Search Results

Ok, strap in. This is an exciting one. Harbour of Blight comes from the same author and designer of a delightful book we covered here, called In The Blink Of A Dragon's Eye. You can read about that here . And coming to Kickstarter soon, is a solo or two-player co-op, campaign-based board game/RPG hybrid, Harbour Of Blight: Obsidian. You can check that out here . That is set in a world that is being introduced here, in this adventure book, Harbour of Blight: Scenario Zero. A teaser to this upcoming RPG style game. Which you can check out here . The designer, wanted to merge the video game style RPG into the book game world. When talking to WBG, he said: "It's really a way I thought up to bring a video game RPG experience to tabletop (for 1-2 players) with an ongoing story, characters, campaign over many acts that all connect together and you use the same character that will be a "job system" so each act you'll have a new Profession to level up with your character." And with this book, we have an introduction in to this world, its characters, and the game style that is going to be brought to our tables soon with the upcoming Kickstarter. I was utterly intrigued from that moment and very exited to try this mystery book. The book functions similarly to many other choose-your-own-adventure style books. You start with some backstory, assume the role of a character aiming to solve a specific mystery, and make decisions to read certain pages or sections of the chapter based on what you believe is the best way to advance the story. You will face time limits depending on the world you're in, allowing you to explore, investigate, or interact with only a limited number of people or places. Therefore, you need to choose wisely based on what you think will lead to the best outcome. Your decisions will guide the story's progression into a captivating narrative of your creation. No digital tricks. No apps. Just good, old-fashioned writing and decision-making. The game is set in the Harbour of Blight universe, around an event called Founders Day. A time when the City of Obsidian celebrates its founding. You play the roll of a new member of the Hunters Guild, but you are thrust into the action from the off, when a mysterious and ominous theft takes place, and you are best placed to help solve the crime. I won't go into specifics here, for fear of spoilers, but you will run through two main chapters of exploration, visiting different locations of your choosing, talking to different people, and discussing specific things. All based on what you feel will give you the best chance of finding the right clues to solve this mystery. Will you tail certain people, or approach them directly and ask the questions on your mind? Will you push your luck and delve deep into the mystery, or play it safe? But how does this all work? Well, much like classic choose-your-own-adventure stories, it is largely based on simple decisions. A or B. But here, often with a C, D, E, and beyond too! But also, dice rolls! The book comes with these utterly delightful crafted custom dice that you use throughout the book. For example, you may be searching a specific area for clues, and you may want to risk continuing your search while being patrolled by unfriendly guards. Here, instead of simply making a choice to back off or carry on, you will also need to roll your dice if you choose to risk it, to see how successful you will be, D&D style. Roll the gorgeous d20 provided, and test your luck. The game then gives different outcomes based on your roll. Once you have searched all you can, and your time has run out, you will move to the decision phase of the game. Here, you must make your choice and volunteer a name as to whom you believe the guilt lies. This will lead to more spiralling avenues of dialogues, before ultimately you enter the final stage, combat! Here, you will use a D&D style mechanic to fight the "enemy" (no spoilers here!). There are various scenarios of how this will play out, so the game moves into a "your adventure has been chosen for you" over a "choose-your-own adventure," based on your success or lack thereof in the battle! Each round you will choose a skill, and roll a D6 to decide how your enemy will attack. Each skill will have a set speed that will determine who goes first in battle. You will continue until either you or your foe is reduced to zero health. Then you will read the following text accordingly, potentially gaining rewards that I guess may be used in the following games? Redacted to avoid spoilers! Harbour of Blight: Scenario Zero feels like someone took the best bits of a moody RPG prologue and poured them into a choose-your-own-adventure mystery book, then refused to “fix” it with an app. You’re a fresh Hunter’s Guild recruit dropped into Founders Day festivities when a sinister theft kicks off the plot, and from there it’s all pressure, pace, and choices. The time-limit structure is the secret sauce. You can’t do everything, so every visit, tail, question, and detour has weight. In my head, I kept doing that thing where you stare at two locations and think, “If I go to the docks now, I’m not speaking to the folk at the pub later.” It’s simple, but it genuinely creates tension. I enjoy how the book blends decisions with with your mind and dice in a way that feels earned rather than bolted on. Sometimes you’re doing classic branching narrative picks, but then you push your luck and the book asks you to roll that gorgeous d20 like you’re in a tabletop RPG. I can picture the exact moment: you’re snooping somewhere you shouldn’t be, guards are nearby, and you decide to risk “one more” search. Roll high and you feel like a genius. Roll low and suddenly your neat little plan turns into a messy scramble, and the story snaps into a new shape. Bad bad roles do not punish you too much. I cheated a bit and explored a few areas of eventuality, for the purposes of the preview of course! And it felt fair how the dice rolls results offered a fair outcome, either way. There is some luck, of course, but not huge swings that will change your game experience. Then, after the investigation window closes, you make your accusation and the book escalates into a combat finale with skills, speed, and a simple enemy AI driven by dice. It’s a neat arc: investigate, commit, face consequences. If you love narrative games, mystery, and solo decision-making with a bit of crunchy spice, this is going to land. If you’re the sort of player who enjoys squeezing value from limited actions, taking notes, and living with outcomes, you’ll have a great time. If, however, you want deep tactical combat, or you hate dice deciding whether your clever plan works, this may frustrate you. The book is aiming for “video game RPG energy in print,” which means it leans into risk and consequence more than pure player control. Also, because this is a teaser for a bigger campaign world, you may finish it wanting more connective tissue, more character progression, and clearer payoff for rewards beyond the immediate scenario. But don't worry, that is coming! Pros Tense time-limit investigation that makes choices matter Dice checks add drama without needing an app Strong escalation from mystery into a proper finale Utterly gorgeous custom dice Cons Some luck of course, there are dice! Combat sounds fun but stays fairly light and structured As a Scenario Zero, it does feel like a prologue more than a full meal Overall, Scenario Zero is a smart, atmospheric gateway into Harbour of Blight’s world, and it does a great job of making you feel like the author is quietly watching you make bad choices on purpose. If you want a solo mystery that reads like a campaign’s opening chapter and plays like a tabletop RPG highlight reel, this is why it’s worth your time. Just don’t get too comfortable. This harbour has a habit of leaving you out to dry. For more information - check this out .

Wingspan : Americas WBG Score: 8.5 Player Count:1-6 You'll like this if you like: Everdell , Lost Ruins of Arnak , Furnace . Published by: Stonemaier Games Designed by: Elizabeth Hargrave   This is a free review copy. See our review policy here . Wingspan doesn't need an introduction at this point. It's a modern staple, and its expansions have steadily added more birds, more bonuses, and more ways to score. You can read our full review here . Americas is the first one that genuinely changes the feel of every turn. If you've ever finished a turn thinking, “If only I had one more egg, one more card, one more anything,” this is the expansion that keeps handing you that little nudge. Let's get it on the table and see how it plays. How to set up Wingspan: Americas Set the game up as usual, but add in the two new boards. One is the hummingbird garden board to hold the new hummingbird cards. Shuffle the new deck, place it next to the board, and deal five face-up cards into the slots. Give one hummingbird card to each player. The other new board is for the hummingbird tracker track. Give one to each player along with the five trackers. Place each one on the starting spot. Finally, give each player a mat overlay, and have them place this over the left side of their player mat. They will place the hummingbird card they took during set-up into the middle grasslands space. And of course we have new bird cards! Add them to your existing cards, or use just these if you prefer. There are new goals which you can also add in, or exclusively use. They only work with this expansion. There are also new green eggs and some more nectar tokens, and eight new bonus cards you can use with this expansion. How to play Wingspan: Americas The game works as usual, but when you activate a row, after triggering any bird cards present, you will activate the final hummingbird space. This will either be empty or full. If it is empty, you will bring over one of the five hummingbird cards present on the hummingbird garden board. This is placed into this free space on the mat overlay, and then the action on the bottom left of the hummingbird card is taken. This lets you gain a resource of your choice, a new card or an egg, trigger another action on any bird card in this row, or move up a track on the hummingbird tracker mat. More on that later. Or if the space is full, you will move this hummingbird card back to the hummingbird garden board, placing it on top of one of the other cards there. You will then move up the track on the hummingbird tracker board for either the symbol shown on the card you just placed, or on the card you just placed this card on. Moving up the tracks allows you to gain extra points at the end of the game. Each tracker starts on a minus three position, but you can move it up to a maximum of ten points for each one. Along the way, there are hummingbird symbols which allow you to carry out another hummingbird action. Either to attract a new hummingbird card, or fly one back to the hummingbird garden board. Again, taking the benefit associated with either action. Is it fun? Wingspan: Americas Expansion Review The hummingbirds bolt a bonus step onto each habitat activation, so even a “meh” row suddenly has teeth. It's brilliant at two or three players. But take note. At five or six, it can noticeably stretch the runtime. The hummingbirds don't feel bolted on. They slip into the flow so naturally that after a round you'll wonder why the base game never had a “final little flourish” at the end of an activation. The loop is simple: invite a hummingbird in for an immediate perk, then send it back later to climb a tracker and score. The hummingbirds fly back and forth, just as they do in the world. It's thematic, snappy, and quietly addictive. In our first game, I finished a grasslands activation, grabbed a hummingbird that let me draw the extra card I was missing, and that single draw set up a wonderful chain the following turn. It's that kind of expansion: small decisions that keep paying dividends. The addition of the hummingbirds is a great bit of design because it makes the row activation feel alive, even if you don't have many birds there, or birds with "when activated" powers. Just think, how often have you played this game when you needed just one more card, or one more egg or resource? Now, you may well just end your turn by getting just what you wanted, setting up your next turn to be that much more efficient. It's a great new addition and one that I personally adore. But it does not come without a very real and important cost to consider when deciding if this expansion fits your group. Time! The hummingbird action is quick. Choose from one of five cards, add it to your board, and take the associated benefit. Or fly a card back and move up one of five tracks. But you can sometimes gain an extra hummingbird action this way. And the choice of which track to go up can be crucial for end-of-round or end-game scoring. As well as the choice of which bird to choose to get the right benefit, this needs to be right. This all takes time. As such, at higher player counts, the rulebook suggests removing one action cube from the game for all players to reduce the bloated game length. I hate this. I think Wingspan has a tight and correct action number with the current diminishing numbers each round. It's genius and perfect. I don't want less. But I understand the need to cull the game length at higher player counts. Therefore, I can only really recommend this expansion for one to three players, or for those who are happy to play a longer game. This will add on 10-25 minutes per game, maybe more with five or six players. Playing at higher counts with this, you need to accept that. I am not sure that would be for me. But at two or three, it's fine. At two or three players, Americas is an instant yes from me. The hummingbirds turn “fine” activations into satisfying turns, and the tracker gives you a new little race to care about without changing what Wingspan fundamentally is. At four plus, it becomes more about your group's tolerance for extra thinking time. Everyone now has a meaningful decision at the end of every activation, and those decisions add up. If your table already has a bit of “hang on, did I trigger that bird?” energy, this will magnify it. One of our games had an end-of-round power that effectively handed me two hummingbird actions, and it was brutal in a way that surprised us. Two rounds in a row the end-of-round goal was “highest on a specific hummingbird track” and I pinched it late, after someone had led all round. I had a great time. The table… less so. That’s not necessarily a flaw, but it's worth knowing: Americas can create last-minute steals that feel spicy to some groups and maddening to others. This expansion is a nice fit for players who like their expansions to feel integrated rather than bolted on, since the hummingbird step becomes part of every activation. I prefer it to Asia in this way. But if you're someone who already thinks Wingspan can run a little long, or you prefer your turns to be clean and fast with minimal extra triggers, Americas may add just enough extra fiddle to irritate. The hummingbird tracker starts at minus three, which is a fun little nudge to engage with it as soon as possible, but it also means you'll feel obliged to babysit yet another scoring lane. And if your table already struggles with “trigger everything in the right order,” you may end up with a few more wait-a-sec moments per round. I can understand why this may deter some, so my score has to reflect this. Pros Hummingbirds add a smart, satisfying loop to every row activation. Tracker paths create meaningful, visible progress and payoff. Feels integrated into the core flow rather than disruptive. New bird cards are gorgeous as always, with some wonderfully thought out and well-integrated new powers. Theme of hummingbirds flitting back and forth is just delightful. Cons Adds extra steps that can slow down already-long turns Another set of components to manage and remember Can feel like “one more system” if you prefer leaner Wingspan Americas is a proper “one more turn” upgrade for Wingspan. At two or three players, I'd happily keep it in the box permanently (not that it fits!) because it makes every activation feel like it matters. At five or six, I'd only bring it out if everyone at the table is up for a longer game. Either way, it's clever, thematic, and just a little bit sneaky. Hummingbirds, eh? Always stealing your nectar and your patience.

In 2025, I played 172 different games. Within those 172 games, I amassed a total of 648 plays. I appreciate that is higher than the average. But 1. I do run a review website and 2. I adore playing games! It is worth noting, a lot were smaller games where you can log a lot of plays in one. Obviously, not every game was new, launched that year. But roughly 35% were. With the amount of games, it is hard to narrow down a top ten. As such, this year, I thought I would do ten of my favourites, not necessarily the top ten. Each game would most certainly be up there in my top ten, were I to rank them. But they are here as I felt they were the best for a specific reason. OK, here we go! Best Game of the Year 2025 - Kinfire Council Check our review here I adore this game. It looks gorgeous, plays so smoothly, and is full of non-stop, interesting, meaningful, and deeply strategic choices. It has held up over multiple plays and at multiple player counts. It is quite different in a two-player game. It changes a fair bit, but not in a bad way, just different. And I think that helps keep it fresh. It can be slightly longer to teach than the average euro, with a lot of things to look at and understand, as is the case with games like this with multiple worker placement spots. You need to understand the options available to understand the game, and a new player will struggle against a more experienced player because of this. But aside from that, this is pure gaming joy for me and deserves its spot as my WBG game of the year for 2025. Best Co-operative Game 2025 - Corps of Discovery Check our review here The sense of adventure in this game is off the scale, matched by a constant undercurrent of tension and genuinely enjoyable table talk. As a two-player cooperative experience, I absolutely love it. Every decision feels important, and from the very first turn there is a real urgency to get exactly what you need, even though you start with almost no information. You only know where the peak is, and that is it. Very quickly, though, you begin to build a shared picture of the map in your head, and the discussions around how to reach your goal are what truly make this game special. Because of that, the solo experience does not quite land for me, even though Boardgame Geek suggests this is how the game is best played. I still enjoy it, and I can see the appeal, especially for players who like quiet, thoughtful puzzles. However, so much of the fun comes from talking through possibilities and jointly working out where things might be. I miss that collaborative decision-making too much when playing alone. For me, this is a game that really shines when shared and as such, is my co-operative game of 2025. Most Innovative Game 2025 - Vantage Check our review here As with many ambitious projects of this nature, Vantage has encountered its share of critics as well as admirers. Personally, I can appreciate both the criticism and the support. However, I find myself siding with the view that this game is a stroke of gaming genius. The scale, ambition, and sheer determination of the designer to craft such an expansive, surprising, delightful, and seamless experience deserve significant recognition. Each game feels unique, and it takes just moments to bring this large, heavy box to the table and start playing. Some games end in just a few turns, for better or worse, while others can last for hours. Some of this is beyond your control, but as you become more familiar with the game, you can begin to shape and influence the type of game you want. The sense of adventure, discovery, and excitement is what keeps me coming back time and again. I want to learn everything this game has to offer and uncover every hidden secret. This could very well make it one of my most played games in the coming years. Best Table Presence 2025 - Cretaceous Rails Check our review here Just look at it! Little plastic Dinosaurs and trains! What more do you want? It's bright, colourful, and begins like this! Instead of building it up, you actually dismantle it and add it to your own player board. Therefore, every game of Cretaceous Rails kicks off with this vibrant plastic display, inviting everyone nearby to join in and play! The game is incredibly enjoyable as well. It combines various mechanics to create a combo-tastic point salad experience that feels arcade-like in its fun, yet incorporates tight strategy and structure at its core. It's truly a delightful experience, and every time I teach it to new players, they initially think it seems a bit gimmicky and "just a bunch of toys!". However, once they start playing, they experience the excitement and challenge in every turn. And by the end, they are left frustrated by how expensive the game is to purchase because they want it! There is a cheaper version without the cool dino models, but they are such a joy that if you want this game, maybe consider selling a few other games you no longer play much and get the full version. It's not always worth to get the full blinged out game, but here I feel it is! Enjoy, my friends! This is very deserving of being WBG best table presence for 2025. Best Expansion 2025 - Kavango Lodges Check our review here I love Kavango. It's a light weight but thoroughly enjoyable game that hits every time. There are a few issues with it though that I felt held it back from being great. Lodges fixes them all! As such, this expansion is an absolute must-have for me and deserving of WBG Expansion of the Year for 2025. If you own the base game, you should definitely get this. If the card placement in the base game felt insignificant to you, give this a try; it resolves that issue with such simplicity and a delightful extra wrinkle you will adore. It's a fantastic production from an amazing team, who consistently deliver excellent work. The experience is incredibly enjoyable as well. It's easy to teach, a lot of fun to play, and holds up to multiple sessions, as two and a half years of gaming with this box have shown me. I first played this in September 2023, and I still love it now. The expansion adds just that little extra enjoyment, fixes the main issues in the base game, and makes me want to come back to this game time and time again. When I have 40 minutes and want something light but crunchy, this is often my choice, and the expansion made that happen. As such, this is very deserving of my WBG expansion of the year for 2025. Best Art / Graphic design 2025 - Tokaido Crossroads & Matsuri Check our review here This award is highly subjective and personal, but I absolutely love the beautiful simplicity combined with the intricate detail found in the art of Tokaido Crossroads & Matsuri. The same stunning art was present in the base game and the original versions of this, so it's a bit of a cheat to choose this re-released combined version of the new expansion as my Best Art award for 2025. However, since it was released in 2025 in a new print and version, and it's truly breath-taking, it gets my vote! Best Thematic Game 2025 - Molly House Check our interview with designer here I don't own this game, and I've only played it once. Consequently, it hasn't been reviewed on this site yet. However, after my single playthrough, I was so captivated by the game's theme that I very quickly arranged an interview with the designer, just to satisfy my own desire to understand this game more! I don't usually do that; I don't usually come away from a game with so many questions. And because of this experience, I believe it deserves to be the winner of WBG Best Thematic Game of 2025. It truly captured me during that one play. Best Two Player 2025 - Tag Team This game does not have a review on the site yet; I've been too busy playing it! It sets up and can be learned or taught in mere moments, and games are fast, frantic, and so fun! There are a number of characters to choose from, with lots of combinations of fighters you can work with, making each game feel different. The first 15 or so games are like a learning experience where you just want to understand the game more, get better at it, and play it over and over. It has captivated me and is a regular one for me to play when I have just a few moments and one buddy to sit down with. And I think it will be this game for me for many years to come. New characters with future expansions will only keep this game fresh; it feels limitlessly expansive in this way, and I just cannot wait to play the new characters when they come out and get better at this game. I lose a lot! Best Puzzle Game 2025 - Take Time Take Time is a campaign game that plays over a number of rounds. I have not finished it yet, and as such, this game has not had a full review on the site yet either. But when it does, I can see this game getting a very high score. It is such a clever mix of mechanics. It will captivate you from turn one. It feels like The Mind mixed with a few other games, but presented in such a new and interesting way. The envelopes you open as you progress through the campaign are worryingly addictive for me. I am so easily pleased when it comes to unlockable content through a grind! But the actual gameplay of working out which card to play, where, and when is delightful and works every time. An ingenious design and one for any puzzle fans, much deserving of WBG's best puzzle game of 2025. Best Solo Game 2025 - The Hobbit There And Back Again Another campaign game I haven't finished, yet I'm utterly delighted by it! It's beautifully thematic, with each chapter feeling different. For fans of LOTR like me, it contains many clever nods to the books and links the story to the gameplay in a truly ingenious way. I don't play solo often, but when I do, this game is the one that brings me back the most. Apart from Vantage, which I also enjoy solo. However, with Vantage, I've enjoyed exploring it with two players more than on my own, and with The Hobbit, I felt that playing with two just slowed it down. Solo, although challenging, is where this game truly shines for me, and as such, The Hobbit There And Back Again is WBG's Best Solo Game for 2025. Honourable mentions: March of the Ants - I love this game. It is a wonderful new edition of a modern classic, making 4x so quick, accessible, and doing so with such a unique theme. This game deserves a mention for that alone. The fact that it plays so well and is utterly absorbing from turn one only goes to show how hard it was to pick just ten games again this year. Check our review here Finspan - This is not the most innovative game in the world being the third "span" style game to come out. But for making the Wingspan universe so accessible, it deserves praise. This game is so simple, so quick to learn and teach, but still scratches that Wingspan itch. It looks gorgeous, and I imagine it will see multiple expansions through the years, keeping it fresh and alive. I'm a big fan. Check our review here Cytress - I would love to include this game for the ambition alone. For such a big, bold, and brave project from a first-time designer with some wonderful table presence to get the backing it did on Kickstarter, and then the clear love and time to develop, not rush the production, but put out a thought-out, well-crafted, and wonderfully enjoyable game that has layers to it both in terms of its physical components, but also in the strategy you can start to develop as you play. A worthy mention in this list. Check our review here So there you have it. What a year 2025 was. Let's hope 2026 brings even more joy to our tables. I know it already has for me. I hope it does for you.

Viticulture: Bordeaux WBG Score: 9.5 Player Count: 1-6 You’ll like this if you like: Lords of Waterdeep , Anachrony , Stone Age Published by: Stonemaier Games Designed by:   Jamey Stegmaier , Alan Stone This is a review copy. See our review policy here We have previously reviewed Viticulture, the base game. You can check that out here . There have been a number of expansion for this wonderful game already, including the close to essential Tuscany , the co-op variant that we covered here, Viticulture World . As well as a few other small additions such as the Moor Visitors expansion. And now we have this new expansion, Bordeaux. It's essentially just a new board, but with a few cool new features! Viticulture is a worker placement game that somehow makes running a vineyard feel both relaxing and quietly ruthless, like a chilled weekend in Tuscany that turns into a competitive spreadsheet when nobody’s looking. You pick your “wake-up” spot to set turn order and snag a bonus, then spend summer building your little wine empire by planting vines, upgrading your operation, and setting up your engine. Winter is when the engine purrs: harvest grapes, turn them into wine, let it age into something worth bragging about, then fulfil orders for points. The clever bit is the seasonal squeeze, blow all your workers in summer and winter becomes a sad little nothingburger, but pace yourself and you feel like a genius. It scales nicely, the Grande worker saves you from the worst blocking, and it’s wonderfully thematic, even if the cards can occasionally let someone win by running the “wine-themed theme park” strategy instead of actually making much wine at all. So, what's new with this expansion? Bordeaux keeps Viticulture’s heart beating exactly the same way: place a worker (or pass), chase victory points, and turn grapes into glorious bottles while your plans wobble under pressure. But now, we have four seasons instead of two. Wow! But hang on, didn't we have that with the Tuscany expansion? Well, yes. We did. But this is a whole new four season board with a few twists! The new Bordeaux board plays nicely with almost all other Viticulture expansions, so it feels less like a replacement and more like a new stage to perform on, with the notable exception of Viticulture World, which stays in its own lane with its own board. As a campaign style co-op, World is a hard world to upgrade or expand. Where Tuscany expanded without much thought to the game length, it was more about the overall experience, Bordeaux feels like Viticulture after it has had a strong coffee (like Tuscany) but also a good chat with a game designer who actually listens, because it tackles the niggles that slow the base game down and turns them into shiny new decisions. You get a faster start and shorter play time, even with a higher point target! Which is a blessing at higher player counts. There are now new bonuses that stop the board feeling empty and polite. Card draw becomes something you steer rather than something that happens to you, coins matter more as real engine fuel as they count to end game points now. The wake up track is now fully awake, with extra bonuses. And there is a new interesting Trade system. New experts are introduced, offering a cool way to upgrade up to four worker placement spots, creating your own personal asymmetrical tech-tree. And the whole system nudges you back toward making wine instead of looping the same non-winemaking tricks so many seasoned players have learned over the years. It also sprinkles in chances for genuinely positive interaction, and gives you a satisfying end-game pat on the back for smart surplus management, so even those extra coins, grapes, and bottles feel like they are doing something useful right up to the final toast. This is the Bordeaux board, with the original board placed on top for a size comparison. What's the Additional Set up for the Viticulture: Bordeaux Expansion Bordeaux adds a few extra pre-game steps to the base Viticulture pour, mostly to get the new board humming from turn one. First and foremost, use this board instead of the regular one! You pop the first-player token onto the wake-up chart, then after shuffling you reveal two vine cards and two wine order cards as a little “public preview” for the green grape and purple order cards. You cannot snag these face up cards during setup, but they are there to chose from at every other points of the game, rather than simply drawing at random. Another significant change is that everyone begins with only the six-value field available, while the other fields are already "sold." This prevents players from selling owned fields on the first turn to gain additional money. This tactic is now less critical because players now start with three money and the residual track begins at one instead of zero. Therefore, you will generate at least one money from the start each round. On top of your normal starting bonuses, and the three Lira, players also have a two-value grape and a one-value wine token, in either white or red. And four cubes of you colour, more on that later! What are the main rule changes with the Viticulture: Bordeaux Expansion To use Bordeaux, you basically play normal Viticulture but swap in the Bordeaux board and enjoy the new toys. Also keep two vine cards and two wine order cards face up on the board at all times, and when you draw one, replace it immediately so the market always feels alive. And now run with four season instead of two. Watch the residual track, because crossing certain thresholds now gives you instant one-off victory points, and you can even earn them again later if you dip and climb back up. The wake-up chart is juicier too, with bonuses that can affect everyone on the top row, and plenty more bonuses than ever before to age grapes or wine, refresh the face-up cards, let you draw any card type, or even pull one of your workers back from fall to use them again in the Winter! Plus a last-row choice between a card and a victory point. It feels a lot more generous and all helps move the game on faster. The main new feature is the introduction of Experts. This is a new Spring action where, if chosen, you can place one of your cubes under any other worker placement space to gain a permanent small advantage whenever you perform that action later in the game. You have four cubes, allowing you to hire four experts throughout the game. I noticed that this spot was highly coveted in the early game. They are new, attractive, and it seems most efficient to deploy your Experts on the board as soon as possible. I do wish there was a minor benefit when others use those spaces and prevent you from using them, but perhaps that will be included in another expansion! The Trade space has become much more intriguing. You can choose a cost and a benefit, but each specific trade can only be executed once during the game. When you complete a trade, you place a glass token to block that trade for the remainder of the game. A couple of other action tweaks keep things moving: there are now two places to Harvest, in Summer and Fall, and winter now lets you sell a wine token for victory points based on wine type. With a handy points grid for this right there on the board. The game now ends when someone hits 25 victory points instead of 20, but with all these other tweaks, benefits, and kick starts, I found games to be 15 minutes quicker, even though we had a higher target. And now, at the end, players convert leftover grapes and wine into lira and trade every 10 Lira for one extra victory point, which makes end-game leftovers feel like a proper final toast rather than a sad waste of good grapes. Is It Fun? Viticulture: Bordeaux Expansion Review Viticulture: Bordeaux is the kind of expansion that does not try to reinvent your vineyard, it just tidies the paths, upgrades the cellar, and quietly makes everything feel smoother. The base game is still there in full, the seasonal rhythm, the worker placement squeeze, the joy of turning grapes into bottles into points, but Bordeaux adds smart little nudges that get you moving faster and keep the whole table more engaged. Tuscany added the grunt and complexity. And now Bordeaux lets you drink it all in faster. Face-up vine and order cards make card draw feel less like fate and more like choice, coins become proper engine fuel instead of loose change, and the design gently pushes you back toward actually making wine rather than running the “wine-themed theme park” strategy on repeat. These subtle changes, based on themes of the base game's evolved gripes, seem reactionary to thousands of plays. A development a game can only have if two things are in place. First, the game is popular enough so that it is played by thousands of people, and multiple times. Gaining knowledge only learnt from repeat plays. People need to get to know the game intimately, so they can forge strategies and gaming patterns. And then the game can adjust to make the ways people start to "game" the game less formulaic and more dynamic. And second, the designer needs to be able to first acknowledge this is happening and a potential problem, and then second, accept it creates a less than enjoyable game experience, and take the time to find ways to correct it. In many ways, Bordeaux is an expansion to correct the issues the base game's popularity and multiple plays have allowed the designer to find. That seems quite unique in modern board gaming. We have had a few game offers expansion that speed up the start, but not correct dull strategies people often employ within the game. People who already love Viticulture, especially those who play at higher counts, will probably adore Bordeaux because it speeds up the early game, adds better bonus options, and keeps more actions relevant as the years roll on. For two player or solo, the game is enhanced, but the main appeal to me is the pace of the game with more players. The Expert system is a lovely bit of seasoning too, benefiting all player counts, giving you a satisfying sense of building your own specialist winery without adding loads of rules overhead. The game now offers some asymmetry in the way you develop your own skills. Of course, each game, players can build different structures, focusing on different strategies. But all are available to all players. With the experts, it is one per player. So what you choose is for you only. You won't always get what you want, and this makes the first player benefit even stronger in the first few rounds. Hence the re-jig of the wake-up track and the benefits that help all players being present for the top spot. This is genius and really makes your choice here crucial. If you are the sort of player who likes having a plan, adapting it, and feeling clever when it comes together, Bordeaux gives you more levers to pull and more reasons to pull them. If you want Viticulture to stay slightly chaotic and card-driven, Bordeaux might not be your favourite vintage. I do like the simplicity of the two-season base board and do think it will still appeal to some. But I struggle to see many players feeling this way. Bordeaux adds structure, more incentives, and a clearer steer toward winemaking, which can feel like a nudge in the ribs if you love wild visitor-card swings and messy, lucky moments. But for most, it will just make sense. It adds minimal extra setup and only a few more rule wrinkles, so it can be added in seamlessly and taught to new players without much extra fuss. If you have Tuscany already, then this may not be as exciting to you. But if you don't have Tuscany, I would recommend looking at this. Although I still feel Tuscany is the better expansion, I like having both for the variation. Pros Faster, cleaner starts and better pacing, especially at 5–6 players More agency through face-up cards, improved bonuses, and Expert perks Stronger incentives to make wine, with a satisfying end-game conversion for leftovers Cons Not compatible with Viticulture World, which keeps its own board, which is a small shame, but I only really mention because I cannot think of anything else to say here in the cons! Overall, Bordeaux feels like Viticulture with the rough edges polished and the flavours dialled in, familiar, richer, and a bit more grown-up without losing the fun. It's quicker, but richer. The strategy is more complex, but the game flows faster and smoother. The experience is enhanced, but the game time is reduced. It feels like a trick, but it isn't. It's just good design. If your table already loves the vineyard life, this one is an easy pour, and yes, it is very easy to get carried away. I am blown away that after all these years this wonderful game continues to get better and better. Like a good wine...

Singapore Showdown WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 2-5 You’ll like this if you like: Drafting with set collection Published by: Genie Games Co Designed by:   Eugene Lim This is a review copy. See our review policy here We recently reviewed Peranakan on WBG. It's a delightful tile laying game with some great scoring options. The designer of that game also made this drafting set collection game. Both will be officially released at the UKGE in 2026. Much like Peranakan, the game celebrates Singaporean culture. But where Peranakan focuses on the food, Singapore Showdown highlights and places and the animals. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. How To Set Up Singapore Showdown First, place the main board in the centre of the playing area. Next, choose one of the four sets of scoring tiles: A, B, C, or D. Collect a tile in each colour from your chosen set and place them face up in the corresponding area on the main board. Then, give each player a 50-point token and a character piece in their selected colour, and have each player place their character on the starting zero space on the points track. After that, deal each player their cards: 10 cards for a two or three-player game, eight cards for a four-player game, and seven cards for a five-player game. You are now ready to begin. How To Play Singapore Showdown Players will now draft one card from their hand. Simply take one card and place it face down in front of you. Once everyone has chosen, flip over your selected card. Then, pass the remaining cards to the right and take the card handed to you from the player on your left. Repeat this process by choosing one card from your new hand of nine cards, and then pass the remaining cards (now eight) to your right again. Continue this until you choose one card from two, at which point everyone will discard the final unselected card. Players will now score the seven scoring tiles set on the main board during setup. This scoring could depend on having the most icons on the cards compared to others, or the player who gathered the most cards related to a specific area on the board, among other classic set collection scoring methods. Some scoring options are "first to" scenarios, meaning they will score during the round if a player meets the specific requirements of those scoring tiles. Players will then secretly pick one of their nine cards to keep for the next round, new cards will be dealt out, and the drafting and scoring phase will happen for a second time, now with one extra card. After the second round, the player with the most points wins. Is It Fun? Singapore Showdown Board Game Review Singapore Showdown feels like the kind of game you can teach in about five minutes, then spend the next half hour quietly enjoying how much it gives you for something so straightforward. It’s a drafting and set collection game that leans into that lovely “pick one, pass the rest” rhythm, with just enough tension to keep every decision interesting. You are not buried in rules, you are simply making small, punchy decisions over and over: what do I want, what do I deny, what might come back around, and what am I trying to build toward? It’s accessible in the best way. Lighter family gamers will be able to jump in fast, because the core loop is familiar and satisfying, and the game does a nice job of making scoring the “meat” without making the play feel complex. You draft, reveal, pass, repeat, and then you cash it all out against the scoring tiles. Two rounds, a clear finish line, and enough interaction to keep everyone watching what the others are up to without turning it into a mean game. What gives Singapore Showdown real legs is the flexibility baked into the setup. Four different sets of scoring tiles means the game can tilt in different directions depending on which set you choose, and that’s exactly the kind of simple modularity that keeps a light drafting game from going stale. Add the 72 cards in the deck, and you have a lot of variety in what shows up, what scoring tiles become possible, and which strategies feel viable from game to game. Some scoring being “first to” is also a smart touch, because it injects moments of urgency into an otherwise calm drafting flow. Suddenly you are not just collecting, you are racing, and that changes what you pick, when you pick it, and how much you care about denying someone else a key card. Pros Drafting plus set collection is quick, punchy, and consistently fun. Very easy to learn, teach, and play, with a friendly family-weight feel. Four scoring tile sets and 72 cards give it strong replayability for its size. Cons If you want deep engine building or long-term strategy, it may feel too light. The scoring tile effects chosen will matter a lot, so a group that dislikes “compare and score” might not engage as much. Two rounds can end right as some players feel they are getting into a groove. Overall, Singapore Showdown sounds like a cheerful, approachable drafting game with enough variability and tactical choice to make it more than a one-and-done filler. The cultural celebration angle gives it character, the scoring tiles give it flexibility, and the drafting does what good drafting should: it makes you care about one card at a time. If you’ve got family gamers, newer players, or anyone who likes clean decisions and tidy scoring, this one looks like a winner. It’s simple, snappy, and full of little moments where your perfect pick turns into someone else’s problem.

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’s a special kind of confidence that comes from sticking the landing on something so big, then immediately deciding to go bigger. Damian did exactly that with Heroes of the Shire  and now he’s back with Light & Shadow , the final instalment in the series, heading to Gamefound on March 3rd. I sat down with him for a chat about what he’s been up to, what’s changed in the game, who it’s built for, and what might be lurking beyond the Shire once this chapter closes. Hello Damian, Heroes Of The Shire was an ambitious project, but it went down a storm, and now you’re back for more. Before we get into the new game, what have the last few years looked like for you? Since the release of Heroes of the Shire, we’ve been full steam ahead developing the final instalment of the series, Light & Shadow, which launches on Gamefound on March 3rd. My partner and I also welcomed a baby last year, which, as you can imagine, has taken up much of our time. That said, it has also been incredibly motivating, he’s my biggest inspiration and a constant reminder of why we’re so passionate about creating something lasting and meaningful. Thats amazing! Congratulations. So sleepless nights and another huge game project! Let’s talk Light & Shadow . When you say this is the final instalment, what’s actually new here? How has the game evolved since the earlier HOTS titles? Combat Maps! In previous Heroes of the Shire games, heroes explored scenario hexes. When a battle started, enemies were summoned and combat happened without a map, taking turns to cast spells. In Light & Shadow, every scenario hex now has its own combat map, stored inside the spiral binders. The hexes still act as a world map, but when a battle begins, you now zoom into that hex. Heroes and enemies are placed directly onto the combat map. Each combat map is unique and matches the theme and artwork of the scenario. The Movement Phase has also changed. Because battles now take place on tactical combat maps, heroes need a way to move. A new Movement Phase has been added. During this phase, players draw three movement cards and choose one. That card determines how much the hero can move during their turn. Another new feature in Light & Shadow is the Roaming Mini-Boss. This enemy moves around the scenario hexes during the game. Its direction is decided by rolling the Boss Die when instructed. As it moves, the mini-boss leaves Encounter Tokens on each hex it travels through. Encounter Tokens. Encounter Tokens are placed on hexes by the roaming mini-boss. When heroes collect one, it triggers an Encounter Card. There are six possible encounters, chosen randomly by rolling a D6. Also, previous games only used cardboard standees, as there was no tactical combat map. With the addition of combat maps, heroes and bosses now move around the battlefield. For this reason, we have introduced premium acrylic standees for heroes and bosses, giving them both a visual and functional upgrade. Heroes are also now rewarded more for levelling up. At Level four, a hero unlocks an additional spell mastery (skill tree). At Level eight, they unlock a powerful master ability. These unlocks give players long-term goals and make progression feel meaningful over many hours of play. Awesome! That’s a lot of new stuff, and it sounds like you’ve leaned harder into tactics and progression. So who is Light & Shadow  really for? What kind of gamer do you see falling in love with it? The game is designed with two distinct modes, each intended to appeal to different types of gaming groups. The Arena Mode is ideal for players who enjoy interactive player-versus-player experiences. It will particularly appeal to fans of games such as Dice Throne, King of Tokyo, Unmatched, and trading card games, with a strong focus on direct interaction and fast-paced play. The Scenario Mode offers a campaign-driven experience designed to be played across multiple sessions. This mode is aimed at players who enjoy deeper, long form games and meaningful progression. Players are rewarded with a robust levelling system that unlocks new spells and abilities, as well as additional level four and level eight hero content introduced in Light & Shadow. With its added depth and complexity, Scenario Mode is very much a game for dedicated gamers. Having both game modes in a single box allows the game to appeal to a wider range of players without compromise. I would agree! I love the Scenario mode myself. If people are reading this and thinking “Right, I’m in” what’s the timeline? When can they back it, and when can they realistically expect to get it to the table? Our crowdfunding campaign will go live on Gamefound on March 3rd, with an estimated fulfilment date of May 2027 and a global retail release planned for summer 2027. Good luck! Last one from me. Once Light & Shadow  launches, what happens next? Is this the end of HOTS for a while, or have you already got the next adventure lined up? There is one more instalment planned for the Heroes of the Shire universe. Details are under wraps for now, but a very 'small' hint might already say enough. In addition, we are developing a new 4X game, which will be our first title outside the Heroes of the Shire universe. While it explores a new setting, it will retain some familiar elements, including shared mechanics such as our cooldown dice system. We look forward to sharing more details in the future. And there you have it: Light & Shadow  is shaping up to be a proper “final chapter” kind of project, with tactical combat maps, roaming troublemakers, and progression that sounds like it’s finally been given room to breathe. The campaign hits Gamefound on March 3rd, so if you’ve been following the series, now’s the moment to circle the date, sharpen your spells, and clear some table space. Just remember: if Damian’s “small hint” is already saying enough, the next instalment might not be the only thing creeping up on us. But what do we think of the game? Light & Shadow sounds like the sort of game that doesn’t just give you a setting, it gives you a world. Not in a vague “there’s some flavour text” way either, but in that deep, rich, lived-in sense where the lore feels baked into the systems and the moments at the table. It’s the final instalment in the Heroes of the Shire series, and it reads like a designer going: right, if we’re closing this chapter, let’s make it sing. The big headline is the shift to tactical combat maps, one for every scenario hex, so battles no longer happen in the abstract. You explore on the world map, then when a fight kicks off you zoom in and play it out on a proper battlefield. That alone screams “more cinematic moments,” the kind you remember afterwards because something went wrong, then very right, then gloriously sideways. Where it really gets juicy, though, is the fighting and spellcraft, because this sounds like a game that understands the joy of throwing magic around but refuses to let it become mindless spam. Spells are gated in a clever way: the more powerful the spell, the less frequently you can use it, and the game tracks that with cooldown dice. You are literally watching your best magic tick back toward availability, which is such a satisfying physical reminder of “not yet… not yet… YES.” Even better, it’s not just waiting around. There are ways to manipulate those cooldown dice, to squeeze them, nudge them, and occasionally pull off that delicious trick of getting a big spell back earlier than you should. Add in a stack of buffs and character boosts, and it starts to feel like a proper buildy playground. Levelling up, Gaining new spells. Stronger, faster, nastier, more efficient, more dangerous, more everything, with choices that actually show up in the next fight rather than disappearing into a spreadsheet. If you like games where combat is about timing and momentum rather than just damage numbers, this sounds like it’ll be your thing. Turn order being driven by agility, and then being something you can mess with mid-game, is a massive deal. Speed yourself up, slow enemies down, engineer a two-turn swing, and suddenly you’re not just reacting, you’re controlling the shape of the fight. That kind of tempo control always creates great table stories, because everyone feels it when you pull it off. And then there are the combos, which sound like the real heart of it. One spell setting up another, which triggers a third effect, which lets you do another thing entirely. That interconnected design is the good stuff, the “I can’t believe that worked” moments that only happen when systems are built to talk to each other. The fact it’s interconnected both in levelling and in the moment-to-moment fighting is exactly what makes a campaign game feel rich rather than repetitive. Pros Spell cooldown dice are a brilliant way to balance power while keeping big moments exciting. Deep combo potential and buff stacking makes builds and battles feel connected and personal. Agility-driven turn order you can manipulate adds real tactical drama and huge swings. Cons With lots of buffs, cooldown manipulation, and combo chains, it could get thinky for some groups. Players who prefer simple “I hit it” turns may bounce off the layered spell interactions. Tactical maps and movement choices may slow pacing too much for some. Light & Shadow is shaping up like a proper capstone: bigger, more tactical, and packed with those wonderful moments where a plan comes together because you built your hero to do exactly this one disgusting thing at exactly the right time. If the lore and campaign structure land the way the combat systems suggest they might, this could be the kind of game where your group talks about specific battles like they were episodes of a show. It looks ready to deliver drama, power spikes, and those glorious chain-reaction turns that make everyone lean in to watch. Just be careful once you start manipulating turn order, because after you’ve had two turns in a row, you’ll want seconds. It’s a dangerous game, but hey, that’s the magic of it.

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. PDX comes from the same designer of Alpenglow, an economic route building game all about skiing. A game I am very keen to try. Designer Sean Wittmeyer has now come back with a game all about managing an Airline. PDX is a game set at Portland International Airport and combines engine building, worker placement, and set collection within a contract fulfilment setup. Some of my favourite mechanics. I was very keen to try this and found the theme quite intriguing too. The game is coming to crowdfunding soon. This is a prototype copy. You can find more details about the game here . The game is all set around players competing as rival airlines, trying to complete the most routes as possible, all the while building new offices and fulfilling advertising contracts. The game is incredibly well put together and has a lovely flow to it. It is all about setting up turns with an ingenious worker placement rule. Players will take turns placing a single worker to either gain resources, acquire destination tickets or planes, construct new office buildings, develop hangars, or fulfil advertising contracts. The process flows seamlessly, requiring you to build the most efficient engine to maximize your turns. Fans of games like Brass Birmingham will see similarities, within a more simple framework, but the bones are there. Beyond placing your single worker, some action spaces, including all the buildings you can construct, offer additional resources by allowing you to place one of your two suitcases. These suitcases function like extra workers but cannot be used until the next turn. It's all about planning ahead, considering what you might need in future turns, and finding the best ways to use these suitcases as often as possible to turn one worker placement action into a potential maximum of three. In the early stages of the game, when you'll be doing a lot of building and acquiring resources, this will be very valuable and happen frequently. In the later stages, it may slow down a bit on some turns as you learn to increase your efficiency, but that's okay. Your focus will shift from acquiring buildings and resources to using them for scheduling and implementing flights! After acquiring a destination tile from the main terminal and adding it to your player mat, you can pay the matching resources shown on the tile to place it into one of your three starting hangars. You must ensure you can meet the destination's requirements. There are short, medium, and long haul flights. You begin with three gates suitable only for short haul. However, you can use the build action to upgrade these to reach further destinations. Then, by using the Lease action, you can acquire the plane at the front of the runway and add it to your hangar. The planes can be small, medium, or large. Large planes can fly anywhere, but small planes can only fly short haul, and medium planes can fly short and medium haul only. As a free action at any point, you can move a previously acquired destination tile from your board into one of the three gates. Then, at the end of your turn, you can schedule a flight by moving a plane from your hangar to one of your three gates. At the start of your next turn, you can land a plane by moving each plane at a gate to the next destination tile. You can then collect one of the resource icons displayed on the token, along with a bonus action, a wild resource, or an advertising token, as indicated by the icon on each destination token. If this is the final destination token in the flight path, return the plane and set the tokens aside. This plane has completed its journey and will move to the back of the queue on the runway, ready for other players to use. If you have more destinations in your path, the plane will wait there for your next turn. You can run three, four, or five destinations from each gate, depending on whether it is a short, medium, or long haul. Completing flights in this manner is the primary way to earn points in the game. Each token displays a score in the top right corner, and at the end of the game, you will total all completed flights and add it to your score. Additionally, you will earn points for every completed advertising campaign you have run, which usually ranges from one to three. You achieve this by acquiring the tokens needed for each ad campaign through completing flights. For instance, you can obtain the palm tree resource for a long-haul flight to Johannesburg or the football resource for a short flight to Redmond-Bend. There are always a few of these advertising cards on display, and once you have the right resources collected from completed flights, you can send a worker to the appropriate spot to exchange the tokens for the card and earn significant end-game points. The final and most interesting way to score points is from constructing buildings. When you take the building action, you can upgrade your gates, add a fourth gate with extra resource holding spaces, or construct a building. When you choose the construct building option, you can place it into the main airport terminal to gain a wild resource, or you can place it into one of the three spaces you have on your own playing board above your concourse. They are extra spaces for your or any player's worker to go to gain extra resources and a place Suitcase action. But also, the icons shown here will act as multipliers at the end of the game. For instance, if the red player below completes their flight to Heathrow, they will earn three points from their office buildings. This is because the blue symbol chosen on the buildings is also shown on the Heathrow flight, along with the purple symbol that appears on one of their offices. As you begin to complete multiple flights, which you will do in this game, these multipliers can really add up! Therefore, when you are acquiring new destinations to fly to, you need to consider six things. What resources are needed to assign it to one of your gates? What resources do you have or can easily obtain? What type of flight is it, and what size gates do you have? What type of plane will be needed to fly to it, and which planes do you have or have easy access to? What resources will this destination provide you, both for acquiring future destinations and fulfilling advertising contracts? And finally, most importantly, do the icons on this destination match the office buildings you have for significant end-game scoring? PDX has that rare “everything clicks” feel, where the theme is doing real work rather than just decorating the box. You’re rival airlines at Portland International, trying to run the smartest operation: pick up destinations, sort your resources, lease planes, upgrade gates, build offices, and squeeze points out of advertising along the way. The design’s calling card is the single-worker placement system, which forces you to think in efficient sequences instead of sprawling turns. But then the opportunity to use your suitcases to turn this to three. You’re rarely going to be doing ten things at once, but you are constantly setting up the next turn so it feels like you might! The suitcase mechanic is the little spark that makes the whole engine purr. Some spaces and buildings let you drop one of your suitcases for extra goodies, but you don’t get to use those suitcases until next turn, so you are always planning ahead and building momentum. Fans of economic route building and “build it, then profit from it” games will likely see why the Brass Birmingham comparison comes up, even if PDX is running a cleaner, more straightforward framework. It is a lot simpler, quicker, and easier to learn and teach, but similar vibes will be felt! That said, this probably isn’t one for people who want breezy, instinctive choices. Picking destinations is a full-on decision stack: what it costs, what it pays you, whether your gates and planes can handle it, how it helps contracts, and whether the icons line up with your office buildings for those spicy multipliers. That’s the fun, if you like a game that rewards long-term plotting, but it could feel like a lot if you prefer quick turns and simple priorities. Also, I can imagine later turns stretching a bit if players start trying to wring every last drop out of suitcase timing and route optimisation. But as you only ever have one worker to place, and a maximum of two suitcases to gather, even the longest procrastination cannot make this drag too long. Pros The single-worker and Suitcase worker placement is elegant and forces genuinely interesting sequencing. Flights feel like a proper operational system, not just “pay, score, repeat.” Scoring variety (routes, ads, building multipliers) rewards different kinds of planning. Cons Destination choices can feel like a checklist, especially for newer players. Late-game turns may slow if the table leans toward heavy optimisation. If you do not enjoy multi-layered efficiency puzzles, it may feel like work. PDX sounds like a smart, satisfying airline-builder that turns careful planning into real payoffs, with enough intertwined systems to keep you grinning when your little operation finally hums. If you enjoy games that require careful forward planning, then this may be something for you to check out. Just do not be surprised if you finish a game and immediately start plotting your next route like a terminal gremlin. Either way, it’s got plenty of runway, and it really knows how to land a good time. I will be following this game on crowdfunding with great interest.

The Mystery Agency: The Bookshop Murder WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 1+ You’ll like this if you like: The previous mystery agency book. Any of the mystery agency games. Puzzles and playing detective.  Published by: The Mystery Agency Ltd Designed by: Henry Lewis This is the reviewer’s copy. See our review policy here By Steve Godfrey This is your obligatory ‘NO SPOILERS’ warning. I’ll try my best to not spoil any clues / puzzles in the pictures but if you are worried about that then quickly scroll past the pics.  If you want to read my review of the of the Museum Heist, the first book in this series then head here If you’ve played the previous book, then feel free to skip this ‘how it works’ section as it works the same. If not, then prepare yourself for this expertly written explanation on… How to solve a bookshop murder.  First, grab yourself your writing implement of choice and some paper. No more than that... maybe just a touch more… perfect. The first few pages will contain suspect sheets, a homicide report, and a map of the street. You can either write on them in the book or you can scan the QR code and download the printable versions. I prefer the latter in case someone wants to borrow the book or for me later on when I’ve forgotten enough of it to play again… so about two weeks if I’m being generous. Then away you go. Most of the pages and spreads in this book will have some form of puzzle on them. Simply read through the story, observe the pictures. Then solve the puzzle and go to the next page. At certain points, you’ll come across locked door puzzles. Once you’ve solved these, you’ll need to scan the QR code on the page that’ll take you to a web page where you can enter the code once you’ve solved it. This will tell you if you're successful or not. If so, go to the next page. The back of the book will have a hints section that will give you two hints per puzzle. Then there’s a solution section. No prizes for guessing what that does.  A paragraph about a QR code! This is going to feel like a trivial point to some, but for me, it made me happy. Plus, it’s at the start of the book, so it makes sense to talk about it at the start of the review. If you wanted to print the suspect pages in the first book, you’d either have to scan them or take a photo and then try and print it that way. It wasn’t the biggest inconvenience, but it wasn’t quick either, so it wasn’t ideal, especially when you just want to get into the game. In this one, they have a handy QR code where you can easily print off the suspect sheets and map with no fuss. It’s such a small quality of life improvement, but it meant I could get going on the book that much quicker. So thank you for that change. Just to say that the lack of QR code was in my printing of the first book. I don’t know if that’s changed for newer printings.  The difficult second album? Last year's book was always going to be a tough act to follow for me. I gave it a 9.5 out of ten, and it was number three in my top ten games of last year. So has it lived up to last year's lofty heights? I won’t bury the lead. Yes, yes it has.  Tales of the unexpected  One of the genius parts of the first book was the setting and how it was used as a basis for the puzzles. You see, being set in a museum, you had access to all sorts of different settings and time periods, and the book could play about with those and make clever use of them, and they still made sense for the story. You could have a puzzle that used hieroglyphics and one that had medieval knights, and it wouldn’t feel out of place. So when I originally saw that a bookshop (or in this case shops plural) was the setting, I assumed that it would be much the same and would go about using different books or book settings as the backdrop for the puzzles. Much like Jasper Fforde does with his Thursday Next novels, I thought we’d be in a world that bounced us through classic and modern literature, and we are, for a bit. The book instead does something that I didn't expect and focuses more on the themes of each of the shops. Each shop, and not all of them are bookshops, has a different theme, and each shop and the proprietor are used in really clever ways that keep the variability of the last book intact here. It’s safe to say that my expectations weren’t met here, but that’s not a bad thing. In fact, far from it. It just goes as proof that these books aren’t going to rest on their laurels and follow the same path from book to book.  The puzzles here are just as fun as its predecessor, and there's an interesting variety of difficulty and type of puzzle. Of course, the difficulty is subjective, and puzzles where I found it difficult to work out the mechanisms, you might instantly get and vice versa. But variety is the name of the game, and one minute you’ll be trying to decode like you're at Bletchley Park, and next you’ll be having flashbacks to GCSE maths. If any of that worries you, it shouldn’t because even me with my poor maths skills managed to work out the more mathy of the puzzles.  The major thing I loved from the last book that’s carried over here is the mix of puzzles and detective work. You'll have individual puzzles on pretty much every double-page spread coupled with story elements and pictures. The puzzle solutions present their own clues to the culprit, but that won't be enough. You'll need to rely on your detective skills and information gathering to figure out the case (hence the amount of paper you'll need). Yes, here you'll need to channel your inner Benoit Blanc, or Jessica Fletcher, or whatever the name of the current detective on Death in Paradise is when you're reading this. It's these elements that immerse you in the story and ultimately keep everything from feeling like “just a set of puzzles” that you can find in any old puzzle book. I rarely felt like I solved a puzzle that was pointless to the investigation. If I did, I was proved wrong at a later point in the story. When that did happen, I had images of Henry Lewis sat at home in his armchair by a roaring fire and looking up from his book and saying “hah, got him.” One of my assumptions was that, given my experience from the first book, I’d have some decent foreknowledge of what to expect from this one. I’d know what to look out for, what to keep an eye on, what sort of things could help me solve the case. I wrote down loads more for this one, and I thought that I’d covered enough ground and enough clues to help me solve it. And so it came to the big denouement, and all I could think was, “I know your game, Henry, I’ve got this”... turns out I didn't know his game, and I certainly didn't have this. Now, while at the time I didn't feel quite as clever as I did before the big reveal, it did lead me to a few conclusions. The devil is in the details. I’d managed to get quite a few of the bigger plot points, and I’d managed to hone in on a lot of the clues and solve quite a lot. Just, you know, not the big one. Mainly I was annoyed at myself because I’d missed a few little details that I should have seen and that I’d second-guessed myself on some detail which led me down a different route. Which in some sense I’m glad about. It means that the game isn't made easier just because you’ve played the other one in the series. You still get clever puzzles and a clever case that isn't going to be affected by any foreknowledge. You’re still going to be just as challenged as you were before or maybe even more.  Personally, I tend to play these books on my own, and it’s just nice when everyone’s gone to bed or doing their own thing to break this one out with a cup of tea and my brain food of choice. Although with the amount of sugar in some of it, I don’t suppose I can really call it brain food. This one took me about three evenings playing at least a couple of hours each, possibly a bit more, but I didn’t really time it, and I kinda just got lost in them. Which is what you ultimately want from something like this. You could easily play this with more people. I don’t think I’d want to play with more than two personally, but I generally prefer these kinds of puzzle games capped at two anyway. However, if you have a group that you like playing these types of games with, then you absolutely can.  If you loved the first book, then you’ve probably already got this, but if you haven't, then you certainly need to think about adding it to your collection as soon as you get a chance. If you’ve played the last one, then you’ll find a comforting familiarity here that you can settle into. However, none of that detracts from anyone new jumping straight into this one. As I said, foreknowledge won’t be an advantage here. My only disappointment with this is that it’s left me wanting to dive into another one… and there isn’t one yet. Now I know why my wife waits until TV shows have finished before binge-watching them.  Right, I’m off to binge a load of detective shows before the next book comes out because mark my words, I’ll be ready for it! There’ll be no pulling the wool over this detective's eyes! No, wait, I’ve just been told we’re going to be very busy until then. Maybe I’ll just squeeze in a couple of episodes of Murder She Wrote and hope that’s enough.

Peranakan WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 2-6 You’ll like this if you like: Chill puzzle games Published by: Genie Games Co Designed by:   Eugene Lim This is a review copy. See our review policy here Peranakan is from the same designer who brought us the 10219 cult hit, Rats to Riches . They are now back with something quite different, debuting at the UKGE fair in the UK in 2026. For fans of games that look gorgeous, play simply, but offer a cosy, relaxed strategy, this well could be one for you. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. How To Set Up Peranakan Roll out the gorgeous play mat, and separate the four types of Kueh (bite sized snacks), placing them into their spaces on the left of the game board. Shuffle all the tiles and place them into a stack on the top left of the board, then place the top four into their spaces below this. Give each player their Babas and Nyonyas of their chosen colour, and you are ready to begin! Unless you want a quick cultural lesson like I did. The Baba-Nyonya, also known as Peranakan, are a unique ethnic group in Southeast Asia, primarily found in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. They are descendants of Chinese immigrants from the 15th and 16th centuries who married local Malay or Indonesian women. "Baba" denotes the men, while "Nyonya" refers to the women, and together they developed a distinctive hybrid culture that combines Chinese traditions with local Malay language, attire, and culinary practices. Ad now, in 2026, are seen in this game! Cool, you are all caught up! How To Play Peranakan Players will now take turns to choose one tile from the four currently displayed, or the top one from the stack. When you take a tile, you will also take the Kueh adjacent to it. If you take the tile on the bottom spot, you can take any Kueh; this is a wild space. Next, you will place the tile you just took onto the game board. You can place it anywhere you like, even on top of a previously placed tile. However, you cannot stack more than once in this way. You can then, if you wish, place one of your Baba or Nyonya onto the tile you just placed. If you stack on top of another tile, and there is a figure there already, simply move them up to be on top of the new tile. You will then replenish the tiles in the stack, replacing the one you took with the top one from the stack, and it is the next player's turn. Simple, right? If you ever place a Baba and it is fully surrounded by eight other tiles, you will score that Baba. This is done by looking at all tiles in the surrounding tiles that match the same design as the tile that the Baba is on. You will then take the matching Kueh shown on the matching tile into your collection. Similarly, with the Nyonya, these score when the tile that they are on has a complete row and column around it. All tiles in both the row and column this tile is within are completely filled to the edges. Again, score all Kueh on all matching tiles to the tile your Nyonya is on. This continues until either the stack of tiles runs out, all players have used all their Baba and Nyonya, or there are no more Kueh left in all four supplies. Players will then score for each complete set of Kueh. The player with the most complete sets wins. In case of the tie, most Kueh in total wins. Peranakan Board Game Review - Is It Fun? Why this game may be good At first glance this game is pure comfort food, a gorgeous play mat, tactile tiles, and those delightful little Kueh snacks waiting to be collected. Then the game starts purring. Turns are simple, choose a tile, take adjacent Kueh, place it, maybe drop a Baba or Nyonya. Under that cosy surface, though, is a surprisingly sharp little puzzle about timing, positioning, and just how greedy you can afford to be. It feels relaxed, but it rewards the player who plans two, three, maybe ten turns ahead and keeps their options open. Who may like it If you love games that look stunning, teach quickly, and still give you something to chew on, Peranakan is waving you over. Tile-laying fans will enjoy the gentle spatial tactics, while lighter strategy players will appreciate that it stays approachable even when the decisions start to tighten. Anyone who likes satisfying set collection, calm table presence, and that warm “one more round” feeling should put this high on the list. It also suits groups who enjoy a bit of table chat and soft competition, because the interaction is there, but it is never mean. Who may not If you want direct conflict, dramatic swings, or constant fireworks, this may feel too polite. The strategy is real, but it is quiet, and the tension builds in small choices rather than big moments. Players who dislike spatial games, or who prefer a clearly scripted plan instead of flexible tactics, might find the tile placement and scoring triggers a little fiddly. And if you hate a game where someone can casually take the tile you were eyeing, well, you might mutter a few unprintable words into your tea. Pros Beautiful table presence, genuinely eye-catching Simple turns with deeper strategy than expected Satisfying tile placement and set collection loop Scoring triggers create tension without aggression Cons Low conflict may feel too gentle for some groups Tactical swings can happen when the display shifts Spatial scoring rules may take a round to fully click Peranakan is a calm, inviting strategy game that knows exactly how to disarm you. It looks like a cosy evening, plays like a breeze, and then quietly asks you to make clever choices while you are still admiring the art. If you like your games warm, elegant, and sneakily smart, this could be a lovely new regular at your table. Just do not blame me if you end up craving snacks, because this one is kueh-fully moreish.

General Orders: Sengoku Jidai  WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 2 You’ll like this if you like: General Orders World War 2 Published by : Osprey Games Designed by: Trevor Benjamin , David Thompson This is a review copy. See our review policy here By Steve Godfrey It’s one thing having one clever game system that combines a seemingly un-combinable theme and mechanism… but to have two? At this point, I can only assume the two designers have a huge mechanism spinney wheel in their office, and every so often they spin it, stick a war theme on whatever it lands on, and boom, a successful game system. Do you know what, though? Whatever it is, I'm 100% here for it! If you’ve already played the original General Orders: World War 2, then the rules are largely the same, so feel free to skim through this explanation for the changes.  How to give General Orders Pick the side of the board you’ll be playing on, take the components appropriate for that side, and set up the board as indicated. Each player will have a number of commanders (determined by the side of the board), and on your turn, you’ll either place one of your commanders on one of the boards or pass. When you place a commander on the board, place it on an unoccupied activation space and play out the action from that space.  Before I go into what the actions do, I want to talk about the concept of being “in supply.” A lot of spaces can’t be activated unless the activated space is in supply. A space is considered in supply if you can trace an unbroken line of adjacent spaces from the activated space to your HQ. When you advance into a space, you can move any number of units from spaces that are adjacent to that space or that are adjacent to a water area that is adjacent to that space. However, at the end of your turn, you can only have five units in a space, so any excess you have will need to go back to your supply. Why would you take more, you ask? Well, if you move into a space with the other player's units, you battle. First, the defender rolls a die, and the attacker removes the number of units equal to the pips rolled. Then each player removes units on a one-for-one basis until there are either at least one of a player's units left or no player's units are left. This is the same with the Sail action, except this only involves your ships. The bombard action lets you use your ships to attack an adjacent land space. Roll one die for each ship in space and total up the pips to destroy that many units.  The Shell action is essentially the same as the bombard action, except it’s targeting adjacent water spaces, and you’ll roll two dice regardless of how many units you have in the space. If you're using the side with the siege engines, then you’ll have the siege action, which works the same as the bombard action, except you’ll be targeting adjacent land spaces.  You can also place commanders on the side board. This board has two reinforce actions, two embark actions, and two plan actions. Each player can only use one of each of these in a round. Embark and reinforce will let you put more units in play, and the Plan action will let you draw a number of command cards, and one space will give you the first player for the next round. Command cards have a number of different abilities and timings on when they can be played, and everything is written on the cards. You can alternatively spend a command card to reroll any dice you’ve rolled. There are some spaces that will also give you bonus abilities as long as you control them, like, for example, being able to reinforce extra units or draw extra cards when taking those actions.  The game will end when either one player has control of their opponent's HQ or after four rounds. If it ends in rounds, then each player will score points based on stars in spaces they control and that are in supply. The player with the most points wins, with the tie going to the player who is first in turn order this round. The student has become the master. The first General Orders game (World War Two) served as another interesting take on the war game by introducing worker placement into the genre. It was tight, tense, brilliant, and condensed the whole experience into a box so small you could barely fit baby shoes in it. Most of all, it was accessible and hopefully more appealing to a much wider range of gamers because of the more familiar mechanisms. Although I appreciate the theme isn’t for everyone. With praise like that, it’s gotta mean that topping that for a sequel is going to be difficult, but what do I know! Apparently, for the two designers, this was actually super easy, barely an inconvenience. I’ll get into why a bit later because first, I want to focus on what makes their system so brilliant. Plus, I’ve not reviewed the first one yet, so I can’t just cheat and make you read that review.  It very quickly becomes apparent how clever and strategic this system and this combination of mechanisms is, especially when it comes to the area control aspect. In other area control games, it's not uncommon to see areas change hands or be fought over a number of times during a single game round. In this, though, more effort is needed because of the limited number of actions you can use to do that. In the original WWII version, only Advancing and Paradropping could let you take over a space. In this, it’s even tighter because you don’t have that paratrooper's action. You know, what with planes not having been invented. The only way you could achieve the same effect is by flinging people across the map with a catapult, but I don't think that’s really practical. Of course, once those actions are used, it still doesn’t mean that a space is safe because there are other ways to weaken the forces in a space to make them more susceptible to take over next round. In the original game, there were few ways to do this, but in this one, they’ve really upped the ante.  With the introduction of ships and siege engines, every space feels vulnerable to attack all throughout the round, and it just raises the tension. Nothing is safe, so you have to decide if your priority is trying to go on the attack or if you're going to have to defend what you’ve already got. It’s not impossible to balance both, but you’ll certainly find yourself leaning one way in a given round.  I see no ships! Right, let's talk about one of the changes from the first game. Previously, you could only bring in units from adjacent areas to the space you're advancing into. Now you can also bring them in from areas that are adjacent to ships that are next to that space, meaning you can bring in units from a bit further out. It brings a lot more freedom in terms of how you distribute your units across the map and helps in not immediately giving away your cunning plans. Nothing says “I’m gonna attack you” more than adding units to a couple of next-door areas. At least now you can be a bit sneaky by putting people a bit further and not completely exposing what you’ve got in store for your opponent. What I love about this change is that it makes cutting off opponents' supply lines even more tactical and probably a bit easier since the water spaces cover a lot of the board and give you more opportunity to get to those all-important spaces quickly. Personally, I only used to try and cut off my opponent near the end of the game to stop them scoring points and because they then had to spend their last moves desperately trying to reinforce those areas and be distracted from what I was doing. Now, though, you may want to go for the other player's ships to really limit their resources in a whole section of the board. Something so seemingly simple as adding ships to this game just turns it up to eleven in terms of strategy because you have so many more options open to you. You have a lot more things to consider and so many ways to swing the fight back to your side. I love the balancing act and the eventual race that comes with this mix of mechanisms. Each round, you have either 5 or 6 commanders at your disposal, and timing can be essential in this game because of the limited spaces to place them, thanks to the worker placement aspect of the game. For example, you may plan to move into a space and then reinforce it on your next turn. Your opponent may have other ideas and choose to hit that space by sea and wipe out those units before you get a chance to add those other units. On the flip side, reinforcing before you want to move may result in your opponent taking that space first. The game is full of these tough decisions, and the wrong one could see you going from being on the offensive with the upper hand to scrabbling to build yourself back up and resupply your forces. In some games, being on the back foot like that could signal the end of your game, but in Sengoku Jidai, and the previous WWII, you never really feel like you're out of the game until literally the end of the game. Unless you’ve played really badly, of course.  It’s written in the cards If all the above is all the game had to offer, I’d still rate it just as highly. Throw in the cards as well, and you open up a whole new world (try getting that song out of your head). The reason I’d still rate it as highly without the cards is because, in my first couple of games of the original, I kinda ignored the cards and still had fun, but the cards certainly add another level to the game. It’d be all too easy to see a turn where you're not using an action to do something on the map or reinforce it as a waste of time. You quickly learn, though, that that’s not the case and that card actions can be just as important. First and foremost, you can just spend them to reroll dice, which, for someone who seems to have upset dice (they won’t tell me what I’ve done), is a massive deal. Each card will give some kind of benefit, like giving you additional dice to roll, adding units to the boards, or letting you take second actions. These are all things that may not sound like much on paper, but in such a tight game, any of these could make all the difference. Another simple thing on the cards that I love is that they give you the exact timing of when you play them. It’s written right there on the bottom of the cards and takes away any ambiguity.  It’s like Piccadilly Circus This is a board that can get very busy. With discs, siege engines, and ships on the board, a lot of the commander placement spaces and victory point stars can easily get lost in the mix. I can’t tell you how many times games have nearly been won/lost because someone couldn’t see what stars their opponent had just because of the volume of stuff on the board. This was a problem for the original game as well, but it seems to be more of an issue here. Because there are more placement options, the spaces are now a touch smaller to fit them into the areas. Couple that with the sepia colour scheme, and they can easily get lost in the mix. In the original game, the commander spaces were bigger and could use better contrast to make them easier to spot. Don’t get me wrong, I love the artwork in this game; it’s beautiful, but the colour on the board can sometimes be a hindrance. We also found the shell and siege action symbols were a bit too similar to each other, and we kept confusing the two. The iconography is really clever in showing you what it does. But again, the size of spaces made them a bit difficult to read at a distance, so lots of leaning and addressing of the rulebook was involved.  The General Orders series is the Aladdin's lamp of board games (I bet you’re really singing that song from earlier now, aren’t you?) Epic feeling war game, itty bitty box. The only difference being that you will need to open the box to get the game out. If you rub the box too much, the only thing likely to happen is the ink rubbing off on your hands. When you do get the box open, though (it’s really not that difficult), you’ll be left with a strategic, fun, and innovative take on a war game that will leave you wanting to rack it up and play again.  Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson have yet again taken two seemingly incompatible mechanisms and themes and combined them to make a gloriously triumphant series of games that offer tight, strategic, and tactical gameplay while making it accessible to anyone who wants to dip their toes into this genre. For me, this surpasses the original, and that’s saying something because I love the original. That being said, though, both are staying in the collection. Right, I’m off to predict what the next game in the series will be. So here’s a peek behind the curtain. I was gonna think of something “witty” to put here and was gonna say Lord of the Rings, you know, because of how many games have been using the theme lately, and now I can’t stop thinking how cool a Lord of the Rings version of these games would be. One side of the board for Helm's Deep and one for Pelennor Fields. We need to make this happen!

Absolute WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 2-6 You’ll like this if you like: Maths! Published by: Nonymous Games Designed by:  Tony Diaz This is a review copy. See our review policy here I love a little card game with a clever scoring mechanism, and Absolute pulled me in with exactly this. It looks mathy, clever, intriguing, and fun, and one I could enjoy with my friends and family both for entertainment but also education, for my kids that is, not my friends. Although, some could benefit! But now I have my hands on a copy and have enjoyed it for a lot of plays (and I've only had it a short while). Is it any fun? Let's get it to the table and find out! How To Set Up Absolute Shuffle the deck and deal five cards to each player, and then place the remaining deck face down in the centre of the table. Take one card from the top and place it face up as a discard pile. You are now ready to play! How To Play Absolute Players take it in turns, using their cards to try and create three sets of cards. On their turn, they will draw one card from the deck and then use their cards to try and create sets of at least three cards (but can be more) of cards that add up to zero combined. The deck is made up of cards numbered one to ten in both positive and negative. So, you could combine a positive five and positive two with a negative seven for a set of three cards that total zero. Make sense? The idea is you are looking to create three sets and go out using all your cards. You can use zeros as wild cards, so they can help with most sums. But you can also take cards from other players' played sets (so long as they are not out of the game yet) and replace a zero another player used with a card you hold that matches what they were using the zero for. For example, if another player was using a zero as a seven you could take this and replace it with a seven of your own, to use however you wish. The game ends when the first player has discarded their final card and played at least three sets. Everyone else gets one more turn to make it equal turns, and then final scoring happens. You will score points for the highest card played in each set, plus an extra point for every card over three in a set, so two bonus points for a set of five cards. You also gain a bonus for any card in a run of three or more, so a set that has a two, three, and four in it would score three points extra for this run of three consecutive cards. And then you will double any set made up of four of the same number or four of the same suit! Such as the below example. Where you would score seven point for seven being the highest card in the set. Then an extra point for having one more card than the minimum of three, so eight in total now. And then double that as every card was the same, so 16 points for this set. One final thing to note is how open the game is when it comes to building sets. Sets can be made freely using any combination of suits, and on your turn you may lay down as many sets as you are able to create. Suits do not restrict play during the game and only really come into focus at scoring, where they can increase the value of a set. This keeps the gameplay flexible and tactical, letting players focus on clever card use and timing rather than rigid constraints. Is It Fun? Absolute Card Game Review Absolute will really appeal to players who enjoy small card games with clever scoring and lots of little moments of satisfaction. If you like spotting patterns, nudging numbers into place, and squeezing extra value out of a set, there is plenty here to enjoy. It is also a great fit for families, as the math is simple enough to grasp but rewarding enough to stay interesting and potentially even informative for the right ages. 8-13 I would suggest being the sweet spot for academic purposes, way beyond that for simple fun. It feels like the kind of game that can be fun on a casual evening but also quietly educational, especially for kids who like numbers and problem-solving. That said, Absolute will not be for everyone. Players who prefer high interaction, constant drama, or big swingy moments may find it a little too calm and thoughtful. While there is some interaction through upgrading other players’ sets, most of the game is spent focusing on your own hand and planning ahead. If mental arithmetic or careful optimisation puts you off, this may not be the card game that wins you over. What makes Absolute stand out is how open and flexible it feels. Sets can be built freely, turns can be explosive when everything lines up, and the scoring system constantly tempts you to push a little further. Do you lock in a safe set, or do you add one more card to chase bonus points? The way runs, extra cards, and matching numbers or suits all layer together gives the game a satisfying puzzle-like feel that rewards smart play without becoming overwhelming. Pros Clever, layered scoring system Flexible set building with meaningful choices Easy to teach but rewarding to master Works well for families and mixed-age groups Cons Limited player interaction during most turns Can feel quite maths-focused for some players Less exciting for those who prefer high-chaos card games In the end, Absolute is a small card game with a big brain and a gentle charm. It looks mathy, clever, intriguing, and fun, and it delivers on all four. It is the sort of game that invites repeat plays, encourages improvement, and quietly rewards smart thinking. If you enjoy compact card games with elegant rules and satisfying decisions, Absolute is well worth getting to the table.

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. Blitz Creed is a card game themed on war, so it may not be a theme for everyone. But it sure does make great use of a tug-of-war and take-that mechanic in a thematic way. The game is for two to five players, but I found it works best with two. Although larger groups do work, the back-and-forth and tightness of the take-that mechanic work so well with two. The game is coming to crowdfunding soon, and you can follow the progress here . The game works very simply. There is one deck of cards. Shuffle them up, deal five to each player, and place the rest as a face-down draw deck. Players now take turns to draw two cards and play up to two battle cards and up to two dispute cards. Players are looking to be the first to have three secured regions. There are four main groups of cards. Country cards, which are grouped into regions. You can place up to two down into your play area each round. Each country will show what region it is from and how many cards from that region are required to secure it. This is essentially set collection. Get three full sets and win the game. However, your countries will be at constant threat of attack by the second type of card, Soldier cards. These can be placed down into your play area, and then later used to attack a rival player's country. You must use them with a country of your own, then it is a simple equation of which country has the higher strength. Although, defending players can play one of the third group of cards as reinforcements, to strengthen their defence and stop the attack. The final group of cards are dispute cards which let you gain more cards for your hand, look at another player's hand, take cards from other players, take countries from other players, or steal soldiers from another player. So, take it in turns to build your armies, countries, attack other players, and boost your hand for later defences and attacks. It's a constant back and forth, as players will be constantly taking, losing, and regaining countries, using their soldiers to try and build their regions. And only when a country is part of a secured region is it then safe. Although, there are some cards that let you take countries from secured regions too! It's a real tug-of-war, with a hilarious swing between powers as the game progresses. I find that as much as this is a classic case of two steps forward and then one step back, you are always slowly making progress. And the winner will be the player who can make sustained progress the quickest. Why Blitz Creed May Be For You Blitz Creed can be a lot of fun if you enjoy direct interaction and a proper back-and-forth struggle. Every turn feels punchy, with players building toward regions while also tearing each other down. The tug-of-war is constant, and the take-that elements feel purposeful rather than mean for the sake of it. You are rarely just waiting for your next turn. You are watching, reacting, and planning how to protect what you have while lining up the next strike. It really shines at two players, where every move feels tight and personal, but it still delivers plenty of chaos and drama at higher counts. In truth, it's probably a better game at higher player counts. I just find the accessibility, speed of play, and high interaction perfect for two players. So that is my personal preference. But I feel this will score higher in general with four or five. This game is likely to appeal to players who enjoy confrontation, card play, and tactical timing. If you like games where your plans are never fully safe and you have to adapt on the fly, Blitz Creed has a lot to offer. Fans of compact card games with lots of interaction will feel right at home. On the other hand, players who dislike take-that mechanics or get frustrated when progress is undone may bounce off it. The war theme also will not be for everyone, especially those who prefer lighter or more abstract settings. What makes Blitz Creed interesting is how cleanly it blends set collection with aggression. Securing regions gives you a clear goal, but getting there is anything but straightforward. Countries are always under threat, soldiers can suddenly turn the balance of power, and dispute cards create big swings at just the right moments. Even when you lose ground, it never feels pointless because the game rewards steady, sustained progress. That push and pull creates a lively rhythm and some genuinely funny reversals, making each game feel like a small story of shifting power and hard-fought victories. One to watch on crowdfunding for sure.