We're Not Wizards - Tabletop Board Game Reviews

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island places players on a deserted island, shipwrecked there and in dire need of food and shelter. Here I'll talk about Solo mode using the beginner scenario Castaway, which is a great introduction to the game. The game is played over 12 rounds, with the aim being to build a log pile and light a fire to signal a passing ship. The ship is scheduled to pass on rounds 10, 11 and 12 so time is of the essence. To further complicate matters, the woodpile must be added to only once per turn, prior to the Action phase, adding another level of complexity and difficulty. This isn't even taking into account the day to day task of actually surviving, which can be very challenging. Each round is comprised of 6 phases. The Event (skipped in round 1), Morale, Production, Action, Weather and Night phases. The Action phase is, unsurprisingly, where most of the key decisions are made. Do you explore your new home and seek ou

MYnd Kraft by Tharini Rajamohan is a more of a games system then an actual game, combining some basic programming knowledge in order to create a series of mini games that can be expanded upon and even altered to increase or decrease the difficulty. Look on it as something similar to what Bez did with Wibbell ++ or Karen Rubins achieved with Comic Turns, both of which are brilliant fun in their own right and continue to offer additional hours of entertainment as you experiment and explore with the foundations provided in their respective core sets. Let us start with the encouraging first observation that you can sit down and know the basics of how MYnd Kraft works in little under four minutes, regardless of how much or little programming knowledge that you have, and that if you can’t tell your switch from your loop, or your function from your data structure then worry not, as the instruction booklet is laid out in a clear series of tables that explain exactly how each of the card

"Oh and next up we have Physis Game’s auction type game, Unreserved. We’ll start the bidding on £3 to get us going... And that’s £4 with you madam? Now who’ll give me £5..?” You might imagine that in the voice of David Dickinson, but in truth, he’s never actually held a gavel anytime I saw him. He was never mechanically that important, just the cheeky glue that held the entire show together and made the contestants feel at home. The auction themselves only got exciting when you get one of those hidden gems that shoots off like an unexpected firework, causing everyone to run and hide and a bidding war to kick off. The truth of the matter is that most of the auctions are straightforward affairs and normally either end up slightly above the asking price, or at worse a touch below, leaving the contestant running away with winnings in the region of tens of pounds instead of a fortune. It’s the anticipation of the ‘hidden gem’ being found that compels us to continue watching as oppose