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

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

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

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

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

This is a preview copy sent to us for our early opinions. No money exchanged hands. Some art, rules or components will change in the final game. Find out more here. Some games catch your attention because of a clever mechanism. Others do it because the table looks completely unlike anything else around it. Cubyria is very much in the second camp, although there is a surprisingly clever spatial puzzle hiding underneath all that three-dimensional plastic. And some amazing multiplier scoring options that will blow your minds! This is a preview based on a prototype copy, so the final components, materials, presentation and production quality are still subject to change. That matters particularly here because Cubyria has been designed around its physical structure from the beginning, and the team is still working towards a manufacturable version that retains the distinctive look of the original 3D-printed pieces. I am therefore focusing primarily on the gameplay, building system and overall experience rather than judging the prototype as finished retail production. Although, for a 3-D printed prototype, this is exceptional. Build Me a Palace Cubyria casts two to five players as rival architects hired by a rather demanding Vizier. Everyone contributes to the same palace on the same board, but you are competing individually for points, with the idea being that the architect who best satisfies the Vizier’s tastes earns the most favour. The designers describe it as something close to competitive 3D Tetris, and that is probably the quickest way to understand the basic appeal. Players are dealt three cards. Cards correspond directly to physical building components, and on your turn, you use as many cards as you wish to add rooms, roofs, stairs, balconies, and structural pieces to the growing palace. Each card shows the building's scoring potential based on what floor it is built on. Some want to be higher, others like the Crypt, like to be low. There are multipliers based on matching buildings of the same category next to each other, as shown on the symbols on the left of the card. And most conveniently, there is a grid reference showing where you can find the attached building in the building container's storage unit, which works so well. I love it. Every room has a base value, and that value is multiplied by the floor on which you build it. A room worth four points on the first floor is therefore worth considerably more if you can somehow position it safely several levels higher. But this will not always be possible. And your fellow players will be looking for those high placements too. The Avery is located in G2, so run your finger along seven spaces horizontally, then two down and there it is. The Vizier Has Opinions Of course, your employer is not content to let architects build wherever they like. Certain rooms have preferred locations, while others can comfortably sit anywhere. A Dungeon, for example, belongs down low, and the Vizier's own chambers score negative if it sits on floor three or below. He wants to be up high! If you ignore those preferences you can still place the room, but you will suffer a penalty equal to its value. That creates a nice little tension. Sometimes the correct thematic placement is also the obvious scoring choice, but there can be reasons to accept a penalty if a badly placed room creates the foundation for something much more valuable above it. The scoring therefore encourages efficiency without completely dictating your decisions. The larger and more complicated rooms tend to be worth more, but they are also more difficult to support as the structure rises. Most rooms need to be completely supported underneath, so the palace naturally becomes a puzzle of foundations, useful surfaces and increasingly awkward gaps. Doors, Windows and Actual Architecture But that is not even half of it. Cubyria does not let you build a nonsensical pile of boxes either. Every room must ultimately be connected to the rest of the palace through a continuous path, most commonly by matching doors. You only need one valid connection, which keeps the rule manageable, but it still forces you to think about how your new room actually joins the existing structure. And each room only has a few doors, sometimes just one. Sometimes even none! Secret doors make that easier because they can connect to normal doors, other secret doors or even blank walls. Gallery windows work the opposite way and cannot be blocked, which creates another spatial consideration as the palace becomes more crowded. Once placed, a building with a window can never be blocked, and this will affect every turn for the rest of the game, so think carefully about where you will be place these tricky rooms. What I like about that system is that the complexity remains mostly visible. You do not need to remember some buried internal network once the palace becomes enormous. You are primarily looking at the exposed edges, open doors, available support, and useful building locations, which is exactly where a game like this needs the information to live. As you can see, as the game progresses, you will have a lot of rooms built. It's nice to not have to worry about what's under or in between previously built rooms! Going Up Vertical construction is where Cubyria starts to get especially interesting. Internal stairs acquired via cards just like the rooms, create a connection between one room and the room directly beneath it, opening access to a new floor and allowing further construction around it. Once that vertical route exists, other rooms on the same level can connect normally without needing their own staircase. And mostly, the higher you go, the more points! Roofs score slightly differently, using their base value plus the floor they cover rather than multiplying by height. Support columns are effectively structural wild cards that can go almost anywhere and help hold up rooms or roofs, although they do not create a valid route through the palace themselves. Then there are external staircases, and these are where the scoring can really explode. Rooms attached to them can be doubled, and linked staircases can stack those multipliers again and again. A clever player is therefore constantly looking for ways to combine height, room value and multipliers rather than simply placing the next convenient piece. Balconies and Bridges Balconies loosen the normal support rules. Balcony spaces can overhang empty areas as long as more than half of the entire piece remains properly supported, allowing the palace to stretch outward rather than becoming a neat vertical tower. Some specific components even reward that overhang directly. The Juliet Balcony and Bridge Tower can score bonus points based on the empty space beneath them, encouraging you to create those dramatic suspended structures rather than simply filling every gap underneath. It is exactly the sort of rule that gives Cubyria personality. The game wants the final palace to look strange, ambitious and slightly improbable, and it rewards players for embracing that. Introductory and Core Games There is an introductory mode designed to teach the basic building rules. Players have cards in hand alongside a shared open display, and on a turn can use up to five cards from the combined selection before everything is replenished. Play continues until the deck is exhausted. The full game then adds Affinities, which are symbols representing the style or function of various rooms and components. Matching affinities between adjacent pieces creates bonus points, with rooms gaining extra value for matches and roofs potentially doubling their total value. This is where the scoring becomes much more tactical. Building high is already valuable, staircases can multiply scores, and then affinities can increase them again. The result is a system where an apparently ordinary room placement can become extremely lucrative if several scoring opportunities intersect at once. The Whimsy of Cubyria The full game also introduces Whimsy cards, which are secret personal objectives representing whatever strange architectural demand the Vizier has whispered into your ear. Each player has one hidden goal, and the first person to complete theirs doubles the score from their entire turn. This allows for insane scores. The highest we achieved on one turn using a Whimsy was 180! And most early game scores are more like two or five! The particularly nasty twist is that when somebody completes a Whimsy, everyone loses their current card. They are shuffled back together and new goals are dealt out, so you can spend several turns quietly preparing for something only to watch another architect complete theirs first and wipe your plan away. That injects a welcome bit of urgency into what could otherwise become a purely contemplative spatial puzzle. It also helps explain some of the enormous scoring swings the designers have seen, with height, affinities, stairs and a completed Whimsy all potentially combining into one ridiculous turn. Shared Building, Shared Problems Because everyone is working on the same palace, Cubyria is naturally quite reactive. The perfect position you were eyeing up may be gone by the time your next turn arrives, and another player can unintentionally create exactly the support, doorway or affinity connection you needed. That also means long-term planning has limits. Some early players have noted that card draw and the rapidly changing shared structure make it difficult to plan several turns ahead, but the other side of that is that you are constantly solving a new spatial problem rather than executing a script you decided upon ten minutes earlier. For me, that feels appropriate for the design. Cubyria looks like a puzzle, but it is really an opportunistic puzzle, where the challenge is not simply identifying the perfect move but spotting what the palace currently allows and exploiting it better than everybody else. Everything is so easy to find and pack away thanks to this handy duel-layered tray The Physical Game Cubyria’s biggest strength is impossible to separate from its physical form. This game began life as an attempt to represent vertical movement properly on a tabletop, before the designers realised that constructing the environment was more interesting than the chase game they had originally intended. That history makes sense when you see the system. The castle is not a decorative representation of something happening elsewhere. Building the object is the game. The doors, windows, stairs, balconies, support and height are all meaningful parts of the rules rather than plastic scenery added afterwards. The challenge has been manufacturing that vision at a sensible price. The current plan is for foldable semi-flexible plastic components that arrive flat and permanently snap together, recreating the look of the original 3D-printed rooms without requiring prohibitively expensive multi-part moulds. Because this is still a prototype, the final success of that production solution is something I would want to see before giving the game a full review. Final Thoughts Cubyria is immediately distinctive. Plenty of games involve laying tiles, building cities or constructing shared landscapes, but physically assembling a competitive three-dimensional palace gives this one a very different presence and creates spatial decisions that simply would not work on a conventional flat board. There is also more game underneath the spectacle than I initially expected. Height multipliers, preferred floors, architectural connections, stairs, balconies, affinities and secret Whimsy objectives all interact to create some potentially huge turns, while the shared structure means you are constantly reacting to what everyone else has built. There are question marks that only the finished edition can answer, particularly around final component quality, durability and how successfully the production version preserves the prototype’s table presence. But as a prototype preview, Cubyria already has the most important thing going for it: it feels like its own game, rather than another familiar system wearing a new coat of paint.

Yield WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-5 You’ll like this if you like: Texas Hold-em and The Gang Published by: BFF Games Designed by: Satoshi Matsuura, Luigi Sampieri Rodriguez This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Some games impress on first play and then slowly disappear from your thoughts. Yield has done the opposite for me. I enjoyed it when I first previewed the prototype, and after more plays over a much longer period, and now with this final print copy, I still enjoy it just as much. That matters, because this is exactly the sort of game where the real test is not whether the first few battles feel exciting, but whether the system still has enough life in it once you understand the tricks. Set 43 years before the events of Hidden Leaders, Yield puts players in charge of rival Houses fighting for control of Oshra during a civil war. You move Armies around the map, strengthen and conquer Fortresses, manage hidden Army strength, and fight over the most valuable parts of the board. After three Years, each Fortress is worth the number of tokens in its stack, and whoever controls the top token scores the whole value. Setup and How to Play Each player begins with three Armies and secretly divides 12 Units between them, with at least one Unit in each. That hidden information immediately gives the game some tension, because the Army sitting next to you might be barely hanging on or could be far stronger than it looks. Players also start with six identical Strategy cards and a hand of Battle cards, while the map changes depending on player count. The game lasts three Years, and each Year is divided into a Strategy phase, Battle phase, Conquer phase, and Recovery and Recruitment phase, although the final Year skips that last step. During the Strategy phase, players simultaneously choose one Strategy card, reveal them, and resolve them in turn order. This happens four times per Year, meaning you only play four of your six available Strategy cards before moving into battle. Those Strategy cards are refreshingly direct. They let you move, conquer unguarded or neutral Fortresses, ambush, upgrade Fortresses you already have, or use the Ritual card to sacrifice some Fortress value in exchange for copying another action and potentially changing the starting player. The decisions come less from having dozens of options and more from choosing exactly when to use the few tools you have. Fighting for Oshra Combat is where Yield really earns its name. When opposing Armies are adjacent, players reveal the strength of the participating forces and mark the totals on the Battle tracker. The weaker player gains initiative and must decide whether to play Battle cards to climb above their opponent, accept a draw where possible, or simply Yield and take the loss. Battle cards are tied to the colour of the region your army occupies, so positioning matters before the fight even starts. Matching cards can be played face up for their full value, while any card can be played face down for just one point. This creates some lovely tension because you are constantly asking whether your opponent genuinely has the cards to keep going or is simply trying to make you blink first. You can play as many cards as you wish until you have a higher score. Then the other player takes the initiative and can do the same in return if they wish and have the cards to do so. This continues until one player yields. Get the name now? Although you can tie and draw too. Losing does not necessarily mean destruction. You lose Units equal to the difference between the two sides scores after adding all battle cards played, then retreat, while the winner may Chase into the vacated position. Armies can also be destroyed if they hit zero or have nowhere legal to retreat, and doing so grants the victor free Fortress upgrades. This makes battles meaningful without turning every defeat into a complete disaster. The Fortresses Are the Real Prize The most interesting part of the scoring system is that Fortresses become more valuable as players interact with them. Every time one is conquered, another token is added to the stack, increasing its value for whoever eventually controls it. They score one point per token there at the end of the game. And tokens never go away; they don't get removed. They just get added to as the game progresses. That means a location can become increasingly tempting as the game goes on, and a Fortress everyone has been fighting over can suddenly be worth far more than something you quietly protected in a corner. This creates some excellent late-game pressure. I have had games come down to one final battle over one heavily upgraded Fortress, with everything resting on positioning, hidden Army strength and whether the right Battle cards are still in hand. That is exactly the sort of finish I want from a fast area-control game. It also means Yield is less about building an empire you defend forever and more about timing. Control can be fluid, and that will not suit everyone, but I like the way it keeps players moving and interacting. Sitting safely in one corner is rarely the most rewarding route. Where the Game Really Comes Alive The asymmetric Leaders remain my favourite part of the design. Each offers two different powers, and some of them dramatically change how you approach the board. Keralon can field a fourth Army or strengthen Battle cards through a Champion, Lemron can move or even create Fortresses, Vymar can improve face-down Battle cards, and Pavyr can gain power from Fortresses or steal cards. Then there is Basil. One side lets losing Armies gain Units rather than lose them, while the other can win the entire game immediately by destroying a single enemy Army. That sounds completely ridiculous on paper, but powers like this are exactly what give Yield its character and make different match-ups feel meaningfully different. I adore it! Importantly, that variety has held up for me. This is not something I only enjoyed during the excitement of the prototype. More games have simply reinforced how much I like exploring different powers, different maps and different ways of approaching the same compact system. What Might Not Work for Everyone There are a few areas where I can see players bouncing off the game. The battle system is intentionally incremental, with players leapfrogging each other by playing cards until one side finally gives in. And you can have your arsenal of battle cards drained with one battle, when your plans were to use them for something else. I enjoy that tension, but if you prefer combat to resolve quickly and decisively and with a little more control, the back-and-forth can feel repetitive. Worse n a multi-player game of more than two, when you are not involved in a long back-and-forth battle. The game can also feel quite fluid for an area-control title. With only three Armies, holding everything you capture is difficult, and Fortresses can change hands repeatedly. If you like building secure borders and carefully defending territory, this may feel less satisfying than a more traditional conquest game. This is a fluid game. Pros Fast, punchy area control with meaningful interaction. Excellent asymmetry that keeps different match-ups fresh. Clever hidden Army strength and Battle card tension. Strong replayability despite a relatively focused ruleset. Cons Battles may feel repetitive if you dislike incremental escalation. Territory can be hard to hold, especially at higher player counts. Multiplayer battles are slightly more cumbersome than the rest of the game. The core loop is focused rather than mechanically broad. Final Thoughts When I first previewed Yield, I thought it had the potential to be a very good fast area-control game. Now, after considerably more time with it, I am more confident in that judgement. The initial excitement has not worn off, and the game still gives me the same satisfying mix of bluffing, positioning, tactical aggression and dramatic late battles. What impresses me most is how much game it gets into a relatively short playtime. You are constantly making meaningful decisions about where to move, which Strategy card to commit, when to risk a battle, when to Yield and which Fortresses are worth fighting for. The asymmetric powers then push those decisions in different directions without turning the game into a sprawling rules exercise. Most importantly, Yield is still a keeper. I have had enough time with it now for the novelty to disappear, and I still want it on my shelf and still want to play it. For me, that is about as useful a recommendation as any review can give.

As the great MC Hammer once said, "Yield, Gaming time!" This is a prototype version of the game and may not represent the final quality or look of the game. From the makers of Hidden Leaders and Almost Innocent there now comes new area control game, set in the same world as the previous games, with the same artistic style from Satoshi Matsuura but a whole new game style. You can find more about Yield here. Yield operates in a straightforward manner. A group of 2-5 players will select a faction from five options and one of the two sides of their chosen faction player boards. Each player will gather their three (or four for a specific faction) army tokens, power dials, six action cards, fortress tokens, and ten battle cards (from which they must discard three from). The remaining battle cards should be positioned next to the main board (on the right side according to the player count) near the score tracker. Neutral fortresses are then placed on the spaces marked with roman numerals. Players will distribute twelve power between their three armies (or four for the yellow player if they chose side A), rotating the dials to any numbers above one, to a total of twelve between them. Players will keep each individual army's assigned number secret. Players will then add one of their fortress tokens to one of the neutral fortress spaces, placing their token on the top. Players will then take turns adding their army tokens to the board either on the space with their starting fortress or one space next to it. Finally, assign one player to be the starting faction. You are now ready to play. Play now follows three rounds, each of which consists of four steps. The first step is where players will all play one of their six action cards from their hand. All players have the same six cards and will play four each round. The cards are all played face down, and when all players have played one card, the cards are revealed to show the intentions of each player. The starting player will then carry out their action first, followed by the next player, until all players have done this. This continues until all players have played and carried out four actions. If you ever do not want to take an action, or need more battle cards, you can choose not to reveal the action card, and instead draw five new battle cards, add them to your hand, then discard two. The main actions available are to move your armies, conquer neutral or other players' fortresses if they are left unguarded, and build new fortresses. You can also initiate a battle with an added battle score of six, which we will explain later; or conduct a ritual when you can copy any other card either in your hand or already played, gain the first player marker, but you must remove the bottom fortress token from one fortress that you control. At the end of the game, the player with the most points from fortresses wins. Each fortress is worth the number of tokens there, including neutral and other players' tokens. Whoever has the top token scores all the points. So you want to be adding tokens, not removing them. After the action card phase concludes, players will proceed to start battles. Battles will occur across the map whenever two or more opposing armies are currently adjacent to each other. A scenario of two (or more) armies facing one can arise if two armies surround a single one, but only the armies neighbouring an opposing army will engage in combat. In a situation where one army is adjacent to an enemy's army and has another army next to itself, but not adjacent to the opposing army, the two armies cannot team up against the single army. Battles work by players revealing the current battle strength of the armies engaged in battle, and then using a fortress token to mark this on the score tracker. The player with the lowest battle score then takes the initiative and decides if they want to fight or yield. If they yield, they will lose the difference in their current battle score and the enemy's by removing that from their battle dial. If this brings them to zero, they are destroyed. If they still have health left, they are defeated but not destroyed. If the player with the initiative does not want to yield, they can play a battle card to raise their battle score. The battle card must match the colour of the area in which they are fighting. If a player has more than one army involved, and these armies cover more than one terrain, that player can then play cards from more than one colour in this battle. This is a significant advantage. Players keep playing cards, rotating the initiative as they overtake each other's battle score by playing cards, until one player yields. The only other way a battle can end is if a tie occurs, and the player who has received the initiative decides to call a draw. This is rare. The battle cards can also be played on their reverse side as a wild card. A defeated army can be pushed back one space by the winning army. They can then advance one space with one army if they choose, potentially moving onto a now unprotected fortress. If you cannot push an opposing army as they are backed into a corner, then this is another way an army can be destroyed. Defeated armies stay on the map, but destroyed armies are removed. Play then moves to the next phase, the conquer phase, where players can add fortress tokens of their colour onto any fortress space they don't currently own, so long as they are on this space with one of their armies. This generally is the result of winning a battle. For each fortress conquered this way, the player who does this can draw two new battle cards. Play then moves to the final phase where any destroyed army can now come back onto the map, onto any fortress owned by that player. They will reappear with half of their previous health, rounded down. One player will then draw one card from the battle deck, reveal it to all players, and all players will then add that amount to their overall battle score, distributed amongst all their battle dials. In round two, two cards are drawn like this. After round three, the game ends. So far, so normal. But where is the twist? Alright, calm down, I was getting to it. This game has five different factions, and each one has its own unique asymmetric power. In fact, each one has two of its own. You can choose side A or B. Let's take a closer look at these now, and this is where the game comes alive! These powers can give you an extra army, allow you to move your fortresses as well as your armies, or even gain units for your armies instead of losing them when you lose a battle! A pretty hard power to combat when you are up against it, I found! Pavyr lets you gain extra battle cards for being in bigger fights, and Vyma has a great power that lets you play face down battle cards as neutral threes, rather than neutral ones. A bit advantage. But this is side A, check out some of the side B's! Pavyr now gains units from his total Fortresses, a huge swing in most fights! And Vyma now gains additional movement when carrying out the Ritual action. Movement is very powerful in this game. And check these out! Keralon now adds plus two for all face-up battle cards when their champion is in the fight! Lemron can now place power tokens on any space where they have armies present, rather than just existing fortress spaces. This is huge. But most bonkers of all, Basil now wins the entire game, no matter what round it is, no matter what player count it is, simply by destroying one army! Will you dare fight Basil? These variable powers bring not only incredible variety to the game, but also bucket loads of fun! I have loved exploring the variations of fighting with and against each of these, in multiple player counts and combinations. It makes every game feel different, and adds huge character to the game. Often a game will come down to one final battle for one powerful fortress. You need to plan ahead and make sure you have the right armies in the right place, with the right battle cards in hand. There can be some luck to this, but also a lot of planning, and when it pays off, it feels great. Games are surprisingly fast. Two-player games can be done in under 30 minutes. And I have had a four-player game last under forty too. Obviously, this depends on the players at the table, but ultimately, you play four cards each round, the actions are often pretty fast, and you won't have battles every round. Making the battle conquer and recovery round sometimes instant. I predict this game will be a huge success at both Kickstarter and retail levels, and would encourage anyone who enjoys a competitive, fast, fun-filled area-control game to check this one out.

Scales Of Fate WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2 You’ll like this if you like: Veiled Fate and two player deduction games Published by: IV Studio Designed by: Max Anderson, Zac Dixon, Austin Harrison This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Some two-player games feel like smaller versions of something built for more people. Scales of Fate does not. It feels completely designed around the tension of sitting opposite one person, watching every move they make, trying to work out what they are really doing while giving away as little as possible yourself. It is short too. A full game can come in at around 25 minutes, setup is easy, the rules are surprisingly straightforward, and there is almost no downtime. More importantly, you never really switch off when it is not your turn, because every move your opponent makes might be helping them, hurting you, disguising something, or doing all three at once. How to Play At the start of the game, all nine demigods begin on seven Renown, and each player secretly receives two demigod cards from their own identical deck. That last point is important because both players can potentially care about the same demigod, which immediately makes the deduction less obvious than simply working out which pieces your opponent keeps helping. The aim of the game is to get your two demigods to be either as far away from each other as possible on the scoring track, as you score the difference between the two, or on the same spot, where you score the spot they are on. The game lasts three Ages. On your turn you normally place a demigod onto an action tile, but you could also place a previously gained Servant or use one of the three God Powers, or pass when you no longer have normal actions available. The action tiles let you Smite a demigod into the Abyss, influence what happens to those in the Abyss at the end of the Age, or gain Servants that can later manipulate Renown. Servants are the main way you actually move demigods up and down the Renown track. Different servants interact with different quest types and can sometimes hit several demigods at once, which creates some very satisfying tactical swings. Placing them will move the affected demigods up or down the score track, based on what tiles they are next to, and where you place your servants. So when you place demigods onto the board, and where you place servants will all give clues to your opponent about your intentions. There is enough going on to make each move matter, but never so much that the game becomes difficult to follow. The Real Game Is Reading the Other Player This is where Scales of Fate really works for me. You are not just trying to improve your own position. You are also constantly interpreting your opponent’s actions while trying to make sure they cannot interpret yours. Did they move that demigod because it belongs to them? Did they move it because they think it belongs to you? Are they helping one of their own while pretending not to care, or are they simply setting up a bigger tactical move somewhere else? Because both players can potentially have the same hidden demigod, even an apparently obvious clue can be misleading. That creates a lovely little game of bluff and counter-bluff. Sometimes the smartest move is not the one that scores the most immediately, but the one that muddies the water enough to keep your intentions hidden. And sometimes you realise your opponent has spent the whole game feeding you exactly the wrong story. In joyous! Two Very Different Ways to Score The scoring system is one of the smartest parts of the design. If your two demigods finish on different Renown spaces, you score the difference between them. If they finish on the same space, you score the value of that space instead. That gives you two very different paths. The safer route is often to push one demigod high and one low, creating as much distance as possible. The more daring route is to try to get both onto the same high-value space, which can score very well but is far more vulnerable to interference. I have managed that second strategy a few times, and it is wonderfully satisfying when it comes off. It definitely helps if you have the final move of the third Age, though, and it becomes much harder if your opponent has already identified both of your demigods. If they know what you are trying to do, they can destroy that perfect alignment with one well-timed move. Deduction That Actually Matters At the end of each Age, both players answer a yes-or-no question based on the current Age card. Those questions give partial clues about your hidden demigods without necessarily giving away exact identities, which keeps the deduction developing gradually rather than turning into a single obvious reveal. Then, at the end of the game, both players make their final guesses. Correctly identifying both of your opponent’s demigods is worth three points, identifying one scores nothing, and missing both costs you one. That sounds small, but in a tight game those points can absolutely matter. More importantly, the reveal is just fun. Guess correctly and there is a proper little moment of satisfaction as all those tiny clues click into place. Guess wrong and, rather than feeling cheated, you often end up appreciating just how well your opponent disguised what they were doing. Powerful Tools, Real Costs The God Powers add another nice layer. Smite can throw any demigod into the Abyss, Switch lets you swap any two demigods anywhere, and Steal takes an unused Servant from your opponent. They are powerful, but they are not free. Each costs you a whole turn and one victory point at the end of the game, and once used, that power is gone for good. That makes using one feel significant rather than automatic, which fits the rest of the design perfectly. Everything in Scales of Fate feels like that. There is no obvious filler, no action that exists simply because the designer wanted one more mechanism in the box. The systems are compact, interconnected and nearly always force you to think about both the visible board state and the hidden intentions behind it. Production The production is excellent. The chunky, weighty pieces feel great in the hand and give the game far more physical presence than you might expect from something this short. It also looks superb on the table, with the board’s interlocking shapes and layered spaces giving the whole thing a distinctive identity. The theme itself is much less important. Mechanically, this is really an abstract tactical duel with a demigod skin, and I never felt particularly invested in the world or characters. That does not bother me much because the underlying game is strong enough, but anyone coming in because they want a rich mythological experience may find the setting thinner than the presentation suggests. The iconography can also take a little getting used to. Several of the demigods and visual identifiers are close enough that you may need to pay more attention than feels ideal in a game built around information management. It is not a deal-breaker, but it is probably the weakest part of an otherwise very polished package. Pros Excellent two-player-only design with almost no downtime. Clever mix of deduction, bluffing and tactical board manipulation. Brilliant scoring tension between separation and matching Renown. Superb chunky components and strong table presence. Cons Theme is much lighter than the presentation suggests. Some iconography and demigod identification could be clearer. Deduction may feel a little fuzzy if you prefer hard logical certainty. Very much a dedicated two-player experience, so naturally niche. Final Thoughts Scales of Fate is exactly what I want from a dedicated two-player game. It is short, easy to teach, fast to set up and packed with meaningful decisions from the first turn to the last. There is no long wait between actions, no period where you feel out of the game, and no real downtime because your opponent’s moves are just as interesting to watch as your own. The thing I like most is how well the different layers interact. You are manipulating Renown, protecting your own scoring plan, trying to read your opponent, disguising your priorities and working out whether to chase a safer spread or a riskier matched score. None of those things sit separately, and that is why such a short game can still feel so full. Then you get the final guesses, which give the whole experience a satisfying little flourish. Sometimes you feel like a genius. Sometimes your opponent reveals just how completely they fooled you. Either way, for around 25 minutes of play, Scales of Fate delivers a wonderfully tight and engaging duel.

This is a preview copy sent to us for our early opinions. No money exchanged hands. Some art, rules or components will change in the final game. Find out more here. There is something inherently satisfying about building a rocket. Slotting together the right parts, hiring the right people, watching the numbers improve and then deciding whether you are brave enough to light the fuse is a strong foundation for a game. Payload takes that idea and turns it into a compact card game about running your own space company, competing for contracts and trying to get enough successful launches under your belt before everyone else catches up. At its heart, this is an engine-builder with a strong race element running through it. Technically, it is the player with the most victory points who wins, but the game ends when everyone has launched their second Payload or somebody launches a third, so you are always conscious of the pace being set around the table. That creates useful pressure because you cannot simply sit there perfecting your engine forever. Building towards launch Each turn begins with a selection of optional actions before you take two main actions. Those main actions let you buy Rocket Parts, hire Engineers, use Operations or attempt a launch, while optional actions include moving Parts around, selling a Spare Part, repositioning a Junior Engineer or starting a bid for a Payload contract. It gives turns a decent sense of freedom without making them overly long or complicated. The market system is one of the nicer parts of the design. Parts and Engineers sit in variable-price rows, so where a card happens to be positioned determines how much it costs, and buying something causes the rest of the row to shift. It is not revolutionary, but it creates a steady stream of small decisions around value, timing and whether to grab something now or gamble on it becoming cheaper later. There are some neat wrinkles around construction too. A complete rocket needs a Nose Cone, Propellant Tanks, Engine and Nozzle, while Engineers improve the key attributes of Payload Safety, Thrust and Stability. Colour matching matters as well, because Engineers can provide stronger bonuses when matched to the right Part, while matching Parts to Payloads can reduce launch risk. That means you are not simply collecting four cards and moving on, but trying to build something efficient. Contracts, upgrades and risk Payload contracts are acquired through a secret bidding system that is more interesting than it first appears. Players call out labels rather than numbers, with each Bid card assigning different values to those labels, so there is a light deduction element sitting underneath the auction. The lowest bid wins the contract and receives income based on the bid, which makes the whole process feel nicely thematic for a game about commercial space launches. Operations add another layer of flexibility. They let you upgrade Parts, gain Shields, manipulate markets or stretch your turn with effects such as Overdrive, and there is enough variety here to create some genuinely interesting tactical choices. None of these ideas individually feel especially new, but they have clearly been tested against one another and they fit together cleanly. Then comes the fun bit: launching. Once your rocket meets one of the requirement tiers on a Payload, you calculate its Launch Target from the risk on your Parts, reduce that through colour matching, and then roll against it using two dice plus the Weather Die. Shields let you manipulate results, and you can even abort after the second roll, so the dice create tension without making the outcome feel completely arbitrary. First impressions My main feeling after playing Payload is that this is a very solid game. It does not arrive with one huge mechanism that makes you immediately sit up and think you have never seen anything like this before, and in a very crowded card game market that may make it harder to stand out. But what it does, it does well. The theme works, the systems feel balanced, and there is a sense that a lot of playtesting and refinement has gone into making the different parts fit together. There are meaningful choices around money, contracts, upgrades, timing and risk, and the game manages to deliver a surprisingly rich experience from little more than a deck of cards and three dice. That is probably its biggest achievement. It is also relatively quick. You can get a proper sense of development, build something meaningful and enjoy a satisfying arc from first contract to final launch without committing an entire evening to it. For a game built around engine construction and optimisation, that efficiency deserves plenty of credit. Final thoughts Payload is not necessarily the sort of game that immediately speaks to my own tastes, and I do think its biggest challenge may simply be getting noticed. There is nothing especially shiny or immediately spectacular about the design, and the hobby is full of games fighting for attention with bigger hooks, louder production and stranger ideas. But underneath that, this is a carefully constructed and enjoyable game. It offers a good mix of planning, tactical adaptation, market timing and push-your-luck tension, all wrapped around a theme that makes sense of the mechanisms rather than simply sitting on top of them. There is real satisfaction in getting your rocket ready, deciding when to take the risk and then seeing whether all that preparation pays off. If the final production keeps the current clarity and the campaign gives it enough visibility, I can see Payload finding an audience with players who enjoy compact engine-builders and games where efficiency matters. It may not reinvent the genre, but it does not really need to. Sometimes a well-made game that knows exactly what it wants to be is enough.

COSMO WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 2-5 You’ll like this if you like: Texas Hold-em and The Gang Published by: Helvetiq Designed by: 宮野 華也 (Kaya Miyano) This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Some games need twenty minutes of rules before anyone can start having fun. Cosmo needs barely any time at all. If everyone at the table already understands poker hands, you can have this tiny box open and be making meaningful decisions within seconds, and that immediacy is a huge part of why I enjoyed it so much. Designed by Kaya Miyano, Cosmo is a two-to-five-player card game that takes around 15 minutes and asks everyone to assemble the strongest five-card poker-style hand. The catch is that you never have complete information about anybody else's hand, and before the final cards are drawn you must bet on who you think is going to win. It is simple, quick and wonderfully suited to that space before, after or between something considerably heavier. Setup and How to Play The game consists of six small decks, labelled A to F. Each deck has a known composition, and that information is displayed on the backs of the cards, meaning you always have some idea of what might come out of each pile. That tiny detail turns what could have been random card drawing into a neat little probability puzzle. On your turn, you choose any of the six decks and take its top card. Your first and fifth cards are kept face down, while the second, third and fourth are played face up for everyone to see. By the time everyone has four cards, you therefore know three of each opponent's five cards, while also having clues about what their hidden cards could be based on which decks they came from. Before anyone draws that fifth card, everyone bets on the player they think will finish with the strongest hand, and you are perfectly entitled to back yourself. The last cards are then drawn, everything is revealed and the best combination wins a Space Dollar, while a correct bet earns another and an incorrect one can cost you one. The first player to reach five Space Dollars triggers the end, with the most Dollars taking the win. Poker, But Not Quite Poker The hands themselves will feel immediately familiar to anyone who has played poker. You are looking for pairs, two pairs, three of a kind, full houses, four of a kind, a straight from one to five, or the mighty five of a kind. Cosmo dresses these combinations up with names such as Chaos Crew, Giant Grippers and Cosmic Crew, but underneath the colourful space animals is a wonderfully recognisable structure. That familiarity is important because it means almost all your attention can go into reading the table rather than remembering rules. You might see somebody sitting on three matching cards and assume they are miles ahead, but perhaps you know enough about the deck they drew their hidden card from to think otherwise. Equally, your own visible cards may look mediocre while you quietly know that your first hidden card has already put you in a much stronger position than anyone realises. It reminded me a little of The Gang, another excellent game that takes poker and asks you to think about the relative strength of everyone's hands. The crucial difference is where the information comes from. In The Gang, you are largely judging other players through how confident they appear to be in their own cards, whereas Cosmo gives you genuine information to work with and asks you to deduce what the missing pieces might be. Small Game, Lovely Decisions That is where Cosmo becomes much more interesting than simply drawing cards and hoping for the best. There is luck, of course, and sometimes your final card will turn a promising hand into nothing particularly exciting. But because you choose the deck you draw from and can track what other players have selected, there is nearly always a reason behind your decision. The betting phase is what really completes it. Even if your own hand is clearly going nowhere, you are still involved because you can score by correctly identifying who is most likely to win. It means you spend the whole round watching everyone else rather than staring exclusively at the cards in front of you. This version is also a reworking of Miyano's earlier Mole Poker, with the betting phase and race-to-five scoring giving Cosmo a more satisfying overall structure. Those additions make each round matter beyond simply determining who assembled the best hand. There is a nice little rhythm to building, judging, betting and revealing before everything resets and you go again. More Is Definitely Merrier I would strongly favour Cosmo at the higher player counts. It works with two, but the betting phase inevitably loses much of its charm when your decision is simply whether you think you or the other player has the better hand. The deduction is still there, but the table-reading becomes rather flat. With three it improves considerably, but four or five is where I think Cosmo really shines. Suddenly there are several plausible winners, far more visible cards to process and much more uncertainty around where to place your bet. If you mainly play games with two people, I would probably look elsewhere, but for groups regularly playing with four or five this is a cracking little filler. And filler really is the right word, in the best possible sense. Cosmo is not trying to dominate your evening or provide hours of strategic development. It is an amuse-bouche of a game, something lovely to bring out while people are arriving, to finish the night, or to clear the palate between two bigger experiences. Pros Incredibly quick to teach, particularly if players already understand poker. Excellent use of partial information and probability. The betting phase keeps everyone invested in every hand. Tiny box, short playtime and ideal for four or five players. Cons Noticeably flatter at two players. Luck can still swing a round despite the information available. The space theme is charming rather than particularly meaningful. Players wanting deep strategy may find it too light. Final Thoughts Cosmo is exactly the sort of small-box card game I love discovering. It takes something everybody understands, twists it just enough to feel fresh, and gets out of its own way. There is very little rules overhead, but plenty of opportunities to make a smart read, take a calculated chance or confidently back entirely the wrong astronaut. It also understands its place. This is not a game pretending to offer enormous depth from 36 cards, nor does it need to. What it gives you instead is 15 minutes of genuinely enjoyable deduction, probability and poker-inspired tension, packaged into something you can carry almost anywhere. Just make sure you have the right group for it. With four or five players, Cosmo is a superb filler that I can see hitting the table again and again. Simple, clever and enormously fun.

Fugu WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Clever, fast, card games Published by: Helvetiq Designed by: Flavio Foches, Riccardo Foches This is a free review copy. See our review policy here Some small card games are exactly what they look like. Fugu is not. At first glance, this is a bright little sea-themed game about placing numbered cards into ascending order, but there is far more going on here than that simple description suggests. It looks and sounds simple, and in truth, is it. But you could instantly love it! Setup and How to Play Every player begins with 18 face-down cards in a fixed row, while three face-up cards sit in the centre of the table. On your turn, you take one of those three, replace one of your hidden cards with it, and then reveal the card you displaced back into the middle. The basic placement rule is beautifully simple. Number cards must sit in ascending order from left to right, so once you begin revealing your row, every new card needs to fit somewhere logically between the numbers already in place. If you cannot, or simply do not want to, you can rotate the card and use it as an Anchor instead, ignoring the numerical restrictions but accepting negative points later. That sounds easy enough, and sometimes it is. If there is a one and you will want it on the very far left. But draw a three and suddenly things become much less obvious. Do you put it in the first space, knowing a one or two could still appear later, but maybe other players with take them first. Or the second or third and gamble that the lower cards will eventually turn up? The clever part is that the card you place is only half of the decision. You have 18 potential positions to replace, and whichever hidden card you choose is immediately revealed into the shared market. So every placement is also a decision about what space you are committing to and what unknown card you may be handing to somebody else. More Than Just Numbers Then comes the scoring puzzle, which is where Fugu becomes properly interesting. Bannerfish want to sit together, rewarding larger uninterrupted groups, while Pufferfish prefer to be isolated from other fish. That means getting your numbers into perfect ascending order is not enough on its own. Octopuses want to sit beside Coral, scoring best when tucked between two Coral cards, while Coral itself scores in sets of three different colours. So a card can be numerically perfect but strategically poor. Putting an Octopus exactly where the sequence demands may keep your row clean, but if it ends up miles away from any Coral, you have effectively solved one problem while creating another. That constant conflict is what surprised me most. You are not simply filling gaps, and you are not simply collecting sets. You are trying to construct a numerical framework and a scoring ecosystem at the same time, and those two goals frequently pull you in different directions. The Real Decision The biggest misconception you could have about Fugu is that the choice of three centre cards is the main decision. It really is not. The more important question is often which of your 18 hidden cards are you prepared to sacrifice to make that choice work? A seemingly perfect card can create a headache several turns later because you have boxed yourself into a narrow numerical range. Equally, deliberately leaving a larger gap can give you flexibility, but only if the cards you eventually need actually appear. You are constantly making small probability judgements about what might come next, what opponents might take, and how much space you can afford to leave open. This is also where the game gains more depth than I expected. There are only three cards available each turn, yet the number of possible placements and scoring consequences means the decision rarely feels trivial. For such a small game, it asks some genuinely satisfying questions. When Luck Bites There is luck, though, and sometimes it can be annoying. You have no control over the hidden card you reveal when you replace something in your row, so you can make a brilliant move and then immediately flip over the exact card your opponent desperately needs. They take it, thank you very much, and your clever little plan has accidentally improved their reef instead. It can be even more painful when you deliberately leave a gap for a specific number or creature type, only to reveal that exact card yourself and watch another player snap it up before your next turn. There is nothing you can really do about that, and if you dislike moments where good planning gets undermined by random information, this may occasionally grate. Thankfully, Fugu is quick. Those frustrations are usually fleeting, because another decision is only moments away and another full game is not much further behind. In a longer strategic game, that level of randomness might bother me more, but here it feels like a tolerable price for the tension it creates. Knowing When to Stop There is another clever wrinkle in the endgame. At the start of your turn, you can choose to pass permanently, even if you still have face-down cards remaining. Those hidden cards score nothing, but they remain in place as separators, which can sometimes protect the scoring structure you have already built. That means you eventually reach a point where continuing is not automatically correct. Do you keep digging for a better score and risk damaging what you already have, or accept that your reef is good enough and step away? I like that decision because it introduces a small push-your-luck element without adding any rules overhead. Some players may find it anticlimactic that the optimal move can simply be to stop, but I think it fits the puzzle nicely. Knowing when further improvement is more likely to hurt than help is part of the game. Pros Far more depth than the simple rules suggest. Excellent tension between numerical placement and creature scoring. Fast turns and a short overall playtime. Clever use of hidden cards and the shared centre display. Cons Luck can hand opponents exactly what they need. A strong plan can be disrupted by an unfortunate reveal. Interaction is mostly indirect rather than confrontational. Players wanting complete control may find the randomness frustrating. Final Thoughts Fugu really surprised me. What initially looks like a straightforward ascending-number puzzle quickly reveals itself to be a much more interesting game about positioning, probability and competing scoring demands. The best move is rarely just “take the lowest useful card and put it in the obvious place”, and that is exactly why it works. I especially like that the depth comes from such simple ingredients. Eighteen spaces, three available cards and a handful of scoring rules are enough to create a constant stream of interesting decisions. The game never feels heavy, but it regularly gives you that satisfying moment where you sit staring at your row wondering which tiny compromise is going to hurt least. There is luck, and occasionally it will absolutely sting. But Fugu is so quick, colourful and easy to replay that those moments rarely linger. This is a smart little card game with considerably more going on beneath the surface than I expected, and one I can see coming back to the table often.