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Colt Super Express WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 3-7 You’ll like this if you like: Colt Express, Robo Rally, Quirky Circuits Published by: Ludonaute Designed by: Cédric Lefebvre, Christophe Raimbault By Steve Godfrey Robbing a train takes planning, a tactical mind, a good team, and time. Although, these days it seems that even time is a luxury modern day bandits don’t have anymore. So, to combat that we have Colt Super Express which will give us all of our train robbin’ banditry but in a fraction of the time. Which means that if we’re lucky we can still catch the 10:15 to Southend to spend our freshly robbed money in the arcades! Every heist needs rules. Set up by laying out a locomotive card and then behind it enough train cards for each player plus one. Each player takes a bandit and the four cards for that bandit (six if you're using the included expansion cards) Set up the players on the train cards as per the rule book and you’re ready to go. Each round is played out in two phases. First each player picks three cards and places them in a stack face down in front of them. The order in which you lay them is important. Once done the first player reveals their top card and plays out the action on it. The round then goes round like that until every player has played out all of their three cards. The actions themselves are pretty straightforward. Flip lets you change the direction you're facing. Move lets you move onto an adjacent car depending on what direction you’re facing. Change floor lets you…change….floor and fire lets you shoot the next bandit in your line of sight and on your floor. Any bandit that gets shot gets pushed to the adjacent train car and knocked down. The next card they play, whatever it is, gets used to stand them up and then your turn ends. Be careful though because if you get shot and you're in the last train car or the locomotive at the front then you fall off the train and you're out of the game. At the end of the round the last car or caboose gets taken out of the game and the bandit furthest from the locomotive takes that card. Any bandits on the caboose are eliminated from the game. The game ends when either there is one bandit left on the train, in which case they win the game, or once the last train car is unhooked. If there’s more than one bandit on the locomotive then they compare the value on any train cards they have and the player with the most wins. Super Colt Express At the time of writing I’ve not played Colt Express (aside from one turn based game of Board game arena which was good, but turn based is not necessarily the way to play that game) If you don’t know, Colt Express is the big sister to this game which boasts a big 3D train and scenery and loot and a Marshall and more. Because I’ve not really played it I'm obviously not going to compare how the two stack up against each other. What I do know is that Colt Super Express is a ton of fun proving that great things come in small packages. I think it would be all too easy to assume that because you’re removing the visual aspect that Colt Express is so well known for that it would lose some of the appeal. This game proves that the appeal of Colt Express definitely doesn’t lie in a 3D train. A perfectly programmed robbery. This is a programming game and I know that those types of games aren’t always for everyone. The opinions being that they are too chaotic and frustrating since whatever you plan very rarely plays out, and I get that. I don’t mind a bit of chaos in the right setting but I can understand how it can get frustrating over a longer game. Colt Super Express plays in about fifteen minutes, so any frustrations you may have with those games never have time to set in here. You only play three cards out of your four, flip them over, play them out then the round is done. The beauty of this of course means that you can embrace the chaos and just let yourself have fun with it and best of all, laugh. It doesn’t matter if you get shot off of the train two rounds in because it won’t be long before you set up and go again and trust me, you will want to reset it. I love games that give you great moments and for as short as each game is, Colt Super Express gives you just. Watching each round play out is a lot of fun, it’s almost like watching a dance play out as people are manoeuvring about the train jumping up and down and spinning around. Seriously, it's like a western themed Strictly Come Dancing. Honestly though, it’s just really fun watching how each round play out. Especially when your daughter and niece conspire against you and you expertly duck out of the way and one ends up knocking the other off the train. It seems karma does exist? Colt Super Express is a bit of a strange one. On one hand you're trying to plan your strategy and there is a strategy to plan here. Trying to get in your opponents heads to work out what they may or may not do so you can keep in the game. It’s a really fun puzzle as you’re to predict if they’re trying to play to avoid or to attack. In the case of the above scenario it was certainly to attack. So, you realistically want your plan to work and if it does then it feels great. On the other hand, sometimes it’s more fun when it doesn’t. Again this game can be all about the chaos and watching that chaos play out and just laughing, in a short game like this that can arguably be more fun. Expanded Chaos In the box you'll also find two expansions. Each one is simply an extra card that you can add to each player's deck. One is the Reflex card. When played, if you're laying down then you immediately get back up and shoot the next bandit in sight. If however you play it and you're standing up, then you fall down. I imagine it like the Three Stooges do a western train robbery. The other one is the Horse card. When you play this you immediately move to the front of the train and face forwards. The best part of this card though is if you play this card immediately after being ejected from the train, your noble steed saves you and puts you back on the front of the train. It’s all very back to the future three. Here's my advice: Never. Play. Without. These. They’re so much fun, easy to teach and add no real complexity when it comes to choosing cards. But given that they’re just two cards they add so much. The reflex card takes some of the sting out of being knocked down by being able to get up and retaliate. If you’ve got conspiring kids playing against you and you're pretty sure you're getting shot soon it’s fun to predict your vengeance. The horse is another great addition and again, if you predict mutiny (can you use that word in a western game?) and you deploy that card at the right time it can be a thing of glorious joy. We have a small games bag which also comes with us when we go camping each year and there are some firm favourites that come out when we want something quick to play. I already know that this is going to be one of the first of those that are picked out. It plays great at all player counts and the higher player counts never lengthen the game by much and only add to the amount of fun you have while playing.

Wombat Kombat WBG Score: 7 Player Count: 2-5 You’ll like this if you like: Flourish, Tucano, Jaipur, Published by: NeoTroy Games Designed by: Arif Nezih Savi Play Here. Rule book here. This preview is based on a final demo copy. All material is final bar a few minor rule tweaks you can see here. Wombat Kombat is coming to kickstarter in May 2022. The game pits you against your friends, in a set-collection game, with fighting Wombats! You job is to collect as much square shaped poo, (yes, Wombats do indeed poo in squares for reel!) to become the victor. The game works very simply with each playing drawing three cards each turn. You can do this from the draw pile, or from the face up discard pile if there are any wombat cards there that take your fancy. You can then take one action such as laying cards down in sets, at least one more than any other player has done so for that set. Before finally discarding one card. Instead of laying sets you can also play food cards to boost your current sets, attack cards to reduce your opponents sets, or attack another player. Attacking consists of choosing three cards from your hand and then adding up their combined attack score. You will then roll the attack dice and compare this to your chosen opponents defence score and roll from the defence dice. Players can then add bonus cards if required. The winner can choose one of their attack cards to move into the deck of glorious wombats. Your victorious fighters that earn you three points at the end of the game. The other two cards will go back into your hand. You can then choose one card from your opponents three defeated fighters to add to your hand, one to flip over and leave in their area to score them negative points at the end of the game, and then they can take the final card back into their hand. You will also then take three poo from them (if they have it) and roll the event dice. The event dice will then trigger one of three decks to add either an end game, immediate or continuous scoring option or rule change. From these cards, you will also have already drawn one from each of the end game and continuous piles at the start of the game. When you lay your sets, some cards have extra powers such as the 4 card above. These allow you to either take an extra card from the top of the deck, discard a card from another players sets, take a card from another players hand, get three poo; or as is the case above, take any card from the discard pile. The game runs until either the draw pile is exhausted or one player lays enough sets to trigger the end game based on the player count. As such, games are fast, franatic, and fun! The main engine in Wombat Kombat is the set-collection, but the twist being the set size and how this interacts with other players. If one player laid two cards of the same type, they would then score points based on the value of one of these cards at the end of the game. However, if a player later plays the same cards but in a higher card count, the first player will then need to flip their cards and add them to their burrow, which scores them negative points per card at the end of the game. This is set-collection with a sort of area-majority twist! Each card has a different points value, which also represents the number of cards of that type in the game. So, the more points a card may be worth, the higher chance another player may have to force you to flip it buy creating a larger set of their own. Do, you go for quick sets to end the game, or larger sets to ensure the likelihood they get flipped is reduced? DO you go for higher value sets that other may be able to more easily beat you on? Or aim for lower value cards that you can defend more easily but score lower points? The attack and food cards, like everything in this game, are brightly illustrated and clearly labelled. This game is very family friendly. I played with my children (6 and 9) and they immediately were able to play on their own afterwards. It is a very simple, but fun concept. The fact that the game is scored in poo, and the poo is cube shaped... well, that will have every kid in stiches too! It led to a fun and educational conversation in our household about different animal poos, which I suppose was a good thing! But also created a lot of laughter! It does make the take-that a little easier to take for kids as well when they can say, "fine, have my poo!" Playing Wombat Kombat is a lot of fun! I enjoyed the simple rule set and fast nature of the games. We found a three player game typically took 20-30 minutes, and a two player a little quicker. Four player was more like 30 minutes, and we did not try the five player count. There are also some action cards in the deck. They are all self explanatory, but some do have a lot of text so this may need some help for younger players. But other that this, and they could always be taken out, I would say this game easily plays from 5 and up. I thought that Wombat Kombat brought a fun and fresh idea to set-collection games, that will land well with families. The card art is great fun, and my children enjoyed playing with the cards after the game, creating their own little armies and creating stories about them all. There are Wombats of both genders too, which my daughter particularly enjoyed. I think this game will stand out due to the fun name, art, and theme. Wombat Kombat does not necessarily bring anything hugely new to the table, but what it does have in abundance is a sense of humor, simple rule set, great art, and a smooth fast gameplay your kids will enjoy.

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-6 You’ll like this if you like: Libertalia, Shelfie Stacker, Red Rising. Published by: Stonemaier Games Designed by: Paolo Mori PRE ORDER HERE Libertalia first came out 2012 published by Marabunta, receiving very favorable reviews. Due to various reasons, the game did not see any new recent print runs, despite there still being interest in the game. The trademark lapsed, and control of the game went back to the designer Paolo Mori. In the summer of 2021, Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games acquired the rights to the game, and set work on making a new version of Libertalia for the modern gaming community. In true Stonemaier style, Jamey looked at what people liked and did not like about the very popular original game. A common issue that arose a number of times on forums about the game was that Libertalia would sometimes come across as having too much take-that for some players tastes. Also, the lack of a solo mode was an issue for some. Jamey makes all of his games work for 1-6 players, and so sought to create a more robust two-player system, and a whole new solo mode. He introduced a second side to the board which took away a lot of the take-that elements, and this is the result. Libertalila: Winds of Galecrest. A new implementation of the popular original. Before I get into how the game works, and what I think, let's first look at the main changes from the original version. New art style. The original game had a fairly gritty, realistic style, using darker colours and human pirates for the characters. In Winds of Galecrest, artist Lamaro Smith has introduced anthropomorphic cartoon characters, a lot more colour, and 10 whole new characters. Solo mode and two-player mode. The original played 2-6. This is 1-6 and the two player mode now plays more like a three player game. Take-That or Take-This? The components have seen a significant upgrade. The board is double sided as mentioned above to allow for a choice between a take-that or more relaxed game style. There are also double sided tokens to represent the loot tokens affects which can be used for more control and variety in set up. New reputation track. Previously card ties were decided by secondary numbers on the card, now a new reputation track is used to settle this, as well as determine the players starting doubloons each voyage. There are a few other changes, you can see listed in the rule book if you like, but these are the major differences felt in the game. Set-up Getting this game to the table is as easy as saying Libertale, Lib-a-tale.. well it's easy OK! The first decision is if you want to play with more or less take-that in the game. The game board is double sided, and there are double sided tiles for more variety and control of making the type of game you want. This is the calm side with less take that in the bottom Loot spaces. And here is the stormy side for a game with more conflict. I really like this choice and how the art represents the type of game you will be experiencing. It is such a simple fix to a needless problem. It makes you wonder why more games don't do this. Once you have chosen the board you want, give each player a set of cards, a graveyard spot and a treasure chest money counter. Place loot on days one to four linked to the number of players. Then randomly place the reputation markers on the reputation track and give out the corresponding amount of money to each player. One player will then shuffle their deck and chose six cards at random. Each other player then needs to find the same cards from their deck for their starting hand. All players will start with the same six cards. Playing the game. Each player will now simultaneously play a card from their hand into the Island, the top space on the board. The cards will be ordered in sequence from lowest to highest, left to right. Players will then enact all day time powers on their cards represented by the sunshine symbol, moving from left to right. Once this is done, all cards with an evening phase will enact this power, this time in sequence from right to left. Each player will also take one loot from that days pile if their card is still there at this point. (Some powers from the cards may have already moved or killed that card). Then each card still present on the Island will return, face up to each players 'Ship' area, in front of them. Finally, each player will then trigger every night time power on all cards present in their ship. The game continues like this for four days of the first voyage, before a second voyage of five days and a final adventure of six days is carried out. After each voyage, all anchor powers are triggered from both cards and loot, and then all money collected is added to each players treasure chest. At the end of the game, the player with the most money is the winner. The Components. Everything in this box is representative of the usual Stonemaier games quality. From the insert, to the card stock, and Azul like loot tokens, everything is of a very high standard. The box holder for the money is very useful and has a satisfyingly snug lid. Everything packs away perfectly as you can imagine. The only minor qualm I have with the production is the art on one card. The original game used realistic human style art for the pirate characters. This game has moved to a more cartoon style using anthropomorphic characters. This is fine, and I personally really like this art style. But I am unsure about one character. This is how most of the characters look. Undisputedly, they are animals. Whereas, what animal is this? I asked many people this and not one single person says a Cat, which is what the artist told me this was based on. I just find it odd that this card is so much more human than the rest. I am not making a point beyond this, but it does stand out for me. Anyway... Player Counts. The game, like all Stonemaier releases now, is advertised as working from 1-6. I think the game works better with more people as your cards then have the chance to interact with more people. In games like this, more interaction equals more fun! The game works very well in a two though, with the only major change being the below tile being added to the board to act as a dummy third player. The rule added with this around placement adds a lot of fun too! If your character is the only one ranked 20 or less, you must place it directly to the left of the Midshipman. Then, during the evening phase, the Midshipman's power activates, causing the other player who didn’t place their card to the left of the Midshipman to be able to remove a loot from that days haul. It is a funny mechanic which can create a lot of very interesting dynamics. In solo, the game again works as with a three player. There is a full Automa second player, and a third dummy Pilferer character. It works very well and feels like a three player game. It plays quickly and smoothly, aand with some very interesting, and simple changes to the base games character powers. Below you can see on the left, the green player is the human in this solo example. On the right is the Pilferer. In the middle is the Automa. The Automa and the Pilferer use the same deck of solo cards, they are just oriented 180 degrees from each other. The Solo mode uses a very simple, but clever mechanic for deciding how the Automa chooses which card to play. The center card below is the reverse of the solo deck, and shows how to pick the card. It is based on what Loot items are available that day. But is it any good? Playing Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is a lot of fun. The game is incredibly simple to set-up, learn and teach. I was able to play with my six and nine year old very easily. On your turn, you just place a card then do what it says. Of course, playing to a high level will take a bit more experience to get the right strategy, but on my sixth game, I played my six year old for her first game, and she was only a few points behind me by final scores. That may say more about me than the game though! But despite the games simple rules and mechanics, there is a lot of fun to be had. As all players start with the same cards, it is a game of bluff and guess work. Trying to work out what other players will do, and how this may affect you. You want to have the lowest number to get on the left side when it comes to the day time phase. But of course, this means you will be last in the evening phase when you loot the booty! You also need to be mindful of the cards that others could play that could affect you. The Brute for example is a card that when played discards the rightmost character. A great card to play when you and another person may be vying for the same booty, and you think they will play a higher card to get first pick. A higher card you cannot beat. But of course, if you have the Brute, they may do too. Or have they already played it? This game is all about interaction, memory, and strategic card play. Working out how best your cards can interact with others. And guessing what other players will try and do. Interestingly, as you all start with the same six cards but only play four, all players will end the first voyage with two cards still in their hand. These may not be the same two cards of course, depending on what each player played that round. All players will then add in six new cards to their hand, now totaling eight. So, in the second voyage, each player will start to have slightly different hands. But all cards they have will have been visible at some point to all players. Can you remember what they played? Can you predict what they will play now? Scores can very quickly jump up to the high 80's and 90s. There is a lot of satisfaction to be had from this game with the quick learning curve. Understanding how best to manipulate your hand, avoid or create conflict depending on your tactics, and maximise your points becomes second nature fairly quickly. After five games or so, the deck will become more familiar to you, and you will fly through this game. I have played two player games in under 30 minutes but despite the quick nature of some games, you still feel like you have played a proper game. I would recommend this game to anyone who is a fan or card laying games that encourage interaction and focus on the order in which you do things. The game echos some mechanics in Shelfie Stacker. If you have played that and enjoy the card play in that game, this could be one for you as well. I also compare this to Red Rising. A card playing game from Stonemaier, that relies on understanding the deck and playing cards at the right time. Red Rising however perhaps suffers from over complication due to its similarities with the incredibly simple Fantasy Realms. Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest however suffers no such fate. Stonemaier always want to create an experience with their games. Jamey likes a game with strong table presence and interesting components. This can lead to games becoming over complicated as was the case for Red Rising. But here, the game retains its core simplicity, whilst looking gorgeous. All whilst delivering a satisfying, strategic experience.

Battleground WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 2 You’ll like this if you like: Undaunted: Normandy, Unmatched, Warhammer Underwords Direchasm. Published by: Your Move Games Designed by: Robert Dougherty, Chad Ellis, Darwin Kastle, Marcus Giegerich, Scott Garner, Brook Villa Rule book here. This is a preview of a final stage prototype. The game has final art and rules. The only difference is the card stock quality. Battleground is a fascinating game for many reasons. Here our my top three fascinating things about Battleground. "Finally!" I hear you cry. Battleground is a tabletop miniature war game... without miniatures!? Battleground was first made in 2005 with multiple releases of various fractions. This is fantasy warfare, not a war game simulation. You could be a human, but also an Orc, Goblin, Vampire, The Undead, or Elves or many more. Have a look here. The game has seen a recent revamp with version 4.0 with new card art, the introduction of double sized cards for some units, and a tidy up on some of the rules. The new version of the 'Men of Hawkshold' hit kickstarter in April 2019 and successfully funded, after a previous kickstarter in late 2018 did not work out. The new version of Orcs, Dwarves and the Undead hit kickstarter in March 2022 and sadly did not fund. It is three of these re-issues that I am looking at now. Battleground can be taught in a few minutes and has a quick start rule book to help new players learn the game. But it also has a 150 rule book with each box! OK, with that out of the way. Let's get into the game and how it plays. In Battleground you are commanding an Army into battle. This army could be from one of many fractions, and in this review I am looking at the above three. I expect they will come to Kickstarter again soon but are sadly not currently available, but you can sign up to the mailing list for more details here. Set-Up. The game starts with each player choosing which faction they want to play with. There are ways that two players can use the same faction if you so desire, but a lot of the fun comes from pitting two different species up against each other, and seeing what happens. Players will then decide what sort of game they want to play. Largely determined by game length. Each card has a points value, players will build their armies with a maximum limit of either 1,500, 2,000, or 2,500 points. Units are made up of standard, core and elite fighters. You must ensure you have at least one core and no more than one elite card in your army. In each deck there are multiple unit cards to choose from, and each card has a value roughly sitting between 100 and 550 points. Any left over points that cannot be spent on units, can be used to buy command cards for 25 points each. The player with the most units will then place one card onto the table into its starting position. Players must form their units within a 7.5" x 25" area that is 15" away from the other players own deployment zone. Players alternate placing a card until all units are deployed. Starting orders are then assigned to each unit, again in turn, one by one, starting with the player with the most units. The player who spent the least amount on their units will then take the first turn. There are a lot of modifying rules in the game that can be hard to remember on your first game. After reading the quick start guide you will have a good idea but the full 150 rule book may not be for you. The game provides the above cards to help remind you of the main modifiers, unique factions rules, and movement points to keep the game flowing and away from extensive rule book searching. The cards themselves also act as measuring devices. As you can see, the red markers on the bleed allow you to see what a half card length or width is. With these cards the game does quickly become very intuitive and fast paced. Standing Orders. The three starting orders that you can assign to your units are Close, Range, or Hold. Once assigned, these commands will be carried out by your units each turn until you say otherwise. Your soldiers are loyal to the end! Hold simply keeps the unit in its current position, but they will fight an enemy if they are ever within range or engaged. Engaged meaning in direct contact with another unit. Or in other words, touching cards. Range commands your unit to shoot at the nearest enemy within range. If nothing is within range the unit will move to be within range. The final and most commonly used command is Close, which commands the unit to move towards the nearest enemy and engage them in melee combat. This unit will still shoot if possible when closing in, but when it becomes engaged with another unit, on the turn that this happened they will be considered to be charging which can add various bonuses we will look at later. These actions are written physically onto the cards using dry wipe pens. I was unable to do this as I had a prototype version, so I used pencil. I could have sleeved the cards of course. But the final version has glossy card stock where you simply mark everything needed onto the cards and wipe of when required. The command orders, health, everything. It is a very cool concept. Once all units have been assigned their orders, the game in earnest begins. Players will have one command point for every 500 points in the original allocation for building the units. So, three command points with an Army built on 1,500 points. Command points allow you to make plans before the fighting stage. You can change orders of any unit, take over a unit to do something specific to that one card just for that one action phase before it goes back to it's standing order, or use a units special skill such as a spell, steadfast ability, hatred or lash ability. You can also rally which I will come onto later. But the last and most common action you will be doing is taking a command card. Command cards allow you to add modifiers to your attacks and defence stats. More on these later. Each unit card is double sided. On the front you can see the units stats, health, current command (that you have written), and a top down image of the unit itself. On the back, you can see a close up image of the unit, generally in battle; the units specific bonuses and special actions, and usually some flavour text, a quote from the unit in full battle cry, or information on their equipment. Once both players have used their command points the fighting can begin! The first player will move all their units with an active movement action, and engage the enemy with any attacks they are already engaged with or the movement may illicit. The first few turns generally follow a predictable pattern of players moving their units towards each other and the odd long range attack. So, lets skip to the good bit! Movement turns only take a few seconds, and once players are familiar with the options, mechanics, and the units in play, you will fly through this. It's just a lot of sliding cards towards each other essentially! Once a unit is closer to another unit than their current movement range then the unit enters a final rush. During this phase, the attacking card lines up with the other unit, and starts an attack. If this unit was currently performing a Close command, then this is considered to be a charge. For units such as Calvary this would give them an added bonus. Most units have a bonus that works either in their favour as a proactive movement like the Calvary charging, or as a reactive measure such units with spears. The trick in this game to me seems to be working out which units will fight well against others, and finding the best way to manipulate this to happen in your favour when our opponent will be trying the same thing. The fighting will be familiar to anyone who has played a lot of table top war games with miniatures. This game takes a lot from those games, but simply replaces the miniatures with cards. This will either loose you as a potential fan immediately or not. Up to you. I did like the ease of set up though, but the table presence and fun-factor is obviously diminished. But back to the fighting, as it's very cool! Let's say this oversized Goblin Bomb Chukka is attacking the Orc Trophy Takers, which generally wouldn't happen as they are on the same side, but let's go with it. The first number on the card reading left to right, will show how many dice you will roll to attack. In the case of the Orc Trophy Takers, you can see this would be three. You will notice the asterisk here telling you there may be a variable based on the units current situation. On the back of the card the details for this will be shown, and in this case, it tells you that you will get two extra dice if this unit is fighting whilst engaged. The Goblin Bomb Chukka's have no number for the number of dice, just the asterisk. On the back of the card you will see they have Erratic Attacks which means they will roll two D6 dice, and the result of this will dentine how many dice they roll to attack. Most units roll between two to seven dice to attack, so the chance for 12 here is pretty exciting! But of course you could get two. The second thing you would do is look to see what your Offensive skill is against the targets defensive skill. This is the second number on the card matched against the first number after the shield icon for the defending unit. For the Goblins fighting the Orcs, this would be five against one. Although again there is an asterisk for the Goblins which affects an engaged attack versus a range attack. But let's say this is a range attack and the target roll is four. You will roll your dice and anything higher than a four is removed. Sixes will go every time, they are automatic fails regardless of the stats. Any remaining dice are then re-rolled to see if any of the hits will cause a wound. This is done with the third stat which is the attacking units power, measured against the second stat after the shield icon, which shows the defending units toughness. In this case, six against three, meaning rolls of one, two, or three will damage the Orcs. All clear? Don't worry, it all makes sense when you play. This is a very "simple" way to explain the fighting mechanics in Battlegrounds (I hope), but there are many other variables. The distance of the attack affects your ability to aim. If a unit was charging or not affects your attack and defence stats as discussed. You need to determine the special skills of each unit and faction. Also, are you attacking from the front, flank, or rear? And you can also play command cards here to either help your attack or defence. Only one card can be played per unit throughout the entire attack, and again, sometimes special instructions could affect this. Generally speaking, the blue cards are defence cards, the red cards are attack cards and the other colours are for other phases of the game. Most cards are self explanatory and add plus one to various parts of your roll, but some cards offer secondary powers that work for certain units, such as 'Bears the Grudge' which is a specific power for certain Dwarven units. I mentioned the spells and steadfast ability earlier. These are specific powers granted to certain units. The Dwarves have the Steadfast ability. The Undead have the spells. In the command phase, you can use one of your command points to use a spell or steadfast ability which then comes into affect during the combat phase. The spells have some interesting powers and effects, the Steadfast power when activated, will increase the number of dice you roll to attack by one for engaged attacks and increase your courage in rout check. The rout checks come into play whenever a unit takes damage on the final green spot, or any damage in the yellow or red. In a rout, you are determining your units courage to stay in the fight when injured. To make a rout check you must roll three dice. If you roll above the number in your courage box, shown next to the flag on the card, then your unit will about turn 180 degrees and your opponent will be able to take a free hit to your rear. This could cause another rout check if you score more damage in the yellow or red areas. If the unit is not destroyed during this process it will move back its full movement range. This will continue until the unit is told to rally in the next command phase by using a command point. A unit that is routing can be told to hold, and then on a subsequent turn, be told to close. But if a routing unit is ever final rushed before this happens, or moves out of the play area as part of the rout retreat, then it is destroyed. Once an active player has attacked with a unit, the inactive player can attack back if engaged. This will continue until all units have moved and attacked, and then the next player will take their turn. The game will continue until a certain amount of of units are destroyed, determined by the amount of points used to build the armies at the start. Why you may enjoy this. The fun of this game certainly comes from exploring all the different factions and units. The unique powers are all very interesting and there is a lot to learn with each deck. The Orcs and Goblins for example have a highly amusing power for the Trolls where by if they are are ever engaged and not charging they can vomit on the other unit. That's right, vomit! This will be an attack using just two dice, but with an offensive skill and power of seven, with a secondary roll to wound added above the usual roll. This can continue until either four wounds are delivered or no successes are rolled. I guess until you run out of "ammo!?" Trying out the factions, learning how they work, and pitting them against different opposition has all the fun you can find in games such as Smash Up, Unmatched, and the Funkoverse games. There is a childish joy to seeing who will win in these fantasy battles. Battleground does this in a fairly serious way though. The game doesn't have the same humour or toy-box feel of these other games. It feels more like a War Game. The battles are more of a simulation that an arcade smash-em-up. This is where the choice as to weather this game is for you becomes interesting. If you want a war game, I think you need to ask yourself if you are willing to give up the miniatures for the ease of set up and transportation of this simple deck of cards. If you are looking for something simple and fun, then you need to decide if you want the more arcade style fights offered with the aforementioned games of Smash Up, Unmatched, and the Funkoverse games. Battleground sits between these two areas of gaming in a slightly uneasy position. It has the best of both worlds, but also the worst of both. It's fun, light, portable, and very accessible in terms of the the rules, set-up, and teach like the Funkoverse and Unmatched games, but at the same time, quite serious in its mechanics, you are at war after all. It is dice heavy, so still luck based. And full of tape measures and fiddly modifiers like traditional tabletop war games. If you like Tabletop war games but don't like the sound of Funkoverse/Unmatched style battle, then this may be a nice alternative for you when you are looking for something a little lighter and quicker to get to the table. If you like the Funkoverse/Unmatched style games but don't have the time, patience or painting skills required for tabletop war gaming, but are looking for something with a little more depth or realism, then this could be for you. The issue here is I think this is a fairly niche group of people. And that is a shame, as this game offers a lot in terms of the discovery and enjoyment of tabletop war games. The game can also feel a little back and forth at times. It is a war of attrition after all. Fight, defend. Fight, defend. Who can outlast their opponent? Who can strike the final blow first? But as you learn the best way to use each unit, and develop more interesting tactics and strategies other than just charging in and hoping for the best on the dice rolls, there is a lot of game within these small boxes.

Cryptid WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 3-5 You’ll like this if you like: Treasure Island, The Search for Planet X, Published by: Osprey Games Designed by: Hal Duncan, Ruth Veevers By Steve Godfrey We're going on a monster hunt. We're going to catch a big one. What a beautiful day! We're actually pretty scared, I mean it’s a monster hunt and those things are big with pointy teeth and sharp claws……...actually forget the monster hunt, we'll just stay in and watch T.V. The Rules Yeti In Cryptid players are cryptozoologists trying to hunt down the Cryptid of the week. To set up, pick one of the cards from the 60 card deck and set up the board as per the card. Then based on the player count, give each player a book of clues and let them know which number clue they’ll be using for this game. Each player will then place a cube onto a space where the monster isn’t, based on their clue. On a player's turn you can either question or search. When you question, place the pawn on a space and ask a player if the monster could possibly be on that space based on their clue. If it can, then they place one of their discs on the space. If not then they place a cube. If they place a cube then you must place one of your cubes on a space on the board where the creature couldn’t be based on your clue. A search is similar to questioning except you essentially ask the whole table. Place the pawn on a space which you know could be the habitat. You must then place one of your discs in that space. If you already have a disc there then you have to place a disc in another space which could be the habitat. Then in turn order, each player must place a cube or a disc, again based on their clue. Once a player places a cube the search ends and you place a cube in another space. If however all other players place a disc then the game ends and the player who called the search wins. Shock ness monster I love when board games surprise me. Not jumping out from behind the curtain kind of surprise me. Although that would certainly be a shock and now I’m trying to decide which would be the scariest board game to have jump out on you! Cryptid was a game I’d heard a lot of good things about and it was on my list of games I wanted to try but I never really looked into it much further than that. When I finally managed to play it though I immediately regretted not seeking it out sooner! When you first look at Cryptid out on the table it certainly doesn’t boast the sort of monster hunting adventure that the front cover suggests and, let’s be honest it’s not that and the game never really confesses to being that. What it is though is a brilliant, pure deduction game that not only asks you to find out where the creature's habitat is, but also what information your opponents are hiding. Chubpacabra’s clever clues At the start of the game you literally have your clue and a couple of your opponents cubes on the board to help you find the habitat. It's one of those games that, when you start you can’t help but think of the term ‘needle in a haystack’ and even though you have those couple of clues, knowing where to start can be a bit overwhelming. This is where the game gets clever. The first couple of turns are usually a shot in the dark for all parties, but don’t forget that everytime someone gets a negative answer to a question, they have to add a cube as well. So quickly the board starts to fill up and it’s here where the deduction element kicks into high gear. Regardless of the outcome, each turn of questioning gives the group some idea as to other players' clues which is sure to keep players engaged throughout the game. The further into the game you get, the more it becomes a race to crack each other’s clues and find the habitat before the others. It gives the game a great escalation in tension and makes you don the deerstalker and get the old grey matter going as soon as you start the game. There’s something fun about looking around the table and seeing everyone muttering to themselves with a huge quizzical look on their faces as they’re all trying to figure out everyone else’s clues. The game doesn’t stop there though as it gives you a fun way to add to that confusion. It would make sense to assume that if someone has questioned you about a space then it must mean that that space is part of their clue. But when you question you don’t have to question about a space that follows the rules of your clue so you can bluff your opponents. If you think it’s fun seeing everyone’s confused faces, then there’s nothing like seeing them when they think they’ve got your clue sussed out and then you bluff them! A lot of deduction games will ask players to either play a role, be a traitor or bluff their way around things and, as bad as I am at them, I do love those styles of games, but they’re not for everyone. Not everyone feels comfortable with being “the one” in those games and not everyone is good at bluffing or keeping a good poker face. As well as throwing the game off they’re not always good for new gamers who aren’t used to that style of deduction. This is where I think Cryptid becomes the ideal deduction game for all of those people mentioned above. It gives you all the fun of deduction without having to rely on skills that some of us don’t naturally have. You may have already deduced from this paragraph that I’m not a good liar when it comes to board games……..or am I!? Cryptid plays just as well at three players as it does five but as the player count creeps up things get a lot tighter and, as you can imagine, so does the amount of information you need to keep in your head. I won’t lie, that can be a lot as you're trying to figure out who has what type of clue. However there is now a deduction sheet that you can print off from Ospreys website. I’ve not had a chance to print this off yet but I’m eager to add it to the box as soon as I can. Not a Big-Foot print When you first look at Cryptid set up on the table you’ll be forgiven for thinking that this is an abstract game and I’d probably be the first to agree with you. The game doesn’t necessarily scream creature hunt. The artwork on the tiles is quite simplistic, well done of course but there’s just not a lot of it and the components are just some cubes and discs and other simple shapes. I know some people will see this and be tempted to turn away, but please don’t! Because it's not until you play the game that you realise that these are the perfect components for the game and that these are all they could realistically be for the game to work as well as it does. Any more artwork on the board and it would be too busy and distracting. The wooden pieces are nice and simple and, again, are there so as not to confuse things and distract from the game. Just looking at the board you instantly know that a cube means no and a disc means yes and the structures are instantly recognisable. I can imagine there being publishers out there who would be tempted to put unique pieces for each player which would just confuse things. It’s games like this that go a long way to prove that sometimes making big flashy components aren’t always a benefit to the game and just keeping it simple is sometimes what you need. All that being said, I really like the components. The boards look good when they’re all put together and the wooden pieces are oversized and are nice to handle. Let’s talk about replayability. There are 54 cards in this box. 19 regular cards and 35 advanced and each of these have clues for all three player counts. Now I’m not going to get into the maths but that is A LOT of replayability. I’m not saying you’re ever going to get through all the cards but this is definitely a game that more often than not you’re going to want to immediately set up and play again. Let’s be honest though, unless you play this a ton, you’re probably not going to remember clues from each card. Cryptid is a great deduction game that I would happily bring out to gamers and non gamers for a quick game of puzzly fun. The box states 30 - 50 minutes playtime but even at five players our games have generally been at the bottom end of that time, which means you can easily set up and play again and there’s a good chance that once you’ve found one Cryptid, you’ll want to repack your equipment and go search for another!

Cytress WBG Score: 8/10 Player Count 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Blood Rage, Android: Netrunner, Neon Gods. Published by: Tress Games Designed by: Sean Lee Rule book here This preview is based on a prototype copy of the game. Rules and components will change. Cytress is a stunning looking game. Check out this box art... But so many games with great box art can disappoint when you set the game up and the in-game art doesn't follow what's on the cover. This is NOT the case here. Bright, vibrant, cyber-punk colours, with lots of options. Lovely! But we haven't even got to the main bit yet. Check out this three tiered structure that represents Stratos, the city you are trying to break into. It dominates the table, looming down on the rest of the set-up and looks gorgeous, even in prototype form! OK, enough purring. How does this play? Cytress is made up of four distinct phases. In phase one you simply gain supplies. In phase two you can send your leader out to get more supplies. Phase three you will send your workers out to complete missions to improve your engine and get end game points. Then phase four is a simple reset to ready yourself to go again for another round. The interesting part is how everything you do, get, earn, and pay for is affected by your own personal lifepath. A unique way to track your engine building within the game, linking everything back to your own personal life experience. Each player will start the game with a double sided player board. You can choose either side to use. The variation being the icons on each of the four main areas linking back to the four factions in the game. Subsequently, when you complete missions in phase three, you will add the cards acquired into the appropriate area based on colour, and increase your lifepath skills accordingly. Below you can see a player board with one card added to each area. Your lifepath is then used to affect each phase. In phase one, when collecting resources, you will do so for each icon shown in your Coprocrat lifespan. The more completed missions for this faction, the more symbols you have, therefore, the more resources gained. In Phase two, when each other player places their leader onto the board to gain resources, for every resource that they gain that match symbols in your Privateer area, this will gain you one of those resources too. Building your engine here needs to be based on what resources you think the other player will want to acquire in future rounds. In phase three, you can trade goods based on a ratio of how many symbols you have in your Rover lifepath. For example, if you are trading credits for technology, and have three technology symbols in your Rover lifepath, you will trade at a ratio of 1:3 in your favour. Also in phase three whenever you complete missions, you will need to pay the required cost. This cost will be reduced by any symbols you have of the same type in your Hooligang lifepath. Your lifepath is an engine that you need to nurture and build over the game. It makes choosing which mission to complete a fascination choice. There is a lot to consider here, and herein lies the brilliance of this game. Let's look into it. In phase three, you can send out three ships to trade goods, take out loans, complete bounty hunter missions, build tunnels to Stratos, or complete missions for one of the four different factions. When you make this choice there are four main things to consider. 1. Which area of your lifepath do you want to improve? Each faction will have three face up mission cards to choice from, each in that factions own colour. If for example, you want to increase the resources you get in phase one, then you need to complete a mission for the Corprocrats. But you will need the right resource for completing Corprocrat missions, unless you have the right symbol shown enough times in your Hooligang lifepath to apply the appropriate discount. 2. Where do you want to put your worker? When you complete a mission, you will place one of your three ships onto the appropriate faction board, but you will also place a worker represented by a coloured cube onto the same coloured hex on the mini-map. The colour is important for two main reasons. First, when you build a tunnel, you can only do so on a space you have a worker; and one way to build tunnels requires the tunnel to be build with specific resource on a specific colour. Second, you will score end game points based on an area control battle of left over workers that have not managed to ascend to Stratos, based on their proximity to the tunnels that all player built. Where you place your worker will affect your ability to get up to Stratos, but also your ability to control the tunnels that have been and will be built. 3. Which Skill do you want to improve? Each mission has two symbols on it that represent what type of mission it is and who that mission is being performed on. You will have skill cards dealt to you at the start of the game that require you to complete three missions of a specific type. When this is done, you can take the bonus associated with becoming a specialist at that type of mission, making any subsequent missions of this type cost one less resource moving forward. 4. Which faction to you want to attack? Who you complete that mission against will also contribute towards your ability to complete the available bounty cards. Each card will score you end game points when collected, if you have three mission cards completed against the same faction. So, as you make this choice, there is a lot to consider. What resources do you have? What resources discounts do you generate when completing a mission? What resources do you want to generate more of, or get more discounts with, or have a better ratio for, or generate more of when opposition leaders go out and get those? Where do you want to place your workers on the mini map? Are you looking to send that worker up to Stratos or will they stay behind to fight the area control battle? All these factors will be swimming around your head as you make your choice and it is delightful! The look and feel of Cytress feels fresh. The rules work well together and bring you into the theme. The lifepath engine build mechanic is a clever way to focus your turns, makes each round and decision feel important, and sets each game to feel like its own unique experience. I love the way the lifepath mechanic works, and brings the classic engine-building mechanic more focused to your own personality in the game. It feels more of a video game mechanic than one associated to a board game, but it works very well. There are multiple ways to score, and with that, many different strategies to focus on. DO you want to get as many of your crew up to Stratos? Or, would you rather benefit from the controlling the tunnels the other players are building? With limited turns, and the game all run on a clock of a limited number of tunnel pieces, every turn is crucial. You need to maximise your point scoring efficiency and react to how the other players are playing the game. I will follow the Kickstarter for this game closer, you can follow along here. Cytress is launching on the 26th of April. FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cytressboardgame FB: https://www.facebook.com/cytressboardgame IG: https://www.instagram.com/cyberpunk_boardgame/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/cytressofficial

Between Two Cities with Capitals Expansions WBG Score: 8/10 Player Count: 1-7 You’ll like this if you like: Carcassonne, Kingdomino, Quadropolis. Published by: Stonemaier Games Designed by: Matthew O'Malley, Ben Rosset There is a lot of confusion between the Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Between Two Cities and The Castles of Mad King Ludwig and I get that! I was confused too. But here is the simple history and my thoughts of Between Two Castles. Ok, all caught up? Great! Let’s talk about Between Two Cities. First up, how different is this to the follow up game Between Two Castles? Well in truth, not a great deal changed. Between Two Cities cemented the idea of playing with your neighbour, choosing two tiles to place either side of you into each city you are building, and point scoring based on your tile placement and set collection. So, all that is here in abundance. Castles and Cities The changes in Between Two Castles were largely around making the tiles you can place a lot more varied and the placement rules a little looser. These are Castles for a Mad King remember, not an organised council zonal controlled city! In Castles you can place the tiles into any shape you like, just as long as you obey each tiles own rules for position above or below ground. In Cities you have to form a 4x4 grid. (5x5 grid when using the Capitals expansion). As such, in Between Two Cities, the game is a simpler and more focused affair, using just six different types of buildings. Shops, Factories, Taverns, Offices, Parks, and Houses. Between Two Castles has many, many more! A lot of the positive talk around Between Two Castles is focused quite rightly around the beautifully designed ‘Games Trayz’ that hold the many tiles. In Between Two Cities the tiles sit loose in the box. There are bags if you want, but really you don’t need them. The lose storage assists the shuffling and set-up. And don’t worry about having to flip over tiles to be the right side when you open the box. Due to the quantity of tiles being so high, they fill the box entirely so tend to not flip over between games. As such, set-up is a very quick process. Choose and take your “City Token” and place it in front of you on the table. Take seven random tiles from the box (nine with the expansion). Get comfy in your seat. Maybe get a drink. Check your phone and away you go! I don’t usually have time for those other things, but it’s so simple in this game, I will allow it. The game operates almost as easily. From your seven tiles, you will choose two to keep and then you pass the other five to the person to your left or right depending on what round it is. Chose another two and place then and go again until you discard the final tile. There are a few rounds of this and well as a round with double sized tiles. Build your city, score your points. Simple. Scoring Scoring is very simple and quite different to Castles. Only the Shops and Parks have placement rules, although the Offices have a bonus based on this. The Shops and Parks score exponentially based on how many you have in a row or for the parks, simply adjacent. The Taverns score based on how many different types you get from the four different varieties. The offices score based on how many you have but with an extra point for each one adjacent to at least one Tavern And houses score between one to five points based on how many of the different types of buildings you have in your city. Your final score is the value of your lowest scoring city, and the winner is the player with the higher score. Two-Player and Solo Versions In the two-player variant you simply make two cities yourself and score the accumulative total of both. It is a great and simple two player option. There are two solo modes against the mighty Stonemaier Automa system and both work very well. Its quick to set up, score and pack away so ideal for a quick solitaire game. Capitals The Capitals expansion brings in three major changes. The Landscape mats, District cards and scoring tiles, and the Civic buildings. All of which add a small layer of complexity to the game, choices and scoring. They work essentially as three modules which can be added or removed as you see fit. The Landscape tiles are my favourite edition. They expand the game from a free-form 4x4 grid to a 5x5 around a natural background. Be that a lake, river or meadow. There are five tiles on each landscape mat that you cannot build on and others connected via bridges. You must place your first tile on the mat and then each subsequent tile touching one previously placed tile as in the base game. It makes the grid you form by the end a little more complicated, but also more visually stimulating and varied. I like the small challenge this adds but mostly appreciate the table presence things brings by not starting with just an empty table. The District scoring cards and tiles are a nice simple addition that affects the end game scoring. During set-up, six from seven cards are placed next to the three tiles, two for each. The final card is discarded. This then creates three groups of districts based on two building types for each. The player with the most amount of adjacent buildings of a specific type for each district will then score nine, eight or seven points respectively depending on which district it is. The person with the second most will score three, four, or five points. This is a nice simple addition that makes you think a little more about where you place each tile during the game. Previously, there was not a lot to focus your attention when it came to where your tile went. It was a more about which tile to pick. It’s nice to now think more about which tile you will pick and where you will place it. The final addition to the Capital expansion is the Civic tiles. This adds 21 new tiles to the base games 108. So, with 36 being drawn each game by each player you will most likely see a fair few each play. They are simple enough but do look a little complicated at first glance. Each Civic tile requires it to be built next to two specific types of other tiles. It will also show one type of tile you need to avoid. If you manage this you will score six points for that Civic tile. If it is next to just one type it will score three, and if you don’t get it next to any or it is next to the tile it wants to avoid, it will score one point. I have found the players I tried this with avoided taking these tiles in the draft until the later rounds. They are a little less attractive as they are harder to place and score easily from. I like the addition, and as these are all modular you can easily take them out if you don’t want them. But it was certainly the part of this expansion I was the least excited about. I like the simplicity of Cities. Against Castles it feels like a simpler game to set-up and start playing. And certainly, a quicker game to score! This expansion bridges the gap of complexity between Cities and Castles and would work well for people who only have Cities and want a bit more from the experience. But if you own Cities and Castles already and want a bit more, I would encourage you to just play Castles instead. But if you don’t own either yet, Cities with Capitals is the one for me. Cities is my preferred game between Cities and Castles. Mainly due to the ease of the teach, set-up and scoring. I will play with the Cities expansion every time I play now and bring in the landscape module from Capitals whenever I teach new players. I will then add in the district’s module for game two and Civic tiles for game three onwards. As such, I can see this making Castles a little redundant in my collection. Its probably only “normal” to have one of these two games. But being the huge fan of Stonemaier games that I am, and such an obsessive completist about these things, I really did want to have both. But with my consumer advice hat on, I would say go for Cities if you want a nice simple tile-laying game. Castles if you want more complex scoring. Or Cities with Capitals if you want the option for both.

Manifest WBG Score: 7/10 Player Count 2-5 You’ll like this if you like: Ticket To Ride, Venice, Clank! Published by: SchilMil Games, Ltd. Designed by: Amanda Milne, Julia Schiller What is it about ships that get me excited! I love all things nautical, but sadly get very easily get sea sick! So, a board game version is right up my street! Or canal, should I say? Manifest pits rival players against each other, in a Ticket to Ride style race to complete contract cards. Traversing the worlds oceans, picking up cargo and passengers and taking them to their required destinations. Like Ticket to Ride, it is a very simple game. But highly addictive! Set up Manifest has a gorgeous board. It shows a map of the world and the available shipping lanes and ports that you can sail to and from. Lay this out, stare at it for 5-10 minutes, then discuss places you have been too, want to go to, and generally enjoy yourselves for a bit. This isn't in the official rules for some reason, clearly an oversight. But does comes highly recommenced from WBG. Once that is done, give each player their chosen player board depicting their two ships and you can begin the game, but feel free to continue any residue conversations inspired by the stunning map of our beautiful world. Each player gets their starting cards for the deck building mode, or some randomly dealt actions cards if not. More on that later. Three contracts cards are then dealt to each player. One contract with a value of one, one at two, and a final one with a value of three. Players can chose to keep two of these and will then place their two Ships onto the board at any port of their choice based on which contracts they are going to start with. The discarded contracts are placed face up on the board, next to the face down contract pile. These are open contracts that any one can fulfill on a first come first served basis. Playing Manifest On your turn, players can play as many cards as they like from their hand and then draw back up to four in the normal game, or three when using the deck building cards. Each card can be used for one of three different actions. Firstly as money, to buy goods when at port, or buying new contract cards to try and complete. Secondly, as movement points, to change your ships location on the board, (ship movement noises optional, but encouraged). Or finally as the special action shown as text on the card. Special actions range from attacking other ships on the board, defending yourself against attacks on your ship, increasing movement, and many more. You can combine cards together to increase your movement or money available, and play as many cards as you like. Turns will be quick, and you will find that you can move around the board quicker than you might have thought. I found two player games to take just 30 minutes, and three to five player games generally over between 45-60 minutes. But this does depend on how long you want to play more than anything else. At the start of the game, depending on your player count and desired game length, you can set an end game points total to aim for. Once this total is hit by one player, all players then have one more turn and the game ends. As such, you can make this game last as long as you wish. Everything is infinitely salable. You could play for ever in theory. This game does not have any huge pay offs. But it does give all players regular, and constant moments of satisfaction. Completing contracts feels good. You can mark them off as done, hand over the desired cargo and or goods by returning them to general supply and move your newly completed contract to another part of the table. This feels good. If you are the sort of person that likes to create lists, mainly so you can tick things off later as it makes you feel good about yourself, this game may be for you! Variations One very simple way to amend this game is to give out one of the above cards to each player at the start of the game. They give out some minor asymmetric powers that are all very self explanatory, easy to use, but quite beneficial within the game. Some of the action cards allow for these player powers to be swapped during the game. If you do get one that you are not happy about, or cannot use as much, there are opportunities to change that. I introduced them from game one, and wouldn't ever see a reason to play without these. The deck building cards I brought in from game two, and again, wouldn't now play without them. They fully replace the action cards. With the deck building cards, each player will begin the game with the same cards in their own colour. Each player will shuffle and deal three to themselves. There is a deck of other cards that players can buy for three dollars on their turn, and for an extra dollar, discard a current card when they do this. The game completely changes into a deck-building experience which I love. Acquiring a new card that allows you to move six spaces, and then being able to use that a turn or two later to get you through a tricky situation feels great. Your power increases. Your ability to carry out more complex contracts at greater speeds improves. All this feels highly rewarding as all good deck-builders should. Moving around the board generally is a calm affair. There is the odd take-that power, but I found we generally favored the money or movement action on the cards over the text powers, take-that or not. As such the game did become a little solitaire. It was more a race to the end game points target. A satisfactory race, but lacking a little in interaction. It does irk me a little when interaction in games often leads to take -that. I do wonder why it cannot be more mutually beneficial. It's not just that I, as some others would agree, don't want to negatively affect other players around the table, especially when playing with my children, but I don't want to waste a valuable turn hurting someone else, when I could be helping myself instead. But you won't always have it your own way. The red routes on the board, which offer significant short cuts if you take them, represent an area of Ocean or Sea patrolled by Pirates. When you chose this way, you must roll the two dice to see what fate awaits you. If either dice face shows a number then the corresponding hold on your ship is emptied of any goods stowed there, but you can then sail on. If you roll the life preserver you are safe. If you roll two Jolly Roger symbols then your entire boat is sunk, all goods are lost, and you must remove the boat from the board. Don't worry, you can add it back safe and sound anywhere on the board on your next turn, but it is annoying! Dice used in this way represents a huge element of luck that can change the course of the game, but there is something you can do to prep for this, using the pirate defense card. There is some jeopardy here if you don;t have this card, but you can always carry two items when you only need one, to prep for any pirate attack losses. I found the Pirate routes ended up being actually useful as a way to try and get rid of unwanted items you may have picked up to try and complete an open contract, but missed out on. The only way you can offload items if not completing a contact is to stop at a port and pay a dollar to offload. This is annoying and feels inefficient to me. I prefer running the pirate gauntlet and hoping they would steal from me the things I didn't want! It felt naughty, like I was cheating the game! But it is mentioned in the rules as a recommended tactic. Overall, I really enjoy playing Manifest. I like the feeling of "being at sea," and the romance and adventure this brings. The game certainly feels like that. In truth, I admit I don't have to dress up in my sailor costume every game, but it does help! I like the option to play with or without the deck-building element. As I say, I don't think I will ever play again without it, even when teaching new players the game, it is simple enough with it and does make it a better experience. But I like the option. It feels less luck based and more rewarding when you're planning and manipulating your deck. When it is your deck that has got you to where you want to be, it just feels better. Like your earned it more. If you are looking for a family level gateway game like Ticket to Ride, and like the nautical theme, then I don't think you can ask for much more than Manifest. It has the right balance of game length, rules, strategy, and theme to be a perfect family experience.

Beast WBG Score: 8.5/10 Player Count 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Fury of Dracula, Letters from Whitechapel, Last Friday. Published by: Studio Midhall Designed by: Aron Midhall, Elon Midhall Rule book here This was a kickstarter preview copy. I did not have all of the final components or the double sided board that will come with the final copy. But I was able to play a full games on one map, with five different Beasts and many different combinations of six different hunters.* At first glance, this game looks stunning. The art and theme are beautifully atmospheric. But we have all been let down by good looking bad games before right? Well, after playing the game multiple times, I can tell you now, the game stands up to the art. This is a truly absorbing game that will pull you into its clutches. Making you think about it between games, and want to play again, over and over. But for now, just look at that box art! ...OK, have I got you back? No? No problem. Have another stare. I will be here when you are ready... Right, let's get to it. Beast is a stunning game. During your first experience with this, I would wager you will think this is a little too asymmetric. It feels unbalanced in favour of the hunters, and the rule book even suggests this may be the case. Not specifically in favour of one player, but that you may feel that you are falling behind in the game. It encourages you to stick with it if you fall behind early on. I found that my first two games saw quick and brutal victories for the hunters. But as we started to learn how to play the game with a little more stealth, and a lot more patience, the game evened up quickly. But let's rewind quickly and talk about how this all began. Beast has been made by first time designers Aron and Elon Midhall. How do people making their first game make one this good!? The game successfully funded on Kickstarter during 2021 and is currently available for pre-orders from the backerkit page here. In Beast, you are playing either as the Beast or the hunters. The Beast and the Hunters live in the same land, and due to reasons all to familiar with us all from real-life, they just can't seem to get along! Sadly, this means the hunters can only win if they weaken the Beats so much that the game gets to Night four, or they destroy the Beast entirely. The Beast however just wants to feed, although sadly, this takes the form of the Farmers and Nobles that have settled on its lands. If the Beast can take three of these settlers out before the forth night then the Beast will win. This sounds gruesome, but for some reason, it just doesn't feel like that in the game. I suppose as all you are actually doing is moving meeples from the board or adding heart damage tokens to a player board. *There is a second board and other missions and different victory conditions but I have not been able to try these with the prototype copy I have. Before you begin, players must decide who will play as the Beast and who will play as the Hunters. Provided with this copy were five Beasts and six different hunters. They all have their own different special powers and unique ways of using the action cards. You can play this game in a two player with one player controlling two hunters, but it works best in a three with two players controlling one hunter each and one playing as the Beast. The only variation between a two, three, and four player game is the drafting round, and for a four player game, how big the map is and how many Hunters there are. In a four player game the entire map is used, for a two or three player game the south east area is off limits to keep things tight. Players must sit around the table according to their role. In the picture above you can see the perspective from the Hunters viewpoint. The text on the board relevant to the hunters is the right way up and the item cards available to you are facing you. The Beast must sit on the opposite side to see their text, but more importantly, keep the players apart. This is a hidden movement game after all. Here is the view from the Beasts' perspective. Drafting Phase. The rules of the game are conveniently placed on the edges of the board and begin at Dawn with a drafting phase. Here, both hunters and the Beast will take cards and pass the others along, readying themselves for the day ahead. The cards work for both hunter and Beast with a simple top and bottom action. The top is for the hunters, the bottom is for the Beast. Players will be looking to take what they need whilst not giving away things their think their opponent might be after. Players will then add these drafted cards into their own specific player deck shown by the art of the back and to any Beastly Talents or Items them have unused from the previous rounds. The cards show either a red or blue circle action. On your turn in the day phase, you can play up to one red card and up to one blue card. Day Phase. Starting with the Beast, players will now take turns to play one or two cards to move around the board, search, hunt, attacks animals, hunters or other humans, or other specific actions such as for the Beast, deploying their summons. Each Beast has a unique summons. A secondary creature the Beast can call upon for help. The Bolgin for example, a giant frog like creature, can call upon three different Polyp's who once summoned, can move into neighboring areas and explode. In doing so they will give one damage to all creatures there and turn the area into a swamp, an area that favours the Bolgin. Each area on the board is one of four different land types. Swamp, Forest, Cave, or Settlement. This is important as each Beast has a favored terrain in which it can carry out special attacks, and some cards only work in certain terrain. The hunters in return, can lay traps in each of the four areas of the board, north east, north west, south east and south west, and do so across one of the four types of terrain. They can do so, in the knowledge of what areas the Beast they are fighting will be stronger in and be more likely to move into. The Beast starts the game in the central space on the map. It can then move two spaces, north, south, east, or west, hidden from the hunter players. The Beast does this by choosing two cards from a huge deck, and placing them face down on the board. This records their turn so it cannot be changed or forgotten, but keep secret. In the final version of the game there will also be a mini map that the Beast player can use to track their progress. This sounds very useful as I was often plotting my moves in my head as the Beast player and the Hunters were staring at my eyes and head direction as I did this! The Beast also has the option to play a no movement card. This is a good way to fool the hunters as from their perspective, it looks like you moved. You have played a card just the same. But of course, the Beast simply hid into the background. Waiting to pounce. The Beast will only ever reveal itself when it attacks or is found by the hunters from a successful hunt action. But the Beast will give away clues throughout the game as to its whereabouts. Firstly, and the main way this happens is whenever any hunter moves onto a location that was a space in which the Beast recently moved through. When this happens, the Beast must place a footprint token on that space to let the hunter know they found live tracks. The other way a Beast's location can be revealed it when it attacks, as the Beast leaves evidence of its presence either with an injured person or animal, or the complete removal of its prey. This is done either by adding a wound marker to the animal, hunter or human character it attacked and moving the Beasts marker to this space. Or, by removing the prey altogether if the attack was fatal. Each attack played in the game by all players, hunter and Beast, delivers just one damage. But players can upgrade their characters and powers to start to increase this in later days. The Beast can giveaway clues as to its location in other ways. If the Beast plays a card which can only be carried out on a certain terrain, then of course, the hunters will gain information from this. When the Beast adds a summons to the board, this must be done one or two spaces from where the Beast is. This again gives clues as to where the Beast may be. Some cards allow for multiple actions to be done and in any order the Beast likes. Move and Summons, Attack and Move etc. The hunters will not know which order these events took place. So, there is some mystery here. But as the Beast, you need to move with stealth and patience to avoid becoming an easy kill yourself. If you ever end your turn as the Beast with your location known, then you will become easy quarry for the hunters. Attacking and moving in the same turn, in that order, is key to the Beast's success. Night Phase. Once all the cards are played, or all players have passed, then the night phase begins. This allows players to upgrade their characters using grudges that they have earned in the day through various cards actions, or for the Beast as a result of attacking the Settlers, Sheep, Bears, and Pigs. The hunters have some interesting options but the real excitement here comes for the Beast's character. They have some very powerful, unique and interesting powers that will be game changing if you can get it right. Learning how these upgrades all work and getting to use them for the first time is a genuine thrill! Each Beast has the chance to turn all attacks into double damage, but the rest of the upgrades are specific to each one. They allow the Beast to move after an attack, transform nearby locations to their preferred terrain, add cards back into your hand after certain actions, and many more interesting powers. The upgrades are permanent throughout the rest of the game apart from the yellow circled ones which are one time actions. During the night phase, players will also check to see if they have fulfilled the specific contracts to that day's mission. There are two maps and two types of contract. I was only able to play on the Northstar Expanse map with this prototype copy, but this allowed for some interesting benefits to be won. The contracts add some focus to each days play and help each player develop their powers across the game. The Beast for example was rewarded with Ancient Power token which increases one attack by one attack point. The Beast can also get Beastly Talent cards, and Grudge points for killing Sheep, Pigs, and Nobles. The hunters are rewarded with grudge points and Watchtowers for damaging the Beast one, two, or three damage points on the first, second and third night respectively. The Watchtowers help the hunters see footprints across a wider territory. The game carries on for three days; or until the Beast is slayed or kills three Nobles or Settlers. I found that after a few games, we always at the very least got to the third day, and the game was always won with the Beast needing only one more kill to win, or the Hunters needing just one more successful attack on the Beast to be victorious. Games are often tight and very tense affairs. Hidden movement games should be tense. You should feel nervous and excited about hiding or searching. Beast gets this part just right! There are some very interesting cards that allow for brilliant moments in the game. In one two player match I had where I was playing as the Beast, I was too close to the hunters, and they knew where I was from a previous attack I had made. I played my Rush card to move three spaces away, and then my Beast's special Leap card which allowed me to move a further two spaces. This card could only be played from a Swamp though, so it did give a clue as to where I had been. My son (nine), playing as the hunter, then played the Prowl card which allows you to move one space, but then move one additional space for each space you move onto where you find some live tracks. He took a punt on the direction I had started and successfully tracked me five spaces to where I was now located. This sort of clever card play, combined with deduction, a little bit of guess work and luck; when it works out like this, brings a lot of joy to the table. Moments like this are common in Beast, and will keep you coming back for more. Beast is a phenomenal game. It works well in a two, and four, but I found to be best in a three. A two versus one is perfect for a game like this. One versus one works as the hunter has two hunters to control, but it just doesn't feel as fun. There is obviously a lot less table talk with two than three or four. Two or three hunters chatting between each other, strategising and plotting whilst the Beast listens is pure board game gold! This is lost in the two player format. In a four, you have more of this, but I found some elements of quarter backing where one player took a lead and tried to dominate what the other hunters did. It also felt tough as the Beast to have three players after you. Perhaps the other side of the board and the other daily contracts work differently for other players? I don't know yet. Playing as the hunter, tracking down and finding the Beast is wildly satisfying. To do so, you must first find a live track, then play your Hunt card to reveal the Beast, and then attack. The Beasts all have four or five health so you only need to do this a few times across the four days to win, but as this happens so rarely in the game, when you do achieve this, it feels great. For the Beast, you only need to kill three Nobles or Settlers. So, again, your attacks will be rare, but highly rewarding when you do pull them off. As your location is revealed when you attack, you need to do so when you can move away right after the kill, or when you are far away from any hunters. Both of these things is hard to achieve. When you do manage to achieve this, it feels great! Winning and losing at this game feels good. All games are close, so losing can be frustrating, but you will still feel like you had a great experience, and can credit the other players tactics and skill to best you. There is some luck in this, guessing which way the Beast has gone. But also a lot of strategy. When you win, it feels wonderful. Like you have actually achieved something. There are no victory points. No end game objectives. No second place ties. Just a simple kill or be killed, win or loose fight off. Thrilling, tense, tight gameplay all packaged into a tight game time. This game comes highly recommended from me. I cannot wait to try the finished version.

Komodo WBG Score: 7/10 Player Count 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Carcassone, Cascadia, Kingdomino Published by: SchilMil Games, Ltd. Designed by: Amanda Milne, Julia Schiller Rule book here* Do you like the tile laying simplicity of Carcassone? Do you enjoy the satisfaction of housing animals in Cascadia? Well then, Komodo could be for you! Komodo combines the satisfying beauty of matching tile placement with the constant 'mini-objective-completion-rewards' seen in Cascadia into one simple, family friendly game. Let's take a look. Komodo is from SchilMil, a New Zealand based publisher known most for their 2018 hit, AuZtralia. The Schil coming from Julia Schiller and the Mil coming from Amanda Milne. Komodo has a slightly strange introduction in the flavour text in the rule book, about an impending asteroid about to hit the South Pacific. I am not sure why that is there, but the game itself is a joy and really has nothing to do with asteroids! How to play. In Komodo, players are looking to place tiles into a communal area to build up areas of either desert, water, forest or grassland to create a safe habitat for your animals. Each player will start the game with two animal cards chosen from three that were dealt to them, and five terrain tiles. On your turn, you can either swap out some of your tiles and cards for new ones, or place as many tiles down as you like and house an animal. *In the most recent rule book it also allows you to stock up by drawing two animal cards and two terrain tiles, or any combination of three in total. This is not present in the original 2012 rule book which instead says at the end of your turn, you draw back up to five tiles and two cards. The animal cards show the points available if you can safely house them, but also the space required for them to be happy in their new home. The Tasmanian Devil for example will get you 10 points at the end of the game if you can safely house it within a landmass of at least 10 spaces in the grasslands. The Tiles themselves are three by three tiles, each with nine spaces on, made up of a mixture of different types of land. The game starts with the Komodo tile in the center and the placement rules could not be more simple. When you place a new tile on the board it simply has to touch another tile, along one full side, with one matching land area. You could complete a square of four tiles by placing a forth tile into the bottom right space, that matches one side of one tile of the left but not the one above it for example. Only one side needs to match. Building up the tiles couldn't be simpler. But it is not just about finding a place to place a tile, more building up the required land space you want based on the animal cards you have in your hand. All animals not yet housed can be seen from the as yet, unplaced animal standees, so you can get an idea for what is in the other players hands and the deck. This is helpful to avoid building up a land mass you think another player could use before you do. Learning and teaching this game couldn't be simpler. Becoming a master of the strategy takes more time, and it s a lot of fun to learn! As a test of the simplicity, in the picture below, can anyone see the one tile that has been placed illegally? Each time you place an animal you can take one of the available face up Wild cards. These offer a variety of powers such as being able to rotate and move tiles that have already been placed, draw extra tiles or cards and still take your turn, or make a rival neighbors animal escape. To stop this from happening to your own animals, you can lock their location. You only have three locks, so you will want to hold onto these until you place a higher value animal. Animals cannot be placed into habitats that have other animals there already, but there are a few animals that come in twos, and they are happy to be placed with each other. Otherwise, you need to have a barrier created by a different land type to start a create a new area for each animal. *Once you have finished your turn, you will draw back up to five terrain tiles and two animals, and play passes to the next player. Or play just passes if you are playing the new rules. The game will end when one player only has three tiles in their hand for the original rules or when there are no tiles or cards left for the new rules. Each player will then have one final turn before the scoring phase takes place. Each player will add up each housed animal and then subtract the value of any un-housed animal. Games move quickly, and it will be rare that you will not be able to house an animal on your turn at the beginning or middle of the game. But near the end, space will become more of a premium, and using the wild card powers to either relocate another players animal or force one of their animals to escape to create space for you will be crucial to your success. If you don't like take-that in games, you can easily just remove a few cards to stop this. But it is useful in these finals stages to have these powers. Building up a larger land space can take a few turns, but leaving a large area without an animal in could mean a rival player will use this space for their own animals before it comes back to you. Generally speaking you want to try and house an animal at least once per turn, build up your land and then claim it. But this is not always possible with the larger areas that some animals require. This is a race game in part. Sure, it is about who gets the most points, but the game is on a clock, based on the tiles running out and space being available. If you don't house the animals quickly, then you may be out of time. The tension this creates provides a lot of entertainment for me. I enjoy trying to do things before it is too late. It is very satisfying to me to achieve things like this in games, and this game has a lot of this. You need to try and see what types of land the other players are building up to see if they may benefit from you what you plan to do. What animals have been placed already. And what animals are still left to be house. I like trying to make this guesses. If players really start taking this seriously, they may even start bluffing what areas they are trying to make. And with most tiles usually having more than one land mass, this is very easy and fun to do! You can only hold up to three wild cards at a time, but you can play them whenever you like on your turn. There are two of each type. You will use them all for a three and four player, and with the new rules, only one card of each type will be available in a two player game. There is also a cooperative mode which can be played solo quite easily where players are looking to house all the animals. The game is played the same way as the competitive version except all players lose if on any turn, at least one animal couldn't be housed. There are also threat cards which must be dealt with once per turn which can play havoc to your plans, so you need to expect the unexpected! The cooperative game ends when all 32 animals are safely housed. If this is done, all players share the victory. This mode feels more like a puzzle than a game, but is a fun way to play solo, with younger children or to learn the game. In the main game, creating your habitats and housing your animals is very satisfying. The fact that you get to do this most turns, feels great. There is a constant sense of progression as the tiles expand, more animals are housed and your points rack up! Finding places to house second animals of the same type is highly rewarding, and moving an animal from a large area to a smaller one when it only needs that, in order to place another animal of yours that otherwise would have been left homeless creates a lovely feeling of completion. If you enjoy games that give you a constant little kick of endorphins for small victories, this could be for you. This seems to be a trait with game made by SchilMil from what I have played from them so far. And what a lovely thing to be associated with. I enjoy playing this game a lot. It is quick to play. Easy to teach. Light enough to play when you are tired or after a heavier game. But it still gives you back a sense of satisfaction, win or lose, for completing your tasks as you play. Get an animal card. Create a suitable habit. House animals. Rinse and repeat. It feels great to do this, and the game keeps you coming back for more. My children enjoy this game immensely. We keep all the take-that in, but we do remove the minus points for any un-housed animals at the end. It does make you feel bad to lose lots of points at the end, especially when it is a 20 or 25, and a card you took near the end! However, this is part of the game I enjoy a lot when playing with adults. You know the risks when you take a new card. In the new rules, it is your choice when you take cards. You don't have to do it every turn like the old rules. And you know what animals are left and what the state of the tiles is. If there Komodo is still out there but there is a large desert space unoccupied, then go for it. If not, perhaps hold back. These are fun strategic choices that I enjoy making, and I assume why the rules changed? Overall, Komodo is a surprisingly deep game. The photography used on the cards and standees is an interesting change from art, but makes the game feel real. At the back of the new rule book there is some detail on each animal, and I have enjoyed learning a little more about this creatures as I have played. And in turn boring my kids with the facts when I played with them! I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys games like Cascadia but want something a little lighter. Or Cascassone, but think they would also enjoy the animal theme.

Gadianton WBG Score: 6/10 Player Count 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Jamaica, Talisman, Terror Below. Published by: Exclusive Games Designed by: Pierre Crouet Rule book here Have you heard of the Gadianton robbers? No, me neither! Well, a quick google search has taken me to the most reliable source on all things on the internet, Wikipedia. I am now reliably informed that they were a secret criminal organisation from Central America referenced in the Book of Mormon. Check it out here. OK, history lesson over, let's talk about the game. Gadianton is from first time designer Pierre Crouet. The idea of the game is that you play as one of the Gadianton thieves. You are trying to sneak into the city, steal some crowns, and get back to the safety of the jungle before the guards stop you. Set-up Once the board is laid out, place the four guards onto their spots around the center of the city. Deal each player two actions cards and the chosen amount of crown objective cards. You can take more or less depending on how long a game you want. This is entirely up to you but there is a suggestion on the outside of the box, not the rules strangely, to guide you based on player count and desired game length. The crown objective cards will show you a coloured crown that you need to steel from the city and bring back to the forest. Each player will then place their chosen colour of robber onto an outside red space and the game can begin. How to play On your turn, you will roll two dice. The regular six sided movement dice and also a second dice that determines who moves. The movement dice will show an image of a robber, or a robber and a guard with or without a line between them, telling you if you are moving just yourself, yourself and the guards, or yourself or the guards. Your aim is to move into the central spaces, pick up a coloured key, followed by a crown of the same colour, and then return the crown back to any outside red space in the forest. You will do this for each crown objective card you have. Key first, then crown. Then run away! On your turn, you can play any two action cards you may have to boost your move, before drawing one more action card and the play then passes to the next player. The components for this game are very nice. Out of the box, you need to add stickers to the guard and thief pawns. But it's fairly simple, although the stickers are not quite sticky enough in truth and do need a good hard press down. Each thief comes with its own set of three "crowns." These are used to represent specific actions such as hiding or putting a guard to sleep, and they fit nicely onto the top of the pieces. But when done, they do look neat! Look, I even lined the stickers up! Playing the game is very simple. Like many roll-and-move games, there is limited strategy to be deployed, and a lot of luck based on the die roll. The variety in this game comes from the other movement die which dictates who you can move. In our first few games, we only ever moved ourselves, largely ignoring the guards. Rushing to get the crowns we needed and then out of town! This does not lead to a fun game. Its just a race, with dice rolls determining who wins. In later games, we realised you did need to mix your movement up, and control the guards too. It is interesting how the guards only move when you as the player wants to move them. And if one player starts to move one or two guards around, in an attempt to scupper your plans, you really need to start thinking about doing the same in retaliation. But in truth, if all players avoid this, you can create a quicker and simpler, but also quite dull game. However, if all players embrace the guards, then there is a LOT more game here. Strategy There are 12 ways in and out of the city, and the game gives players four doors you can use to block these. The doors can only be moved or opened with the door card as one of your actions on your turn. You will usually only ever have a couple of cards in your hand and there are only a few door cards, so as much as this is a nice addition, it just doesn't happen enough in the game. Being able to use the doors to block another player is very hard. Even if you do get a card and are able to place one, your opponent can either use a card themselves to move it, or simply move towards another exit which will not be that far away. It will rarely slow down your opponents, if at all. I think you either need more doors, more door cards, or less ways in and out of the city. I like the idea of messing with the other players though. I just wish this was easier to do in the game, and more encouraged. There are two ways you can fight other players to take their crowns, if they have one, or make a guard do this for you. If you are ever next to another player you can embark in hand to hand combat. Although this is sadly just a dice roll off. Or more interestingly, you can shoot an arrow at another player using a very cool distance measuring system based on your attack die roll. The issue here is you need to get to one of the orange guard towers and have an arrow action card to do this. The guard towers are located in-between the entrances and exits to the city and so are a little out of the way. With only a D6 to control your movement, every movement space counts. And then of course, if you do sacrifice your movement to move yourself or a guard to a guard tower space, your opponent can anticipate this and simply move out of range, knowing you can only shoot a certain distance. But even if there is no time for that, you still as the attacker need to roll high enough to reach them. The risk/reward just doesn't quite work for me, and so I started to avoid even trying to do this which is a massive shame. Other action cards available allow you to slow other players down by forcing them to miss a turn, which is a good way to try and shoot someone. Stopping them from running away You can also gain a master key meaning you can claim any colour crown without first picking up the right key from the board. But there is also another card that really makes heading to the guard towers such an avoidable tactic. You can play a card that breaks an opponent's bow before they even shoot but after they commit to trying to fire at you. I understand the designer wanted to give some control to the defending player, but there is so little incentive for the attacking player to even try, this seemed like the wrong choice. We need more cards to help the attacking player, not the defending one. I love the art though, and the clear, text free cards do look great. It does mean you will use the reference guide in the rule book for the first game to remind you what they all mean. But there are only 12 cards and they all make sense. Below you can see a card that allows you to add two extra movement points to your dice roll, and one that lets you sneak through gaps in the city wall. They are all mostly self explanatory. Essentially this is a race game using dice to control your movement. Roll-and-move is not a very popular mechanic, and I feel that if you are going to make a game using this as your main part of the game, then you need to bring something clever and new to the table. Or at the very least have some other ways to mitigate your luck from the dice. This game does have a +2 card for movement and a plus 2 for fighting, but I don't think this is enough. There are quite a lot of the movement cards in the deck, so you will get them a lot. But I feel the game could do with more things to help other than just these cards. Perhaps areas on the board that activate certain things. Spaces you could go to that allow you to increase your movement, or take more shortcuts. The game needs more take-that, and more encouragement to interact with other players and the guards. Perhaps there could be a variation where someone plays as the guards Hunt for Mr X style. Or maybe it is just me and the way we were playing it? I enjoyed the race element of this game. It certainly creates a nice level of tension which I do enjoy in games. Tension often comes from a race or luck based games, and this is certainly present from both of these factors. he main issue I have with the game is that alongside the tension comes either satisfaction from winning, or frustration from losing. That may sound simple, but most games for me don't punish the loser as much as this game. Anyone who has played a game with me would testify to the fact that I really don't care if I win or lose. But losing this game is just annoying. On one occasion, I was one space from victory. I had collected two of my three required crowns, and was in possession of my third. I needed a roll of four to get to the final spot and win. I was close to another player in a similar situation as we had previously tried to interfere with each other. I rolled a three and had no +2 card so ended my turn one space from victory. The other player then battled me on their turn, won through no more than a higher attack roll than me, and disposed me of my crown. They took the crown for themselves, as they luckily had the same objective for the same coloured crown. They subsequently won one turn later, moving with my crown to their final space. I was still a good few turns away from being close to finishing my task essentially having to start the search for my third crown again. All the work I had done to get the final crown being made irrelevant with one dice roll. This just felt disheartening to me and the winning player said it felt unjust and unsatisfactory for them to win this way. If it was a short game, fine. Rack 'em up and go again. But this was the end of a 50 minute game and left me feeling quite dejected and the other player awkward and like the game had ended when they had not deserved it. If you like this sort of take-that, and all players buy into this, then I can see this game being a real hit. But for me, it left me not really wanting to play without some house rules that would stop this happening again. Overall, this is a nearly game for me. It has great art. I love the theme. But I think it could perhaps have benefited from more play-testing to find its place a little more. There are so many games made every week, it is hard for each one to stand out. The standard for games has moved on at an incredible rate, which is a good thing. This game 20 years ago could have been a real hit, and even today with a few tweaks could still do the same. But it definitely lacks something for me to cut it in the current climate of games. That said. If you are a fan of roll-and-move games, this has a genuinely absorbing theme and interesting implementation of the way the guards move. And there certainly is a lot of tension created from the race to the end.

WBG Score: 8/10 Player Count: 2–4 You’ll like this if you like: Photosynthesis, Medina, Bunny Kingdom Published by Floodgate Games Designed by Daryl Andrews, Erica Bouyouris By Tom Harrod Resplendent trees follow a formulaic yet fantastic journey across all four seasons. New shoots emerge in spring, basking proud in the summer warmth. Leaves tumble and cascade in autumn, carpeting the woodland floor come winter. It’s a story of two halves: of growth, followed by their preparation for winter dormancy. What if we switched out the roots, trunks and foliage, and replaced it with 3D cardboard? Swapped brittle, browning leaves for bright, laser-cut wooden tokens? And what if we chucked a cheeky squirrel in for good measure? What you’re now imagining, my gaming friends, is Bosk, by Floodgate Games. This design comes with a tagline: “a game of majestic trees and falling leaves.” The definition of the word ‘Bosk’, in case you’re wondering, means a wood comprising of small trees. (If you win a future pub quiz thanks to this answer, feel free to transfer me 10% of the prize.) Bosk is an abstract-strategy/area-majority game by Daryl Andrews and Erica Bouyouris. Andrews co-designed the colourful Sagrada, also by Floodgate Games. That’s where the similarities end, though. Let’s take a closer look… Bosk In A Nutshell There’s four rounds to Bosk, each being a separate season. In spring, everyone ‘plants’ (places) their trees on the board – a national park. In summer, everyone scores their trees, according to their locations. In autumn, everyone’s trees start to drop their leaves. These scatter and tumble due to the ever-changing wind. Last of all in winter, everyone scores their leaves, according to where they fell. Four phases then, but two of them comprise of scoring, alone. The meat of the game occurs in ‘spring’ and ‘autumn’. This is where all your planning and calculating come into their own. Summer and winter take less than five minutes to add up the respective scores. A Spring In Your Step Each player has eight 3D trees in their own colour. Each has a number (1 – 4, twice). The board is a grid of squares that overlay the national park’s terrains. The first player places any one of their eight trees on a vacant intersection on the board. (As in, the point where two grid lines meet to form a +, so it can’t be on the board’s outer edge). Players take turns, clockwise, placing one tree at time onto the board. You can place them in any numerical order. In a three-player game, for example, 24 trees end up on the board. But why place a tree in one spot over another? And why do your trees have numbers 1 – 4 on them? Scores Out For Summer Once the last player’s placed their final tree, summer scoring begins. You look at each row and each column of the board one at a time. The player with the highest value(s) of trees present ‘wins’ the row/column. For example, if red has two trees (of value 1 and 2) in the same row, their total is 3. Purple has one value 4 tree in the same row. Orange has two value 3 trees in this row (so a total of 6). Orange wins this row, with purple being the runner-up. Red gets nothing for coming third. A scoring table explains tie-breaks for joint-first, or joint-second. If you’re the solitary tree type in this row/column, you earn extra points. But if this were a football match, it’s half time. Don’t fret if you’re in last place. The second half is a whole different ball game… No Fooling Around In Fall The last player gets to place the all-important Wind Board. This sits along one of the four edges of the main board. Deciding where to place it can be game-changing. It dictates the direction the wind begins to blow. Eight arrows run along on the Wind Board, left-to-right. Each arrow rotates a further 90° clockwise from its predecessor. The first four arrows are numbered 1 – 4, while the latter four are mere asterisks. There’s eight rounds in autumn, like there were eight in spring. (You’ve guessed it – one for each tree.) The active player triggers one of their trees that matches the number stated on the Wind Board. You have two trees of each number, remember? In round one, leaves fall from one of your ‘1’ trees, then, in the direction stated by the Wind Board. Each player has eight big Leaf Tiles numbered 2-8, plus one with a squirrel on it. A bit of hand-management enters the fray. You’ll select one of these, and take that many wooden leaf tokens from your supply. You place one of these leaves in a square beneath your tree. Then, you place the rest of the leaves leading away from this first leaf, in the wind’s direction. The next leaf sits in one of the three squares – either parallel, or diagonal – away from the previous. Will you drop them in a straight line, a total diagonal, zig-zag, or a blend of all three? If you reach the edge of the grid and you have leaf tokens remaining, return them to your supply. But that’s a waste! The aim of autumn is to cover the board full of your colour leaves, if viewing the park from above. The board’s separated into eight different-coloured terrains. Each of them score in an area-majority manner in winter. Once you’ve placed all your quota of leaves for the turn, you remove the origin tree off the board. Then it’s the next player’s turn, clockwise. They pick a Leaf Tile of their choice, and drop that number of leaves leading away from one of their ‘1’ trees. Then they remove their tree. Then it’s the next player’s turn, and so on. Don’t Trust The Squeeple! Over the eight rounds you have to use all eight of your big Leaf Tiles. Each player has, in total, 35 wooden leaf tokens. Deciding when and where to use the larger (and smaller) quantities of leaves is a marvellous decision. The squirrel is a little different. This lets you use your squirrel meeple, instead of any leaves this turn. The little animeeple still obeys the wind direction (according to the round in which you use it). You can place it up to three spaces away from the tree. Squirrels can sit on top of any stack of leaves. And we’ve all seen David Attenborough documentaries: nothing sits on top of a squirrel! Opting when to use it is a major question of timing. Smart placement could be the difference between winning or losing an terrain. This Park Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us Now, like any good western, you’ll soon realise that this national park ain’t big enough for the both of us. In a three player game, for example, between you all you have 105 leaves (108, including squirrels). The grid for a three-player game consists of 100 squares. There comes a time in autumn where Bosk starts to become a tad cutthroat. Because if you like, you can opt to overlay your leaves on top of others. If a rival’s leaf sits in your path, no problem; you can cover it with one of your own. At the end of the game, remember: it’s only the leaves that are visible from above that score. The leaves on top of a pile are all that matter. But hold on there, buster. Yes, it’s in your best interests to cover up your opponents’ leaves. But it comes at a price… Smother The Park With Your Leafy Blanket To overlay, you need to ‘throw away’ a leaf in hand for every leaf in the grid square you want to cover. Let’s say you’re red, but you want to place a leaf into a spot where yellow has a leaf. You have to return one leaf to the supply. Then place another of your leaves on top of yellow’s. On a later turn, the purple player might want to place one of their own leaves here. In that case, they’d have to throw away two of their leaves in hand, to position one of their own on top. This can prove expensive, but it’s a vital consideration, strategy-wise. The more often you overlay, yes, you’re undoing the previous work of your opponents. But it means you’re placing fewer of your 35 leaves onto the board. You’re not spreading out as much. And the aim of autumn is to dominate as many terrains as possible, because you’ll score them in winter. And winning a terrain scores you a lot more points in winter, compared to winning a row/column in summer. On occasions, your own previous-placed leaves might block your path. You don’t have to throw excess leaves away to overlay on your own. You place one on top as if the square were empty. Of course, this feels like a waste, because you’re not investing it on the board, elsewhere. But one silver lining is that it acts as a further deterrent for opponents overlaying there later. They’d have to throw away more of their own leaves to overlay there. Ultimately, you can’t feel bitter about leaf overlaying. You know that each player (including yourself) has 35 leaves to spend. It’s all about how many of those 35 end up on the actual board, and how many of them are sacrificial. Go After The Big Dog? Or Settle For Second? Bosk presents layers of intrigue. Like any area majority game, it can become a bit of a constant state of one-upmanship if you’re not careful. You need to pick and choose your battles. Some terrains are smaller than others. Are these easier to dominate, then? Fewer leaves needed? Or are they appealing to everyone, so it becomes one big fight for them? One of the sneaky things to remember is that dominating a terrain is all fine and dandy. But you get points if you finish a clear-second in a terrain, too. Sometime it takes less effort to tiptoe in and pip a rival for second place, compared to challenging the big dog for first… One thing you cannot afford to happen is to allow one player to have their leaves present alone in a terrain. That’s worth a whopping eight points. This makes the final few rounds so important; trust me, the tide can – and will – turn. If you can ensure you have a single leaf in their monopolised terrain by winter, then that one leaf scores you three points. (For coming second.) Plus, it drops their eight points down to five. (If they win the terrain, but a second leaf type sits present there, too.) That’s a major swing. I tended to keep my squirrel until late in the game as insurance for this exact move. Does that make me a bad person?! Errr… How Many Points For Joint-First, Again? The scoring tables are not easy to memorise, I’ll admit. You need to keep the back page of the rulebook to hand to check this. There’s four different scenarios for scoring. (First and second; joint-first and second; first and joint-second; and first, alone.) It’s accessible enough via the table, at least. Talking of scoring, summer and winter feel like two polarised battles. There’s a lot more scope to nick points, it feels, in summer. There’s more rows and columns up for grabs, you see. Meanwhile, there’s only eight terrains in winter. This evens itself out by winter’s points being worth more. With smart placement in spring, you can reap the rewards come autumn. This is the kind of thing you’ll learn after your first game. To begin with, in spring, you’re presented with a blank canvas, of sorts. You can place your trees anywhere! But the board soon becomes cramped, if you want to steal those scoring opportunities in summer. Or, you’ll see the board cramped in a different light, if you’re thinking ahead to autumn leaf-placement in mind. It’s a dangerous game to put all your eggs in one basket in spring. Yes, you want to try and out-muscle your rivals for the rows and columns. And elbowing in with your ‘3’ and ‘4’ trees can prove overwhelming in this respect. But you need to remember: you have two of each tree number. And in autumn, you’re going to have to activate one of each of them for the first four rounds on the Wind Board. Remember the asterisks? For the fifth-through-eighth rounds of autumn, you still have to obey the wind direction. But you can pick any number tree to drop leaves. The peril is if you place, say, both of your ‘3’ trees in the same row. This goes double if it’s a row near or on the outer edge. Because then you limit the flexibility of that tree, with regards to its leaf-drop. It isn’t going to be able to drift its leaves far in one direction, if it’s too close to the board’s edge. Spring Strategy Blown Out The Window Trying to split my trees apart in spring gave me a decent opportunity to adapt my tactics in autumn. It meant I could go with the flow according to north, south, east or west winds. Which leads me to a potential negative in some peoples’ eyes – Bosk is a game about reacting. You can plan and strategise to an extent, because you know the order of all eight wind directions. But you can’t plan too far ahead, because the state of the board changes between turns. You need to keep your fingers in lots of pies. Like any kind of game that has an abstract nature to it, this can bring out analysis paralysis. You might get some players who agonise over tree placement. They’re trying to play both spring and autumn both at once. This is tough to achieve, though. One thing you can do is manipulate turn order in your favour. This can change each time the wind moves direction. Whomever used the lowest Leaf Tile number in the previous round becomes the new first player. This adds yet another layer of strategy into the mix. Do you want to go first, so you have more of an empty board to place more of your leaves? Or do you want to go later? Yes, you might have to overlay, but you can cancel out an earlier player’s hard work. Hindsight’s on your side. Table Presence Hits All The High Notes Bosk commands table presence aplenty. It boasts wonderful art from Kwanchai Moriya (Dinosaur Island, In The Hall of the Mountain King, Prêt-à-Porter, among others). I’m so impressed by Floodgate Games’ products for their component quality. Sagrada packs a real punch. Cosmic Colonies is a hidden gem with awesome plastic resources. Bosk hits the same high notes and it doesn’t miss a beat. The main board itself is abstract in its purest form. There’s eight different terrains, individual by stark colour contracts. Mind you, the black terrain is a little too similar to the water terrain, if playing under ‘mood lighting’. There’s subtle details on the board, but not the sort you’d necessarily look at, or go out of your way to look for. They’re the kind of details that you’d soon notice if they were vacant, though. Sporadic trees, single rock formations, grass billowing in the breeze. You don’t want a board like this to look too busy. You want the terrains to stand out, and (for the most part), they accomplish this. The trees are the pièce de résistance. Two punched pieces slot together to form a 3D standee. They do require some assembling; it’s not a job you can rush. I had to use a small knife to prise out some of the more delicate pieces. But so long as you’re patient, the finished article looks stunning. The big Leaf Tiles are of chunky card stock. The wooden leaf tokens are dainty yet divine in their silhouettes. They have no problem at all standing out against the backdrop of the board during autumn and winter. There is one potential issue with the trees, though. There’s no denying their photogenic quality at the start of autumn. 32 trees standing proud on the board, in all their glory. But for the first few turns, you’ll see players trying to place their leaves down in a haphazard manner. If you have big hands, it’s tricky (see also: nigh-impossible) to fit your hand between trees to place leaves. You might (see also: you will) knock some trees over, by accident. This is awkward, because you’ll have to remember where said tree(s) stood on the board! Bosk comes with four insert boxes, one in each player colour. They’ve got a delightful origami vibe. These are the perfect size to fit each of the players’ components. It means set-up takes ten seconds – a simple case of passing out four boxes to the players! A big nod of approval for me, here. Final Thoughts On… Bosk I’ve fallen head over heels for Bosk. The way the wind changes each round in autumn is a thing of genius. It’s such a delight to see the theme mirror mechanisms in such a seamless fashion. It’s the kind of feature that gives me genuine jealousy, because it’s that clever. It’s the kind of feature that makes me think: “You know what, I wish I’d thought of that…” I approached Bosk like any kind of area control game. That means sometimes taking on ever-changing tactics, rather than a singular strategy. Your opponents’ leaf placement can cause havoc with your plans. This goes double if you limit yourself with poor options. (Both with the hand management of your Leaf Tiles, and the placement of your trees). But I love the fact that the final four rounds have those asterisks. You can trigger any tree you like of your final four remaining. You can evolve your tactics as everyone’s master plans unfold. Can you second-guess how your opponents will evolve theirs? You can, after all, see their remaining trees, and their remaining big Leaf Tiles… There’s a tendency to want to want to compare Bosk to Photosynthesis (by Blue Orange Games). They both have alluring, 3D trees. But that’s where their parallels end. They’re separate games; you can justify owning both. I prefer Bosk, due to the four-season format – the ‘game of two halves’ angle. In Photosynthesis a bad start can hamper you. In Bosk, it felt like you could always adapt your tactics and recover. Bosk is a 45-minute game, and one I love sinking my teeth into. It’s not complex, nor complicated to grasp, but it has marvellous layers. Like I mentioned above, the mechanisms match the theme in a true, logical way. Players nod when you explain the rules to them because they just… make… sense. Yes, it helps that the pieces are wonderful and tactile. And boy howdy, does it take a pretty picture. But mark my words; there’s more to Bosk than beauty. It’s got brains to boot, too.