesser at least once or to a points target or time limit. Totally up to you. We generally play for hours!!! Is It Fun? This game is essential pictionary using blocks. The issue with pictionary is some people are not good at drawing. Or do not enjoy doing it. Using blocks levels the field and makes the game a lot more open to more players. Now, some will still feel it is beyond them and won't be able to get their head around how they can turn a bunch of coloured cubes into a volcano, but for most, I have found the blocks makes this a much more even and approachable game across all levels of artistic skills! It may be that some can envision things easier than others. But then, can the guesser see what they were trying as well? Probably not, as I found out. But the reduced time limit means that no one can create anything spectacular or overly complicated anyway. It is a case of trying to quickly form a clear representation of whatever it is you are building so that it can be easily guessed by the person currently acting as the guesser. This can be stressful for some. The time limits are very short in this game. But I found that with a few adjustments, this worked for most people we tried with. For example, when playing with younger kids, we always gave them an extra 20 seconds or so after everyone else finished. And for younger children guessing, we allowed them three guesses. We also gave people the chance to change their cards. However, I think the most fun comes from working your way through a card and being forced to make everything on each one. The game has a very simple adjustment so you can play a cooperative two player version. Simply flip over the score board and place a block onto the level one space and a red block on the ten space on the lives bar. Take three steal tokens and then play through each level, trying to guess each others attempts in turn, with both players building each round. If you are successful in guessing each others attempts, simply move on. But if you get a guess wrong you lose a life. If you ever want to get a hint, play one of your steal tokens onto the hint space and then your partner can give you a one word clue. Notice that between some levels there will be bonuses to reclaim lost lives or get extra building cards. I really enjoy the process of building in this game. But found guessing to be a little more stressful! It's funny how clear something can be in your or other peoples minds, that are just completely baffling to other people. It depends on the object, time limit, and the person as to how this works, but you can make things that look quite obvious to some, baffling to others. At times it can become quite abstract. Take a look at the two below. These are reconstructed from a game I had recently. The top one was guessed by the guesser, but the others around the table thought it was something else. Take a look. What do you think this is? A fish! Of course it is. But others thought this was tumour, bolognaise, and one even thought it was a heart. I suppose I shouldn't have used red? What about the one below? Any thoughts? This one wasn't guessed correctly by the guesser, but was by another player who used a steal token. A Chessboard! Obviously!! Now in the game, you don't get to look at the card to see the options. I have just done this hear for illustrative purposes. You are supposed to keep your card secret. But I suppose there is an element to the fact that players could learn the cards and find it easier to guess the more they play. But there are a lot of building cards. 40 in total. However, there are only six challenge cards, so they become a little old quite quickly. A few more of those would not have gone a miss. One final thing to praise Big potato on is their eco packaging. Zero plastic. Minimal waste. Functional design. Well done Big potato. . I can see this game being a massive hit in our household for many years to come. It has been proudly placed alongside my other party games in the front row, ready to be played at every possible opportunity. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoy party games and likes having the opportunity to flex their artistic muscles in games. This is a game I would play with pretty much anyone, and the games on that list are not very long. It is just so simple to teach and grasp. It works with any person, group or environment. And it is so fun to play.

Asteroid Dice WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-5 You’ll like this if you like: Throw Throw Burrito Published by: Camden Games This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. Asteroid Dice feels like a combination between dodgeball, and in a very weird way, Libertalia. It has huge, squishy foam dice, that you will be throwing at your family and friends, and I am unsure if you need any more introduction than that?! Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Each player chooses a colour, and takes their set of cards. Place the foam dice into the centre of the player area and ensue all players are sat equal distance to them and each other. How To Play Simultaneously, players will now choose one of their seven cards to play face down on the table. When all players are ready, on a count of three, two, one, players will reveal their chosen card. The cards will either be a one to six (three not shown below for the sake of symmetry!) Or, one of the two special cards. The Losteroid card or the I Can't Decide card. As all players have the same cards, and you are slowly working your way through the deck, and you all know what everyone else has played, this is where the game starts to feel a little like Libertalia and the strategy comes in. You want to play a card that allows you to roll a higher number so you can win that round, but ideally not when other players play the same card. If players played a number card, they must now take the matching dice. But if another player played the same card as you (including special cards) this turn, a Brawl ensues. This is where both players try to grab their chosen dice the same time (either one if a special card was played) and throw it at the other player. They need to avoid the other players head, pet, precious vase, or sleeping Granny. If they are successful, they win all cards played by the players in the brawl for juicy end game points. If they miss, and the other player ducks, dodges, and dives in true dodgeball style, both players can make a grab for the thrown dice, wherever it may now be, and try again. If the thrown dice is caught, that player can then throw the dice back at the person who attacked them. Parry's do not count. It has to be a clean catch. Brawls can also happen with more than two players, if multiple duplicate cards are played at the same time. All players are now attacking each other with one dice. I would start running if I was you. Never be still in a game of Asteroid Dice! Once all required brawls are over, all players will now take a dice. The one they played if they did so alone. Or the dice they won if they were in a brawl. For any player in a brawl who lost, they can now take any remaining dice. If you played the I Can't Decide card you will take any remaining card at this point. All players now roll their dice and the highest number rolled wins all remaining cards. If someone played the Losteroid card, then before the roll takes place, they must declare any number out loud. If anyone then rolls that number, all cards played this round are discarded, bar the Losteroid card. Which is placed into any players hand, as chosen by the player who played it that round. If someone played the I Can't Decide card, they can re-roll their dice one time at this point. Players then pick up their cards and go again for the next round, less one card. This continues until all players have played all cards. Final scoring is calculated based on the numerical value of each card in each players score pile at the end of the game. If you have a Losteroid card in your hand, you have to discard your highest scoring card at this point. Most points wins! But really it is down to most hits with the dice! Let's be honest why we are all here. Is It Fun? I think the level of fun you will take out of this game will vary greatly based on the amount of fun you can see yourself having from throwing a foam dice at a loved one. For me, that meant crazy amounts of fun! And I think most children will agree! We did have the odd tear, as dice caught people in the eye from close range. We starting sitting a little further apart from each other at this point. And really enforcing the "no-headshots" rule! But mainly, playing this game created huge amounts of belly laughter and fun. I love it. It is a very simple game, and can be taught in minutes. It is the perfect game to take to a family gathering, works well outside, but not in the pub. As I found out. Sorry John. (My local landlord). You do need a bit of space, and ideally an environment where everyone in the near vicinity, playing or not, doesn't mind being hit by a foam dice. They do not hurt when they hit you. They are very soft. But it is not for everyone. And you need to ensure 100% compliance and acceptance for everyone present. Not just the players Again, sorry John! I would heartily recommend this game to any family, or group who enjoy silly, but fun games likes this. Games that can get you jumping up and moving around. You can play sat around a table. We have done that, but it does take away most of the challenge. Although we found a lot of throws were caught and simply returned, you don't always get your own way if you grab the dice first. But a little ducking and diving makes for a much more entertaining experience if players are up for that. This game feels like it has been made with a huge amount of joy, love, and happiness. And bar the odd dice in your tummy, you will feel this as you play.

Disney Animated WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Horrified, Disney Villainous, Back to the Future: Dice Through Time Published by: Funko Games Designed by: Prospero Hall This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. There is something special about Disney. Whatever your own feelings are on the brand, there is a unique feeling associated with the entire Disney world. To me, it means family, fun, and queues! But overall the emotion conjured by the little mouse is happiness. And the thought that this could somehow be packaged into a box and distilled in cardboard form excites me! There are a lot of great Disney games on the market, you can check my review for a number of them here. But this new one from Funko intrigues me. It offers a cooperative experience, where players race to 'complete their films' before the time is up. A simple concept. But the feeling this gives... it's like I am transported back to a Disney studio in the 50's, at the beginning stages of creating a Disney classic. I cannot really say why. The art style does not suggest that. The gameplay does not encourage that. But it is how I feel when I play. Let's get it to the table and see how it feels for you. Set Up There are five films to choose from. Make your choice as to which one you want to play with and simply place your background board face up in front of you, along with the background tiles placed to the left of your board, three character cell cards placed underneath, and your action board to the right. Then add any wood tokens your chosen film has near your action board and take one Magic token to start the game with. Each board shows the films release date in the top right. The player whose film was released first becomes the first player and takes the first player token. Next, place the Studio board in the middle of the table. Create a supply of the remaining magic tokens here, and then shuffle the Animation cards, placing them into their allocated slot. Each player draws three cards from this deck and adds them to their hand. Players can share this information freely with other players at any point. The next step is to put the deadline token onto the starting position of the deadline track. Next, place the Paint tokens onto their spaces in the Ink and Paint section on the Studio board in any random location. Then take the Villain Tiles linked to the films each player chose. Place them onto the studio board, calamity side up, in order of the films release, earliest on top. Then take the five Action tiles and place them face up on the five spaces on the main board. You can do this is any order. Next, take the calamity cards from the films the players chose and shuffle them together. Place them next to the top right of the main board. Then, based on the player count and level of difficulty you want, flip over one to eight calamity cards. You are now ready to start the game. Check the section in the rule book for the correct amount. How To Play The game plays through two main phases, starting with the players turn, then the villains. On the players phase, starting with the first player, players will take it in turns to choose one of the five action tiles, and place it in front of them. They will then carry out that action based on the number it was at. For example, if you took the Ink and Paint action tile from the three location, you can do this action three times. The five actions are as follows. Sound: This lets you carry out your own unique player action, shown on your action board. Each character has their own power, such as the Alice in Wonderland player, who can draw two cards, then place the Cheshire cat token onto any other action card. Later, when another player chooses that action and returns the Cheshire cat to you, another player can then take the action this player is doing at the same value. Another example, is the Aladdin board, which allows you to place the Genie above any action, and similarly to the Cheshire cat, when taken, allows the Aladdin player, and the player who took the Genie to then carry out a bonus action detailed on the Aladdin players action board. Animation This simply lets you draw extra animation cards. Ink and Paint This allows you to take ink and paint tokens from the main board. This is used mainly to add your characters to your board when the background is finished, but also to ward off certain calamity cards. Background This allows you to place the background tiles into your board. When they cover certain spots you can take additional actions, or claim extra magic tokens. Magic This allows you to carry out any other action at its current cost for the payment of one magic token. All of these actions are done in the process of traying to complete your background, add your characters, and then defeat your enemy. When your action is done, move all the action cards along one space, and then replace the action you took back into the lowest available space. Once you have taken your main action, you can then spend any cards or paint tokens you may have to either add a character cell (if the background is finished) activate a character (if they are on your board) and/or remove a calamity card(s). Each round, new calamity cards will be drawn based on your player count and difficulty, and they need to be removed otherwise the villain that round will activate more often. The four types of calamity card are as follows. Paint - Cards that need specific paint tokens to get rid of them. Cards - Cards that need specific animation cards to get rid of them. Actions - Cards that need specific actions to be taken to get rid of them. So the above card will need what ever action is currently in the second spot to be taken in order for this calamity card to be removed. Unremovable cards - These cannot be removed, even using character powers. Once all players have had their turn, it is then the turn of the current villain. Whichever one is currently top of the pile activates. Simply follow the instructions on the villain, advancing the deadline token one space, checking no one has more than seven cards, and then enacting the calamity effect for each calamity card still present. Finally, draw back the correct amount of calamity cards and go again. The game continues until all players have successfully completed their film, or the time runs out. To complete your film, you need to fill your background, add your characters, and then defeat your villain. This is different for each player, but is shown on the action board. When you have added your final character, flip your action board to show your final task. This will be to discard a number of tokens and cards, alongside other unique requirements for each character. When this is done, you can take your specific villain back from the main board, flip it over and place it onto your own board. Your film is done! Now, try to help the other players do the same before it is too late! When you are done, each film's components can be neatly packed away in its own little box, ready to go again another time. Is It Fun? As you can tailor this game very easily to the player count and difficulty, every game of Disney Animated has been a very tense affair for me. I have won or lost with a turn or two to spare every time. This is exactly what is needed with a game like this. Working cooperatively towards a team goal, based on a time limit without tension is just completing a series of tasks. With tension means you have a game. And a really fun one at that! There is a real sense of progression in the game as you go through the various stages of completing your film. First with the background, then the characters, and finally the villain. It feels a little like an engine builder at this point too, as adding the characters to your background increases your powers, offering you new powerful options on your turn. There are a few opportunities for cascading turns, as you cover certain spots with your background, or enact certain character powers. Which not only feels fun and satisfying, but also imperative! This is a race against the clock remember, and turn efficiency is crucial to winning. There are five great film to choose from. All of which offer a very different experience, from the character powers you can use, the villain you need to defeat, and also the unique character powers given to you based on your sound action. It's great to see these different films interreact together. Although it feels somewhat abstract. You are a film. Not a character. The game doesn't even encourage you to feel like a producer, director or studio even. No, they want you to be the film. The concept of the movie. And you need to make it become a reality. But I love that. It genuinely works, and thrusts me into the wonderful world of Disney. I like how most of the powers offer you a chance to help other players. Give them extra cards, or increase their turn power. In a cooperative game, I like it when this happens. It makes the experience better when you are encouraged to help others, and work together as a team. I would recommend this film to any fan of Disney, family cooperative games, or people looking to bring a sense of light-hearted tension to their tables. I see this being endlessly expandable with new movies added at later stages. Something that I really hope happens! It would be such a simple but wonderful thing to do. I want every Disney film ever produced made in this format! This could be a real cash-cow for Funko. Cash cows sound bad, but they work as they are fun and popular. And a little bit addictive! Just like this game.

Scythe: Encounters WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-7 You’ll like this if you like: Scythe Published by: Stonemaier Games Designed by: Jamey Stegmaier This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. Scythe is one of the most popular games ever made. It looks great. Plays great. And offers a lot of replayability. One part of the game that is very popular are the Encounter cards. During set up, Encounter tokens are placed onto various hexes on the main board. When you reach them with your leader, you can take them off the board, draw the top encounter card, and make a choice from three interesting options. In the main game, there are 32 encounter cards. They look gorgeous, and offer a sense of adventure, exploration, and player choice. They are a perfect addition to the game. The only thing anyone could say about them is you want more. This small expansion fixes that and offers 32 new cards to add to the game. Let's get them to the table and see what they add. Set Up To add these cards to the game, simple shuffle them into the deck of existing encounter cards during set up. Then place them in to the usual space on the board. Done. How To Play When you would normally draw an Encounter card, continue to do so as you usually would. Simple! They work with all other combination of Scythe expansions. That was easy! Is It Fun? It is worth noting that these cards were made by Jamey Stegmaier, the designer of Scythe, with fans! Jamey asked fans to submit ideas. He then turned these into these 32 new cards. What a great idea. However, fans are fans, and designers are designers for a reason. Some of these cards do feel a little unbalanced, but they sure do bring the fun! The art all comes from other parts of the game, but has not been seen on cards before. It all feels very much in keeping to the world built in this game, if not technically offering anything specifically new. But it looks great. As does everything in the Scythe universe. There seems to be a little more humour in these cards than the base game. Take the betting on a game of lawn tennis above. It seems like some of the fans of Scythe wanted to have a bit of fun and imagine what it was like for all people in this world. There are some very interesting options too, such as being able to gain other faction abilities for the rest of the game such as in card 56 above. Or in card 52 where you can take resources from other players. Some cards are perhaps too overpowered, but then they wont always work for you. One card allows you to pay nine power to gain a combat star. If you get this early in the game it may be hard to use, but you can use combat cards. It feels like too high of a reward, despite the cost. I like how some of the cards have hidden benefits. Such as one card which tells you not to read out loud the text, because if you choose this option, at the end of the game, you will gain $3 for each farm you control. There are only four cards like this, so if someone claims an encounter card and doesn't read out loud what they are choosing, you will have a good idea of what they are doing once you have learnt these new card. Saying that, it will take three to five games to do that if you mix them up with the original deck. Depending on how many players you have and how people play. As I was excited to get through them all quicker, I played the first two games just with these cards. It's up to you how you want to integrate them into your deck. I think it was a wonderful thing that Jamey invited fans to be a part of the game in this way. I wish more designers did this for more games. It would have been nice to have each contributors name on the card, but in the absence of that, just knowing you had a contribution to the world of Scythe must be a wonderful thing. This mini expansion was perhaps a little overpriced at the start but you can now get it for around £13 if you look around. For any fan of Scythe I would say it is a must have.

Coatl: The Card Game WBG Score: 7 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Coatl, Betta Published by: Synapses Games Designed by: Pascale Brassard, Etienne Dubois-Roy This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. By Steve Godfrey Did you know Coatl is a Nahuatl word meaning "serpent" or "twin"? Now as someone who isn’t a particular fan of snakes, the idea of twin snakes is an absolute nightmare! For some reason though the colourful feathers go a long way to hide the nightmare fuel within and luckily the game itself is fun enough to keep me interested. How to feather a snake. Each player will receive a level card, 4 feather cards and a prophecy card which is placed on the “0” edge of their level card. Two prophecy cards are then placed face up in the middle of the table and the rest in a face down deck as a supply. Lastly, shuffle the temple cards and place one face up in the middle of the table and return the rest to the box. On your turn you’ll place down two feather cards on the same or different ends of your Coatl. Each card has two colours of feather on either side and when you place one down you may rotate the card and you can either place it directly next to a card, or you can overlap the colour at the end. When you’ve placed one card you can score any of the prophecy cards out on the table, including your opponents, as long as you satisfy the conditions with the feather card you’ve just placed. To do this you basically have to match the patterns in your Coatl with the prophecy card(s) you score. You then see how many times that pattern is satisfied in your Coatl and move that prophecy card to the appropriate space on your level card. You can score multiple cards that are on the table but you can only take one from each opponent per round. The more times you can satisfy a pattern on a card the better as they’re worth more points at the end of the game. However if you manage to satisfy a prophecy card three times, either in the same round or across multiple, you can lock it in place. This means that it’ll score six points at the end of the game and it can no longer be stolen by other players. Once you’ve placed both cards, draw back up to four feather cards. Patterns come in a pretty big variety from simply requiring adjacent colour combinations to some cards requiring you to overlap other cards/colours. After everyone has played eight feather cards (four rounds) everyone gets a final turn in which they place a head and a tail on their Coatl and score in the usual way. Everyone has a deck of head and tail cards and they come in every colour so you're not limited. At the end of the game you score points for the position of all the prophecy cards around your level card and then see how many goals you achieved on the temple card. If you achieve one you get three points or six if you do both. Doing a feather dance. Underneath all the beautiful art and colourful layout of Coatl the card game lays a really good, thinky puzzle you get to solve every time you lay down a card. Before you place down you’ll be intensely staring back and forth around the table, then back to your cards, then back to the table, then looking at your friend's Coatl and thinking, man does that look pretty, before hurriedly realising it’s your turn and that you should probably be playing a card. This game is the embodiment of maximising your turn. In a perfect world you’ll want to be able to take a prophecy from the display, from your opponents and score your own and if you can score them multiple times then you're onto a winner. Now obviously that’s not going to happen a lot, if at all, so you’re left with trying to puzzle out the best use of your turn and that’s where the fun lies. Well unless you count seeing your opponents trying to hide their cards from you like school kids trying to hide their answers from their mates. I mentioned earlier that you can steal prophecy cards from your opponents and a lot of what you’re doing is trying to gauge not only IF you can steal from them, but also the likelihood that they’ll be able to steal that card back before you can lock it in. There’s a definite sense of a The Good the Bad and the Ugly/ Reservoir Dogs style standoff as you're staring at everyone else wondering who’s going to try and take whose cards first. I think, because of that stealing aspect of the game that it’s not going to be for everyone. It’s just on the verge of take that. You’re not necessarily targeting a player because you’re merely taking advantage of what you’ve already built and what’s in your hand, but having something taken off of you after you’ve put the effort towards it doesn’t necessarily feel great. Especially in higher player counts when you have to wait three turns to see if your efforts and planning have been swiped away from you. Now this does increase the tension between rounds and that can be a lot of fun. But if you’re constantly getting your cards stolen it can easily feel like you're fighting a losing battle. Especially if you're not able to get cards back. Don’t pull on its tail! Coatl: the card game is essentially a tug of war mixed with a puzzle and the winner will invariably be the one who can figure out how to balance the two. This does put me in mind of games like Sagrada or the recently reviewed Betta, also by Synapses games. They’re all games which can have players pondering their turns trying to play out the possibilities, which can be fun, but equally if you're playing with someone who is prone to analysis paralysis then just be warned that games could easily stretch way beyond the 30 minute playtime on the box. I know that some of the above does sound more on the negative side but Coatl the card game is a fun game and if the things I mentioned above aren’t an issue for you or just something that your group gravitates towards then I’d certainly recommend giving it a try. It’s a big puzzle in a small box with some beautiful artwork, what’s not to love!……..well, the snakes obvs.

Ierusalem WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Dune Imperium, Orleans, Tiletum Published by: Devir Designed by: Carmen García Jiménez This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. This is a game about trying to get a good seat for supper. And not just any old supper. The Last Supper. You know? The one where Jesus broke bread with his disciples. And, so it turns out, a load of others too, just before he was crucified. Not via cruel social media posts for his stale bread and smelly fish, but literally. Irrespective of your own faith, this is an intriguing theme for a game. And I was instantly fascinated by this. But does this game live up to the billing of being based on one of the most sort after dinner invitations of the last 2000 years? Let's get it to the table and find out. Set Up I am not going to go into the full set up or rules run down for this game as it will be long, and frankly rather dull. Instead, I will give you a brief overview so you can get an idea for the game and turn structure. For a more detailed look at the rules, I suggest having a look here. Getting this game ready is mainly about sticking stuff. For your first game, there are pages and pages of stickers to add to the meeples, resources, and, well, it seems just about everything! You don't have to do it of course. It even says so in the rules. I presume as there is so much and they don't want to put people off. But, come on. Which one of us really is not going to do this? Anyway. An hour or two later, you can begin to set up for your first game. It will look roughly like the below, bar a few changes based on your player count and decisions you make during your own set up. But ultimately, you are setting up some of your own workers into the three main resource gathering locations on the left. Placing some cards that you can acquire in the top market and middle favours area. Along the bottom you will arrange a number of tiles that represent the parables. Along the right is the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high council at this time. This acts as the game clock. You will place some scoring tiles here. Then finally in the middle at the top you will place the 12 Apostles on the left and the starting layout for the Last Supper on the right. Jesus gets the best seat, it is his party after all. And a few other followers may be placed if you are playing below a four player count. Each player will take their own player board, favours tiles, illumination tile, followers and their starting hand of cards. You are now ready to play. How To Play The turn structure to this game is very simple, but the options available to you are deliciously varied. On your turn, you will simply play one card from your hand. Then, if you have met the required criteria for any of the three apostle meeting spaces, you can visit one of Jesus' 12 closest pals, and gain the benefit they offer. You then have the chance to buy a new card to build up your deck before refilling your hand. Sounds simple right? Well, getting a good spot at Nando's is hard enough, sitting next to the big man at his Last Supper is going to be a challenge. They don't just let anyone in. You have to play a Euro game first. Lets talk more about the card play in this game, as that is where the majority of the juice comes from. And oh my, is there some juice! This is like when you bite into some juicy looking fruit and it bursts even more juice than you were expecting into your mouth, only for even more juice to flow as you pull your teeth away, covering your jaw with yet even more juice. There are three types of cards in the game. The starting hand cards, which are the same for all players. And then the 33 A.D. and Mahane cards which can be either bought, as is the case for the Mahane cards, or acquired for carrying out the Do A Favour action, as is the case with the 33 A.D. cards. These secondary cards act in the same way, but offer extra actions when played. The cards work in multiple ways. First, by showing an area on the top left where you can send one of your available followers. This is mainly to gather resources from the Desert, Mountain, or Lake. But can also be to buy new cards from the Market, or be used as a way send extra followers to these locations by visiting the Temple. You will want more followers in these locations because each time you go to one of them, you will can gain resources equal to the number of followers currently present. You can never have more than three followers in each location though and sending them to each one costs either on, two, or three Denarii. The currency used in this game. Once you have carried out the top location action, you will move onto the bottom Follower action. There are 11 main actions, so I won't go through them all here. But they are all clearly explained on a very good player aid that each player can use. The main actions allow you to place your followers into the available locations at The Last Supper or gain resources, money or extra cards. You will have to pay a cost to join the Last Supper, (hence why you need resources) based on the locations proximity to the centre, and best spots. Jesus has all the good chat. You want to be near him. Plus, you will get first use of the gravy boat. When you add a follower this way, you take them from the space in your warehouse, clearing room for you to later hold more resources. But you can choose to instead fill this spot with an offering token which clogs the spot for the rest of the game, but rewards you with end game points. This delicate balance between your warehouse spots is one of the first very juicy elements of this game. Other actions allow you to listen to a parable, which is essentially a very addictive set collection mini game that can score you extra points at the end of the game. You can also Do A Favour which means you will gain a 33 A.D. card and must give one or your favour tokens to another player, this gives them an immediate benefit of money, resources, or extra actions, as well as acting an an additional symbol to help with the Apostle action. Helping other players in this way feels odd at first. But when you realise the benefits to you out way anything you are giving away, and of course, other players will start to return those favours, you will get into the swing of things. Treating your neighbours as you want to be treated yourself, and all that. Oh Jesus! You got me again. When you play a card, you will place it into one of three spaces on your own player board. You will leave the top location visible like below so that you can see the location symbols. Matching these to the Apostles symbols is how you can visit them in the second part of your turn. Once you have finished with all the actions on your card, which can run for a while sometimes, there are a lot of opportunities in this game for cascading effects! You will move on to see if you have met the criteria to visit an apostle. Below each row of Apostles, there are three location symbols. If you have matched these three with three cards in the same column on your player board, or a combination of cards played alongside favour tokens given to you, you can then visit an Apostle. This will allow you to add the matching Apostle onto one of the spaces at the table next to Jesus, and then gain the benefit of doing so. Subject to their being the appropriate Apostle left. The Purple Apostle lets you add one of your followers to the table, they get a plus one! The Orange apostle rewards you with instant points based on who is sat directly behind where you place this apostle. The White apostle lets you swap positions at The Last Supper between one of your followers and one other follower, getting a better, higher point scoring spot for yourself and messing with another player in the process. And the final Apostle is Judas. He rewards the player who takes him with 5 Denarii and then any player who has their followers behind him at The Last Supper will receive penalty points at the end of the game. Matching three symbols to meet the apostles takes at least three turns obviously, but you can also use your illumination tile to do this action for free as a one time action. By the end of the game, the spaces around the main table get pretty packed. The blue ones are lying down above as this was a three payer game, and we placed the fourth dummy player like this just to remind us. They essentially act as blockers but can be swapped with other followers during the game. This is the only change for a three player game. The two player games has a lot of changes, using the other side of the board, removing favours from the game entirely, and adding a lot more blockers to the table. It works well, but is ten minutes extra rules and teach. The game runs until the Sanhedrin marker reaches the top of the tracker. It moves each time the matching symbol is played on any of the cards. Along the way, various mini scoring rounds will be triggered where players are rewarded for a variety of things such as the number of parables, resources, or offerings they currently have, number of favours done, or number of followers sat at the table. The game immediately ends when the last space is reached and final scoring ensues. Players will be rewarded with points for the number of parables they collected, the followers at the last supper and their relative locations to Jesus and other Apostles, any offerings they collected during the game, and finally if they have not used their Illumination tile. Your points will be added to any points you acquired along the way during the main game, and the most points wins. Is It Fun? Before I get onto that, I feel I need to talk a little bit about the theme. The larger publishers have not really touched this area. There are a number of independent games with Biblical or religious themes, but not many from the bigger players. As such, it does stand out. This is a resource management game with very clever multi-use cards, deck-building, and some very interesting area-control scoring. But it will be the theme that gets talked about the most. Personally, I like the theme. But I can see this being polarising due to the religious nature of the game. Not everyone has the same belief or faith, and they may be drawn or pushed away from this game based on what they believe. Personally, I hope this can be separated from the games mechanics and flow, as that part is excellent. It's a euro game with a theme added on essentially, as most euro games are. You won't be thinking too much about Jesus, the Apostles or listening to parables as you play. You will be thinking about how you can maximise your turn and get the most out of your hand of cards. But what I will say, is that the theme has been treated with reverence and respect, and as far as I can tell, based on as much historical fact as possible with an event of this nature and religious background. There seems to be a lot of evidence proving that Jesus did exist at this time, and this Last Supper did occur. It's up to you if you believe Jesus was a regular man or something else. But either way, he had the hottest ticket in town in 33 A.D. and a brilliant game has been made about it, so I am all in! The flow in this game is phenomenal. It takes a few turns to get into the swing of things, and it can be a little daunting to teach at first. But it all comes together very well thanks to the excellent rule book, clear iconography and brilliant player aids. As you progress game to game, you will feel very at home with the rules. I found my mind becoming in sync with the strategy the more I played. I wanted to go back for more due to two main parts of the game. I love the scoring. I like to chase the maximum in the parables but the location of your followers at The Last Supper is what it is all about. Placing, moving, and manipulating their locations is so fun. The second part is the card play. Multi-use cards are always fun for me, and they are used to perfection in this game. The top and bottom action is brilliantly implemented and the choices offered on both are stunningly balanced, always appealing, and make you feel like you are in full control of your destiny. The opportunity to create cascading turns is high, and you will often be rewarded with chaining combo-tastic turns that feel great. The one downside of this is that the down time between turns can be high. There is not lot you can do between turns other than plan which card to play, or watch what the other players are doing. If you are looking for a new Euro game that takes an interesting theme, delivers intricate and thoughtful options as you play, and executes a well balanced and strategic experience, then this could be the game for you. In a world proliferated with Euros, theme is important. So, this may or may not appeal. I would urge anyone turned off to look beyond that and give this a try. The game is good enough for anyone to look past the theme. If the theme does appeal, and you are a euro fan, well this could become one of your favourite games of all time.

Nimalia WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Kingdomino, Rune Published by: Lucky Duck Games Designed by: William Liévin This is a free review copy. See our review policy here. Nimalia is a tile laying game with a cute animal theme from a first time designer. It does not scream out "BUY ME!" At first glance is does not look like it is offering anything new or original. However, packaged within this tiny box is a joyful array of fun that packs a punch far mightier than you may expect. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Set up, like everything in Nimalia, is very simple. Place the five scoring tiles out like below, alongside the round tracker. Select four round cards, one of each colour, and place them on their corresponding spot on the tracker. The game suggest four specific cards for your first game, but then after that, pick however you like. Shuffle the main cards and deal three to each player, giving them a score marker of their own player colour, placed on the zero space of the score tracker. Finally, place the round marker onto the number one spot of the round tracker. You are now ready to play. How To Play Each player will choose one of the three cards in their hand to place in front of them. The first card can go anywhere. Each player will then pass the remaining two cards in the direction shown by the round tracker. This alternates between rounds, clockwise and anti-clockwise as the game progresses. Each player will then choose one card from the two they have just been given. This second card must cover at least one of the four areas on the first card played. It can cover all four spaces if you wish, or just two. But not three, unless you get out some scissors. But it has to cover at least one. Through the game you must stay building within a six-by-six grid. Finally, each player will play the final card handed to them. This is round one done. Simple right? Players will now score for the blue and green score card as indicated by the black lines connecting them to the first round on the score tracker. In round two players will score the green and yellow card. In round three the blue and red. Then in rounds four and give you will score three cards. The green, yellow and red in the fourth round, and the yellow, red and blue in the final fifth round. Soring will be based on grouping certain tiles together, placing certain animals into specific positions, or creating rivers. After every round, each player will be dealt three more cards and the next round will begin as before. As you play through each round, you will need to find a balance between scoring for the current round, and planning for future rounds. Some of the scoring cards reward points based on your relative position against other players. You will need to be mindful of the cards they are laying, and the cards you are handing over to them. The choice you make when drafting cards is not just about what works best for you, but what cards do you want to give to the other players. Is It Fun? Playing Nimalia is surprisingly engaging. Considering you are only every choosing one card from three, and placing it into a six-by-six grid, the choice feels quite complex at times. Do you want to build up your savannah as much as possible for scoring this round at the sacrifice of other rounds. Will that mean blocking a friendly looking penguin which was set to score you three points in next round if you had left it out uncovered. You can see your neighbour is building a long river, and you don't want to give them more river pieces but the card with the river square in your hand doesn't work so well for you and the other one in your hand does. The balance between building your own area and monitoring the other players is one thing. But adding to the that is your focus moving from what you are scoring this round as well as what is potentially possible for you in subsequent rounds. It all makes this game move from a generic filler to something of genuine substance. I very much enjoy this balancing act, and find the game both soothing, and challenging at the same time. Its a game I have been able to share with my children (ten and seven) who found the game to be approachable, but entertaining, and "cute!" Being forced to cover something up each time is a clever addition to the rules. Simply being able to build out like Kingdomino would be a mistake for this game. You need the jeopardy of losing something each time to gain something later, to make the balance of this game work. Within the box there are multiple scoring cards to choose from. There is a lot of variety here. It will take a long time, and a lot of plays to grow tired of these. They are double sided, and create an almost infinite number of possible set ups to the game. Some work better together than others though. I like the bottom two together, rewarding you for placing Giraffes as well as growing your savannah, where the Giraffes of course live. They all explain themselves very well too. The rule book will give you detailed information on each card, but I found after a game or two, they all started to make sense in what they were saying. The iconography is very clear. I would recommend this game to any family who enjoys games like Kingdomino and are looking for a game that has just that little bit more interaction. Nimalia looks great and plays very simply. But I found it to be far more substantial than I first thought when I learnt the rules. As each game went by, I saw more and more complexity to this game. The choices are simple in terms of your options. But they always feel significant. This means the game plays very quickly, even for beginners. But you always feel like you are making important decisions despite the fast pace. Each game takes just 15 minutes, even with new players. And with all the variety in the scoring cards, it is hard to play this game just once. It certainly sits within the filler category, but could end up taking a lot more time at your table than you first thought.

Lost Ruins of Arnak WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Dune Imperium, Clank Published by: Czech Games Edition Designed by: Elwen, Mín This is the reviewers own copy. See our review policy here. By Steve Godfrey When it comes to hype in board games I'm very much the Marcus Brody to everyone else’s Indiana Jones. I'm usually the one waiting in the wings to see if Indy brings me something that either wouldn’t fetch £10 on Antiques Roadshow or is worthy of being guarded by top men…..top…men. So here I am jumping aboard the back of the hype train to see if this is where my fear of snakes comes from or if I’ve chosen wisely in playing this game. Before we jump into some ancient ruins I will say that I’ve painted the tablets in my copy but the unpainted originals still look awesome. How to explore Arnak Set up by picking a side of the board to play on. For your first game it’s suggested to use the bird temple side of the board and I’d agree with that. Populate the board with enough tokens for the number of players. Give each player their starting cards and two fear cards. You’ll know which one the fear cars are because they look like the creepy wolf from the end of Neverending Story! Place out one temple card and put the staff next to it. On the other side of the staff fill the rest of that row with item cards. Everyone draws five cards from their deck and you're ready to go. On your turn you can do any number of free actions. These are all depicted with a lightning bolt symbol. Then you can take one normal action. Digging at will require you to place your explorer into a free slot on a space and then pay the cost of the transport icon. These are mostly on the cards in your hand which you’ll need to spend. Then take the benefits of the space. Discovering a site is much the same as digging. Except here you choose one of the blank worker placement spots, pay three or six compasses depending on the level and add a tile from the top of the stack in that space. You instantly gain those rewards then add a guardian to the space as well. To defeat a guardian simply pay the resources on the guardian (as long as you're in the same space as it) you then gain that guardian. It will give you a boon to use if you want. Either way it’ll be worth five points at the end of the game. If you don’t defeat this by the time the round needs you’ll get one fear card into your deck. You can buy item cards which cost the coin value on them. These immediately go at the bottom of your deck for greater chance of being drawn next round. Temple cards cost compasses and their effects trigger as soon as you buy them. They then go into your play area to be shuffled in at a later time. When these cards come out again you need to pay a tablet to use their main ability. Lastly you can move up the research track. Pay the resource cost and move either your magnifying glass or your journal to the next level. However your journal can never move past the magnifying glass. When you move onto a space, take any available bonus tokens and then take the bonus of that space depending on which item you moved up. Both will give you victory points depending on how far up the track they are at the end of the game and you can buy additional victory points when you reach the top of the track. Once everyone has passed, shuffle your played cards and put them at the bottom of your deck then draw back up to five cards. Remove the temple and item card from either side of the staff, slide it up one space (this also acts as a round marker) and fill up the temple card row. You’ll find as the game goes on that you’ll have more temple cards out and less item cards. At the end of five rounds score points for cards you’ve brought, guardians, idols, points from the research track and minus any from fear cards still left in your deck. Devices of such lethal cunning. Every now and then a game will come along that just feels like it's been made specifically for me. It’s like someone has trawled through the depths of my brain and picked out everything I like in games and mushed them all together in a perfect combination*. Those hefty combinations don’t always work mind you. Sometimes they turn out like an old photo you’ve got of yourself wearing a horrific combination of clothes that you swear looked cool at the time. Thankfully Arnak has avoided that 90’s nightmare and given us a combination of mechanisms that fit together so well it’s almost baffling that no one had thought of it sooner. *I’d like to take this opportunity to apologise to the designers for all the weirdness and anything else you may have found whilst trawling through there. Designers Min and Elwen have managed to take all of these mechanisms, deck building, worker placement, multi use cards and resource management, all things that could potentially power a game all on their own, and managed to balance them out, I would say, almost perfectly. Everything you do feeds off of everything else which means you’ll need to do a bit of everything if you want to get anywhere which I love. It’s all one big game of combos that houses a load of smaller combos. There are so many great games out there that will have multiple paths to victory and can have you practically ignoring one element of the game all together. I’ve not got a problem with that at all, it’s a great way to keep a game fresh everytime you play as you can explore something new each game. Great Western Trail has that and I love that game. But that only really shines if you’re able to play enough times to explore those different strategies. So Arnak having it all compacted so you get a taste of everything, whilst still giving you an opportunity to focus more on one aspect is great regardless of how many plays you’ll get out of it. No path ever feels like you’re “just settling for it” because you can't do what you really want to do. Everything will get you something, it all just comes down to you and how you're going to spend your hard earned wealth. So many grails to choose from. How you spend your resources will throw up some interesting choices. Compasses for example are needed for discovering a new site, but they’re also good for spending on temple cards. So now you’ll need to decide on if you want to take a known quantity of a card or go and gamble by discovering a site and seeing what you get. It’s like having a tiny (insert current favourite game show host here) on your shoulder asking if you want to gamble or take the card, “well I’ve had day lovely day Ben but I think I’m going to take the card” You'll have these questions with every resource you’ll acquire through the game. That also goes for the cards in your hand as well. Do you save it for its travel icon or use it for its ability. It won’t be long before you’re agonising over which way is the more productive use for each one. The amount of times I’ve played a card down for its travel icon and it’s like time slows down and every moment before it hits the table I’m wondering if I’ve made the right choice! The whole game is reminiscent of being a gamer in a FLGS. “I’m going to spend my money on this…..ooh or I could use it for that and that’s just as good….oooh but I really want that thing over there” except that your FLGS doesn’t give out gems, well mine doesn’t anyway. If yours does let me know. Regardless of the amount of choices you have, turns seem to move at a good pace. The only time a turn slows down is if someone has found a nice combo they can trigger and usually you don’t mind because everyone is watching this feat wondering how the heck they’re managing to pull that off….and making sure they aren’t cheating of course. The cleverest part of the game for me is the way it approaches its deck building. Every item card you buy will immediately be put on the bottom of your deck rather than your play area. This gives cards a greater chance of being drawn and in early rounds when you have fewer cards then it’s pretty much a guarantee that you’ll get them next round. Given that this is only a five round game it’s very much needed. Having almost instant access to those cards is a great way to help plan your next round and helps you get to the interesting stuff faster. If you’re really impatient (like me) and you can’t wait till the next round to see your new item acquisitions to come out you also have temple cards. These are your instant gratification cards. They really help with keeping those combos going and can act as a little ray of hope when you’ve got a few spare compasses and just want to eke out one.more.thing before you have to pass. Even better, it may even give you enough to claw another turn. In a game like this an extra turn could make a world of difference. This belongs in a museum! The way the card market works is a little piece of brilliance. On round one you have one temple card out and five item cards. As the rounds move on you’ll have more temple cards out and less item cards. It’s a great way of reflecting how people buy cards as the rounds go on. It's less and less likely you'll buy item cards since there’ll be less chance they’ll end up in your hand, unless you have multiple ways of drawing cards. So having more temple cards to choose from with their instant effects makes a ton of sense. Much like Clank, Arnak is one of those odd deck builders where you want to keep your deck slim for the purposes of efficiency. But then every card is worth points, so maybe more is better? Despite everything that’s going on in Arnak they’ve managed to keep the spirit of everything intact. You get the “don’t take my space” tension from the worker placement, the satisfying building and thinning your deck, the thought provoking choices from the multi use cards and the planning involved with using your resources. All that comes in a package of a great theme and artwork which weirdly makes sense. Of course your magnifying glass will move up a research track before your journal. You can’t write stuff down if you haven’t experienced it, although if you’ve read any of Brian Blessed’s stories you do start to wonder. I was a touch sceptical about this one, despite all the hype. After going through the rules I wasn’t sure how much it’d be possible to get done in five rounds. With only two workers and what felt like a limited amount of actions I thought the game would be over before I knew it. Certainly during the first round you can’t help but feel you're not going to get anywhere. But as the game progresses, as you get more cards in your deck, as you start exploring, gathering resources and start moving up the research track and gathering bonus; everything starts to really open out. Turns will become that touch longer as you start to do more things and string together more combos and by the end you’ll realise how smoothly the game has ramped up to this wonderful crescendo. Just as it hits its peak, just before it starts to drop off, the game is over. You’re always left with that “if I had one more round” feeling. I know that’s something that can hinder some games, but here it’s a perfect stopping point. It leaves you wanting that little bit more, but not in a way that makes you feel like you haven’t done enough during the game. A quick guide to solo adventuring. I also want to shout out the solo mode. I won’t go into how it works (you can discover that on your own) but it’s a simple enough system that you can run easily and without a lot of effort, which I really like. My main reason for mentioning it though is the four chapter solo campaign which you can play by either printing out the physical components or using the web app to run it. It’s a really great story that has a touch of a legacy element to it. But most of all it’s a really clever use of all the components in the game that have been used to a) help tell the story and b) used to change the way you play/win each game. At the time of writing this, as I understand it, they’ve now extended it to six chapters and added it to the new second expansion. It won’t stop me from getting it because I’d happily play through the campaign again. I only played it on a fairly easy level so I’d love to see what happens when I up the difficulty. You can find the solo campaign as it stands right now here - https://czechgames.com/en/lost-ruins-of-arnak/solo/ Lost Ruins of Arnak got a ton of love when it came out and for me it deserves all of it. It’s managed to explore its way into my top ten and I can see it hanging around for a long time…..well until it tries to remove a sacred idol and gets chased by a huge boulder that is.