We're Not Wizards - Tabletop Board Game Reviews

  You know what they say, you don't see a mechanic for some time and then all of a sudden two games appear at once, thrusting their bags in your face and asking you to take a dive of luck into the velveteen darkness and fumble around hoping that you're grabbing something useful.  Overview Meeples & Monsters is a bag building meeple based game. So as your turns progress you'll be trying to upgrade the quality of the meeple resources you have while trying not to dilute your own supply too much that your end up continually drawing the weaker components.  Mainplay Each player is in charge of their own personal meeple army that they will aim to try to enrich over a series of rounds by constructing buildings in the small city of Rowan. The first phase is either about construction or upgrading the existing units that you own to access special abilities that some of the units offer. Every player starts off with a generous number of peasants that have a basic attack value and as

  Huge shag pile carpets like miniature forests, sofas and chairs furnished in material that almost looks like one of those stereoscopic 3D images that if you stare long enough at it would turn into some kind of horrific fashion monster. Televisions with four channels and four buttons to select those channels with NO remote control. Your gran coming round to your house and smoking in the house while dishing out a packet of Opal Fruits, a Marathon and a packet of Beef Monster Munch for each of the kids. Men with non ironic moustaches and mutton chop sideburns and hair almost down to the shoulders. Surrounding it all, keeping it all together in the most wonderful over patterned way is That Old Wallpaper. Overview That Old Wallpaper is a competitive card selection game where you will try to win cards that will complement your existing tableau of wallpaper cards. You will try to create patterns that will ultimately score you points at the end of the game. It's designed to be played at

Fir aw the times yi hope yi end up gieing the chance tae look at summin braw and special and summit that the high heid yins are aw spraffing aboot, thurs aways the chaunce yi sit there thinkin, am a gieing it laldy here coz I am gettin tae ploy it? Sometimes yir better waitin until aw cont hiz calmed doon, and yi dinnae feel like some wydo is sitting aun yir shouldoor, checkin yir watch fir ya, and tutting like a radge.  Tiny Toon fae Alderac wiz such a game. In the past yi couldnae move fir sumwan chattin aboot it, stickin it oan lists and Twitching all oer tha innernet. Like, it wiz so gid tha it even wun tha top prize at Origins. Tha probbly ment tha heid bummer, Mr McPherson wiz toap man fir five minits in his hoose, so he goat the remote fir the telly, and was given the extra crunchy bit off the fish supper oan friday.  Tiny Toons is aboot wid an bricks an glass and stoan, and yir aw like the heid man makin the calls, tellin fowk wit tae build wi an they aw need tae follow yir lea

When you finally sit back like Admiral Ackbar in The Return of the Jedi, realising that your work is done and you've nailed that mechanic in your game, playtesting it until you've refined and distilled it, so that all there now is wonderful purity of intention and execution. There's always the temptation to bloat things out, to add in those little extras to extend things just that little bit more for the sake of content. We've all played those games where you can see they gave into temptation, and the mechanical star of the show has grown arms and legs and while you're enjoying what's in front of you on the table, you can't help but thinking that it would be better with some of the fat trimmed away.    Whirling Witchcraft is a lean mixture of engine building and resource management, couple in with a neat overfill mechanic that has you directly influencing other players resources in order to score and win. You take the role of a witch, using various ingredien

Ten has a lot of promise from the outset. It's based on one of the gamblers core staples, the tense delicious and often painful game of 21 or Blackjack. Except the difference here is that you are not only trying not to bust over the that gateway number of Ten but you are also using the cards you gain to create runs in four different colours. Once the main deck is exhausted then points are tallied based on the runs achieved and the winner can be decided.  There's three types of cards in the deck, the normal value cards have a number and colour that you are trying to get runs with. The currency cards will award you with the associated amount of currency that can be used to purchase cards from the market. Wildcards will allow you to fill in spaces where you are missing all important numbers for your runs. When a Wildcard is drawn then play stops and an auction is held to decide who will win that card. Each player takes their turn to draw cards from deck and decide whether to conti