We're Not Wizards - Tabletop Board Game Reviews

Radiant Offline Battle Arena (ROBA) is a card based version of a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena or MOBA. (I will now revert to acronyms as that's a lot to type repeatedly).  Initial impressions upon opening the box, are that there are a lot of characters to choose from for your team of three heroes, which could be good for longevity, given the amount of combinations possible. Each hero comes with it's own set of cards and all 3 decks are shuffled together to form your skill deck from which you draw your hand each turn. A deity is also selected and the accompanying three Conduit cards are placed on the board with your heroes "defending" these. This reminded me a little of the game play I love in the Legend of the Five Rings LCG. Each player also received a deck of item cards which can be used later in the game, as power is earned by defeating heroes, destroying conduits or from card effects. Power can also be used to level up heroes as the game progresses.

See that shadowy silhouette appearing through the giant 1? They want to bash your brains in then disappear back into the jungle, leaving you and your backpack a bloody smear on the ground. At least I assume that's what they want, so I'm going to send them somewhere else and leg it. The premise of 1 Survives is that your High School boat trip has gone awry and the group are stranded on a seemingly deserted island. Unluckily for everyone involved, the island is in fact inhabited by a serial killer who'd moved there in a last ditch effort to stop killing. The stranded party have triggered the blood lust and the urge to kill is back. Can you be the one that survives? 1 Survives is a small footprint card game for 2-6 players. Each player takes a role within the stranded party (Cheerleader, Jock etc.) and a location card indicating your starting location on the island. Each player is dealt a hand of 7 cards and from these cards you have to survive the killer and your ba

That gaming nightmare, that horrific situation where your enthusiasm for something leads you down the track of almost being an apologist, where not even your energetic cheer-leading can save you from the faces of the truth staring back at you. That no, you weren't exactly lying, but you weren't exactly telling the truth either, and like payment protection from the turn of the century, they feel slightly missold, and might be searching for compensation. I blame myself, because there were five of us at the table, and two were reading the new rules for Adeptus Titanicus, with its tables and statistics and huge numbers of rules, and hardback finish and robots for goodness sake. I decided to teach the rules and sit out, not wanting anyone to miss out on the chance to control a team stealing gems or taking out their rivals.  So I sat instead, reading through a rule book of another game needing a critical eye, making sure the quartet were on their way to joy and excitement,

In an age of gaming where some games not only rely on one, but multiple rule books, all with fiddly explanations and play through examples, it's always refreshing to see a game that shouts and claims complexity, and at the same time condenses it into a ten page rule book that fits comfortably into the palm of our hand. This is what people like me like to see when they have been asked to write a few lines on our first thoughts of a game. That the first barrier to entry is potentially a very small one, which means getting to the table doesn't involve a huge amount of careful planning. Which takes us to Bellum of Mutants and Men, where the Sapient Kingdom face off against the Gobalos in a naming convention I can only guess is to avoid some kind of potential copyright claim against Van Hammock Games. A monochromatic tale of protecting your keep from the opposing forces, where resources are quite literally your hand of cards and you play out the tale on a cloth board which