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Radlands WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 2 You’ll like this if you like: Keyforge, Hero Realms, Marvel Champions Published by: Roxley Designed by: Daniel Piechnick By Steve Godfrey If, like me, you grew up in the 80s/90s then Radlands could easily sound like the coolest place on earth. Lots of people in bright neon, using words like radical and dude and riding around on skateboards. This game is a stark contrast to that. It’s a post apocalyptic mad max style waste land where water is the most precious resource and gangs will do everything they can to get it. Even destroy each other’s camps. Having said that you do get the neon……which is nice. Rules are rad Each player will receive six camp cards each and pick three to use. For your first game it will give each player a starting set of camps. Draw a number of cards equal to the number depicted on your camps and choose a first player. On your turn first trigger any event cards in the 1 space of their column then move any other events up one space. Draw a card, replenish your three water tokens then play as many actions as you can/want to. You can play a card by paying its water cost and (if it’s a person) playing it in front of one of your camps. Each camp can have at most two cards in a column in front of it. The card you play can’t be used this turn. If the card is an event card then it goes into the event column in the space numbered on the card. Junking a card lets you discard a card in your hand for the junk effect in the top left corner. You can draw another card for the cost of two water or, lastly you can pay one water to take the water silo card into your hand. At any time on a future turn you can discard this card to take an extra water from the supply for that turn only and then this card goes back in front of you to be used again. The last thing you can do is pay the water cost and use the ability of an undamaged card that was played on a previous turn or one of your camps. Your basic actions on cards include injuring an unprotected person. You pick a person at the front of one of your opponents columns and rotate them on their side. Your opponent can now no longer use that cards ability on their turn. It also means that if you hit them again they’re destroyed. The damage action is the same as injuring but this can also be used on bases as well. As long as there are no people in front of a camp you can damage it. Again two hits and it’s destroyed. The water action gets you extra water and the heal action lets you, well, heal a damaged card. Last of all is the raid action. Both players have access to a raiders event which they can deploy using this action. You can even use the raid action to advance your raider event and even trigger it. Once triggered it will damage an opponent's base regardless of any protection. This will, then go back to your supply to be played again when you next play the raid action. Water way, to have a good time. On my first game of Radlands, after an expert teach and an even more expert trouncing of my camps (by the brilliant @gamingoverboard on Instagram) I was asked “do you want to play again?” to which I said no. Not because I didn’t enjoy the game, but because I knew we had limited time and wanted to get in as many different games as we could in the time we had. I could have played him again, at that point I’d already lulled him into a false sense of security by pretending to be really inept at the game and could easily have pulled the old, “Ah ha, I’m not left handed” ruse from The Princess Bride and beaten him handily in the next game…..ahem Of all the games we played that day my one regret was saying no to playing Radlands again. It’d stuck in my mind in the days following and for me, that’s the sign that something has really got my attention. Either that or the trauma of that defeat was still lingering, it’s a gamble really. One thing that I think Radlands does extremely well is having this balance between always giving players a chance to do something useful on their turn, but also making your choices feel limited. As you look at the cards in your hands and the display of cards in front of you it’s easy to be distracted by the fact that you’ve only got three water to spend and then puzzling out how you can do as much as you can with seemingly limited resources. If that was all you could do on a turn then I still think the game would be fun, but could also lend itself to maybe some wasted turns or unspent water that could start to feel like untapped potential (now there’s a water pun I didn’t mean to make but sometime when you break the pun dam there’s no stopping it) there’s been just enough small tweaks that have made those types of turns a little less frequent. The water silo card is such a simple thing, but it makes that last unspent water actually useful for a future turn. Having that card in hand when you just need that extra water could make a huge difference. It could mean that you get to destroy an unprotected base rather than just damage it or trigger that one extra ability that lets you chain some actions together to make a big turn. On their first play I’ve seen people, myself included, grumpily picking up the silo card stating “I suppose I’ll just get the water silo then” as if it’s a waste of time. It’s not long before they start to see the potential in it as they’re happily using it to trigger some card abilities that will take out your base. This is much the same as the raiders card. Both are definitely not something to be underestimated. The biggest thing though is that junk effect and the amount of flexibility it gives you. I think for the most part you can tell in games like this when a card is going to be useful for your strategy or not. So having seemingly useless cards sat in your hand for turns on end can be irritating. Not that there’s a hand limit but it’s just annoying knowing that you can’t use them and then they spend the rest of the game gently mocking you as you hope that they may eventually become useful. The junk mechanic now gives you a reason to discard them and not only that, makes them actually useful for you. Junk effects can also be a godsend if certain card abilities just aren’t coming out for you. Drawing a card and seeing that little repair icon on the top of it, just when you need it can be a saving grace if you're clinging on to your last camp. They’re also good for stringing along a couple of combos here and there and giving you those big turns that are oh so satisfying. Of course the satisfying part is the look on your opponent's face as you start rendering their hard earned cards useless mwahaha. Tug of wa…ter Radlands presents a really great tug of war as you set up your array of post apocalyptic cannon fodder of people and punks (punks are people too) only to have them picked off one by one. It’s going to happen, it’s the nature of the game, but your main goal is for them to survive long enough so you can use their abilities and do the same to your opponent. The real tension kicks in when a camp is left unprotected. When it’s yours all you can do is sit there hoping beyond hope that your opponent doesn’t have something that can damage it, or worse destroy it before your next turn where you’ll be able to throw anyone in front of it to give you that much needed protection. If it’s your opponent’s camp that’s exposed then you're now praying that you’ve got something either in hand or in play that can help you exploit that lapse in defences and give you the edge. Never is this more true in both cases than at the start of the game when no one’s bases are protected. The first few turns are a desperate rush to both get your camps protected and, if possible, sneak in a cheeky bit of damage to a camp. It actually makes for a fun devil's bargain at the start of the game. Sure you could protect your camps, it’s the smart move, but if you’ve got the right cards then it could be all too tempting to stick your post apocalyptic boot in to do some damage and run away like you're playing a destructive game of knock down ginger. This one time at Radlands camp. The camps themselves come into their own as a constant source of actions and a great way of upping the replayability of Radlands. Camps can always be used even if they are damaged. The range of abilities on these camps and the huge range of possible combinations gives the game a great bit of asymmetry and being able to pick from six at the start means you have the potential to tailor each game to how you want to play. You could even get your own devastating engine going with the right set of cards. There is one set of the starting camps that I don’t think is particularly great. Two of them are all about damaging yourself or even destroying your own camp to do more damage to the enemy and as fun as those abilities are, I’m not sure I personally like them as first game camps. I tend to take that particular combination myself if I’m playing with someone new just because I do think you’re best off having at least one game under your belt before you’re confident destroying your own camps. That being said, once you’ve got a grasp of the game then I’d suggest picking your own as soon as possible. “Punks are people too” For a new player I think this is definitely worth a second go. The first game will most likely go to the experienced player so another go straight after, once you’ve got a handle on how you should be playing is worth it if you can. My one real negative would be the alternative end game trigger. If you manage to cycle through the deck twice before one player's camps are destroyed then the game ends in a draw. It’s good that they have an alternative there, but it’s just too long. This happened to me and my daughter on her first game and the game just dragged on as we were locked into this Doctor Strange style loop of damaging each other’s last base and then repairing it again. I can see why Dormammu got fed up and gave in. I’m not sure what the alternative would be as I think just cycling through the deck once would be too quick. Luckily this has only happened once so I can’t imagine it’s going to be a regular occurrence though. In case you were wondering we settled that game with a good old fashioned game of rock, paper, scissors. I lost. But that’s pretty much par for the course these days. Radical, awesome, mega! In a world where great two player games exist (you know your saying that in the voice of the trailer guy) Radlands is a stand out. It’s fun, quick, beautiful to look at and gives you a ton of replayability. Who knew trying to steal your neighbours water would be so much fun! #punksarepeopletoo

This was a free prototype sent to us for our unbiased opinions. The game is coming to Kickstarter soon. You can find out more about that, here. I love card games. I love the simplicity of just choosing a card from my hand and building something from there. The art and theme of Altar is very interesting to me, so I was excited to try this game. The rules are pretty simple, this is all about clever card play. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up In Altar, you play as a God, trying to control humanity. You will do this by building Shrines and discovering Altars in your Realm. I presume, to create a nice comfy place for your followers to bow down in obedience to you? In turns, players will choose a God board, placing it in front of them, adding one inactive Altar (face down) in one of the Altar spaces. In a two-player game each player will chose two boards. Then shuffle the follower cards and deal one to each player equal to the amount of players, plus one. So, four each on a three player game. In a two-player game, each player has two God boards and therefore gets dealt five cards as you treat this like a four-player game. Next place follower cards face up in the middle of the table, again equal to the number of players plus one and five for a two player game. Finally, place all the Shrine and Altar tokens on the table. The number of Shrine tokens varies based on player count. Six for a three player game. Nine for a two or four players. And 12 for a four player game. These are a limited resource as they are very important in the game. You are now ready to begin. How To Play Players will now take it in turns, starting with either the oldest player, or the player using the Ancient God character. On your turn, you will draw a card, either face up from the available cards, or face down from the deck. You will then perform one action. In a two player game, as you control two God boards, you will draw two cards and perform two actions. The three actions available to you are as follows. 1. Play a Follower card. Perform the actions on a card from your hand. Discarding the card and following the text on the card. Some cards let you place Altars, this is how you add them to your Realm (board). 2. Perform a Ritual. Discard three cards from your hand with a star symbol on to build a shrine on one of your God boards. 3. Worship a God. Play a worshiper card from your hand. Any card in your hand with the below worship symbol on can be placed face up next to one of your boards to offer your chosen God protection against certain attacks. (All cards shown have the star symbol on as well that can be used for performing a ritual). Some cards have a free action symbol on, as shown below. These can be played, discarded, and performed as much as you like each turn. If the draw deck runs out, or the final Shrine is used the game will immediately end. But what players are aiming for is to build the required number of Altars and Shrines. You need at least one Shrine to win the game, but you can build more if you wish. If you build one Shrine you will need to have four Altars to win the game. If you managed to build two Shrines, you now only need three Altars. Three built Shrines means only two required Altars. You just need to fill up the spaces on your board. Both boards need to be completed in a two-player game. The first to do this wins. If either of the other two end game conditions ends the game the person with the most Shrines wins. If there is a tie, refer to the God abilities to determine the winner. The Ancient God for example wins draws. The Goddess of Love loses draws. Is It Fun? Altar: Realms of the Gods is all about clever card play. And I love clever card play. The rules and end game conditions are all pretty simple. This is about using the cards is strategic ways to build your Altars and Shrines as best you can. You need to find a balance between defence and attack, whilst not forgetting to make actual progress with your own development. The game ends if the deck runs out remember, so you cannot spend to much time just messing with the other players. There are some very clever options available to you from the cards. I particularly like the Wizard that lets you destroy an opposing players Active Altar whilst adding an inactive Altar to your own Realm. I also find the Seer very interesting in the way that you can force an opponent to discard a card of your choosing, but you can also see their entire hand, thus getting an idea as to their current strategy. Each God has its own unique power too, which brings some interesting asymmetry to the game. It is fun to try each one and see how they interact with the other cards and players in the game. I particular like the Goddess of Death power which allows you to perform rituals with only two cards needed instead of the usual three. She cannot use Clerics to do this, but I found I was able to race along with the power. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys games that use cards in a clever way. Fantasy Realms comes to mind when playing this game. Not from the scoring or structure. But in the way the cards offer quite interesting and clever options if they can be played in the right combinations and order. Altar: Realms of the Gods looks great too. The art on the cards is stunning and the synergy between the followers and their powers in quite interesting. I will be interested to see how this game develops during its crowd funding stage and look forward to many more games in the future.

Scythe: Rise Of Fenris WBG Score: 9.5 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Scythe, Pandemic Legacy, Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isla Nublar. Published by: Stonemaier Games Designed by: Ryan Lopez, DeVinaspre, Jamey Stegmaier. Scythe is a huge game within the board game hobby. Currently ranked 16 on BGG, it is beloved by many within the community. Scythe launched Jamey Stegmaier into the stratosphere, and has seen a number of popular expansions made for it. You can read about one here, where I cover Invaders from Afar. An expansion I suggested was not as essential as this one. This review will be spoiler free, so there is only so much I can say or show. But this is a campaign game that develops over a series of eight games. It can be fully reset and played again, this is not a legacy game. Or the various components can be added into individual games of Scythe as different modules as you see fit. It also introduces a cooperative version of Scythe but this is not the exciting bit. I want to cover the campaign. The campaign is full of twists and turns, and I would hate to ruin that for you. But this review will give you an idea of how it plays and help you decide if this is for you or not. I will mark any part that has anything close to minor spoilers so you can move on if you like, but they will all be at the end in the "Is It Fun?" section. With that said, let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up First you need to decide how you want to play this game. You could just open everything up from the off and add any of the eleven modules within this box into a game of Scythe right from the beginning if you wanted. The rules explain how to do this, but to cover that would be full of spoilers. As such, I will focus on the campaign mode, where these modules are revealed one at a time across a series of eight differing games of Scythe. Some are full games close to what you may be familiar with. Others can end a little quicker, and play with differing set up and in game rules. But that is spoiler territory, so I will leave it at that. For your first game, set up the game as you usually would. The only real difference is that you will add one of the personal objective cards next to the triumph track to add an extra way to place a star. Other than this, the first game plays pretty much as any game of Scythe would. To play Rise of Fenris though, you will need to read through a few pages of extra rules and narrative text to explain the background of the setting. If you want to get a flavour for this you can read the first two pages below. If you want to keep that a surprise until you play, the below text should be small enough without clicking to enlarge to avoid! There are four more pages of this which if you really want to get into, you can check that out here, from page 8 onwards. Careful not to read any other pages beyond this though if you want to avoid spoilers. Inside the box you will find a number of tokens and boxes. Do not look at the tokens as this will easily spoil things to come, and definitely do not open any boxes. The game will clearly let you know when you are meant to do this. But it will look like this before you open anything. Don't worry, no spoilers here. But inside these boxes, oh my! How To Play When you are ready, turn to the first chapter of the game on page 14 of the rule book and complete the final part of the special set up for this first game. This adds new tokens to the board that I will not go into here, but that will determine the effects of the next game in a huge way. You wont know this until you finish the first game, so I won't spoil that here. The rest of game one works just as a usual game of Scythe. Just ask Rodney if you need some help with that. Scythe it is way to easier to learn than you first think, and you should not let the size of the box or the amount of components worry you. I promise it is a fairly simple game once you get the hang of things and it plays oh so smoothly. When you have finished the first game, you will start to log your progress on one of the below sheets. These are paper, and there are loads in the box. You won't feel like you are ruining a nice laminated rule book. On this sheet you will log you wins and loses across the eight games. Your wealth, (your final score) which accumulates over the eight games and can be spent on various upgrades such as the Perks and Mods that I won't go into, again for fear of spoilers. (But they are awesome!) In the Triumph log you will mark which stars you were able to place in each game, and these then accumulate over the eight games to earn you more money that can also be spent on upgrades. And that is all I can say about this without spoiling the game. Below I will explain what I liked and did not like about the eight game campaign experience. I will keep spoilers to a minimum, but avoid the below paragraph if you want to experience it fresh. All I will say before I leave some of you is that it was a truly wonderful experience that breathed new life into Scythe. It made me appreciate the different ways you can play the game a whole lot more, made me a better Scythe player (mainly from playing it eight times in a few days), and the experience of playing the eight games was an absolute joy. The surprises the expansion bring are all brilliant. And the way they are integrated into the game is just fantastic. But more of that below. Is Is Fun? Oh my goodness, yes! I played the eight games over the course of two days, with a two day break in-between (forced by other life priorities otherwise I would have happily done thi sis two days straight). I did not want to rush it, as I wanted to savour the experience, but it was just too good! After each game I just wanted to play another to use the new things we had gained, and to find out what was coming next. I loved the story the game is built around. It is very well written, absorbing, and wonderfully interwoven into the fabric of the Scythe universe. For me, this is some of the best narrative writing in board games that I have experience so far. From the 11 modules in the game, I would say there are now four to five that I will regularly use in every stand-alone game of Scythe that I play. This game massively increases the replayability of Scythe well beyond the campaign itself. I would love to tell you more about the treats and surprises we found in the boxes of this expansion but it would ruin it for you. All I will say is none of them disappoint. All of them make the game different, better, and more interesting. This is one of the best expansions I have ever played. It makes Scythe, a game I love, better in ways you cannot really imagine. The Rise of Fenris is a masterpiece within the board game world.

Tiletum WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Trismegistus, Tekhenu, Tabannusi. Published by: Board&Dice Designed by: Simone Luciani, Daniele Tascini The "T" series are a group of games, all made by the same design team, all beginning with the letter T. They consist of some modern day big hitters and all do something interesting with the mechanics used. The design team are not without their own recent controversy. You can read more about that here. Tascini has since apologised for his actions and the publisher released an excellent statement on the matter here. From this, I was left unsure what to do about reviewing this game. But decided in the end to go ahead with it. Ensuring I covered three points. I wanted you to have the above background. So you could decide if you want to read on. I wanted to make it clear that there are many people involved in the production of this game that do not deserve to be punished by one person's actions. I, and no one associated with WBG tolerate any form of racism or discrimination in the slightest. I find these situations abhorrent. With that said, it is your choice if you want to read on. Anyone with a view on any way I could handle this better I would welcome your feedback. Set Up Set up in Tiletum does take a while, but after a few games you will have it down to around five minutes. (At a push!) I will go through every step here. First, lay out the main board and give each player their own player board along with all the pieces in their colour. I sort all the colour pieces into individual bags to speed this up. On the player board, each person needs to place five house pieces at the top of the five houses on the left side of the board, leaving the far right space alone. Then place one house into Tiletum on the main board, and the other two by the side of your board. Next place five columns onto the first five spaces on the top right of their board. The remaining two are left by the side of the board. Each player will take one of each resource and gold depending on their position in the game. One gold for the first player, three for the second, five for the third and six for the forth. All pieces by the side of the board are available for use in the game. All piece's on the board need to be unlocked before they can be used. Then on the main board, lay out the action wheel and action tiles around the dice action wheel at the top left of the board. For your first game, you don't need to use the action tiles. These just add more variety when you want it, replacing what is printed on the board. Then shuffle the bonus tiles with the compass symbol on the back and lay one around each dice space, and one onto each space on the map side of the board. Avoiding any spaces based on player count. This is clearly marked on the board. Then place one below the King track. Also by the king track, place one marker for each player on the zero space. Place one marker per player on the 10 point space, and the final one on the turn order track according to player order. Also by the king track, shuffle and lay face down three corruption tokens, leaving the rest in a face down pile. Next, shuffle the contract and character tiles and place one onto each space on the bottom left of the board. Leave the rest in a face down pile by the side of the board with the remaining bonus tiles too. Next to these place out all the resources sorted into type. Then shuffle the construction cost tiles and place one below each Cathedral space on the main board. Then lay out the Cathedral pieces in ascending order of value. Place these into each space, bar the one with the "X" on the construction value. This Cathedral won't be made this game. Next, shuffle and place three town tiles and four fair tokens at the top of the main board. This shows where the four fairs will be, the first is always at Tiletum. And what the fair will reward in end of round points. Then place the fair order tokens onto the board matching the cities the fairs are in to remind players during the game. A nice touch. Finally, each player will place their Architect and Merchant token into Tiletum and one dice of each colour for each player is placed into the cloth bag. You are now ready to play. See, easy huh!? How to Play Starting with the first player, the dice are pulled from the bag and rolled, then placed in groups into their designated locations into the dice action wheel. Then flip the far right corruption token and move every player piece here back the number of spaces shown. Either zero, one or two. Then the main action phase now begins where players will take it in turns to take one dice from the action wheel. The colour, number, and location all matter. The colour will determine what resources they get. Blue dice make Iron. Pink make food. Yellow make Gold. Light Grey make Wool. And Grey make Stone. The number on the dice will determine the quantity of resource they get. And the location on the action wheel will determine the type and number of actions they can then do. You will notice that the number of resources and actions will always add up to seven. If you take five resources you will have two actions. One action will get you six resources, etc. It's a clever way to balance this drafting process out. The locations around the action wheel will determine what you can do. When you take a dice, you can take the token if you want to if it's still there, then claim the resources and action available. But what do all these actions offer you? The top right King space lets you move on the King track. Simply moving right into positive points by the number of actions you have. The Merchant space lets you move your merchants on the main board, take a token from the space the merchant is at, or build a house at the space the merchant is at. Similarly, the Architect lets you do the same but with Pillars. Move the architect, build Pillars with the architect or take tiles with the architect. The character space lets you take a character from the character track and add it to your board. They all cost one action point. Or, you can discard them all and refresh the layout. When you take one, you will place it into one of the four spaces on the right of your player board, your store house. All tiles you gain are always placed here. You can only ever have four at once, hence why sometimes you may not take one. Using character action points is how you move them from here onto your main board. Taking your turn in the right and most efficient order is key. On the left side of your board you have six houses. Five with empty spaces for characters to move into. The bottom row costs one action point to move a character into. The middle row costs two action points, and the top row on the far left house costs three actions points. As you move characters over, you have to ensure they are the same type for each house but different across each other house. To complete a house and take the house piece off the board for later use, you must fill each character position and the basement space with a different crest for each household. The crest costs a certain amount of food, shown on the player board, and reward a different bonus each time. Moving crest can be done at any time. When you complete a house you can move a house and pillar from your supply onto any town currently without one of your houses/pillars on the map. You can also move your merchant and architect to any space, gain two resources and five points. So, well worth doing! You will also increase your power in the action wheel selection in the chosen power of the characters in your house. Based on the symbol on the character you will move your bonus action point marker, based on the size of the house, to the matching action space on the action wheel to the symbol on the characters in the recently completed house. This will increase the number of actions when you choose dice from the space on the action wheel in subsequent turns. The top right of your player board is where you will place your contracts when they are fulfilled. You will get these using the contract action on the action wheel above. They cost a different amount depending on their location on the row. This action also lets you exchange resources in a one for one ratio. You will also get one bonus resource the first time you do this each round. When you take these contracts they will go into your storehouse on the right. Then for a free action at any point, when you have the required resources shown on the contract, you can move it onto the left most available space above, claim the points on the tile and space you are placing it on, and take the pillar that was there. This is one of the main ways to score in the game. The final action is the jester action which lets you copy any other action. If you have more than one action, you must copy the same action each time. When you take a dice in this phase, you will take the resources, carry out the actions, and place the dice into the bottom right of your player board. Each player will do this three times each round. When each person has done this, you will then move into the King phase. In the King phase, players will score points based on their current position on the king track. Anywhere to the right of the starting zero space and you will score positive points. The furthest right will take first place in the turn order for the next round. Anyone to the left of the zero starting position will score negative points, but then move back to zero for the next round. Then you will move to the Fair phase where you will score points based on the current fair in the current round. You can only score if you have a house and/or your architect in the current fair town. Each fair scores differently and can include points for the amount of pillars or houses currently built, the amount of contracts completed, or the number of crests on your player board. Finally, you move into the clean up phase where you will replenish action tiles taken from the action wheel and king track, shuffle all the corruption tokens and replace three more face down, return all the dice to the bag, rotate the action wheel one space clockwise, and then start a new round. There are a few bonus action that can be done at any point such as completing a contract. You can also always spend two gold to gain one other resource. Spend two gold to change a dice face up or down by one before you take it. You can spend food to move your crest to a building. Use any helper tokens you may have previously taken which can give you extra actions or resources. And finally, you can help construct a Cathedral for any space where you have a pillar. These cost a various amount of Stone as depicted on the tiles placed at set up. When you do this, take the top Cathedral token and add the points shown on the tokens. The game will go like this for four rounds, until the end of the fair scoring phase in the forth round, when the game will end. Players will then total their points based on in game scoring, one point for each group of four unused resources, points for the number of houses built multiplied by the number of pillars, and finally, points for all completed houses on their player board. It is zero for one or two rooms, five points for three, ten for four, 20 for five and 30 points for all six rooms completed. Well worth trying to do well here. Most points wins. Is It Fun Playing Tiletum is a wonderful experience. Sure, the set-up and rules may sound like a lot, but I have covered every detail here and I hope you got through it ok. And it really does play very smoothly. The rule book is excellent and offers good visuals and pictures. I would just take note of the extra actions shown on page 19 under "Tasks." These are all quite crucial, but seem like an after thought in the rule book. As you play Tiletum, you will very quickly get into the swing of the game. I was able to teach my nine year old in under ten minutes. It is an easy teach, and the board layout makes everything very simple. But I appreciate it may not sound or read like that! But it really is very simple. The look of the board can be a bit drab. But the colour of the player pieces all really pop against this beige background. Making it a lot easier to see where you are, what your points are, and plan your next move. And planning moves in Tiletum is a wonderful thing. Combination turns is something very popular in games. Having a turn that feels like it is one action cascading into another feels great. Sometimes in games that offer this it takes too long to build up to these more juicy turns. It can also be quite a complex process to carry it out. Tiletum gets this right perfectly. You will be 'combo-ing' very quickly in this game. Taking food resources as you claim a pink dice, using these to move a previously claimed Crest token over to complete a house, which gives you more resources needed to complete a contract. All of which gives you more points, more houses and pillars on the board, and the chance to move your pieces. All before you have even taken you main action this turn! Sounds fun doesn't it? Points will rack up very quickly. You can get into the high hundreds and double hundreds by game two as you learn the game, and develop your strategy. And all this is done in just four rounds of three turns. That is just 12 times you get to do something. But each turn can end up being quite impressive as you have seen. Which leads to the only real negative point for me in this game. Downtime between turns can be long. In a two player game this is fine. But in a higher player count the wait can be frustrating and I would not recommend this game for anything over two players for this reason. It is not even a case of players taking too long or being struck with analysis paralysis. It's simply that some turns take a while to do. Which is juicy, satisfying and oh so fun for the player doing it. But a bit annoying for other players as you never quite know when they are done, and it does take a while. But in a two, this game is a euro dream! If you are a fan of euro games in general, this may be one of your favourite new experiences at a game table. There are some question marks around this games longevity. There are a few variations at set up, but none will really change how the game feels or flows. You will essentially have a very similar experience each time you play this. However, as that experience is so good, I do not think this is a problem. It is ok for some games to just do one thing very well, and focus just on that. Tiletum is very much in this bracket, and I salute it for doing so. Too much is made on variation between games. Play a different game if you want a different feeling. I am very happy for Tiletum to keep rewarding me each game with a delightful, crunchy, combination filled game experience where I score hundreds of points and feel good about myself. Sure, some games you want to feel different each play. Narrative led games especially. But for a strategy lead euro, it's ok for me if each game feels the same if the game itself is good. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys Euro games, has enjoyed the previous T games, and is looking for more of the same entertainment. It does not offer anything that is incredibly new/ Although I think the dice drafting is very clever in the way it is linked to the number of actions. But what it does do, it does very well. The game is potentially problematic due to one of the designers past actions, but I tried to look beyond this for this review. Personally, after not playing his games for a year, I am now ready to play these games again. I do not necessarily accept his apology, but I do not have all the facts, and I was brought up to forgive. I myself am not perfect, and feel everyone deserves a chance to educate themselves, better themselves, and understand how to be a better human.

This is a prototype version sent to us for our thoughts. No money exchanged hands. If you want to find out more about this game you can head here. Racing games often suffer from one of two problems for me. They are either too complicated to be fun, or too simple to be interesting. A few games recently have found a nice middle ground, but I am always intrigued to look at new games in this field. Classic Rally is pitched as a strategy race game mixing hand management and dice rolling to bring the thrills and spills of car rallying. That is certainly something that gets me excited! let's get it to the table to see if it lives up to that billing. Set Up The set up and rules for Classic Rally seem complicated at first, but everything comes together smoothly and works in a very intuitive way. There is a suggested starting track set up for your first game, but you can lay the modular track tiles in any way you like. Sticking to just a few simple rules to avoid certain types of track being next to each other. There are a lot of different types of cards in the game, but they all make thematic sense. There are toolkits to fix your car, fog lights and wet weather tyres. To set up your vehicles, players will take it in turns to choose from the various options of modifications. You control two cars. One to race with, and a second support vehicle that can supply your main car with additional fuel and accessories when you share a space with it. How To Play The race works by players taking it in turns to roll three dice. Two are regular D6 than can hamper your modifications, and the other one controls the weather. This will either be sunny, rain, fog, or rain and fog. If you have the right tyres and fog lights, this won't make any difference. But if you risked it in set up to carry more fuel, poor weather may force you to deactivate certain features of you car. During set up you can choose two unique upgrades to your vehicle that will allow you to move an extra space when overtaking, on straight lines, when on a corner, or on each turn if you picked to be light weight. However, this power also has it's downside as it can be disabled in its own unique way if you ever roll a seven with the dice. The only other purpose of these two D6 is they disarm one feature for any dice that shows a single pip. So, if you have the light weight upgrade and you roll a seven with a six and one, you will need to disarm both of your features. Once the dice are rolled, players can then play fuel cards to move one space on the track. You can play as many as you like, but must stop on a Hazard space, or if you want to fuel up at a service station, exchange cards with your support vehicle, or pick up one of the three checkpoints. Your support vehicle can move one space each turn without the use of fuel cards, and careful thought into how you move this car and where you can cross paths is crucial if you want to win the race. The game is won by the first player to pick up their three checkpoint markers and cross the finish line. Players will also have access to one joker card, dealt at random at the start of the game, which will give them a one time use power. This could be to take cards from their support vehicle even if they are not on the same space, take any card (bar the Toolbox) from your opponents board, disable all feature cards on your opponents, or fix any malfunction or breakdown on your main race vehicle. The final cards you have access too are the Rood Book cards which have to be used at intersections. At the start of the game you will be dealt two straight on road book cards, one turn right card and one turn left card. They have to be used when you move on from an intersection if you have them, meaning a careful route needs to be planned at the start of the race, otherwise you may be forced to turn right when you want to turn left. Is It Fun? Classic Rally certainly hits the sweet spot of racing games, being strategic, quick, fun, tense, and not overly complicated. We found we were able to finish two player races within 20 minutes, perfect for games like this. I don't want them to be too complicated and long, but I do want them to be enjoyable, accessible, and make me want to race again when done. Classic Rally certainly does that. In a four player game, I can see this getting closer to the 45-90 minute game advertised on the box. It quickly becomes very intuitive as to what you need to do, but that does not take away from the strategy. This is a race game. But the core mechanic to me feels like a hand management game. Do you stock up high on fuel to give you long range? Or cover your self for inevitable hazards and tool up with the necessary kit? I often found that the second strategy is more likely to bring you success. Hazards are unavoidable in this game, and they all slow you down. Flat tyres, fuel leaks, power failures... There are many hazards that could all bring your race to an abrupt halt unless you have the right kit on your boards. Stock up too much on fuel sacrificing the required accessories and you will pay. But, without fuel you cannot move. There is a balance here. You need to have your support vehicle moving into the right spot at the right time to refuel at the right time to make that burst for the line. The tension created from this duel car movement is very interesting, and crucial to both the success of this game, and making it stand out from the obvious alternatives within this field of games. This is certainly a game I enjoyed playing. It created a beautiful tension every game. Across six games, all with different set ups, tracks, and opponents, I won three and lost three, but was never sure of victory or out of any race. Speaking to all the players I tried this with, they all felt they were going to win the race up to the final few turns. And this is why I think this game deserves your attention if you are a race game fan. A race game with a runaway leader is a failure for me. A game like this that feels more luck based that a strategic experience will always flop. Classic Rally succeeds in both these areas, it looks great, and delivers tense, enjoyable race experience that focuses your mind on your cars and cards from the beginning to the end.

Rear Window WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 3-5 You’ll like this if you like: Codenames, Mysterium, Decrypto. Published by: Funko Games Designed by: Prospero Hall Rear Window is a classic film released in 1954 from legendary English director, Alfred Hitchcock. I studied at University, and hated it. I am a fan now, its an amazing film! But as an impatient 20-year old, it was a little slow for me. I preferred The Simpsons version. I now get that the pace builds the tension and is often why so many people regard this film so highly. To attempt to convert that into cardboard form intrigued me. Could it be done? Well, you're about to find out in the next few paragraphs. But if you're impatient and want to know now, the answer is yes. And in a really good way too. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Now, this is a lot. But all comes together easily and it much easier to do than it sounds. One player will play as the Director, and the rest of the players will act as The Watchers. More can be the Director if you prefer, this is a good way to incorporate younger players into the game in a stress free way. Set up the screens for both sides of the table, separating what each group can see. Next, place the four day boards between the two groups of players, with the first "day one" board face up in the top left, and the other three face down in numerical order forming a large square. Give the solution board to the player acting as The Director and ensure they place it face down in front of them in the same orientation as the main game board. Upside down if necessary. The Director will also take one of each of the Resident tokens, the three Cut tokens, four wooden cubes, the Trunk box, and then shuffle the Window cards, placing them into a face-down deck in front of them. Lay down the four Watcher placards so the Watchers can access them easily along with the Investigate token and the pointer token by the four day boards. These Watcher placards give the Watchers four very interesting special powers. More on that later. Then give the Watchers the two Murder tiles and four of each of the Resident tokens. The Watchers will now choose 12 of the Attributes, taking the five tiles for each, placing them face up next to the day boards. One of the Watchers will then take one of each of the Attribute tokens, adding one Murder tile, and will pass them to the Director face down, with a little shuffle. From these 13 Attribute tokens, the Director will draw four at random. Meaning that the Murder token is only in the game roughly a third of the time. They will then place the four selected tokens face up onto the attribute spots on the Solution board. The remaining tiles are placed into the Trunk box, hidden from all players. Do not reveal to any of the Watchers what four Attributes are in the game. Especially if the Murder tile is in the game or not. The Director will now choose four residents to live in the four apartments, placing their tokens face up onto the four Resident spots on the Solution board. You can pick any four you like, it doesn't affect the game. There are some Attribute tiles that add additional Resident tokens. These are the purple tokens and clearly identified. They add additional complexity to the game when you are ready for that. I would say from game three and onwards once a few people have had a chance playing on either side of the table. Then, place any remaining tokens into the Trunk box and set it aside. Finally, the Director will draw eight Window cards to start the game with. You are now ready to play. Phew! In all seriousness, this all takes under five minutes, there are just lots of little steps, but it is all very intuitive. How It Plays The Director will now look at the eight drawn Window cards and assess how they could work for the four chosen Resident and Attribute tokens in the game. If the murder token is in the game then the Director is aiming to give good clues, but avoid the Watchers correctly guessing there has been a murder. They need for the Watchers to correctly guess six or seven spots on the final forth day, but not correctly guess the murder tile is in the game. The Watchers need to correctly guess seven or eight spots, including the Murder tile. If the Murder tile is not in the game it is a little easier, and everyone wins if all eight spots are guessed correctly at any point. This is achieved by the Director placing the eight cards they have into the eight spots on the face-up Day One board. There are two spaces for each of the four apartments. You are looking to match the images on the cards to the characters and characteristics on the chosen tokens in the game. This can be done a few ways, but due to the lack of communication aloud between the Director and the Watchers, this needs to be learned through the game. You could use matching colours from the cards played to the characters in the game. They all have one main colour associated with them. Some cards literally show the residents in the game. This can help a lot. But what if the character is doing the opposite of what their Attribute is for this game? You don't want to confuse people. The cards all show a lot of detail. Various objects, items, and scenarios are all depicted. You need to try to find the ones that work best for each Attribute/Resident combination. Each round, the Director can choose to place two cards face down. This would be for two reasons. Perhaps some of the cards just do not work for the Attributes and Residents. Or, maybe there has been a Murder and the Director wants to keeps a few things hidden. However, remember those four special powers the Watchers have with the Watcher placards? Well, one of them allows the players to choose one day and flip over the cards played face down. So, in as much as card that links to the Attributes and Resident of one specific apartment, a card flipped over, that can now be viewed gives clues as to which Resident/Attribute are not selected for this Apartment, and most probably, the game. Another power allows the Watchers to discard a face down card from the current day, and make the Director replace with a new face up card. The Director can then draw one more card to their hand to replace this for the next round. The Directors can also one of their three Cut tokens to discard as many cards a they like, and replace them with new ones. I have found that these will generally all get used, but three cut tokens is enough as long as you don't try and be too specific. But give your Watchers some credit, they have four days to guess after all. After all eight cards have been placed by the Director the Watchers will now openly discuss their thoughts as to what the Director is trying to tell them. The Director can listen to this, but not comment. It will give them clues and hints as to how to help the Watchers in later rounds. When ready, the Watcher will then place their guesses down onto the board as to which Attributes and Resident the Director was trying to allude too. The Director will then tell them how many of their eight guesses were correct placing one of their four black cubes onto the corresponded number on the day board. They cannot say which ones are correct, just how many. However, one of the other Watcher placard special powers offers the chance to ask the Director to place a token on any chosen Attribute or Resident guess placed by the Watchers on any previous day. The token will either say YES or NO, indicting if the guess made by the Watchers was correct or not. The final power gives the Watcher the chance to ask the Director to place an arrow pointing to the specific part of one card that they wants to draw attention too. This is a great way to be implicate with a particular clue, and avoid the Watchers going down the wrong path. Once a day has been finished, the Director will flip over the next board, and start placing the next set of eight cards into the eight spaces. The Watchers will guess again, hopefully making some progress from the previous round until the fourth and final round when the Director can then reveal all, and tell the story of the game. Is It Fun? Oh my goodness, yes! I love this game. I'm a fan of deduction games, and enjoy a cooperative experience like this. I am a fan of the movie, and love the way the designers of this game have integrated the theme. So, it's worth taking all that into account when you read on. However, what I have found when playing this game with different types of people, generally speaking, everyone gets caught up into the experience, no matter their thoughts on all of that! Sure, they may not all love it. But everyone I have played this with has certainly "got into it." There is some frustration from both sides of the game. For the Director, if they don't get the "right" cards, then it is tough, Although, I found the agonising choice when I played this role to be a massively enjoyable part of the game. But I understand how it can be tough being forced to lay a card you think will confuse people when you don't want to. The good thing, is if this isn't for you, you can try the Watcher role instead. However, that role isn't without its own frustrations for some of the players I played this with. The main one being that the game won't be solved in round one. And some people get very frustrated when they cannot figure out the clues right away. I mean, it could be! But that's unlikely, and would be down to a fair bit of luck. But when you play Rear Window you need to understand the goal is to get it correct by the fourth day. Use the full extent of clues available to you, matching up cards across multiple days to eliminate certain things, and make your guesses. If you can play like this, you will enjoy the process. If you get impatient and frustrated that you cannot get it all correct with one or two guesses, then it may be a frustrating experience or you. For me though, the game has a beautiful tension that develops through the game, just like the film. OK, that's ridiculous. it is not "just like the film"! Of course it isn't. How could it be? But it certainly does the film justice, and honours the core source material. As you play through the four days, the tension builds in a beautiful way. I would say I have won 80% of the games I have played. The few we lost were close affairs, and often when the Murder token makes the game a little more unpredictable. But generally, the game ramps up in a delicious and beautifully balanced way. Teasing a potential fail but delivering a satisfying, crunchy, and rewarding victory for all at the final seconds as the credits begin to roll. Which brings me to my only issue with this game. When you lose, it sucks. As I said, you don't lose this game very often. But the occasions you do, the game ends very flat. Everyone just feels a bit crap and the burst balloon of an ending does leave a sour taste in your mouth. You want a pay off for the effort you have all collectively made. When one half loses when the Murder token is in the game, this is fine. One side loses, but another wins, and banter can ensure. But the collective lose when the Murder is out the game is a bit rubbish. But like I said, it happens rarely, and makes the wins all the more sweet. But yo do need to bare this in mind. As the Director, if I see a lose coming, I will offer some guidance and help, well outside the rules of the game, to avoid the feeling a lose brings. Overall though, Rear Window is a brilliant adaptation of a very good movie. It stands on its own for people who have not seen the film, and brings something new to the hobby outside of obvious comparisons to games like Mysterium. If you have Mysterium already, do you need this? Well, that's up to you. If you love Mysterium, and like the idea of this theme, perhaps this would get more plays. If not, then maybe Mysterium is enough for you. If you have neither, and want a game in this genre then I would seriously consider Rear Window. But then, a Murderer would say that.

Unmatched: Houdini vs. The Genie WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2 You’ll like this if you like: Disney Sorcerers Arena, Funkoverse, Smash Up Published by: Restoration Games, IELLO. Designed by: Noah Cohen, Sam Crane, Rob Daviau, Adil M. Geresu, Justin D. Jacobson, Brian Neff Restoration Game take old favourites that need a fresh coat of paint, and bring them back to life for the modern era. The Unmatched series did this for the 2002 classic, Star Wars: Epic Duels. A popular, but out-of-print and hard to get game. The Unmatched series took the same idea, but tidied up the ruleset, and opened it up to characters from all over the world of books, film, and TV. So far, we have had Marvel characters (of course) Buffy, and Coble & Fogg to name a few. And now, Unmatched brings us Houdini vs. The Genie. The legendary and very real escapologist. And, errr... The Genie? Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Usually with an Unmatched game, you will need to choose which characters you want to fight with, but if you just have this set, it's simply one each. That makes for a very good and full game though, don't worry. But you can mix-and-match with other sets. Pick your character and take their mini, cards, and health dial. Be sure to take the little token for Bess (Houdini's wife in real life) if you play as Houdini. Shuffle your cards and deal yourself five for a starting hand. The youngest player now places their mini on the spot marked with a "1" and the other player places their mini onto the "2" space. It's worth noting the board is double sided. Both sides are essentially the same, except one is designed for people who suffer from vision deficiencies or colour blindness. Nice touch. Note your characters special power, movement range, and if they attack with ranged movement (in any space of the same zone) or Melee, right up in your grill. You are now ready to play. How to Play On your turn, you will have two actions to do one of three things. You can either move, called Maneuver, or play a card from your hand to fight, called Attack or take a special action, called Scheme. When you move, draw a card into your hand then move your fighter up to your maximum along adjacent spaces. Adjacency in this game is shown by connected lines between spaces. Your maximum movement will be shown on your character card. You can boost your movement by discarding a card from your hand and adding the extra spots shown in the small circular boost area on the middle right of each card. It is worth noting that other than a few cards that have a special power that will gain you additional cards, moving is the only way to draw a card in this game. There will be a few turns that you will move just for the opportunity to draw a card. Some boost powers give you extra benefits such as being able to to draw extra cards or recover health. Houdini can boost his movements to move to any space on the board without another fighter on it. The game also has secret passages on the board which are all seen as adjacent to each other. Large figures from other version of Unmatched cannot fit through these. This makes moving in this version of the game very interesting. You can get very far away from your opponent, but they can equally catch up quickly! To attack, simply declare who the attack will be made on and play a card from your hand. Attacks will either be melee in which case you must fight an adjacent fighter, or ranged, in which case you can target any other fighter in the same zone as you. This depends on if you play as Houdini or The Genie. Other fighters in other versions will bring other powers. Zones are shown by the coloured circles, so you could find a ranged attack has quite a long distance threat. You need to watch out if you are playing as Houdini, and use Bess where you can to protect yourself. Once you have chosen and declared who you are attacking and played a card face down attack card shown by the red explosion symbol, the defending player can decide if they want to play a defend card or not. The defends card are blue and show a shield. However, some cards work for both attack and defence so look closely. Combat is then resolved, sorting through immediate effects first, then during combat effects along with the actual combat, shown by the strength of the cards played, followed by the after combat effects. Combat is won by the attacker if they managed to deal at least one damage. It is won by the defender is they managed to block all damage. The effects can be quite effective and things can turn around very quickly. I played one game as Houdini where I successfully defended the attack but lost my final health due to The Genies after combat effect; but was able to recover four health with my own after combat power. It was quite the show! The Scheme action lets you play the cards with the yellow lightning symbol on. These give you a variety of benefits such as drawing more cards, adding extra actions, or forcing your opponent to discard cards. They can be quite powerful but each deck only has a few in. Players will take it in turns like this, moving, scheming, and attacking, until they reduce the other players Heroes health down to zero. Defeating Bess is a tragic loss, but not one worthy of victory in this game! At this point, the game ends. The winner is declared. Outrage at that final awesome card your opponent beat with you ensues. And you will most probably rack 'em up and go again. It all happens quite quickly. It's around 10-20 minutes per game I have found. Is It Fun? Playing Unmatched feels very much like many other games in this field. Disney's Sorcerers, Arena, Dice Throne, Godtear and Funkoverse all make use of similar mechanics in this busy market place. It's a;l;l about clever card play and ~unmatched certainly holds its own in this arena. But you need to do something different to stand out. I have also recently previewed two excellent new games that use this style too, Fatal Knockout and Merit. So, what does Unmatched do to deserve its place in your collection? If you are after a two-player skirmish game that is! I would suggest two key things. The characters and the movement. There are a lot of cool licenced characters in Disney's Sorcerers, Arena, Dice Throne, and Funkoverse but they are all from recent films. Mostly animated or comic book films. Unmatched is bringing characters from all parts of literature and from throughout history. It feels more grown-up. There is something "mature" and sensible about these minis and characters when compared to the colourful standees of Disney's Sorcerers, Arena, or the bobble head toys in the Funkoverse games. Nether is better or worse. It just helps you make a choice for what will better suit you. But the main stand-out feature for Unmatched is the movement. It is a little more subtle in these games and a lot more important. In Unmatched, movement is a key part of the game. I find that I am moving most turns. Probably three quarters of my turns will involve a movement. In Disney's Sorcerers, Arena and Godtear I find it is more of a race to the middle action zones, and then a brawl ensues. In Dice Throne you obviously don't move, and just assume adjacency all game. In Funkoverse you often move to claim flags and certain action points. But the movement is neither clever or interesting. In Unmatched, the movement is a key part of the game. The zones, and with this version, the hidden tunnels, offer clever opportunities to spring up and make sneak attacks. Running away is an actual viable opportunity as you can gain some serious ground when needed. The battle id more of a dance than a slog. Both ways to play are fun. They both allow for a great game to happen. Again, this is just a point of difference, and with Unmatched, this is certainly an area that it stands out in. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys two player skirmish games, but is looking for something that feels a little more 'after-hours'. Unmatched offers more of an adult theme and style that works well when the lights are low, dinner is long finished, and the small hours approach. If you want a duelling game to battle your friends and loved ones and would like for the characters to be more 15 (or R for my American friends) than PG, Unmatched could be the one for you.

This is a prototype version sent to us for our thoughts. No money exchanged hands. There are a lot of two-player fighting games on the market. We have played and covered a lot of them here recently. Are skirmish games the new roll-and-write in terms of being the new hit mechanic? Well, first-time designer Andrew Swan from Shrine Games, thinks so and is releasing Merit, a new skirmish game for two-to-four players, coming to Kickstarter in May 2023. For more information, head here. Considering how popular they are now, Skirmish games need to be excellent and offer something new. I would suggest Merit achieves both of these goals. The majority of fighting games I have played use cards. Cards work well either in a deck cycle capacity such as Disney's Sorcerers Arena, combining the cards with dice throws like Dice Throne, or utilising them in a programming-based way such as Kickstarter success, Fatal Knockout . Some have mixed the genre with other mechanics, such as Vengeance Roll and Fight, which incorporates roll-and-write elements into a more solo, point scoring fighting experience. And I like how games like Godtear and Funkoverse make the characters all completely different with hugely asymmetric powers. (Told you I covered a lot recently). Merit though, has no cards or Dice. It chooses a different system closer to an engine-builder that is a little like Heroes of the Shire where each fighter has different abilities that can be unlocked as you develop. But where in Heroes of the Shire these abilities develop over different missions, in Merit, they develop over each game. Set Up To set up the game, players will choose their fighters in turn. Starting with the first player who picks one, then the second player who takes two, before the first player takes two more and the second player takes their final third fighter. Each fighter comes with a hero board, health dial, and some have secondary appearances, a little like skins in video games. These have no affect on the game. On the hero board, each player will place a cube on their maximum energy, they will then roll dice to determine starting positions on the board, and play can begin. How to Play Each round has three simple phases. First, the level up phase where players can unlock one ability on one of their heroes for each realm stone they control. (I'll explain this later). This must be a level one ability at first, but then in later rounds, can be a level two on a hero with a level one ability unlocked, and so on. Any beginning round effects will also occur at this stage, but in round one, this will not be the case. But later in the game, various boons and powers could kick in. Second, is the main turn phase. Here, players will take it in turns to use up to three energy. Each player will have three turns to do this. You can spend the energy all on one fighter, or spread it around your three characters, it's up to you. The energy can be used for three main actions. Moving. Which simply requires one energy and then each hero can move up to its own movement limits. Influence a Realm stone. Which means either placing one of your three dice on one of the three realm stone spaces when you are adjacent to a realm stone space, increasing an existing dice by one to increase its power. Or reducing an opponent's dice by one. And using an Ability. Each ability is clearly explained on your character board and will cost one to three power to activate. There are some abilities that need zero power, but these are more passive abilities that are always active. Finally, there is the reset phase where all players regain their maximum energy for all fighters still in the game, and any end of round effects occur. Players will continue to play, in turn, round by round, like this one of the players triggers one of the two end-game scenarios. To win the game, players must either eliminate all of their opponents characters, reducing their health to zero. Or finish a round with all three of their dice placed on a realm stone space. The mix of area control and fighting is another reason this game feels fresh in a crowded market. Most games I have played have felt like they were going to end with one player losing all their fighters, but in fact, the majority of games were decided by the realm stones. If you can manipulate your fighters to be in the right spot, with the right energy, then you can control the realm stone spaces and make it impossible for your opponent to stop you. Especially if you are acting second in that round. Is It Fun? Playing Merit feels fresh. I have played A LOT of similar games recently but this felt original and full of new ideas. I love the characters in the game. They all feel completely different to play as, and offer interesting asymmetric powers. It has been a lot of fun working out which ones work best with each other, and against what other combinations. The game is clearly expandable in this area. Any new or additional characters would be very welcome. The one area I would like to see developed in this game, or games like this, is to find a way to make movement more useful throughout the game. The Unmatched series currently does this best for me. In Merit, and most fighting games, I find there is an initial rush to get into the best sparring positions, and then players just bash each other for a few rounds. Of course, there is a bit of shuffling around, and the realm stone make for a very interesting element here. But as movement cost energy, and you need energy to fight, I find that most games have minimal movement after round two. I sense this is due to players not wanting to waste their energy on movement as I say, and the easy fix for this would be to allow one movement for free each round. As many of the attacks relay on specific position on the board, this would be advantageous, and stop players using the same attacks each time. however, as I became a little more accustomed to the characters, and learnt how best to upgrade them, I found I did begin to move around a little bit more to utilise by actions in a more efficient way. So, in part, this is also just about learning the game. But it was still minimal. However, this does not deter the fun of the game. Playing Merit is an absorbing experience. You feel captivated from turn one. It all looks wonderful, despite being in porotype form. And the mechanics, ruleset, and characters are all beautifully fine tuned. But the two headline acts here are the upgradable characters and the effects. Being able to develop your character and use new powers and abilities each round makes paying Merit feel such a voyage of discovery that never ends. There are a lot of tokens in this game. But they are all clearly explained on this handy reference sheet that you can leave out on the table for both players to check when needed. Clever use of these effects will be vital if you want to win the game via the first method of defeating your opponents characters. The bleed effect can be especially powerful, more so when up against an opponent with high armour. I would highly recommend checking out this game when it comes to Kickstarter if you enjoy games within this field. I could see this game becoming very popular on the tournament circuit, and I would love to develop my understanding of more characters if that was something designer Andrew Swan wanted to do. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with this prototype and will watch the Kickstarter with avid interest.

Next Station: London WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Railroad Ink, Metro X, Get On Board. Published by: Blue Orange (EU) Designed by: Matthew Dunstan Next Station London is a game that simulates the experience of building the London Underground routes for the first time. Can you improve on the iconic transportation icon of the UK's capital city? Let's get it to the table to find out. Set Up To play the game, each player starts with one map of London playing sheet and a pencil. In a three player game, there will be one pencil left. Place this on the table between any two of the players. In a two player game place the two remaining pencils to the left of both players. You are now ready to play. Shuffle the station cards and place them face down on the table. How To Play The game plays over four rounds, one for each of the coloured pencils. To start the game, players will find their starting stations. This will be a station matching the colour of the pencil in their hand. One player acting as the 'Controller,' will then flip the top station card over so that it is visible to all players. All players then must draw a line from their station, out to meet a station matching the current face up station card, following one of the grey potential routes on the map. The next card is flipped and now you can build out from either end of your current line. When the Controller flips over the fifth pink or yellow underground card, this will be the end of the round. Any unflipped cards are ignored for this round. Players will draw one final line, and then this round is scored. Scoring is a little confusing at first and hard to teach but quickly becomes second nature" Each line that you have drawn will score points based on three areas. First, the route it takes, scoring one point for each district your line passes through. Districts are shown by the nine main squares on the map, plus the four smaller ones in the four corners of the map. You will also score one point for each station your line passes through in the one district in which you have the most accessed stations. Second, you will score two points for each occasion on which your line passes through the central River Thames that crosses the middle of the map. Multiply the scores from the first two areas for your districts and most station together and add on your river score, to get your final round score. Finally, you will score points for each tourist spot that you line visits. Tourist sites have the outer sun symbol on, with an empty circle inside. Each time you go through one of these you can cross off one circle on your tourist track on the bottom on your sheet. This will score you additional points at the end of the game. You will now get ready for the next round by switching pencils, placing them to the left, changing who will be the controller, shuffling up the stations cards and going again. After the fourth round, you will skip this and move to final scoring. Add all the points scored from the four lines you draw across the last four rounds. Then find your score on the tourist track and add this to it. And finally, add up the points scored for your interchange stations. These are any stations where you have more than one line coming in or out of it. You will get two points for each station with two lines. Five for those with three lines. And nine points for those with all four connected. Add all these together for your final score. There are joker cards that will be flipped that allow you to connect to any station. A switch card that allows you to branch off from existing lines to new stations. Basically creating the Northern line! And a number of advanced modules to keep the game fresh. You can either add the shared objective cards that add two common goals for all players to aim towards for the duration of the game, chosen at random from a deck of five cards during set up. This will score each player ten additional points for each objective achieved. Or, you can add in the Pencil Power cards. These bring in a specific one-time use power linked to each of the four coloured pencils. You can either draw two lines linked to the same shape on one turn, treat the station you are working on as a joker, or as a switch card allowing you to draw a branching station, or circle on station which will now count as two stations instead of one when counting the points at the end of the round. All of them are easy to add, either separately or together. Is It Fun? Next Station London is a fantastic flip-and-write game. It ticks all the boxes that a game in this category should. Small, portable, quick and simple to teach and play, but full of interesting choices. It is simple but addictive. Relaxing but consuming. Next Station London works great in solo, or any of the player counts. What you do will not ever have an impact on any other player. It's just a challenge to see who can get the most points. So, player count will not affect the game length or experience that much, other than teaching new players the rules, and the obligatory post-game banter section. If you enjoy games using this mechanic, chances are you will enjoy this game a lot. Although, saying that, it is also probably very likely you will have a game similar to this in your collection already. So, the question is; should you buy this game? I would suggest yes. It is different enough in theme and gameplay to fit in my bulging flip-and-write collection. And offers something fresh that will get it to the table in high numbers. I love the London underground theme. Being someone that commutes to London every day, but avoids the Tube like the plague, it's nice to create my own underground map. And not have to go down there myself! I like the sense of calm this game brings to me as I play it. And despite the fact that I am simply drawing lines on a piece of paper, I am always quite strangely proud of the end results. The coloured lines look more impressive to me than they should. Good or bad score, I am always left knowing I had a good time playing, and with a new, colourful, unique take on the London tube map to cherish.

This is a porotype copy sent to me for free for our early thoughts. For more information on the game you can check here. Rolling and placing dice is something I love to do. There is something about the luck of the roll mixed with the strategy of the placement that just works well for me. Whenever I see a game offering this mechanic I am always interested to see how it has been implemented. With Dice Barons, the beauty comes in the simplicity. Turn structure is simple. Draw four dice from a bag, roll them, and then place them into your expanding castle. And you know that bit in a game where you realise you are in to it? That time you become aware you are currently in a state of happiness? When you realise you are actively having fun? Well, this happens in Dice Barons very quickly. And a lot. I love puzzling out where to place my dice. I really enjoy thinking about how I can fit all four dice into my castle. You see, you always need to end your turn with all dice placed in legal positions. Which mostly means, you must have orange roofs on all parts of your castle. These can be built on later with other dice. It doesn't mean you have reached your maximum height. But each round must end with this rule obeyed. If you have two dice showing an orange face, and two without, perfect. Build up using two dice on one level and two more on top. But if you have just one orange face to work with, can you place the other three below it, in a way that works for you? Your walls can show any colour, but you will score more points if you can build showing grey outer walls. Even more if you can construct the archery windows facing outwards. Speaking to designer, Matt Reed, he explained, "The unique feature of Dice Barons is that the dice are also the building blocks from which the castles are made. They are rolled as dice, but then used the same way up they fall to build the castle. There are rules about which colours may be used for walls and which colours for roofs, so the top face and the side faces all matter. The only other game that I can find where dice are used as building blocks is 'Blueprints', but that game uses ordinary d6s with pips and the sides don't matter. As far as I can find out, my game is unique in this way." Set up is so simple. Just choose one of the various bases to work from, give one to each player, and then start drawing dice. It is that simple. The way the bag is used to draw four dice to randomise what dice you get, followed by the dice roll randomising what dice face you end up having to work with, does makes a large part of this game luck based. But it does not feel luck based at all when you play it. This is down to the simple fact that all dice work for you. What you draw matters, but you won't ever get "screwed." Most dice faces can be used in a way that can work for you. A tricky draw and roll just makes your construction phase more strategic. But there will be some occasions when you cannot place all your dice. Any dice that cannot be used are simply placed back into the bag. The game carries on until which point there are not enough dice in the bag for all plyers to draw four in a new round. At this point, final scoring takes place. You will score points for each outer wall that shows a grey side. One for a ground level dice. Two for a second level, and so on. Bonus points will be awarded for all archery icons seen on an outer wall and all turret icons shown on a roof top. Tally this up, and surprisingly, most points wins. Dice Barons is a lovely little game, made with a lot of love and heart. Matt Reed has a clear understanding about what makes a game work. I enjoy the simple clean structure of the rules, game flow, and find playing Dice barons to be a calming, enjoyable, but absorbing process. Games only take 10-20 minutes, and I am fully locked into the game for the whole time. It's a great pick-up-and-go game, perfect for pubs, restaurants, anywhere. I will follow the Kickstarter for this with great interest. I hope it hits its goals and fulfils soon. This game scratches an itch for me that not many games in my 600 plus collection do. It's lighter than Sagrada, which is a bit too much for me. But offers more thought than first meets the eye, and is an all round, very enjoyable experience, addictive, and one I will play many more times.

Borders: Europe WBG Score: 7 Player Count: 1-6 You’ll like this if you like: Geography Class Published by: Rounded Kids Designed by: Christian Morgan Borders: Europe is from independent publisher Rounder Kids. They aim to make games that are educational, fun, and encourage exploration. Their first release, Borders: Europe, certainly does that. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up There are many ways you can play with these cards, and the rules encourage you to create your own versions too. But I will focus on the main game here. "Make The Map." You can see details of the other variations below Shuffle the deck and deal five cards to each player. They split the deck in half and place two draw piles face down. You are now ready to play. How to Play Each player will now check their cards and see which card in their hand has the most named border connections. These are shown on the outside edges of the cards. The cards are either border cards, or country cards. The border cards will be bodies of water and will have just one border each. The country cards will have a number of borders. The player with the card with the most connections will now play this into the centre of the board, and the game will start. You are looking to get rid of your cards, the first to do so, wins. On your turn you can do one of three things. First, you can discard one card and draw two, one from each pile. Second, you can draw one card and then play cards, if you can. Third, you can play as many cards as possible from your hand. Playing cards is simple: you just have to match a card in your hand to a border on the table. For example, if Luxembourg is on the table, you can play Belgium, Germany, or France next to it, as shown on the card below. This will then open up more options for subsequent turns. Keep going until one player runs out of cards. How big will your map grow? For a video description of this game and its other variations, check here. Is It Fun? I like game for three main reasons. 1. I feel like I am learning something every time I play this. That is rare! 2. I feel like I am being a responsible and helpful father when I play this with my children. 3. I enjoy the feeling I get when I play games that have cascading options. That sensation of doing something that then opens a window to more opportunities. You know, when you do a specific action, and now we all have access to this new thing, we can all now do this new action. I love that feeling, and this game is essentially just that. It's great. It feels like as a team, we are getting closer to the finished puzzle which each card we play. As such, we quickly just started playing this game cooperatively, without even a scoring system. We just enjoyed making the map and seeing how big we could make it. As such, this feels like more of a hobby or pastime than a game for me. But that is only for me. There is a game here, a number of them in fact. It's just that as we played, we developed it into that after a few games as that felt more fun to us. But I think that is what these cards are about—developing them and using them for your own purposes. Making new games up. Developing the existing ones to suit you. Learning about Europe and enjoying time with your family. Variations Flag Runner: This is a simple game where players simply take it in turns to try and guess which flag represents which country, using the reverse of the country cards. Remove the border cards from the game for this variation. If you are correct, you keep the card to score one point with the end of the game. If you are wrong, it goes into a separate pile to be used when the first deck of cards is done. Players will now draw from this, scoring two points per correct guess. Travel Trumps: This plays just like normal Top Trumps. Remove the water cards, shuffle the rest of the deck and deal them equally to all players. One player will then name one statistic on their card, all players will then state their number for that statistic on their top card. The player will the highest number wins all the cards. The winning player then chooses the next statistic to compare. keep playing until one player has all the cards. Higher/Lower: Remove the water cards. Shuffle the deck and place it face down on the table. Choose one statistic from the cards to play with, then flip the top card. Then try to guess if the next card will be higher or lower than the first card. Remember, you will have the country flag visible on the card to help you. LatLong: Remove the borders cards and shuffle the deck. Deal 3/4 cards to each player. Flip the top card from the deck. The first player then must choose one card from their hand to place either above, below or to the right or left of this card, based on if they think their card is north, south, east, or west of the first card on the map. If you are right, your card will stay on the table and the next player will have a turn. If you are wrong, the card you play goes next to the next and you will draw a new card from the deck. As the cards on the table build, you can place cards from your hand next to any card even in-between cards if you think that could be correct. But the furthest north, south, east, or west card. You are always forming a cross shape with the cards. The first to play all their cards wins. You can also play this version cooperatively, seeing how many cards you can play as a group. I would recommend this game to anyone with children aged between four and 12. The cards are a great tool to have some fun, whilst learning about Europe and the countries within them. I myself found the experience to be very enjoyable, especially as I got better with my knowledge about the countries locations, and the flags that represented them. I cannot wait for the next geography round in my local pub quiz!

Run Run Run! WBG Score: 7.5/10 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Escape: The Curse of the Temple, Sub Terra. Published by: The Flying Games Designed by: Bruno Cathala, Anthony Perone Success! You have reached the tomb of Tutankhanine, the Cursed Pharaoh! But watch out! A booby-trap has been triggered. You now need to escape as fast as you can. Mummies are approaching from all sides and must be stopped before they reach the relics of the Pharaoh and gain the ultimate power. You need to fight back and find the exit of this crumbling pyramid before it's too late. Not the most relaxed set-up to a game is it? Let's get this to the table to see if things calm down a bit. Spoiler, they do! Set Up For a small-ish box, and minimal components, this game actually takes a fair bit of space on the table, and has a high number of moving parts. But it is all very simple. First, find the double hex Pharaoh's vault tile, and place this into the centre of the board. This will be your stating space. Each player will choose their 'Catventurer', and places their chosen character board in front of them, along their character onto the central space. Then take all the other hexes, separate the exit tile (setting that aside), shuffle the remaining tiles, and create a face-down stack.. Place the door mechanism tokens, torch pieces, health tokens, two sets of dice, four mummy cards, and regroup tokens into a central reserve. Finally, you must choose one of the three end-of-game Boss Mummies to fight. Shuffle them, and pick one at random and place it face down, discarding the other two into the box so you don't know which one was chosen. You are now ready to play. How To Play To win, you need to create three triangles of tiles, to find the mechanisms needed to create the exit and find the way out. Eliminating all the mummies along the way. If you ever run out of cards, you will lose. And if any of the mummies make it to the starting vault, you lose. On your turn, you will first activate the mummies. To start, there will be just one dice to roll, but as other mummies are introduced to the game, this will increase. Roll the dice, and then if it shows a mummy icon, you must add one heart to the first mummy card. When a mummy card reaches five hearts it will awaken and be introduced to the board. You can place it wherever you like. If you ever have any mummies on the board when you roll these dice, the mummy symbol will move the mummies one space towards to the starting tile as well as adding another heart to the next mummy card. Once the mummy's have finished their turn, each player will then carry out one of three actions. Explore. Fight. Or Cooperate. Cooperate can only be done three times in the game. It uses up one of your three re-group tokens. This will allow you to all move to the same hex on the board and exchange cards if you wish, and draw extra tiles into your hand. Crucial if you are running low, but use this power sparingly. Fighting will come into account when the mummies enter the board. You cannot let any mummy reach the starting hex, and the more on the board, the harder the game will get. The only way to stop them is by fighting them. To do this move onto the space the mummy is currently located at and then discard cards to acquire dice to fight with. The cards all have a different number of exits, from one to six. You can take dice equal to the number of exists you discard. Then roll the dice and carry out the roll. You will either be able to inflict damage on the mummy you are fighting, draw another tile, move out of the room you are in once the fight is over, or your own special action. Each character has their own small asymmetric power, and this is activated by the question mark on the combat dice. The mummies you are fighting all have their own small asymmetric power too. Some will add more mummy dice to the board. Others will steal torches from you. And you only start with five. All of them will take tile cards from you when they land on the space you are on. They all have five health and will be removed from the board after they lose all their hearts. The four powers you have access too are the opportunity to draw an extra card, torch, sarcophagus token, or an extra hit in combat. All great options. When defeated, the mummy cards are shuffled back together, so you could face the same one again and again. When you face the final boss mummy, all other remaining mummy's are removed from the board, and you now must focus on defeating the boss. Each one has a different starting health and power. Either taking extra moves when they travel through the pyramid or cancelling all player powers; and they will all take tile cards from your hand. Other than fighting and cooperating, the main action is to explore. This is how you will move through the Pyramid, find new rooms, gain new torches and powers, and find the exit. When you choose to explore, you must place one of the tile cards in your hand onto the board. It must connect with one of the existing tiles and cannot block any pathways or exits already made. It must also be accessible by your Catventurer meeple. You can only move three spaces each time, and you cannot move through a mummy without stopping to fight. If you need to move more than three spaces at once to reach a recently placed tile, then you must discard a card from you hand. Discarding cards in this way works using the same method as fighting, by allowing you to move one space for each exit shown on the discarded tile. Once the tile is placed and you have moved onto it, you need to see if that tile needs to be lit. By that, I mean lit in the literal sense. It doesn't have to become "exciting or intoxicated," as the internet suggests is the modern meaning. Most tiles do require this, but some show a flaming torch on it already, so don't need any more light. But if they don't, you need to add one of your group torch's onto the tile. You can place a tile if you have run out of torches but you must then add a heart to the next mummy card, bringing it closer to becoming awoken. Once this is done, you will then activate the room tile you just placed. Each room is different and will either be a sarcophagus room which will allow you to draw the next sarcophagus token, gaining you a bonus. Or it will be a glyph room. If you manage to group a triangle shape of rooms with either the same glyph, or three different glyphs, you will gain a bonus. For three matching glyphs you will get five new torches. If you create three different glyphs, you will place one of the door mechanism tokens on it. When you do this the third time, this is how you activate and place the exit door, and the final boss mummy. Is It Fun? Playing Run Run Run! you will go through a mixture of emotions. As you play, it will feel tense, exciting, and very balanced between your chances to escape and the game stopping you. After playing multiple times now, each game has felt very close to finishing with a loss. It could go either way. However, all games then moved to a fairly simple finish, and an easy win. This may be luck, or down to the fact that I played with people used to playing cooperative games, but I would say the game is a little easy. There is only really one way to modify the game's difficulty, and that is through the final boss mummy. But whichever one you face, it won't make a huge difference to your game experience. Perhaps just taking one extra turn to finish them off. I mention this as the game is good. Really fun, tense, and an enjoyable puzzle to work out as a team. But I would like for more ways to make it harder. That said, this is a solid family level cooperate game, that will introduce a number of mechanisms and game techniques to your family or friendship group, all packaged in a fun theme, (Catventurers?! come on!) and simple ruleset. I enjoy the flow of the game for the first 80-90% of the game. It just always seems to end a little flat, with what seems like a simple victory. But for a younger group, perhaps this would be welcome.