We're Not Wizards - Tabletop Board Game Reviews

I have an expectation that as someone who can play board games with my kids. If I play things right then I'm pretty much future proofing my chance to guarantee I'm always going to have someone who will sit with me at the table and play all of the games. I'm not expecting to jump into a Turczi rules fest as soon as they get to the age of eight, but it would be nice to know that I'm not just waiting for that next game night to get something meatier to the table. The truth of the matter is that mass market board games often treat our children like they are idiots that only know how to roll dice and move pieces. The actual reality being that kids grow out of board games because they struggle to be challenging, and therefore struggle with the balance of fun confusing simplicity as a good direction to follow.  It doesn't have to be this way. The Dark Imp have proved time and time again to me that kids games can be brain burners, like Doughnut Dash with it's programmin

Imperium Classics is the granola of deck building games. Further more, Imperium Classics is the "fruits of the forest" granola cereal killer of a breakfast of deck building games, that demand you see it through with little or no mercy. Crunchy and occasionally overwhelming, with hints of fruity sharpness. Imperium has a need for you to stop for a minute and chew energetically in the hope that you'll be able to digest it. It's the deck builder that you think in the long term will be good for you if you can just persevere and keep chewing for that little bit longer. In all fairness while the first bowl will be a hard slog, and you may need to change spoons halfway through, ultimately this is the type of deck builder your civilisation itch has been looking to help it get thoroughly scratched.  Imperium Classics contains all these click moments. You can try to wade through the rules in order to get an understanding of what is in store for you, but the reality is that unti

There's always that slight silence across the table as the die slowly clatter to their rest. You may not like dice games for their randomness, but you certainly can't fault them for the amount sheer suspense and excitement that they bring to the table. For everyone I know who hates the addition of rolling cubes, there's someone else cheering them on and joyously adding another game the their collection. They are the embodiment of anticipation and for most of us our first foray into board games was based around some kind of dice rolling mechanic and so like most nostalgia, we either look back fondly or cringe that we ever enjoyed something so crass in the first place.  Cubitos not only wants you to roll dice, it wants you to roll lot of dice. It would honestly like you to be swimming about in dice like Scrooge McDuck if it had its way with you, spitting out dice in a cascade while you did the backstroke. And while you are doing this, it would like you very much to race aroun

This is the pre-production version, so the art, rules and mechanics may be subject to change over the next couple of months. Therefore please treat this as a first thoughts piece, based on version of the game that we were provided with. We have not been paid for the preview. We also do not provide a full play by play explanation of the game, so not all mechanics may be mentioned in the preview. Sometimes when you get a game for an intended audience, its often better just to hand that game off to the intended recipients, lighting the blue touch paper and just stepping back. As someone who has reviewed close to over 100 games now, sometimes its not an entirely bad exercise to get someone you know who is slightly less experienced, to play the game first and give their viewpoint. So with a combination of the summer holidays and the arrival of Zuuli through the front door, it made perfect sense to hand it over to two of my children to see how they would fair.  In Zuuli, you're charged

This is the pre-production version, so the art, rules and mechanics may be subject to change over the next couple of months. Therefore please treat this as a first thoughts piece, based on version of the game that we were provided with. We have not been paid for the preview. We also do not provide a full play by play explanation of the game, so not all mechanics may be mentioned in the preview. I can't think of anything worse than putting your creation out there to an audience in order to ask for money to get the project made, only to have it miss the mark. It must put you into a position where you start to wonder whether you actually don't have something of worth and fun to offer people. Though with Kickstarter it seems to be more about the sizzle and less about the sausage. I've played some mediocre extremely well funded projects in my time. So to me, first time Kickstarter success demonstrates that you're excellent at marketing and audience building, and not necessa

This is the pre-production version, so the art, rules and mechanics may be subject to change over the next couple of months. Therefore please treat this as a first thoughts piece, based on version of the game that we were provided with. We have not been paid for the preview. We also do not provide a full play by play explanation of the game, so not all mechanics may be mentioned in the preview. So what have I done? I really don't know. I have a rule about reviews that I keep to myself which is very simple. Any designer that contacts me and says 'Well, it's like chess but..' I normally respond with a quiet thank you and then a polite decline. I want people to sell me the game because of what it is, not because they claim to have improved a game that is so in it's own category some people wouldn't even necessarily put it down as a board game. No, making the horsey jump an extra space isn't going to cut it, and no I like the prawns the way they are I thank you