We're Not Wizards - Tabletop Board Game Reviews

It's maybe pure ignorance on my part but I've never seen a huge number of board games that sit within the organised crime genre. There seems to be more Sci-Fi than Scarface. I own The Godfather: Corleone's Empire, which was a grail game for me and was its own tale of negotiation and acquisition and offers that couldn't be refused. Wise Guys from Gale Force Nine enters the fray with a  Goodfellas  attitude on how you win at life, which is to gather up as much money as possible, without effecting your influence and clout and your ability to make money on the black market. It is a remix of a Sons of Anarchy game from a few years ago, but this time it returns without a connected IP.  There's an attraction to this kind of genre of game, because these are criminals, but also the ultimate in non-conformists to a societal norm. Most of us don't want to work a normal job with a steady life and pay check if given the choice. Some of us already live on an edge, working fr

Power Hungry Pets by the Exploding Kittens team is essentially Love Letter , but in an Exploding Kittens flavour. Love Letter is such a staple in my collection that when I'm thinking about culling the collection it doesn't even make the pile for consideration to be considered for the pile that will be considered potentially to even look at culling. I think it is one of those games that sits well in being both easy to teach but has enough meat on the bones to make it worthwhile playing. My own copy of Love Letter has been played so many times and through so many hands that when you see another company create a version of it, then I'm going to be concerned and potentially sceptical. It's like Pizza Hut announcing they are going to be making their version of a Big Mac. You know they have to get those Big Maccy flavours in, but at the same time, they also need to remind you that you're chomping down on the Pizza hut version.  Exploding Kittens is such a huge brand

"A Solid Title" is a phrase that I am guilty of using alongside some of my peers. To me, it is where something is very dependable in what it is offering. There are no welcome or unwelcome surprises. You get exactly what you expect and therefore don't walk away disappointed. You are maybe less likely to feel wowed. As I play more games and look at those that introduce mechanics to be 'different' or 'an escape' from the normal 'expected', it is sometimes marvellous just to have something that lands on your table as a solid title. Solid doesn't necessarily mean dull, but it means to me that don't feel cheated or oversold. When it comes to game funded through crowdfunding where the hyperbole is an effing sickness that seems to have no cure, it's a relief to play something that is akin to a decent bowl of chicken soup.  I have a confession to make about Castle Up from new creator Wolley Games, in that due to a communication oversight, I

Demigods eh? You think every thing is going well and life is nice and quiet, then all of a sudden you're reminded that you've actually got to go and prove yourself and show how powerful you are in order to ascend to some kind of Pantheon type thing. Well, in Divinus you need to. Now, I don't want you to cringe when I mention this game, but Divinus from Lucky Duck Games seems to have crawled from the same evolutionary pool as Charterstone. Now that might be enough to have some of you wince slightly but hang fire. I'm very aware that not everyone had the best time from that game and time has seen it as more an experiment in gameplay than a direction to forge ahead with. What if I said that Divinus also seems to have inherited its mother's love of Carcassonne. Does that make you feel any better? I hope so. I really do.  Divinus is another entry in the application based games that Lucky Duck Games are quietly and regularly producing from their studios. They seem to have

Imperium Horizons is almost like a director's cut of a popular film. You are pleased that you are getting more of what you like, but are sometimes left wondering why certain bits that could have been tidied up were left as they were. For those not familiar, the Imperium games are a deck builder based around the development and evolution of your own civilisation as you move it from being a barbaric nation to being one who merely scream and shout at the television. The original Classics version was daunting in terms of its ambition and offered an experience that far extended over a normal expected deck-builder. Its small failings were mostly down to a rulebook that was as much of a puzzle as playing the game, and unfortunately left it having a short shelf life in many collections. For me, who has both Classics and Legends, it falls into that genre standard of being a set of games that I like enough to keep in my collection, but never play it enough to fully appreciate what it has to

Nawalli creates a curiosity as soon as you have the box sitting in front of you. I'm so used to seeing dramatically overstated attraction artwork, that the colour scheme and simplicity of the Nawalli box was a refreshing change. When you remove the lid and start going through the cards I'll be surprised if you don't spend time appreciating the style of art on offer here. Nawalli's theme is based around traditional Aztec artwork which means you have extremely strong images and line work, strong colours that often clash with each other in a delightful way. The artwork and theme alone was enough to want me to see how this would play on the table.  Nawalli is a lane battler, along the same lines as Sol Forge, where you'll be playing Nawals into one of four lanes with the aim of trying to capture Tonalli gems. Gather thirteen and you'll win the game which differs it from the normal 'reduce the enemy down to zero'. It gives the potential for more of a tug of w

CLeM is gently unsettling from the very start. As you begin to explore the cartoon style mansion you find yourself in, you start off with only a diary with the word CLeM embossed on the front cover. You also don't seem to be human, instead you walk around the halls looking like some kind of sad sack cloth doll, mismatched eyes and slow of purpose. The only thing guiding you onwards is a voice making demands to be shown examples of various qualities, the first one being 'beauty'.  CLeM calls itself a 'Puzzlevania' which is meant to mean it mixes exploration and puzzle solving but also means that you unlock new tools as your progress to allow you to unlock previously inaccessible puzzles. In practice this means that as you explore the mansion you'll come across items that you can combine to create new tools to use in puzzles, like the lock pick (which gives you a very fun minigame to play). Some puzzles require you to combine items with the environment in order to