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Blue Cocker games are mainly known for the hugely successful Welcome To series of flip and write games which I featured here in this article about games great for playing over video call. If you haven’t tried these games yet, I would highly recommend them! Welcome to is great in most scenarios; solo, video call or large groups. It is brilliant fun to play and is the example I always use for the perfect scale game. It works just as well in any player count, one to one hundred! There is a great catalogue of other games published by Blue Cocker and I wanted to cast my eyes them all and list my top three games. Blue Cocker looks for games with a high “natural gameplay”, which I would say is heavily present in all the games of theirs that I have played. So, without further ado, here is my top three Blue Cocker games! Save The Meeples 2-4 Players. Officially 10 years and up but worked for me with my eight-year-old. Save The Meeples is an intriguing game. First up, it looks quite different to many other games you may have seen or played before. It quickly fills a table of medium size, but there is no board. The mix of trains, tracks, rocket ships and 3D landscapes are both enticing and stunning to look at. All set up, this game will certainly draw people in! As it did for me when I first saw this at Essen 2019, where crowds of people gathered to see what was going on. Based on looks alone, I was left very excited to play this game. Secondly, despite there being no main central board, this game is predominantly a worker placement game. There are very few games that utilise worker placement as its core mechanism when there is no main shared board present to facilitate this. In Save The Meeples, there are four mini boards where you can place your workers for certain actions, but it doesn’t feel like four boards. More like four destinations. The separation of the boards into four different physically locations on the table adds to this. To get to these destinations, the Meeples are placed onto trains in an action queue mechanic. Setting up the order in which the actions can be implemented at each location. This mix of action queue and separate location-based boards makes the entire process feel much more like an immersive experience over a process of game turns. The addition of a ‘journey’ to get your Meeples to their place of action, over simply placing them down on a space on a board, pulls you into the world this game sets out to create. It sounds simple, but it really does work thematically. And finally, this game feels intriguing from the unique perspective the game presents. You are playing as Meeples. Not with Meeples, but AS Meeples. Trying to escape the torment that us humans have put on them in various games over time! The Meeples have been enslaved by the human race in order to facilitate certain actions in games, and they are fed up! Do you feel suitable guilty!? You should! The Meeples want to return to their home planet and the freedom this will bring them. This meta idea alone is fascinating to me. I was instantaneously and whole-heartedly drawn into this world. The humans immerging from the forest quickly become the ‘baddies,’ and my escape route on the rockets was ‘my’ dream. It’s a captivating, original and most importantly, highly immersive theme. In the game, you are working towards two potential end game scenarios. Either the humans over run you and your fellow Meeples meaning you will score points based on the number of humans you were able to defeat and capture during the game. Or you will escape to your home planet launching a certain number of rocket ships triggering the end of the game, and the winner is determined by the amount of Meeples you managed to get onto the rockets. In both scenarios, the point gained from the other facet become worthless. As in, if the number of rockets triggers the end of the game, the humans captured become worthless. Likewise, if the humans overrun the forest ending the game that way, then the Meeples that escaped become worthless. This is another intriguing part of the game where you need to watch your opponent’s moves and try and judge which end game scenario they are favouring and working towards. There is no point capturing more humans if your opponent is about to end the game by launching the final rocket. Every part of the game is cleverly inter-connected. The mechanisms of each location are all intrinsically linked in a way that adds both to the theme and fun on offer. In order to build the rocket, you of course need to build it first. To build it you need the parts. In order to get the parts you need to visit the mine. But once the Rocket is built, it still needs to be launched and of course, for you to benefit, have your crew onboard. It feels very intuitive to play, as you puzzle out the best order and manner to get your Meeples to work for you. Deciding what to do, in which order to do it, all the time whilst watching what your opponents is a very enjoyable process. In an ironic twist of fate against the games theme, the Meeples essentially are involved in “one last job,” working for the human overlords (you!) to get away from the humans looking to play with them! If this paradox hasn’t blown your mind, then you are going to have a lot of fun! I would highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys worker placement games and is looking for something a little lighter and more family friendly than many other worker placement games on the market. The games offers a theme that doesn’t take itself too seriously yet offers an immersive experience. As much as this is a mid-weight game in terms of the rules and set-up, (which does take a while) the game itself is relatively straight forward, as most worker placement games are. But it pulls you in and you will be surprised at how invested you are, quickly doing all you can to defeat those pesky humans! ARGH 2-4 Players. Officially 8 years and up but worked for me with my five-year-old. Continuing the theme of pesky humans, ARGH, which stands for “Animals Revolt aGainst Humans,” is a hilarious family friendly card game, pitting animals up against their human overlords! ARGH can be set-up, learnt and taught within minutes. It offers a fast, fun and quite unique game experience suitable for younger children and adults alike. And if your family is anything like mine, will lead to a lot of laughter, screams and most pleasingly, pleas of “Can we play one more time please?” The game is simple. You play as revolting animals. In that they are fighting against the status quo, not unappealing! Having been held captive in laboratories, you join forces with a lab rat looking to blow up the human’s domain! Set-up is simple. There are three decks, easily identified from the colour on the reverse of each card. Shuffle each one and lay them out face down. Players then take it in turns to take a card to add to their collection or offer to another player. Keep the card and place it face down in front of you. But face down cards are always open to be stolen by other players! Cards offer either positive or negative effects. This is why you wouldn’t necessarily want to keep every card you draw or indeed, are offered by another player! When you offer a card to another player, they must chose to keep or return it without looking at it first. If they return the card, you can then keep the card face up, meaning it cannot ever be stollen. If they look at it, they must then keep it, again, face up. And herein lies the genius of the game. Why would you offer someone a good card? Well, in the hope they think it is a bad one and reject the offer. You now get to keep it face up and protected for the remainder of the game. But this choice is not simple for the person you offer the card too. What if it is a bad card? Maybe they think you are trying to get rid of it and don’t want to take the risk of accepting the offer. “Why is this person smiling at me as they hand me a card? Why am I now smiling? Why are we both now hysterically laughing? Nothing has happened!!” The game very quickly becomes all about the hilarious interactions between players. Stare outs. Fits of giggles. Bluffs, double bluffs and triples bluffs! The game brings so much to the table from so little components, words or rules. In order to win the game, you simply need to have two bomb cards face up in front of you or in your possession come the end of the game if this doesn’t happen. The end game is triggered when one of the piles runs out, but we play when all the piles are gone to make it longer as we are always having so much fun! Each pile starts with one bomb card in it, but before the games begins, one random card is blindly removed from each pile. So, it may be you are all chasing bombs that are not there! As such, if none of the players manages to get hold of two bomb cards, the winner is determined by the points acquired by the other cards in their possession. Any face down card can be stolen by other players. On their turn, players can choose to take a card from the central draw piles or other players face down cards. But of course, they may not be good cards. They may have been looked at and placed there as a bluff too. The bluffs don’t only come in what is offered to you, but in what is never offered to anyone! This works just as well with adults as a late-night filler. It may be met with scepticism to start with due to the simple nature of the rules and cartoonish style of art, but once you get playing, you realise there is a whole sub game of bluffing and tricking your friends akin to many other popular party games. This is great fun family card game and an entertaining and hilarious adult party game all in one! Rest in Peace 2 players. 8 and up. Rest in Peace is a lovely little box two-player only production that brings some interesting mechanisms into play. Mixing auction bidding, set collection and elements of a race game, this clever little game packs a lot more than first meets the eye. In Rest in Peace, players are competing as one of two families of ghosts, competing to control the most majestic and sort after mansions and castles across the land. Control four manors or three castles and you will win the game. At the start of play, nine of the available psychic cards are randomly delt in a line. I say available, as there are 29 nine included with the game, and there are nine starter ones to use as you learn the game, and 20 others made available to you later as you learn the game. A mansion or castle token will be placed in each of the cards, and each player is given their deck, shuffles it and draws 5 cards. The decks are made up of ghost cards of different numerical values. On each player’s turns, you will lay a card next to a psychic card in an attempt to win that token. The player who commits the highest amount of ghost cards to it wins. How much are you willing to commit to each card in order to win it. Your deck will become exhausted if you are not too careful, so there is some strategy here. The loser doesn’t go empty handed though, they get the psychic card as compensation. The psychic cards can later be used in subsequent rounds, giving players many different powers. Being able to look at their opponents’ hand, boost their scores, copy other cards or even switch unclaimed tokens around of later psychic cards. The game creates a delicate and perfectly balanced tug-of-war as players compete to be the first with either four manors or three castles. On occasions you will bow out of a round without even playing a card, letting your opponent take the token happily. Other times you fight tooth and nail to win, perhaps even both exhausting all your available cards and powers. There is a tension and sense of competition here that is pure and unadulterated two-player gold! As both players start with identical hands, but are drawing them randomly, there is some luck to be said in the early rounds but the catch-up mechanism works well. As the loser on each round gets the psychic card, if you win some of the early mansion tokens, you may climb ahead in the game. But your opponent will become more powerful than you, due not only to the psychic cards that they win, but also the cards they are not having to play from their hand to win! As players enter the middle and later rounds, often the player in second place draws back the score s their dominance from having more powerful cards shines through. Quite often making this game have a close and tight finish. The variety with the 29 psychic cards keeps this game fresh. I like how the game brings these in batches. Instead of randomly drawing 9 from 29 each game, the cards are grouped into sets. The starter set and then four other groups. I like to play the game in a campaign style of five games. Each time with a different group of psychic cards. I am surprised the game doesn’t have this as a suggested campaign style best of five in the rules but it is easily done. I would recommend this game to anyone looking for a simple two-player game that is light on rules, but still brings a fun and tense experience.

by @favouritefoe Venice came alive for me on 25 March 2021. 1600 years after the city was first founded, and almost a year to the day that we were due to have arrived in La Serenissima ourselves. But with the Pandemic changing everything, our own travel plans to visit the sights and smells of the Floating City (and other places) were unavoidably cancelled. I have no doubt that we will resume our plans to tour the waterways one day. But for now, I can cruise the canals courtesy of designers David Turczi and Andrei Novac, and publisher Braincrack Games through their latest Eurogame release, Venice. Queen’s Gambit Gearing Up! Before I begin, however, I think I had better give a little more context to this piece, as it is not a straightforward review. You see, anybody who knows me will be acutely aware that I am extremely patience-challenged. Waiting is not my natural state. Shop queues, traffic jams, even being processed through the IKEA showroom; the glacial crawl is just too much (or too little!) for me. Good news, bad news. It doesn’t matter. I just need to know now. I need to react and I need to act. Time waits for no woman, and I am never in the mood to see-what-happens. And so, a week prior to its official retail launch, I downloaded the rules for Venice. Looking up at my ceiling at midnight whilst lying in my pillow palace (the only time I allow myself the luxury of going horizontal), I tuned out the rhythmic snoring of my Bearded Moon bed-fellow and dived in! Ignoring the complete lack of actual components to parse, I just wanted to skip over the wait and start playing. And with the entire 12am – 5am slot available to me and my imagination, I doffed my merchant garb and (along with two other make-believe mongers) went paddling, stalling, racing, and sailing around the imaginary board. Over the next few hours, I worked my way up and down the narrow canals, collecting goods, activating assistants, and completing missions along my way. I won, of course 😉 If you haven’t already, you can read my Queen’s Gambit inspired experience in full here, and, having now played the actual game with Bearded Moon and our brilliant bubble sharing mother-in-law, I feel like many of my preliminary predictions were pretty on ponte. Gondoliering Gameplay! Without doubt Venice is a beautiful pick up and deliver game weaving together other big mechanics in the form of resource management and engine building. It also dangles the possibility of linking multiple actions/bonuses together in one turn which is not always the case in this type of game (and one of the reasons why pick up and deliver isn’t often my favourite mechanic). And for me, knowing that there are ways to earn even a little bit more money that will let me sail around the board faster, hitting up more buildings, activating more assistants and their bonuses, and achieving more missions as the game progresses makes it feel like there is always the potential for something interesting or different to be done in this game. Having played other pick up and deliver titles before Venice, this chaining is now a sought-after element for me going forwards. Whilst it is true of course that, in all games of this type, you are going to need to use your first few turns stock-piling as no engine runs on empty – even gondolas need their boatmen and their oars! But the potential to ratchet up a number of points and bonuses through linked actions in a single turn definitely makes Venice feels less like a simply “going through the motions” move-pick-move-drop-sell-move game than many of my other experiences. Golden Gondolas! Speaking of which, going around the board in two gondolas can be an expensive business (especially if you don’t want to swap over - continuing your ride in one will cost you 3 coins!). But getting your lengths in is the way we found that we were best able to get our assistants out on the board (remembering that the first to get all 10 out gains an 8 point bonus!), to accumulate the goods needed to really start cranking our engines, and therefore to pay for those missions that rewarded our financial sacrifices multiple times over. And some missions did, over and over again! Which was brilliant especially when they resulted in more coinage. (Beware, however, because if you go for the upgraded metal, stackable coins, you can lose hours just staring at the beautiful things!) If you’re not into hard graft, when the opportunity arises, you can also build a bridge which will automatically gain you one coin every time you sail under it. And conversely slap your opponent with an intrigue every time they have to do the same – as Mark Knopfler once famously didn’t sing; money for nothing, intrigue for free! In each of our first two plays, I admit that I was initially too scared of intrigue – projecting too far ahead to the end-game scenario where I could be arrested and prevented from winning for being too much of a gossiping Gertie. I focused on avoiding this for more of the early play than I should have, and it cost me dearly in the end. But there are ways to lose intrigue and it is only really towards the final stages where you can and should start thinking about zipping your lip. Using what is on the board (like mooring at the Minor Council or the Church for example which reduce intrigue, or choosing an action that will gain you scrolls) to wipe your indiscretions away is a better strategy than being a fraidy-cat because early on intrigue is actually quite useful. Especially when visiting the Major Council which rewards you if you have more intrigue than other players and allows you to move along the track for possible huge end game points – those curious council folk love to know the 411! Even bargaining your way out of jelly-gum jail is a possibility at the end if you have enough coins and scrolls to pay the price! Final Thoughts There are a number of elements in Venice which I really like (and not just those very cool floating gondolas!). Having different buildings coming up on each game means that no single strategy is ever going to work. This is because the actions which the assistants can do (and will advance onto) are always going to change in the game-scenario, and therefore so are your preferred routes around the board. With more plays, I know we will become more familiar with the “best” ones and so the race will be on to get to them as and when they shuffle into the set up. But the overall collection is always likely to feel quite fresh. Similarly, I love missions. In anything. Give me a goal or a purpose and I will laser in on it. I will do it. No matter what. In fact I think these are what I enjoy the most about Venice – working my way to a connected building, paying the price, and tucking the completed mission card under my board. The coins and points for doing it are almost irrelevant to my enjoyment (although not my end score!); the real satisfaction comes from knowing that I have connected certain steps together to achieve the objective itself. I also like the influence cards but, hey, who doesn’t like something for free?! However, at the time I rode around in my ghost-gondola, I think my brain oversimplified or at least underestimated some aspects of the gameplay which felt more fiddly or involved once factoring in other players and in-game interactions. Our initial plays were long and that was in part because we kept losing track of all the things we could and should be doing on each turn. And that compounded the time-element. I think we sort of lost focus on the big picture, in part because I for one wasn’t concentrating enough on what I needed to do in order to actually win overall, but also because there is a lot of options generally. The board is also quite busy – especially when gondolas are vying for the same spots – and my hand issues meant I knocked my boat and my opponent’s boats over numerous times, scattering little cubes everywhere. Something which I think has also happened to others when playing at higher player counts. A little more space would have therefore been appreciated to make things less fiddly. But on the flip side, that lack of oar-room also felt quite realistic – the tight waterways and boatmen having to bump and squeeze past each other in order to continue their journeys. And this is going to sound very silly indeed, but as well as having a tactical purpose, just the action of being able to offload goods from one gondola to another as my ships passed within a hair of each other in the day (or night!) made me smile. The versatility of Venice is also not to be ignored as it is a welcome element– with the solo Doge automa and the 2 player Smugglers rule set (which promises the tension many pick up and deliver games often lack at power player counts) to try when my very accommodating mother-in-law is busy, there are a number of ways to play this game which I haven’t yet tried and could resolve some of the minor issues I have and which are probably in truth more about me and my gaming style than the game. Going, Going, Gondola! Ultimately, I have a feeling that my imaginary ceiling playthrough was probably conveniently perfected in places by my willingness to skip over a few details, preferring to think that some things would just work when it came to the real thing (basically completely ignoring the rule goofs/missteps I would actually make in real life). In truth, the limitations of my cerebral and mechanical processing power have been exposed by the steeper than expected learning curve in Venice but we will play, and we will practice scenarios, and I will improve. This is of course not to say that Venice was not what I was anticipating – it is indeed a beautiful pick up and deliver game which twists as nicely as a Venetian palazzo pole. But it is perhaps also more game than I had initially expected or needed. Left to explore the waterways unrestricted, I can get lost which is a little frustrating for a fast-laner like me. And so Venice has become one over which I initially need to pump my internal brakes. One I need to understand better so that I can then select what I am going to focus on in a particular game in order to get me (hopefully!) to first place at end game in a timely fashion. And therein lies my main personal hurdle in Venice. In order to take full advantage of the momentum boosting assistants (which set this game apart from a lot of other pick up and deliver titles), I need to know it. I need to know which buildings to target, which actions to chain, whether to drop some elements entirely, and how much intrigue to handle. Because, by implementing your knowledge, your turn set-ups and hard work pay off in satisfying, visible ways. But it takes time to learn these things and, as such, those first handful of playthroughs are going to be slower than ideal. And this could risk you seeking a similar appetite-quenching feeling in a shorter, less open game. However, I would suggest bearing with early trips around Venice because, once firing on all cylinders, if you like pick up and deliver games then it is a worthy investment in time and experience.

by @exploring_boardgames Picking my 3 favorite games was not an easy task and it is probably a question that most gamers find hard/impossible to answer. I did suffer from the dreaded analysis paralysis trying to make my selection. Finally, I decided on those games that I will never say no to. The following 3 games always bring me joy when they get played. 3. Deus – Pearl Games This game came to my attention after discovering Troyes and checking out the publisher. In this game, you start with 5 cards in your hand, and you try to build your civilization (6 different building types) on a common game board. To build, you must have the building type, you must be able to pay the resources required and you must have the right card. If you meet these conditions, you can place the building on the common game board and place the card in the corresponding column in your personal game area. Finally, you activate all the cards of that column which can create some fantastic engine building possibilities! One tricky part, you can only build a temple if you have a set of the other 5 buildings. Each temple awards victory points for different scenarios so you want to keep that in mind when selecting your strategy. To get more cards, you must make an offering to the gods. Each god will allow a different benefit such as resources, money, or victory points. The more cards you offer, the more additional benefits you get. This act allows you to obtain new cards, but also to get what you need if it is not available in your little engine. This game has some unique features, and it is easy to learn and quick to play. Therefore, this is a game that should be known and played by more people! 2. Gùgōng – GameBrewer In this game, you take on the role of a Chinese family, trying to gain influence with the Emperor by bribing officials for certain tasks. This is done by exchanging gifts and that is exactly the core mechanism of the game. You exchange gift cards with higher value to take a specific action. You want to have the most victory points by the end of the game and you can get those from 7 different areas on the game board. But be careful – you need to get to the top of the Palace of Heavenly Purity track to gain an audience with the Emperor or none of your points will be scored. It gives the game a nice twist as you must keep an eye on this track whilst trying to maximize all the other areas of the board. Once you understand the different actions, the game plays very easily and there are so many strategies to be tried out. Furthermore, I love the artwork of the main gameboard, and the different tokens used. This game deserves more attention! 1. Paladins of the West Kingdom – Garphill Games This game was the first one I played in the West Kingdom Trilogy and I fell in love immediately. I have all 3 games in the series, and I am truly impressed by the consistency of the symbology and artwork, and still each game feels different. In Paladins, you hire 1 paladin at the start of each round out of 3 options, and you place 1 on the top of your drawing deck and 1 on the bottom. Each paladin will grant you 2 workers and a special ability. You also get 4 more workers from the tavern to help you with your actions. So, you do not have your personal workers at the start of the game, rather they change every round. Workers have as well different colors, allowing you to take distinct actions. It is a unique challenge to balance the color and number of the workers with the actions available and trying to maximize it all to gain the most victory points. Furthermore, actions are linked to your level of faith, strength, and influence. Sounds complicated? A bit, but once you get your head around the gameplay, it is fantastic. Go try it out if you haven’t played yet!

I love print and play games. The world it opens up is huge! Way more impressive than you may think. And a whole sub-culture of board gaming. What you can create with just a few simple tools will amaze you. I spoke with a few people within the industry to learn a little more. Aleksandar got into to games from a young age and has now become a huge fan and advocate for the PnP world. This interview was conducted in 2020. What got you into the hobby as a player I played games even as a kid. Here in East Europe in 1980s, some boardgames occasionally found its way into youth magazines, and that is where I met them first. During university years, back in 1990s we played a lot of DnD, and later I was introduced to Warhammer. Warhammer was to much for me, and as introvert I preferred to play solo at my own speed, so I started investigating other solo wargames and RPGs. During this quest for solo games I learned about solo boardgames (it was only Friday and Onirim at the time) but I stayed in solo boardgaming until today. And how did that lead into PnP? It all started with paper terrain for wargames. Then it occurred to me that I can make complete games like that. and then I discovered that there is a whole PnP scene. I am proud to be part of it now. Print and play opens up games to new players but the revenue stream is very differnet to normal publishing. What are your thoughts on this? For me, gaming was always a hobby. I do not like to mix my hobby with my day job. My day job provides for my family and for my hobby, both. Therefore the games I make are usually free. The one that is not, directs funds towards the artist, not me. As player, I built a lot of PnP versions of commercial games. But I do not think that designers who give PnP games for free or sell PnP files for smaller amounts of money are having losses due to this. If a person who made a PnP version of a game likes it, they will promote it on the net constantly. Giving PnP for free is a marketing investment. Some designers (like Cole Wehrle - Root, Pax Pamir) understand this and offer free PnP versions of their games. How do you feel when people have made one if your games at home? One always feels proud when something he/she makes reaches the hart of some other human being. Every built copy pushes me further, makes me think about the next project. Without feedback, there would be very few things to push us forward to make new games. What do you see in the future. What’s next for you? 2020 Solitaire BGG design PnP competition is just around the corner. I hope to throw in my 2 cents again this year. If you could have any other game not made by you in your rosta of designed games what would it be and why? At the moment, I am playing a lot of Pax Porforiana and Pax Pamir. I wish I designed one Pax game. I might even do that - my entry into 2020 Solitaire PnP competition might be something called Pax Napoleonic. Which other designer would you most like to have a games night with and why? Cole Wehrle at the moment. I love both Root and Pax Pamir, and I would discuss with him about his design processes. Thanks Aleksandar. There are some amaizng facebook groups for PnP, and I will be featuring more information about this world on this blog over the coming months.

I love print and play games. The world it opens up is huge! Way more impressive than you may think. And a whole sub-culture of board gaming. What you can create with just a few simple tools will amaze you. I spoke with a few people within the industry to learn a little more. Tovarich has been designing games since a child! It was a joy to talk with him about this beautiful world. First up could you talk a bit about your background in designing games? Although I have no memory of this, my parents claim that I was designing games as far back as when I could first hold a crayon, as I made my own cards to insert into the family copy of CandyLand. I’ve been a kit basher, making unofficial expansions for games that I love, pretty much forever. Most notably I was part of a group of rabid fans for the cult classic Star Wars Epic Duels, which was really where I sort of honed my skill as a designer, getting experience with playtesting and iteration. After doing that for years, I suddenly asked myself why I hadn’t been doing any work on my OWN games, and the family card game Spy Guys (now sadly out of print) was the result. I’ve also dabbled a bit here and there, most recently creating additional cards for the fan-made Star Wars retheme of Marvel Legendary. Awesome! What got you into the hobby as a player I literally don’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t playing games. I would play such “classics” as Monopoly and Clue with anyone who would sit still long enough, slowly working my way up to more complex fair. I was paying Car Wars and BattleTech before I left middle school, and it just kept going from there. What are your thoughts on how PnP can help bring new games to new players and how it affects the industry financially? Print and play isn’t actually cheaper for the consumer, in many cases. I mean if you just want to print of a couple custom cards to throw into sleeves to expand a favorite game that’s one thing, but to produce a professional looking, sturdy copy of a game that will stand up to many plays takes time, effort, and more than a bit of specialized equipment. It’s a fun hobby but it’s got a learning curve like any other, and in the long run it’s far from free - you’re just spreading the cost out as you go instead of paying all at once, like you would with a commercial game. Now with that said - I’ve been somewhat astonished by the reaction of the game publisher community to the pandemic and lockdown the world is currently facing. Over 100 games or expansions have been released by publishers as print and play files in light of the catastrophe, and I don’t really think there’s a precedent for that in the history of the industry. I’m really curious to see the long term ramifications this has on gamer behavior. As far as income is concerned...let’s be honest. There are maybe 6 people in the world who are able to make a living JUST as a game designer. No one does this just for money. I don’t even think my royalties on Spy Guys covered the cost of producing the prototypes. Ultimately I make the games and expansions that I want to play, and hope other people want to play them to. Granted I’ve got a pretty good day job, but at the end of the day I’m not in this for the money. How do you feel when people have made one if your games at home? All of the confirmed printings that I’ve had are of things that I’ve specifically built as a part of a community response to expand a favorite game, which makes it feel really personally good. Partly because it’s affirmation that I was able to tap into and expand the original zeitgeist of the game that brought us together, and partly because I consider game design to be art, and the greatest enemy of art isn’t lack of quality - the greatest enemy of art is obscurity. To be played and hated is still better than to not be played at all. Wise words! What do you see in the future. What’s next for you? # I’m at something of a crossroads just at the moment. I developed a sequel to Spy Guys that I’m pretty happy with, but I just did a major interstate move, and just when I was about to gear up to start pitching it, covid-19 happened. I’m actually considering releasing it print and play, but I’d need to find a graphic designer to help me get everything ship shape first - I’m a designer, not a publisher, and I don’t have those skills. I also need to find a new community to bounce ideas off and playtest with. If you could have any other game not made by you in your rosta of designed games what would it be and why? It’s a card game called The Agents, that I received blind in a math trade at a convention and absolutely fell in love with. Every Agent card you play in the Agents will give you either an ability or a scoring opportunity - and give one of your opponents whichever half you don’t take, but you then have a secret hand of Missions that might allow you to score big bonuses based on the board position, which would allow you to capitalize on giving your opponent a seeming advantage. It’s an incredibly tense design and I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Which other designer would you most like to have a games night with and why? There's a great group of designers in the LA area that I spent almost a decade hanging out and testing games with. I'd love, LOVE to be able to round them all up for a game day, if for no other reason than the diverse personalities in play would mean a lot of different KIND of games to play! :) From an admiration standpoint, there's really no one designer I consider to be a mentor or guru - I find something to love about the design of every game I like, and I'm very eclectic about who I steal from...I mean, from whom I take inspiration. :) Thanks Tovarich. There are some amaizng facebook groups for PnP, and I will be featuring more information about this world on this blog over the coming months.

I love print and play games. The world it opens up is huge! Way more impressive than you may think. And a whole sub-culture of board gaming. What you can create with just a few simple tools will amaze you. I spoke with a few people within the industry to learn a little more. Giang has been involvedin the PnP scene for a long time and I was keen to find out what it was that first interested them in this amazing world! I'm a crafting veteran but a novice in hardware (things like printer and such). My list of made games has gone way over twenty by now, including both big or small builds What got you into the hobby as a player? My group of friends started playing light card games like Exploding Kittens and Uno. Then we started playing Shadow Hunters, and we kept on playing it for months! I started to get sick of it and wanted to find new games to introduce to my folks. Now we're actually playing a new game every game night! If I could build the new games in time! Print and play opens up games to so many more people like this but doesn’t help with the income for the industry so much! What are your thoughts on this? Well, it actually depends on the target of audience that you're leaning into. If a company targets the avid or casual gamer then obviously PnP wouldn't be a good choice. However, there are quite a handful of nerds like us that are much more willing to purchase a cheaper, more affordable PnP version rather than a whole big box. It's shipping friendly too, because my region (and I believe many others) has lots of problem with all the shipping shenanigans. Very true! How do you feel when people have made one if your games at home? Obviously great, if I am actually distributing the pnp version officially. Other than that, to each their own, if one managed to get their hands on the files without paying anything, they deserved it (haha). I wouldn't really mind because I know once something is on the internet, there will be always be people that can get it free. What do you see in the future. What’s next for you? I'm hoping that pnp games will become more widely known. Many people I meet still think that PnP games are not right. And that people get by to play the game without paying the real price. There are real games that are made for the purpose of to be print and play games! If you could have any other game not made by you in your rosta of designed games what would it be and why? Gloomhaven. Or Mage Knight. Love the genre, never got to try them out. Which other designer would you most like to have a games night with and why? Honestly I've never thought about it. Maybe the couple that made Afternova, Jeff Chin and Andrew Nerger :) Thanks Giang. There are some amaizng facebook groups for PnP, and I will be featuring more information about this world on this blog over the coming months.

by Alex Eugenio @gamergriffson Hello everyone! My name is Alex, and I am so excited to share my Top 3 games with you! Bear in mind I just got into the hobby maybe two years ago? So, take my top three list with a grain of salt. I think the hardest thing about making a Top 3 list is that my favorites are always changing. It usually boils down to the current game I am playing but these three are games I will always come back to! Clank! I couldn’t not add a deck-builder to my list of top games. Dominion was my gateway game so naturally I gravitated to Clank! and I have a deep love for deck-builders. This game, to me, is just pure FUN. The theme alone just screams adventure, and you can’t help but get excited the moment you enter the dungeon. The way the cards integrate with the artifacts and movement on the board is just so well done. It perfectly combines strategy and heart-racing mechanics. Is that a real mechanic? It is now! And I appreciate a game that has me sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time. This is that game that I will always suggest bringing to the table whether you have experienced gamers around or not. To me, the fact that everyone at different gaming levels can enjoy this game speaks to how great it is. Inviting me over for a game night? I’m bringing my buddy, Clank! Terraforming Mars Terraforming Mars is the most played game in our household! I am a sucker for anything space-themed so that alone was a win for me already. In Terraforming Mars, you’re playing as a corporation that seeks to raise the global parameters on Mars so that it is habitable. You do so by drafting and playing cards that manipulate your personal tableau of abilities. This lets you place certain tiles that increase oxygen, raise the temperature or discover ocean areas. When I first played this game, I was impressed by how fun it turned out to be. Each global parameter you raise earns you a point and while it may not seem like a directly competitive game, the parameters max out at a certain point. So, basically, it’s a race to get those points first! Who doesn’t love a good ‘ol fashion race? I love how the cards and components integrate with each other wherein your components/tiles on the board are a physical depiction of the strategy behind the cards you play. You can see the effects of your cards in real time and to slowly watch Mars become terraformed is so enjoyable! This is a much longer gameplay than Clank! but I will never turn down a game. Lisboa I have no business liking this game. It involves every mechanic I am terrible at: economy, tile placement, city building, politics, etc. But, in fact, I LOVE IT! So much so that this is for sure my favorite game in our collection. It just hits all the marks for me- everything from the theme, gameplay, components to complexity. I love that the theme is so personal to Vital Lacerda deriving from an actual event in history in his hometown in the 1700s- destruction of a city after an 8.5-9.0 magnitude earthquake, tsunami and three days of fires. The artwork from Ian O’Toole is just top notch (as always) and the detail of each component is astounding. There was never a time during gameplay where I thought to myself, “I wish this did this,” “I wish you could do this,” or “I like this game BUT…” To me, that’s a sign of a- dare I say it- near perfect game. A bold statement, I know, but remember when I said take my opinions with a grain of salt? :) Nonetheless, even if this is not the perfect game for you, it is so worth giving a shot and strong consideration for a space in your collection.

Dive WBG Score: 7/10 Player Count: 1–4 You’ll like this if you like: Port Royal, Colt Express, Tiny Epic Mechs. Published by: Sit Down! Designed by: Romain Caterdjian, Anthony Perone Dive is a beautiful production. Let’s make this very clear from the off. It looks beautiful. The effort that has gone into the manufacturing of this game is stunning. Both in terms of originality and quality. It looks stunning set up, and all works very much within the theme of the game. This is not style over substance. Dive is set in the beautiful world of the Windbark. A beautiful remote island beyond the last continent, where diving is an ancestral tradition. During the summer solstice, divers compete to see who can navigate the shark infested waters and dive into the depths to retrieve the sacred stone of the village and become the town hero. Players will compete to analyse and in truth, guess what creatures will appear as they dive deeper in a mechanism new to me, but one that offered a lot of entertainment for my family. Simultaneous, Pre-Programmed, Push-Your-Luck! What would technically be described as simultaneous, pre-programed, push-your-luck movement, Dive employs clear plastic sheets that represent each layer of the ocean. Players look into the depths and try to assess where Sharks will or will not appear. Layered as they are, these sheets create a confusing cacophony of images. Making it very hard to predict what will appear where. Some of the sheets have holes cut in them, creating illusions of depth that can confuse players. With the thickness of the ocean cards, the slight blue hue, and the sheer number of them, making predictions can be somewhat haphazard. There are also many other creatures and plant life on the cards which have no affect on the game, other than creating more confusion. Mechanically this may not be new, but this is something I have not see on a gaming table before. And it’s barrels of fun! Each round, all players will place five tokens on their dive board. Simply trying to assess if a shark will or will not be present at each level of the dive. The tokens are numbered one to five. On the levels where there are no sharks present players can get bonuses if they predict correctly. If more than one player correctly guesses that no sharks will be there, and there are also one of the three helpful animals present, the player who played the highest number gains that animals assistance. The Red Sea Turtle will help you dive down two more spaces. The Green Sea Turtle will swoop you down one spot. And the Manta will help you catch up with the next player ahead of you, as in, you catch up to the next player deeper than you, if there is one. After each round, players move down the same number of spots on the score tracker for each correctly guessed level. If you guessed wrong on any level, that is your dive over! It is harder than it looks to guess where the sharks are. It feels like it should be easier. But it just isn’t. But it is certainly fun to try and guess. There are a lot of “Oh no!” and “Yeah” moments as each ocean card is lifted to reveal exactly what was on it after all. Race you to the bottom? This is a race game in truth. The first player to reach a 23 on the score tracker wins. This typically takes between 15-30 minutes, depending on how well each player assesses the ocean. As this is somewhat guesswork, the game could outstay its welcome if much longer. You may feel this game isn’t for you were it a 45 minute plus game. Getting your predictions wrong over-and-over can be frustrating. But in this light family game, played in under half an hour it works well. There are lighter rules for younger players where making a mistake in your predictions doesn’t stop your dive. And there are companions to add to the game if you want some diversity. The companions offer a lot of different options. Players can choose one of the seven extra animals to play with and they all feel quite different. From the Anglerfish who offers you the chance to dive down one further level on your turn, to the Giant Octopus which can be placed on the Ocean tiles obscuring the view of all players for what may be lurking underneath, each companion adds a nice subtle asymmetry to the game. A family favourite in this house was the Fugu which is available with all pre-orders from Sit Downs website as one of three bonus companions. When you play with the Fugu, all players are given the length of time that they can hold their breath to programme their tiles! This is a hilarious rule that has become a must have addition to every game we now play! Style and Substance If this game was set-up on your table at home, I would suggest it highly likely your kids would put down whatever they were doing and come and ask to play! Games like this serve a purpose. Their attraction comes less from their complex gameplay and strategies, and more from their unique visual appeal and table presence. This can be a good thing. More games should consider this for this age bracket. Games that are fun to play with your family are important. Once everyone has understood the rules and played a game few times, a good game should make people want to play it often. But to overcome that initial hesitation or intimidation of learning new rules, some games should be appealing right out the box. Having something as beautiful as Dive to draw your children in, cannot hurt. Many great games can discourage people from wanting to play them as they look complicated or dull. Conversely, many dull games can attract players to them as they look fun or original only to then disappoint. Dive has the best of both words. It is a Dolphin mixed with an Anglerfish. Sure, it looks light and fun to play with. But it also draws its prey close ready to pounce! Not letting go when it get a chance to play with it!

Free Market NYC WBG Score: 6/10 Player Count: 2-5 players You’ll like this if you like: Clans of Caledonia, Stockpile, Century Spice Road Published by: Unique Board Games LTD (UBG) Designed by: Izik Nevo A Free Market in New York? Seems unlikely! But it does exist in Board game form at least. You may have missed this one from Unique Board Games. Released in 2020, this game has flown well under the radar for a few reasons I expect. But I am going to park all pre-conceptions and just talk about the game itself. Which is really rather good. At its core. Free Market NYC is worker placement game with an interesting commodity speculation and action queue mechanic. And also with auction style nodding and area control! But we will come to that! You are playing as a business leader in the middle of the American great depression. Doing all you can to bring in trade and commerce to your home city. Make the most bucks and win the game! The era and city does not really shine through in the game, but the sense of business does. You feel close to the prices of goods and the moving markets. The feeling of building your economy is strong throughout and keeps your focus and attention. Its fun to try and beat the system. Buy low. Sell high. And this is all done in a very familiar ‘gamer-friendly’ way. Imagine playing Century Spice Road but being able to buy and sell the cubes. And the prices fluctuate throughout the game. Step-by-Step! At first glance, this game does appear quite complicated. The rule book and board look busy and intimidating to new players. But it can be learnt relatively quickly, an hour I would say. And taught in twenties minutes or so. It feels a lot at first to learn as there are 17 steps in each round. But this isn’t really the case. The first four steps are quick and more mechanical; more set-up in truth. And two of which you miss in round one anyway. And then the 13 steps after, well you can only choose to do three of these. So, in round one there are only five steps. There are a lot of available phases sure, but not a lot of things to do. Just a lot of choice. The rule book does not convey this clearly so it may seem intimidating and laborious if you assume as I did you need to go through 17 phases each round, but you don’t. I thought it important to clarify this. Like any worker placement game, this is what makes the game fun. You want to have choices and feel your selections make a significant difference to your overall success in the game. The strategies you employ should genuinely influence your game. So, in most worker placements you have a lot of choices. Just like this game. But usually, it is a map with multiple locations and you place your worker based on what you want to do. In Free Market, it is a line of actions you go through from left to right in a linear manner. This makes it feel more mechanic and perhaps less appealing. But this is just a assumption, not an actual feeling when you play. It looks complicated. It is less visually appealing than what most are used too. But it’s essentially the same thing as many other work placement games, just with more structure. I mention this as I think this is one major reason the game may not have been seen by as many people yet. If this was a more attractive modern looking board, and perhaps from a larger more well known publisher, I am confident this game would have sold a lot of copies. It doesn’t do the game any favours selling itself in this way. But if you can look past that and judge this game by its workings and not its cover, you may find a diamond in the rough. Substance over style! I appreciate aesthetics are a core part of the modern board game industry. But I bet you have a few games in your collection you would rate higher in terms on looks that actual gameplay? I know I do. Well, this is one I would suggest is the opposite. And that is fine for me. Style over substance can be disappointing. Substance over style can be rather joyful! As you move through the 17 stages of each round, one player will place a large blue meeple on each space to signify which phase is active. Each payer in order then has to decide what they are doing on these phases for the first four spots, and then if they want to do this phase on the next 13. As you can only pick three of these in round one, and in later rounds, generally only up to five, you will be missing out more than you will be choosing. This creates genuine tension, and excitement to the game. Most phases only allow one player to take the action. So, the fear for the first player to turn something down in order to open it up to the next players is a fantastic part of this game. Equally, the apprehension as the other players wait to see if the first player is going to block them from doing what they want is great to watch! Control your F.O.M.O.! The game levels this out too. The very first choice in the 13 optional steps is to get the first player token. And the final action is the ability to re-do any action from the previous 12. There are ways to control this F.O.M.O.! But its is there throughout, and builds up fantastically throughout the game, and is the core reason why the game is fun. Your core focus will be acquiring commodities at the best prices possible. And then selling them for the most profit. But each part of this has its own mechanic to make it feel unique and important. This has caused some reviewers to suggest this game feels like a miss-mash of mini games. I disagree with this strongly, as each phase moves very quickly and feels intrinsically linked. And importantly, they all work for each phase they are employed. Buy! Sell! For example, in the third phase, each player will bid in an auction style for the available crates (commodities) available at the shipyard. The minimum bid must be the cost price, but with all the market fluctuations available in the game, this could be well under the current re-sale value. You also have the ability through various means to influence and directly affect the market price in each round, both in and out of turn. This makes this part of the game feel exciting and very much alive. Just pulling random cubes would be lazy. Taking turns to take one wouldn’t seem genuine. Buying them in turn order would be dull. The auction phase works. And importantly, I see this as being closer to how it works in real life. So why not employ this in the game? Its quick, fun and feels realistic. Later in the round, when it comes to selling your products, you need to make sure you have a shop that sells this particular type of product and a truck to get it there. A roadblock could stop this and other players involvement in the ownership of that shop would affect your profits. This all feels very much how it would be in real-life. You couldn’t make this an auction like the purchase phase. It needs to be more area control and worker placement, so it is. Yes, this is a series of different mechanics, but they are all chosen for a reason. And they link up and feel right to me. Take control! If you can see this game for what it is, I think you will really enjoy it. You are the boss, controlling your workers. Each worker has a different role. And you need to think about the right way for your truck drivers, buyers, sellers and political ‘pole-greasers’ to all behave! If you can think like that, and could imagine yourself enjoying that, then this well could be a game you will enjoy a lot. If you cannot see past the board then I would suggest this is not for you. It is busy, and that is a shame, I think the designer wanted to make the game easier to understand with all the iconography laid two times for each phase, so players could read it no matter where they are sat round the table. Personally, I think this is not needed. You quickly learn each phase anyway, so I would argue you could remove all the icons. But I get why they are there. In short. This game is an excellent idea, perhaps not brilliantly executed considering the current aesthetic demands in the board game industry. But I wanted to feature it here as I think it serves as an excellent example of a game that is a lot better than it looks and one worthy of your consideration. For people who enjoy a crunchy euro, this may not matter as much anyway. But if you want the next Everdell, this is not for you. However, if you are a fan of economic/commerce building games that build up tension and employ interesting and varied mechanics, and can look past the aesthetics, you will not be disappointed.

By Ben Herbert - @athroneofgames Crypt of Chaos WBG Score: 6/10 Player Count: 1-2 players You’ll like this if you like: Tiny Epic Dingeons Sub Terra Clank! Published by: Crystal Dagger Games Designed by: Steven Shields Alone in the dark dungeon, I’ve been going deeper into the darkest depths for some time now and been able to equip myself with new weapons and armour. The earlier spiders and crypt crawlers were no match for me, but the Goblin Guard protecting the sword I was here to find put up a fight. I will need to find a potion of healing soon if I have any chance of defeating the Dragon which guards the exit to the crypt. That is if I ever find the key I need to escape! Every chest I open risks triggering another trap. Crypt of Chaos from Crystal Dagger games is a light, thematic, tile laying, dungeon crawler for one or two players that plays in about 30 minutes. Players take on the roll of one of six classic fantasy archetypes and explore the crypt on a mission to discover the Lost sword, find the key, and make their way to the exit alive. Many traps, obstacles, and monsters lie in the way of our champion, including a Dragon which guards the exit to the crypt. Set up of Sorcery Set up of this small box game is easy and done in a couple of minutes. Start with getting yourself a fairly decent sized table so you have space to build the crypt out in any direction. Select a champion from the six options available: Barbarian, Forest Elf, Mage, Warrior, Orc or Dark Elf. Take the appropriate number of health tokens, and take note of their base attack and defence score, plus any special ability the character may have. Next, stack the three levels of the dungeon deck to form a draw pile. Separate out all the other components such as the treasure cards, attack cards, health tokens, monster markers and pawns. Place the conveniently titled “Start here” floor tile in the in front of you and place your pawn on it. You are ready for the adventuring! Rules of Reckoning Each action you can do one of four things. There are no between turn phases to slow things down so you just keep taking actions one after the other. Explore – Take the top tile from the dungeon deck, flip it over, and place it adjacent to an existing tile and add any monster of treasure chest tokens. Placing two tiles with their entrances touching means your champion will be able to pass between them. You cannot place a floor tile beyond a tile that contains a living monster. Thematically this is because the monster is stopping you form exploring in that direction, so you must kill the monster to progress. Move – You can move your champion’s pawn onto any connected floor tile. But if there is a monster in any tile you stop at or want to pass through then you must fight it. If there is an obstacle in the way you cannot pass that tile without the correct equipment. Again, this simple approach to movement is thematic and keeps the action moving. I can imagine peeking around a corner, seeing a monster and then quietly back tracking to try to find another route. Fight – Combat is a case of flip the top card of your champion attack deck and add that number to your base attack and any bonus from your weapon. This is the amount of damage you do to the monster you are attacking. If you kill the monster with your first strike they are gone! But leave with them at least one health and they always get at least one retaliation on you. Again, flip the monster attack card, add that number to its base attack and do that amount of damage to your champion minus any defence bonus you may have. If you kill a monster, then flip the monster token over rather than remove it as (spoiler alert) they can sometime come back to life! Search – Your last option is to search a treasure chest. You flip over the chest token to reveal the item and put it in front of you as a reminder (if it’s good). A chest may contain a new weapon, adding to you attack score. Or you may find armour, adding to your defence bonus. With all the armour equipped I did feel a little overpowered as some weaker monsters didn’t have much of a chance against me. Other chests contain potions to heal you, but others contain traps dealing instant damage or bringing dead monsters back to life! Searching chests is essential to your progress in the game. Some contain the equipment you need to get past obstacles and others contain the sword and key you must find to complete the game. Variations of Vanquishing Crypt of Chaos can be played as a two player cooperative game with players taking it in turns to take actions. I like how you don’t share items so you have to both find and fight you own path. Then there is Chaos mode, what the rule book describes as a “faster and more difficult challenge”. Faster yes, but more difficult? In chaos mode the main difference is you have no treasure chests to search. You instead start with the eight items marked on your player card. These include a weapon, armour, a potion, the equipment to get past obstacles, and the sword and key. What makes a standard game tricky is haveing to search chests what you need. This means fighting monster and triggering traps. In chaos mode, you have everything you need. Admittedly you only get limited items but that is outweighed by the benefit of being able to bypass almost all the monsters. In chaos mode I twice reached the dragon having only fought three spiders (the weakest monster), and once I reached the dragon with all my health intact. Game play of…Gateways? If you haven’t guessed it yet, this game is very straight forward, read the rules once and you are good to go. There’s only issue, apart from a couple of spelling mistakes in the otherwise very readable rule book. The rules fail to mention that the sword you need is in a yellow chest, the key you need is in a purple chest and equipment is in the green chests. A vital detail when playing for the first time and deciding if you need to keep searching a certain colour. Crypt of Chaos does an excellent job of making a straightforward tile laying dungeon crawler feel thematic. Shall I fight that monster or should I turn back, maybe there’s something I need in the treasure chest, but maybe it’s a trap! As you progress through the dungeon you enemies get tougher, the risk/reward of searching chests increases and you can get dangerously close to death by the time you have what you need. The dragon at the end hits hard and has a lot of health to burn through. You better be ready, or very lucky! With six champions to choose from and a different dungeon layout every time, Crypt of Chaos is never the same twice. Saying that, I felt after a few games, although the dungeon layout changed, how I approached the game was the same every time. Components of Composting Component quality is good for its price point and will absolutely stand up to repeated plays. Graphic design is good and clear, but text is small in places. The art on the tiles and tokens is decent enough. The art used for the champions on the box and character cards is sadly generic. Good, original art can be expensive, so small publishers can keep costs down by not commissioning an artist. But it is undeniable that box art sells games and poor art risks losing sales. Hopefully if you are at the reading a review stage then you can let this issue slide. Final Thoughts of Fantasy Retorts I enjoyed my plays of Crypt of Chaos. I liked its quick set up and play time and I am a fan of it’s thematic dungeon crawl feel. I felt like I was making the decisions I would make if I were a real life fantasy adventurer. Crypt of Chaos makes a good filler. I’ve played it a lot in the evening after work when I want to play a game but don’t want to think about what I’m doing or spend much time setting up. It fits that remit perfectly. You do need to approach Crypt of Chaos knowing that luck plays a huge roll. You are making choices in the game but it is clear that for the most part, the outcome of the game is controlled by the order of the card draw. For this reason, this will not be the right game for some gamers. Play as efficiently as possible to reduce your risk and hope you draw the cards you need in a good order to stay alive and reach get what you need. Whether you win on not is largely out of your hands, but you will have fun finding out. The feeling of tension when both you and the monster you are fighting are down to their last couple of health point and everything rests on the flip of a card is intense. Crypt of Chaos is a game I have genuinely enjoyed playing and will continue to play after this review if written.

By @both_sides_of_my_table How is it at all possible to compile a top three? Ahhhhhh… so many games on my shelf. I could narrow it down to a top three per genre, perhaps. That would be an achievable task, for certain… well, a reasonably achievable task, at any rate. Maybe it is worth focusing on what most frequently hits my table, which, I must point out, does not necessarily reflect favour. It is more indicative of how my mood seems to change with the wind, and, when I having that gaming itch, that requirement of said itch getting a certain scratching. But so often my brain is on a go-slow, so my choice often turns out to be a less thinky game… but always with a soloish element. Ok… here goes. 1st choice: A Solo game - Gloom of Kilforth (Hall or Nothing Games) Gloom of Killforth regularly finds its way to the table, and is always in my ever changing top games list. I think that this is not only down to the great table presence, with its sumptuous art work, but also because it has so many throw-back elements to my late teen-hood with Fighting Fantasy books and D&D sessions with my old volleyball team mates. This high fantasy adventure/exploration game doesn’t really have much in the way of either within its gameplay, but has more of an essence of both. The imagination road trip that both FF and D&D created, can be unearthed once more with adventures in Kilforth Players may take on the role of a wide range of fantasy races, but each race is additionally paired with a trait/special characteristic lending the choice of character combinations not to be endless, but certainly hugely variable, pairing a multitude of interesting skill set and ability combinations. A personal favourite mechanic is the synergy between health and action points. Directly linked so that, let’s say, getting a black eye from an unruly Hobgoblin could impact on the number of actions for future turns and consequently forcing a well crafted strategy to be rapidly rethought. And thus we, the heroes, are forced to make difficult life choices. Jump into combat and run the risk of losing health and action points or bury one’s head in the sand and ignore everything…or even use the Hide ability to sneak upon or past risky situations. …did I Mention Gloom? …each turn a card is turned from the Night deck (and there is rarely anything nice to come out of it) rain, snow, gales, hail, more beasties and each card drawn from this night deck causes a location to fall into Gloom. So! I hear the cynics cry. So Gloom locations are so….Gloomy….they eat away at your health, making life that little bit more tricky to navigate through. It doesn’t stop there. Oh no! there are 25 locations and 25 Night cards. if, by the turn of the last night card (forcing the last location into gloom) Heroes have yet to dispatch the Ancient One, it’s good bye Kilforth. The land succumbs to the despicable influence of the Ancient being and Gloom doth spread all around. An excellent, and certainly during my games, a sphincter squeaking timer mechanic! There are so many nice little touches I’ve not even mentioned but I’m not about to do a How-to-play narrative, which is probably sensible considering the significant cock-ups I always seem to make…but that’s the beauty of solo play…there is only me, myself and I to witness such events. I, we, us…well, my whole collective found this thoroughly game entertaining with every play. It does look great, though A5 card size would be even better to see the art…mind you, that would need a football pitch to lay out the components, I’m guessing…but the gameplay is so engaging. It does take a little to get all the small rule details committed to memory, but to actually play, the brain isn’t forced into a melting cauldron of mechanics, modifiers, sodifiers and what ever elseifiers. It is straight forward, and in my case, leaves my brain to firstly enjoy the adventure, and secondly plan what needs to be done. It’s like living a Fighting Fantasy book or playing D&D but without the fuss. Now I’m a little more familiar with Kilforth and its inhabitants, I can make more informed choices about where I go to see a man about a dog…but, after an absolute shed load of plays, it has yet to become boring or predictable. In fact, I may move to Kilforth as some of the locations are much nicer to visit than my house. There is so much to do without being overwhelmed, but at the same time so little time to do it in. It’s such a fulfilling experience with so many varied encounters with all manner of local Kilforthian personalities and even after a crushing defeat against the Marquis just leaves me wanting a revisit. This is a perfect solution to my desire for solo adventuring. No DM required but all the thrills and spills I remember from my youth…playing D&D, that is, as my youth was pretty uneventful…except spilling things quite often. 2nd Choice: A Cooperative Game- Perdition’s Mouth (Dragon Dawn Productions) Some concise-ish scribblings about the game: Thematically this is undeniably immersive. There has been significant attention to detail in story line, scenarios, adventure background and makeup of each hero. But fancy pants graphics and dark brooding illustrations maketh not a game. Ah, but what does stamp its authoritative boot heavily upon the thematic immersion category is the way the game actually plays out. There is an interesting use of the rondel system to facilitate and dictate hero actions, there is a similar and equally clever rondel to govern movement/actions of all the Cultists and Insectoids (which really lends itself to a hassle free solo game where we can focus on our role whilst the game takes care of its own) The mechanics governing players boards, their actions and the way wounds are acquired….and stay with a character for the entirety of a campaign is another excellent touch, breathing a fresh breath of life into the game genre. I pick but just a small smattering of game elements, because there are so many subtle mechanics built into this game breeding a clever life-force into gameplay. There is a feel of old-school D&D rolplay but without the mither of character score sheets or tracking wounds (as each hero’s unique action deck quickly becomes cluttered with wound and ailment cards from something as trivial as a snuffly nose to, terminal piles, to broken legs and worse, a mild shaving rash…(*I made these up for humorous effect, I have to add, before some astute hardcore Perdition player points out I am a total buffoon) But I would imagine completing a level battered and bruised, that even if my broken leg healed, it would still hamper me in the future. There is such a need for all characters, whether played by a soloist or coop players, to constantly support and pool resources. These subtle touches of realism are qualities that pull together to make this an incredible, immersive game experience. It is so much more than merely scurrying from room to room, killing beasties and pinching all their hard-earned loot. I was supremely impressed with some of the many small mechanical elements of this game when I had it explained at UKGE 18, by designer, Timo. So many things that ought to but usually don’t appear in this nature of game, and I was also won over by Timo’s enthusiasm for his game. Asked to review it, I was supremely honoured and was excited all the way home after that eventful con. When it came down to playing the game, I felt a little unsure. Was it going to play as well as I hoped. Would I like the gameplay, would I understand what was trying to be achieved? During the first scenario (the easy introduction to the game) I felt there was a lot to remember and things were not as straight forward as I first imagined. I struggled on to the end and things did speed up a little but I started to doubt the game. …but after clarifying a couple of rules that I was unsure of, game two started much better. More game mechanics were introduced in this scenario, and then…all of a sudden things really started to click into place…it became apparent why teamwork was so important, why planning potential moves in advance was important (not just next move but where we would be on the rondel several turns ahead). The game, even on easy mode, is set to punish us dreadfully. However, looking at how we utilise our character’s best assets to their full potential, how we use aid and when we decide to tackle an enemy, or when we just lure an enemy in to block their line of sight to our other heroes, suddenly all those small elements fell nicely into place. This really is not about slash and bash dungeon crawling, as so many on the market are. It is more about thinking and planning. Working together (when playing with others, or, as my case proves, arguing with my self as I play solo with all three characters), planning, puzzle solving and drawing upon our heroes’ strengths all made perfect sense. This is what Perdition’s Mouth is actually about. Ok we can acquire some snazzy gear to help us and we do develop some nice action combinations, but it is still about teamwork. Injuries immediately cause us inconvenience. We become less strong, slower and, if poisoned by those blowpipe guards, we lose action points for being poisoned. A realism reflected in game play that is brilliant…but the brilliance doesn’t stop there….oh, no. As this is a campaign style of game, allowing us to navigate our heroes from one level to the next, it is amazing to discover our illness, wounds and ailments follow us from level to level. Each card drawn for wounding gets added to our hero action deck. This clutters up our hand (not unlike Mage Knight) but the cards have negative effects either in our hand or once played. I really like this element of the game. If we were at death’s door in an adventure, why would we make a miraculous recovery for our next adventure? We wouldn’t! And this is accurately reflected as we take our hero deck from game to game, slowly swelling with many a hurty hurty! This is not a quick dungeon crawl fix game. There will be no instant ratification. This is a long, extended affair (weather in one gigantic setting or over several saved sessions) which demands our full attention from start to finish. If we take our eye off the game for one minute a certain substance is likely to hit the fan! It is rather heavy as a game but my goodness its a bloody brilliant one. As we progress from level to level, it is at this point the game really start to shine. After game two…I just wanted to get on to game three (sadness filled the camp as Ollie died…it was expected as I had not performed well as her guardian…her wounds were two plentiful… curse you, you Gloom of Kilforth cross over wound card!) but it is possible to bring new heroes into the group between levels so all was not a total loss. All in all a gigantic game with so many scenarios (playable as a campaign or as stand alone). It’s always a thrill to get it to the table. 3rd Choice: Death on The Rails (2d6EE games) A rather understated wargame set in a turbulent part of Estonia’s history…the time independence was fought for in 1918 against an oppressive Russian rule. This is a block and hex wargame for two players…so why on earth feature it on BSoMT? Well, designer Aigar is currently battling his way through the complexities of developing a set of solo rules for a game of hidden objectives, hidden placement and area control. The progress will, of course, be brought to you as it develops. In the meantime I shall endeavour to share how this plays for two players… and if it is, in fact, worth developing into a solo war game at all. It has to be said that a wargame, even one with beautiful sculptured miniatures, will have an element of abstraction about it. As such, it could be argued that any war game could not be a truly immersive experience… however, I feel I must counter argue that point with DoTR. There are a significant number of small elements/mechanics that come together to recreate a combat simulation with a surprising degree of realism to support my case. I will touch on some of these below including movement, combat and the use of block counters, all representing but a smattering of the various complexities facing forces in both this game and on the real field of conflict. This is a surprisingly simple game but hidden beneath the facade are some rather appealing mechanics that make this a pleasure to play. I don’t wish to bore anyone with the entire where’s and why-for’s so I shall, instead, pick the elements I find most appealing to share with you…mind you, the list is still quite extensive • Movement: Movement is simple. A unit can move from one area to another during each move action… but as the board is divided into hexes, how does that work, I hear you asking in an unceremoniously disgruntled fashion. Areas are actually single or multiple hexes. Usually thick vegetation, trees and the like are represented by a single hex where as clear open ground could be three hexes linked with a common border. So movement on terrain needs no further modifiers…if in wooded areas, a unit is limited to the wooded hex it stumbles into, where as a unit sprinting across open ground may pass from a three-hex area to another three-hex area, realistically covering more ground…but obviously leaving said unit open to be fired upon from opponents. The hexes are also large…very large, so there is not the sorts of complication found in other titles where stacking units has to be a huge tower of tokens or square tokens that overlap the hex making adjacent units misalign with each other. Simple, straight forward and also indicative of a more skirmish-sized conflict (but a unit block is not a single troop so this is by no means a one for one skirmish game) • Line of sight: A node system has been used to aid line of sight. A dot located in the centre of each hex is used to establish line of sight. A straight line from point to point accurately established contact and does away with any ambiguity. It is also important to note that these nodes are also indicators used when establishing stacking of units. As mentioned in movement, areas can be from one to three hexes in size. Counting the dots within an area quickly indicates the stacking limits imposed for that area. • Combat System: Possibly the simplest but most realistic mechanic in the game, from my perspective, is the way in which combat has been handled. The number upmost on a Units face is the number of dice to be rolled both for offensive and defensive operations… both sides roll their respective dice and sort them into ascending numerical order. Then both sides compare their results. Highest pip count from each side compares to highest pip count. If, for example, we have a (5) and our opponent’s highest die is a (4) then there is one win to us. We work our way down the descending value die until all are compared (no dice present equates to a zero score) and so which ever side finishes with the highest number of victories becomes the combat winner. The loser then takes a step loss to their participating block unit. Support units can help alter the value of low pipped die but the nice feature is that all the dice are like a series of fire exchanges and during a single battle the end result is just a single step loss to the wooden block. In reality many men may have been injured or killed but a unit would remain intact, just being less effective or strong for future engagements. And so it is with the block units in the game. Unlike some wargames where tokens are very quickly diminished and removed, there is a greater longevity to troops and their engagement. For me this gives a great scale to conflict. A big dice-fest battle but the end result is just a weakening of opposition’s units and truly creates a wonderful feeling of engagement without fear of “the luck of the roll” overly affecting the outcome. • Hidden Objectives: A card is drawn and, dependant on the scenario, numbers are allocated in secret to each side referencing the Objective tokens on the board ( be it a building to occupy or wood to chop down or latrine hole to dig and fill up…or any manner of made up reasons to get to the specified token) • Hidden Action Points: Planning our actions is all well and good when we know just how many we have during a turn to achieve a certain goal but when we don’t know how many we have at our disposal, life becomes a little more complex. The opponent turns over the top action card and keeps the action (red) number secret. The active player, us in this case, will carry out an action (be it a move or shoot or what ever) then our opponent will indicate if we have another action point available…and so we continue using action points until the number on the card is reached. At this point we end our turn but may, at this point, have failed to achieve as much as we really wanted to achieve. as in real conflict situations, we can plan in advance but unforeseen circumstances can hinder our progress and this is nicely replicated by hidden action points. • Initiative & Action points: leading on from the action points, the Initiative track plays a significant role in the to-and-fro of war. let’s say we start a turn on the (2) initiative square. if we use (3) Action points, this will move from (2) initiative on our side to the (1) initiative space on the opponent’s side and the Active player role is swapped. However, if we were, say, on initiative space (3) and were unfortunate enough to only have (2) action points…well the Initiative would move towards the opponent but still be on our side (n the (1) space. As we end our turn with the Initiative still in our favour, joy of all joys, we get to have a second Action card drawn for us..which is not to shabby at all. GREAT for us as we could end up with (5) or more actions and the need to think quickly to wisely utilise the extra actions. In a similar fashion, there is a Reactive Fire that can be taken by an opponent at our moving troops. why do they get a fee shoot?…hah, well, it is not so simple. If the opponent does use Reactive Fire, the initiative track is moved in our favour thus adding to the potential of us being able to draw a second Action card I’m not a really big wargamer, as such, but I do like the history and the simplicity of this game, and despite its simplicity, it still provides an arena for highly strategic warfare… and I now have in my possession, an early draft of the solo rules with a first solo scenario…(writted with words and such, on authentic 1918 replica paper). So, testing of the solitary rules began…and, if my first couple of games were anything to go by, they will soon become a reality for the production copy, opening up the Estonian War of Independence to soloists everywhere…I hope. Exciting times ahead, me thinks. Giles Pound

By Morgan Coulter @coffeeandcooperation Once upon a time, gaming in public was something you could do without thinking twice about it. But after a year of a global pandemic, we’re all missing our favorite local game spots. Whether it’s a game cafe, a coffee shop or a brewery, we all have somewhere we like to hang out and “waste” an afternoon. While there’s still so much that’s closed, my favorite local brewery is now open (with plenty of guidelines in place to keep you safe!) and it’s been such a joy to escape my house for an afternoon, drink a Cherry Cobbler Sour, and GAME. Here’s a few tried and true games that have become staples for us while at the brewery. These are games that are compact, don’t have a lot of components, and are easy to learn but a blast to play. Let’s check them out! 1. Love Letter by Z-Man Games. This game has become a favorite of ours. It consists of only a small deck and a few tokens that help you keep track of the winner each round. In Love Letter, you’re attempting to win the heart of the princess by having the highest value card at the end of the round, or by simply being the last person left in the game. It’s incredibly simple; draw a card, play a card. But it’s a good amount of luck and guess work, and is always a blast. We’ve found that this works really well at two-player (although it goes up to 6 player!) And if you’re with a group of friends, check out Marvel Infinity Gauntlet. It’s the same concept, but is set in the Marvel World. We enjoy that one with a higher player count though, so we tend to pick Love Letter when there’s just two of us. 2. The Bears and the Bees by Grandpa Becks Games. This is a beautiful card game in which you’re building a hive with cards from your hand. You can match your cards by color or by using a wild (honey!) But be careful, bees can produce extra cards for you and bears can tend to mess up the whole hive. First one to get rid of all their cards wins! This game is incredibly simple to learn; you can dive in within minutes of hearing the rules. There is advanced game play for those looking for a challenge, and it plays with up to 5 players so it’s another great option if you’re out with friends. Since it only consists of the deck of hexagon shaped cards, there’s hardly any set up at all. 3. Trash Pandas by Gamewright. This is a hysterically fun game in which you and your opponents are collecting trash and stashing away food (and shiny objects!) It’s a push your luck game based on a single die. Each round you roll the die, trying to get different actions. Once you get the same action twice you’ve busted and lose your turn. (Unless you have a card to help out!) The game consists of a deck of cards, one die, and 6 tokens so it’s perfect for a table crowded with food and drinks. And we all know that push your luck games are even more fun when you’ve had a beer! 4. Railroad Ink by Horrible Guild. This game has been a new obsession in our house after meeting with friends via Zoom to play this every Saturday. In Railroad Ink, you’re rolling dice with railroad tracks, roads and stations on them, and attempting to connect them all together! This is a brilliant game. Each game feels unique, and it’s all because of what comes up on the dice. This is a great game at any number. It’s one of my favorites to play solo, and as long as everyone’s got a board there’s no limit to the number of people that can join in! And with only boards, pens and dice it’s another great compact game for when you’re out and about. 5. Metro X by Gamewright. Another favorite roll and write, in Metro X you’re attempting to visit as many stations as you can on a subway map. But watch out! Tracks cross and every station has to be visited. You’ll soon find yourself with gaps in the line that need to be filled, but will you get the card you need to fill it? Metro X is for 1-6 players, and only consists of boards, markers and a deck of cards. Everyone that I have played this game with absolutely loves it, whether or not they’re gamers. It’s addicting and after every game you want to start again because you’re convinced you can do better! As the world begins to re-open, head back out to your favorite gaming location and enjoy your afternoon! Test out one of these games, and make sure to let me know what games you love to play when you’re out and about!