We're Not Wizards - Tabletop Board Game Reviews

In the annals of football history, you'll find some of the greatest derbies of all-time. El Classico, the Milan derby, the Merseyside and Manchester derbies and the Old Firm game to name but a few. Now, the football scribes will have to enter a new entry into this prestigious list - the A9 Derby. Until now most notable for being the most tenuous derby ever concocted. St Johnstone and Inverness Caledonian Thistle will care little for this. These teams came into yesterday's match with one singular goal - to win the oldest cup competition in world football. The only downside to the match at Hampden Park was that there had to be a loser. Between them, these sides had overcome not only both sides of the Old Firm, Celtic and Rangers, but also both sides of the Edinburgh divide, Hibernian and Heart of Midlothian. Alas, there had to be one winner and it was the men from Perth who won their second Scottish Cup after a very enjoyable final. Things didn't exactly get of

Of course, choice is something that is closely controlled. In many cases, you're faced with the illusion of choice, governed by external forces, whether that be self imposed or pushed on you by another party, or even the Brownian motion of society itself. You could make the choice of walking out of your job, pouring your water bottle into the middle of the floor and marching out, head held high, sneering at anyone who cares to look at your performance. Though you are more likely to spend the evenings instead scowling and checking recruitment sites, because walking out isn't viable, because of bills and references and what's actually acceptable, and when it comes down to it, it's simply not a choice that is on the table.  Choice can be fun when you limit the choices, and it manifests itself in the form of triumph as previous choices line up and lead to victory, or as analysis paralysis, when a simple choice is not an easy choice to make. Geode from District 31 is

Angel Investor is a card game about running successful start ups using your own money and skill cards, completing projects and aiming to build up as much fame as you can before the deck of cards runs out. Published by Inductive Bias and designed by Alrecenk, it combines a mixture of business intelligence and information with cute cartoon like graphics to bring a combination of luck and strategy to the table. Players aim to play as many of their money cards into a project row in order to have the most money invested in the project to win fame. On the completion of a project all the skills cards within that row will be activated and awarded to the player who has invested the most money within that row. Some of the completed cards will award you with that much required fame. Others will reward you with the ability to swap out cards or draw more cards, effect other players and generally give you an advantage the more your play. That's dry isn't it. I mean, I had to take a

"Yeah, it's good" is the "Yeah they're a nice person" of the board game world. It's the 6/10 of the video game world, the 3 out of 5 stars for movie reviews. It's something that does exactly what it planned to do and nothing more, not being rubbish enough to anger you for wasting your time, but not making you glad you carved out time from your day in order to experience what was on offer. The issue with tabletop is that we expect our tiny entitled minds to be blown away every time we sit down in front of the latest boxed goods sitting on our table, and so when something does something 'good', it is sometimes easy for 'good' to find itself not picked up and played again. The Digital Agency Game from David Storey is a perfect example of a 'good game', where there is a lot to like from the outset. The graphical presentation is clean and crisp, the rules are well laid out and easy to understand, and you'll grasp the

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.

Gnomes & Wizards is a funny beast. A skirmish game where tribes of fools and idiots in pointy hats face off against each other with asymmetrical powers, fighting for shares of power crystals and trying to wipe out each other's tribes over ten rounds in order to score as many points as possible. It's a game about adding on to basic traits and movement using dice rolls and skill cards. It's a game about flipping over the triangular tiles in order to create a sense of urgency. It's very much a game about gathering crystals and charging up your team in the hope of gaining the upper hand when you face each other across the battlefield. At the beginning you'll start off with your leader, and them alone, as you roll dice to help you move about the modular triangular board. Your dice decide your actions and in many ways enhance them, and will also allow you to summon in additional clans that will bring their own special skills that you can take advantage o

The new Kickstarter Campaign can be found on https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ministryofmeeples/theurgy-the-area-control-game-of-monsters-and-miracles There is always a certain level of nervousness when you first dive into a game, especially one where the words 'Kickstarter Preview Copy' are attached. You are literally hoping that you aren't just a tertiary level of play-testing for the designer, and that you don't end up playing the 'benefit of the doubt' card when things don't quite mesh. You don't often get the same experience in a professionally produced game where entire teams of play testers might be used, and there's not a sparing of feelings when it come to criticism. It's not that I want to be overly critical on a creator for their attempts, but at the same time, if you want to be accepted as a professional, then you have to be pushing yourself to being as close as you can to that level. The Ministry of Meeples want you to take the

The original Kingdomino was a huge hit in our household, and is one of those games that gained a coveted position away from my collection of heavier games such as Dinogenics, Root and Scythe, and earned a special place next to Super Rhino Hero Battle and Gonuts For Donuts in the cupboard in the lounge. Kingdomino is one of the games that we'll continually bring to the table when we want something familiar and fun, but it's also been introduced on several occasions when we've been showing friends and relatives games away from the normal familiar assortment, usually to a lot of success. We've not had the pleasure of trying Queendomino to date, but I've heard that its like its sibling, but with strategic additions, and this concerned me as to whether it would be as accessible. Jump forward a year, and we have another player in the Kingdom.. ino.., Coiledspring have taken the plunge and licensed Kingdomino Duel in the UK (United Kingdomino), which is followi

I've always fancied myself as a bit of a property magnate. I rented out my house in Burntisland for a bit, but got fleeced by the last tenant I had and he ended up owing me about £2,000 by the time he was turfed out. That's a pittance compared to the eye-watering sums of money I managed to lose playing Magnate: The First City from Naylor Games. The game sees you take on the role of a budding property developer in Humbleburg. A location where the council have seen fit to get rid of zoning laws and open things up for the budding Donald Trump's of the world (not the current version, but the previous version that kept going bankrupt on bum deals). Before I really knew what I was doing, and with little planning (not entirely down to relaxed zoning laws either) I had bought my first retail unit and was feeling good. The land had come up for sale at a good price so I thought "what the hell" and went for it. What's 300k after all. That would be coming

If Vector Wars demonstrates anything about the nature of Kickstarter, it is that a strong marketing campaign is almost as important as making sure the game itself works. As the platform continues to grow and change, Vector Wars joins the list of games that we might simply never see climb back on the kickstarter bandwagon, due to the huge task that getting the word out involves. Vector Wars has been on Kickstarter previously, and failed to reach its funding goal. So why even bother telling you about it now, when you can't jump on and back it? Well, I'm hoping you're reading this because Eli Mamane has made the bold move of starting to produce the copies through his own source of funding, or it has managed to find a safe port in the arms of a careful and interested publisher. I hoping that you are  reading this  because you've heard about it and you want to find out more. Vector Wars isn't the big game that "should have been", and this is not goin