We're Not Wizards - Tabletop Board Game Reviews

  End Results can be wonderful in the board game space. When that last tile or card is placed and you're able to sit back in your chair away from the table, and stare in wonder at the unique creation in front of you. In the case of Megacity Oceania it was a full three dimensional structure that graced the table that you could almost imagine living in. With the likes of Akropolis and Kingdomino, your tiles form a unique habitat unlikely to ever be repeated. Often board games become a thing of beauty that tell their own tale. In the case of Wayfarers of the Southern Tigris, you're charting the history of exploration starting in 9th century Bagdad and spreading your caravan as far you have resources. At the end of the game, your unique tableau will tell the tale of your efforts, of your journey and there's something rather special about that.  Overview Wayfarers of the Southern Tigris is a worker placement and tableau builder with aspects of an engine builder in tow. This mean

Self Awareness in board games is minimum commodity that not many designers are willing to visit, let alone stay there. If anything, they want you to look on their game as a means of escape, a way out of your normal day to day. Mind MGMT embraces its existence in a way I haven't seen in a board game ever, and makes you think you're watching Ryan Reynolds break the fourth wall repeatedly while trying to be serious. This is all about the big conspiracy, the secret conspiracies, the codenames and talking and the recruitment and people in doorways and meetings at fountains and outdoor cafes. It's about chasing down the Recruiters as a Rogue Agent and trying to make the world a less controlled place. In the spirit of enjoyment and discovery, THERE WILL BE NO SPOILERS IN THIS ARTICLE.  Overview Mind MGMT is a hidden movement game, and for those unfamiliar with the concept, this will mean that regardless of the number of players, you're playing as two teams heading off agains

Some games need the players to sing, whether your are in the realms of social deduction of the likes of Werewolf or Coup or even on a family throw down of Uno. The game has the base mechanics to make it work, but what is going to make it shine is the level of interaction between the players and how they add that little grain of sand that will eventually become a pearl. It's such a difficult thing to achieve perfectly that some of the most complicated games I have played actively discouraged direct communication or interaction in favour of heads down and numbers up. In my opinion, it takes a bit of courage to put a game out there that relies on it.  Which takes us to Langskip from Crab Studios, in which as a Viking that fell in battle, you've ended up in Helheim by mistake and need to use a mixture of bluffing and card play in order to make the climb to Valhalla. The rules are fairly simple, you have two cards dealt to you plus an all important reference card. On your turn, you&

There's an occasional knock on the door from the outside that reminds us that the realm of modern tabletop is a fairly smallish type of place. Not every game that is out there has come from the marketing zone that is crowdfunding, not every game is designed by someone who we follow on social media and more importantly, not every game is going to have a twenty three page rulebook, a Rodney Watch It Played or a Slickerdrips live play through. We've become occasionally snobbish in our old age and can be easily accused of turning up our nose at something just because it doesn't make our eyes squint when we are trying to learn it.  Take A Race in Time from History Heroes. There's a good chance that this review might end up being longer than the rulebook itself. It would be easy for me to line this up at the end of the street before I take a run up and kick its ass with a running jump, cackling with glee about the simple movement track and race to the finish. When you take a

After a while you get to recognise a Turczi, whether it's the aroma when you first unwrap the packaging, the subtle hint of sarcasm in the box, or the rulebook that usually has the exceptionally small font, or the fact that the game itself is trying to push the genre just that little bit further. Here's someone who isn't willing to accept what others have done and just do their version of it. There seems to be an obsession from the man to push the envelope and get you thinking at the same time. I'm guessing if you look in his cupboards, the peanut butter is never smooth. That he cooks his veggies for 4 minutes instead of five, and you'll never catch him dunking his biscuits in his tea. Vengeance Roll & Fight is a roll a write that just like Rome & Roll (still the most stupid name in history of naming games) requires the use of dry wipe boards and gaining resources in order to carry out your actions to score points. Vengeance is closer to a dungeon crawler th

There's a skill to making a game as easy to play as possible. It is a road paved with traps and misdirection and distractions, where going down the wrong road can often lead to frustration, and in the worst case, a game not finding a way back to the table very soon. While I genuinely use my own opinions as the base for many reviews that I've produced in the last six years, when the people you are playing with are genuinely happy to have another round of a game with hesitation, you know that the designer must have succeeded in making huge inroads in making their effort accessibly playable.  Akropolis from Giga Mic wants you to get laying tiles as quickly as possible. There are no punchboards to fiddle with, the quarry tokens are already bagged up. The tiles have printed on the back the number of players they should be used for. The rulebook is simple and straightforward to read through and understand. In your turn you pick from one of line of tiles, with the price increasing as

There are games that require maximum concentration, so much to the point that the friendly chit chat falls away into the silent contemplation of a state of almost analysis paralysis as it is known. Other games demand less attention and less brain power, but will still have those moments where serenity is called for so that someone can sit back and truly decide on their next move. Those are the games were you sit and have a cup of coffee and share stories and catch up, hoping to will your opponent into casual abandonment that hopefully wins you the game.  Kahuna from the mind of Gunter Cornett balances on that fine line like a tightrope walker, where you can safely state that this isn't going to require huge amounts of rule checking in order to play. It runs as an area control game where you play as one of two sorcerers from the Pacific who have decided compare the size of their egos by trying to control as many of the twelve islands the see in front of them. Decisions on influence

Oh Karak! You lay bare your gifts with your surprise card dungeon tiles and unexpected treasures in locked chests that need keys to fought for. You had players roaming as chosen heroes collecting swords and daggers and all the time wondering if the next draw from the bag is going to be the very dragon that you have to defeat in order to win the game. You bring special skills and dice rolling and indented character boards with slots for keys and life hearts with pain on the opposite side. Oh Karak! With your standees with small character art and bigger character cards with cryptic symbols that tell me sometimes everything about a character and nothing at the same time. You leave me pondering the rule book to figure out how I should be tackling the confusing and very similar dungeon. Watching me and my fellow explorers making the path ahead and passing through teleports and healing fountains but always stopping after our fourth action. Unless of course we end up doing something other tha

SteamForged have always been on my radar since the days of the Dark Souls Board Game, which in my mind was always going to be a near impossible task to please the fan base. How can you ever compete with the glory and gameplay that exists within someone's head? The trouble with IPs is that you get a licence for them because they have a fanbase. In doing so you then have to live up to the expectations of that same fan base. You can imagine that even if you did the perfect iteration that 98% of people loved, you would still get the comments from B1gG35TFANN419 about what really non important bit you missed out on in the gameplay videos on YouTube. I admire Steamforged alone for that, putting themselves to the be the sacrificial lambs of taking that risk with those characters and pushing through, regardless of the limitations and never letting their heads drop down. Then we come to Godtear, that doesn't have the slightest hint of connection to any kind of se