We're Not Wizards - Tabletop Board Game Reviews

There are few things that you can claim to be truly at the beginning of. I was there when I first saw and heard the Robots in Disguise, and those cartoons days when the Ark landed on Earth and Optimus Prime promised to protect the humans from the Decepticons. They were expensive toys and difficult to get hold of. We were living in the dawn of 'must haves' and forced shortages to create demand after the riots of the Cabbage Patch Dolls. I remember one of the spoiled kids at school (whose parents swapped actually giving a shit for lavish toys) proudly declaring he had managed to get both Megatron and Optimus Prime as toys and we jointly envied and hated him in one sitting. He used it as a bargaining chip to decide who his friends were and who were allowed to see his prize possessions. So we took a number and waited our turn, and eventually I got a chance to see what the fuss was about. While Optimus was cool, Megatron was the one I liked. He just looked cooler and shinier and he

Almadi is all about a Sultan wanting his trusted advisers to build the new realm of Almadi in order to honour his wife Sheherazade. Now it doesn't use the word Grand Vizier, but I guess everyone kind of skirts around using that job title. 'Oh, you're the sultans chief advisor? Oh, but you're not Grand or the Vizier? But what about that snake staff you have? Or the wonderful eyeliner? Or the talking parrot? Oh, you want me to go away? Ok..'  So let's just leave it that you're important in a not-usurping-the-throne kind of way, definitely not an architect of destruction and you're certainly not seeking the diamond in the rough to find some dirty lamp you can give the once over to.  Almadi is all about the tile laying and planning. It's a game that rewards the final game state rather than a points as you go Euro and so your aim is to lay tiles into a form that groups tiles together, or has them linked in a way that you score the maximum number of points

Stop being clever. Taking that into account, sometimes all I want is a game that is solid and bloody well good at what it does. Others throw at you what looks like an inaccessible pile of nonsense that baffles, while you try to translate what is on the table from the rulebook that is so much many confusion. I'm tired of innovation for innovation's sake. It happens you see. When we get a shiny new exciting genre, or an old genre that gains a bit of popularity and its taken and copied and then others take what they think are the fundamentals of what makes something fun. They twist it a bit too far and they mess it up and you're left with a tuna and banana pizza with a chocolate orange stuffed crust. If any one of you reading this thinks that sounds like a good idea, then I'm afraid I have to come after you. It's the rules you see. 'There's no need to apologise' is the first thing I mutter when I look over the rulebook for Demeter from Sorry We Are French,

In the situation where some kind of natural disaster strikes, I'm going to be one of the discovered poor souls that got burnt / drown / cooked / cannibalised to death. I can't be bothered with the thought of being the plucky survivor, ending up meeking out some kind of living on the scraps of humanity. If the zombie apocalypse turned up, I'd be out there arms outstretched waiting to be bitten, I'm getting my tan in the nuclear fire. I've never been on Five Games for Doomsday because my answer to the question is "I'm probably already dead Ben to be frank, you c*nt".  Which takes me to Hellapagos, a shipwrecked with castaways survival game where within the first five minutes, I've already walked out in to the deep blue tide and taken in a lungful, while sticking the finger up to those trying to make a fishing net out of their left shoe and recent pinned tweet. Without microwave or confirmation of dairy and gluten free options I'm pretty much a de