Board Game Book Vol 1 - Spreads HIGH QUALITY PDF [PDF]

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The Board Game Book Volume 1 comes with a dedicated chapter covering the best games for new players, as well as in-depth coverage of the hobby’s latest hits including: Keyforge Azul Fog of Love Wildlands



9 781916 456204



32300 >



Root Warhammer: Age of Sigmar Brass: Birmingham and many more



UK: £23 USA: $30



Clyde & Cart Press https://boardgame-book.com/



Edited by Owen Duffy



Contributors: Owen Duffy, Matt Thrower, Teri Litorco and Richard Jansen-Parkes



Vol 1



ISBN 9781916456204



Downforce Gloomhaven Dungeons & Dragons Twilight Imperium



THE BOARD GAME BOOK



Board gaming has become one of the world’s hottest hobbies, with millions of players discovering the fun, challenge and excitement of releases like Ticket to Ride, Catan and Pandemic. This hardcover book by some of the world’s leading board game journalists is your guide to this fascinating pastime, featuring insightful, fiercely independent game reviews, gorgeous photography and exclusive interviews with the most talented and innovative game designers in the industry.



BOARD GAME BOOK



THE



VOLUME 1



The essential guide to the best new games



The Board Game Book



Kickstarter backers



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The producers of The Board Game Book thank all of the project’s Kickstarter backers, who include the following:



The Board Game Book Volume I is © Clyde & Cart Press Ltd., 2019, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, photographic, recorded or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisher. Published in April 2019. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A copy of this book has been deposited with the Library of Congress ISBN: 9781916456204 Clyde & Cart Press is a limited company registered in Scotland with company registration number SC600497. Printed by Bell & Bain in Glasgow, Scotland. The Board Game Book is a work of review and criticism. Details of the designers and publishers of games are given in the Games Index on page 254. The product reviews presented in this book are entirely editorially independent. Games publishers have not been approached for their approval before featuring their games. They have not been shown reviews of their products prior to publication, and have had no opportunity to alter or influence the content of this book in any way. The opinions expressed are solely those of the authors. Designer interviews have been edited for length and clarity.



Age Recommendations Some of the suggested player ages for games listed in this book differ from those provided by their publishers. Where we feel that a game is suitable for younger players than indicated on its box, we have lowered the suggested minimum age. Where we feel that a game is too complex for younger players, we have increased it. For safety reasons, we have not reduced any of the suggested minimum player ages below eight. Parents should supervise young children playing games at all times.



/\\/\\elissa Vaughn @mitcharf Aaron Jones Aaun Abbas AD Warr Adam Krier Ahmad Albaqsami AJ Alan Alan Candler Alan How Alan Millard Alan Young Alex Bardy Alex Moseley Alfie dennen Alley Cat Games Amy Mellor Anand Patel Andreas Magnusson Andrei Lefter Andrew “Doc” Cowie Andrew Bennett Andrew Griffin Andrew ‘Playful’ Clifton Andrzej Cierpicki Andy Macd Angelus Morningstar Angus Abranson Antiloopia Antonio Catalán (ACV) Aslan Silva atelier198 Austin Keech Avri Klemer Bakka Bascu Basia and Yves Szczyrby Becky Muilenburg Behrooz ‘Bez’ Shahriari Ben Ben Henschel Ben Holland Ben Ritter Benedikt Ludwig Benjamin Costello Benjamin Porter Benjamin Ryan Bernard Ho Betty May Miller Bhavesh Patel Bill Martin Bill Slaughter Bill Storts Blank Navapol BlueMatter Games Bob Finn Bob Lukic Brad Larson Brandon Barlow Brendan O’Donovan



Brett D Eggerth Brett Pritchard Brian D. Quinn Brian McDonald Brian Robson Brian W. Lenz Bridget & Kyle Bugg Brock Wager Brock Wilbur Brooke Brite Bryan D. Cole Bryan Pagni Bryan Winters C Ferguson McGregor Cameron Gould Caner Ozyurtlu Captain Arkansas Carl D McArthy Carl Schnurr Carl Sherrill Carole and Brian Parkes Carter Holcombe Cay Blomqvist CelestialMonkey CHABOUSSIT Chaeha Im Chance & Counters Charles Tan Charlie Chu Chip Everdale Chris & Niko Chris Cherng Chris Gage Chris Imershein Chris James Chris McDermott Chris Mitchell Chris Petersen Chris Roberts Chris Winterton Christian Laggner Christian Volkmer Christopher O’quin Claudius M. Coen de Groot Colin Coleman Colin D. Speirs Colm Doyle Craig Dickie Craig Pearce D.Johnson Dagmar Schwarz Daisy Song Dan Jolin Dan McCarthy Dan Scoffings Daniel Connors Daniel Sutcliffe Daniel Tivadar Daniela & Lars Danny Marquardt



Darc Darren Prevost Daryl McLaurine, PhD. Daryl Weir Dave Datema Dave levy Dave Nattriss Dave Shedden Dave Wetherall (GGG Games) Daven Septon David Ameer tavakoli David Dickinson David Galbally David Hannigan David Jack David Pacheco David Schuth David Starner Dean Windemuller Deanna Ventura Derek Guder Devin Kelsay Devin Liao Dewayne Chase Diana Davenport Dimitris Michas Dominic Shaw DoubleSix Dice Dr. Manish Kotecha Dru Duane Wright Duckworp Dustin White Ed Johnson-Williams Edd Hodder Smith Elisar Cabrera Elliot Ortiz Emanuel Cartacai Emile Eric Torres Erich Cooper Erika K Erv Walter Esther MacCallum-Stewart Evan levine Fabien Morisson Familjen Samuelsson Felipe Hernández Flo Florian Spreitler Fran F G François Barrette Francis Caron Francis Maietta Francis Tweedy Frank Avocado Frank Kergil Fred Jowett Frederik Bo Lind Gamr_Shrimpo Gareth Bellamy



Gareth J. Coster Gareth Knowles Gary Moore Gavin Byrne Geoffrey A. Rosen Gert Brink Gianni Cottogni Giles Glenn Mochon Gordon C Graham House Grant Malone Greg Guinard Greg Wilson Gregarius Pettit Guivaro Guoccamolé Gwynth Davdov Harrison Guzman Hartmut Groh-Papenfuß Heath Stockburn Heather Bailey Heini Hagsberg-Moug & Iain Moug HelloAllan Helmut Winkler Hibird Books Hilmar “The Drupalviking” Hallbjörnsson Hoby Chou Holger Frommer Howling Hog Games Hunter Hywel Phillips Iain McAllister Iain Sinclair Iain Triffitt Ian Payton Il Grande Cacciatore Bianco Ilias Ingo Willems Isaiah Tanenbaum J. Gunnell Jack Callaghan Jack Davies Jack Parkes Jack Smith Jackie Lawrence Jackson Pope Jacob Grey Jacob Magnusson Jae Cope Jaeme kelly James Brennan James D Green James Jones James K. Tinsley, Jr. James Kingston James Lowder James Naylor James Pocock   Continued ...



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... Kickstarter Backers continued James Schmidt James Thorne James World Jamie Frew Jared Eggers Jared Weiss Jarmo Petäjäaho Jason Epstein Jason Fan Jason Roseweir Jason Thorne JBird_TheWord Jeep Curacao Jeremy “Meatsweats” Price Jess Ballenger Jim Campbell Jim Cornelius Jim Stirrup Jimmy Giddings JNinja JoAnna Hubbard and John Schwendinger Joe Blakesley Johannes Knöbl John Belgrove John Cmar John Hobkinson John kav John Mazzeo John Palagyi John Shulters Jom Thasanakit Jon and Josh Waddell Jon Moore Jon Sykes Jonas Daneby Jonathan Jordan Jonathan Sachsman Jonny Quirke Jontia Joost van Haasteren Jordan White Joseph M. Louis Joseph Sutton Josh Maher Josh Munson Joshua Acosta Jukka Koivunen Junaid Imtiaz Justin Jonas Justin Phillips (gkanks) Karel Titeca Karl Schmidt Karl Schultz Karsing Fung Katie Martin Katy Balagopal KCK Keith & Jessica Dickens Keith A Reeves Keith A. Garrett Keith McLeman Keith Polnik Kenneth Jensen Kenneth Liew Kenny (Overboard



Games) Kenny Rosenberg Kerry Jordan KEVIN BARON Kevin Bertram Kevin Porter Kiti Yingyongjaisuk Koby Godwin Kyle H Kyle Penniston Lance Bohy Lars Arndts Lauren Jansen-Parkes (Winghorn Press) Lawrence Lin Lee Lloyd Lee Russ - The Average Gamers Podcast Lee Stanford Lieven Van de Walle Lisa Vaughn Logan labrune Louis Downs LUCAS ALEXANDRE MAGNANT Ludoquist Mészáros György Magnus Nyberg Magnus Rygh Maka Gradin Manuel Rozoy Marc Kratzer Marco Colla Mark and Keira Mark B. Wolf Mark Churly Mark of Wreck and Ruin fame Mark Seymour Marshall Miller Marten Infinite Martin Knudsen Mason Todd Matheson Marcault Mathias Christiansen Matt “Catapult” Wang Matt Brewster Matt Coward-Gibbs Matt Evans Matt Jarvis Matt Koester Matt Leacock Matt Rollefson Matthew Chan Matthew Dominski III Matthew Heesing Matthew Rowe Mattias Collén MdP Melli & Stephan Michael Fenton Michael G Foster Michael Gan Michael Iachin Michael Mahoney Michael Maroon Michael McBride Michael Mordor Michael Robinson Michael Skazick



Michael Vanbogelen Michael Wilhelm Michael Woodcock Michael Wortley Mick Mick Stockton Mighty Fulkron Mihai Ungureanu Mika Urban Mikael Wicktor Mike Davey Mike Musteric Mike Oney Mike Sneed Mikolaj Laczynski Miles Myers Mindaugas Ulevicius Miscillo Miss Waminee Niyagas Mitchell A Johnson Morten Monrad Pedersen Muggie Mycheall N J HIGGINS Naam Nathan Hill Neil Burton Neil Estacio neilhora Nick Hines Nick Jones Nick Pitman Nicolas Chamontin Nigel Abbotts Nigel Roper Nikoli Pupzki Niranjan Balachandran Noah Bast Oliver J P Low Oliver Kinne (Tabletop Games Blog) Olivier lefebvre Olivier REIX Orren Webber P. Kline Pablo Fontanilla Patti-Jo Lacey Paul A. Anderson Paul Cocker Paul Dunlop Paul Dunn Paul Jones Paul Jordan (Sandman1973) Paul Lipscombe (“Kniknax”) Paul Schulz Peer Sylvester Peng Peter Candelario III Peter Dimitriovski Peter Nixon Peter Quickert Peter Sciretta Peter Simunovich Peter Smith Pheonixq25 Philip Reed Phoebe Wild



PirrakasIPL PK family CIV-ESP Playmore Games Inc Polly Robinson Proddy Quentin Quentin, Rémy and Guillaume Mathot R Dean R Zemlicka R1artwork Ragini Rastrapies Realshantheman Rebecca Shaak Rex and Zaria Richard Gregg Richard Reekie Rick Reid Rick Smith Rob Stillwell Robert chapman. Robert Hedley Robert M Soderquist Robert S. Ahearne Robyn Appreciation Society Rod Currie Rodney Smith Roger Leroux Ron Maas Ronnakorn Chukaew Roy Box Roy Martin Ruben Almaraz Ryan Bell Sam Gawith Sam Illingworth Sam Newman Samuel Rosenberg Scott Alden Scott Frisco Scott Mohnkern Scott Rogers Scott Russell Scout Blum Sean Marren Serenity Kaysdatter Shaun Boyke Shawn Kuhn Shelly Miner Sidious the Clown Simon Bradshaw Sir Ewan Bowers Siriwan Phu Sisada Ransibrahmanakul Snehin Snydepels Specky Board Game Studio Spoon Paws Stéphane Bouchard Stéphane GALLANI Stefano Negro Steve Fearns Steve Mcgillivray Steve Mould steve smith Steven Parry



Stu, Janice, Amelie and Sammie Turner Stuart Bertram Suzanne R. Toon Sven De Backer T. Midas Tanel Jõeäär Terry Dano Terry Fung Ching Tezza The Cardboard Kid The Colgates The Lampen Family The Pandemonium Institute Thomas Ebert Hansen Thomas Gaudet Thomas Luke Belfield Thomas Vandenbergh Thomas Wetzer Tiago Soares Tim Tim Ellis Tom Tom Brotherton Tom Newman Tom Swift Tomer Perry Tony Barrett Tor Edvin Dahl TorgeirT Travis Berg Trent Leporati Trent Middleton Triclopsrobot Trogdor Smith Tucker Bruce Ty Kendall Tyler Auer Van H. Fujishige Vault Games - Australia Vikki Drummond Ville Ojala Vincent Thomas Walberto Smith Wally Seltzer Wanshun Wong Watt0 Wayne Burchell Wei Luo We’re Not Wizards Widgett Walls Will Anderson Will Himmah Will Lakeman Willem van der Horst William Asico William Chang William S. Hartman K. Wright Rickman WyattJ Xitosu YeN Yori Bekker Zaffar Siddiqui (aka nEoNgObY) Zeliang Wang Zelos Du Zenon Plazmos Zhen_wa40



Foreword



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by Ian Livingstone, CBE Ian Livingstone, CBE is one of the founding figures of UK gaming. The co-founder of Games Workshop and the co-author of the Fighting Fantasy series of adventure gamebooks, he has a personal collection of over 1,000 tabletop games. He is an advocate for games-based learning and science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) education in schools. He currently chairs six games companies and is writing three books – a new Fighting Fantasy gamebook; The Dice Men, about the first 10 years of Games Workshop, and an as-yet untitled book about the history of board games through the ages. 



I



DIDN’T know it at the time, but in 1975, I was part of a revolution. Together with my old school friends Steve Jackson and John Peake, I founded a business selling games out of a London flat. We called our fledgling enterprise Games Workshop and got off to an inauspicious start. Then a miracle happened. On the other side of the Atlantic, Dungeons & Dragons inventor Gary Gygax had seen a copy of our gaming fanzine Owl & Weasel. He wrote to us about his new game. We played it and were instantly hooked. We ordered six copies, and Gary granted us the exclusive UK and European distribution rights. Business picked up, but our landlord grew tired of the increasing number of cartons and customers arriving at his front door. It wasn’t long before Steve and I were thrown out on the street with little cash and nowhere to live. Undeterred, we rented an office the size of a bread bin and ran Games Workshop from there, with Steve’s van serving as our temporary home. We’d sleep in the back, shower at a nearby squash club, and spend most days and evenings packing mail order parcels. Looking back, it all seems a little extreme. But we were driven by our relentless enthusiasm for Dungeons & Dragons. It was unlike anything we’d played before. The game was unique, a milestone in gaming history. We took on the roles of warriors, wizards and rogues in a make-believe world of magic and monsters and created theatre on-the-fly. It was imagination overload, and we couldn’t get enough of this open-ended fantasy role-playing system with its adrenaline-fuelled combat. D&D became a global phenomenon, and Games Workshop grew with it. But the company exploded after publishing its Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 battle games, introducing players to a universe of stoic Space Marines, rampaging Orcs and twisted creatures of Chaos. Steve and I were also furiously writing our Fighting Fantasy adventure gamebooks, which have themselves sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. I’m proud to say the success of all three - Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer and Fighting Fantasy – are credited as being the root cause of the meteoric rise of gaming in the 80s and 90s. What is strange, though, is what has happened since. The past few decades have seen video games rocket into the public consciousness. From consoles and PCs to smartphones and tablets, digital games have become as important a medium as television or music or movies, with multi-million-dollar budgets and production values to match. I witnessed this first



hand when I was Executive Chairman of Eidos, the original publisher of the Tomb Raider franchise. In theory, tabletop games were supposed to be outgunned. How could cards, dice and plastic miniatures ever hope to compete with detailed, beautifully rendered 3D worlds? But while it might seem counterintuitive, analogue games haven’t just survived in the digital age, they’ve managed to thrive. Designers across the globe continue to produce a dazzling array of exciting new releases, and players snap up billions of dollars’ worth of board, card and roleplaying games each year. Far from fading away, tabletop gaming has entered a golden age. You can point to any number of reasons for this surge in popularity. There’s the growth of internet gaming communities, where fans can share their enthusiasm. There’s the influence of online shopping, opening the hobby to people who might never have set foot inside a traditional games store. There’s the seismic effect of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, allowing would-be designers to turn innovative ideas into reality. But above all, there’s the simple fact that tabletop games remain an incredibly enjoyable and sociable way to spend time with family and friends, old and new. I still run my regular game night with the same six people I’ve played with since the 1980s. The variety and quality of games available today is hard to fully appreciate, from beginner-friendly classics like Ticket to Ride to complex strategic challenges like Caylus, cooperative games like Pandemic to hyper-competitive ones like Small World. With thousands of games to choose from, and dozens of new releases hitting the stores each week, a big problem for players can be picking the best games from an ever- expanding line-up. That’s where this book can help. It’s an exploration of some of the most interesting and original new tabletop releases, covering everything from quick and simple family games to deep and tactically-rich options for experienced players. The Board Game Book has been compiled by a team of some of the top writers covering the hobby today. It delves behind the scenes to meet talented game designers and uncover the fascinating stories behind their creativity. If you’re new to the hobby, it’s a perfect introduction. If you’re a veteran of a thousand game nights, it’s a chance to deepen your understanding of your current favourites. I hope you enjoy this book, and that you’ll continue to support its creators as they celebrate the gaming hobby for years to come.



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Editor’s introduction by Owen Duffy



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HEN I was nine years old, I was stabbed in the butt by a goblin. It was a tiny metal figure given to me one day by a friend on the way home from school. I looked it over, noting the expression sculpted on its face – a sneering combination of malice and mischief. Then I put it in my back pocket and forgot about it until I got home and attempted to sit down. The spiky, spear-wielding model that pierced the flesh of my posterior that afternoon was from a game called Warhammer, and it quickly became the cornerstone of my life. My friends and I spent all of our pocket money on miniature warriors and commanded them in epic battles on our living room floors. We spent every weekend at our local game store, surrounded by demons, ogres, elves and fellow kids who were as obsessed with the game as we were. Over the years, we discovered other ways to play. We journeyed through fantasy lands and confronted evil forces in Dungeons & Dragons. We became angst-ridden nocturnal predators in Vampire: The Masquerade. We wielded unimaginable arcane powers in Magic: The Gathering. These games and others like them were enthralling to me, and they’ve been an important part of my life for decades. People I’ve encountered across gaming tables have become some of my closest friends. One inexplicably even married me, and now we play board games together with our sons. There’s never been a better time to be a tabletop gamer. Recent years have seen the hobby’s popularity skyrocket. Thousands of games are now being released annually. Talented designers are experimenting with fun, fresh and innovative ideas, and artists are bringing new levels of atmosphere and visual flair to players’ tables. Dedicated board game cafés are springing up across the globe, from the UK and the United States to South Korea, Nigeria and Brazil. Gaming conventions are filling exhibition centres and arenas. And perhaps most importantly, a huge community of enthusiastic fans has arisen online, where people around the world can share their love of games and discover intriguing new releases. This book is a celebration of the explosion in analogue gaming. It’s written by some of the world’s most knowledgeable, intelligent and entertaining games critics (and also me), and it’s intended not only to shine a spotlight on some of the best re-



cent tabletop releases, but to dig into exactly what makes these games tick. It’s full of insightful critiques as well as exclusive interviews with game designers, from legendary figures in the industry to up-and-coming creators whose names you’ll be hearing much more often in the years to come. It isn’t a straightforward “top games” list; there are plenty of those already available online. Instead, it’s an attempt to show off the breadth and variety of the hobby, looking at everything from silly, family-friendly releases to crushingly complex hardcore strategy titles. In the following pages you’ll find games that let you and your friends become mighty heroes battling monsters in fantasy realms, medieval mayors competing to grow your towns into thriving cities, leaders of impossibly advanced galactic empires and lovestruck couples riding the emotional rollercoaster of unpredictable love stories. Tabletop gaming today offers an incredible variety of experiences, and as a result it’s attracting new players from all backgrounds and all walks of life. It comes alongside a surge in geek culture that’s seen things like science fiction and comic books – long marginalised by the mainstream – accepted and recognised as important elements of contemporary culture. By creating this book, we hope to do our own small part to introduce new players to the world of tabletop games, and to encourage existing fans to dive deeper into our fascinating hobby. We plan to release a new edition every year looking at the most impressive and original games from a ceaseless stream of new releases, and we look forward to discovering the best that gaming has to offer along with our readers. There is, however, one thing we’d like to see change. The majority of the games listed in this book are created by male designers. This isn’t by choice on our part. In spite of the huge number of women, girls and nonbinary players enjoying games, the gaming industry remains lopsidedly male. It’s a hangover from the 1970s and ‘80s, when tabletop gaming was seen largely as a boys’ pursuit, and I strongly believe that in spite of the hobby’s phenomenal growth over the last decade, it could be massively bigger if it embraced and championed the creativity of the half of the planet’s population it currently underserves. There are encouraging signs that this tendency is changing, and it’s something we hope to document in future editions of this book. We hope you’ll join us for the ride.



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About the authors



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Owen Duffy Twitter: @owen_duffy Owen Duffy is the editor of The Board Game Book. As a games journalist, his work has appeared in The Guardian, Tabletop Gaming Magazine, Ars Technica, IGN, VICE and on BBC radio and television. His non-gaming journalism has covered the environment, urban development, immigration, LGBT issues and technology. His favourite games include Pandemic, Alhambra and the roleplaying games Fiasco and Monster Hearts. When he isn’t playing or writing about games, he enjoys martial arts, heavy metal music and photography. He lives in Glasgow, Scotland with his wife and their two sons.



Dedication To James, my big meeple, Ryan, my little meeple, and Andrea, my favourite opponent.



Matt Thrower Twitter: @mattthr Matt Thrower has been writing about board and video games professionally since 2012. Crossing over both domains has given him the opportunity to feature tabletop games in a diverse set of publications including The Guardian, IGN, PC Gamer and Stuff. He is also the author of The Haynes Tabletop Gaming Manual and the founder of gaming site There Will Be Games. Based in the south west of England with his family, his other hobbies include hiking, cooking and faux intellectualism.



Teri Litorco Twitter: @thatterigirl Teri Litorco has contributed to the online media network Geek & Sundry, makes YouTube videos on miniature games and is the author of The Civilized Guide to Tabletop Gaming. She discovered the tabletop hobby through the sci-fi battle game Warhammer 40,000, and she has been addicted to plastic and pewter toy soldiers ever since. She currently plays Guild Ball, Warhammer Underworlds, Age of Sigmar, Bushido and several other miniature wargames. She collects vinyl records, enjoys rollerskating, and lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband, daughter and several cats.



Acknowledgements The editor would like to thank David Holmes and Dave Shedden for their assistance with proofreading, Ivan Van Norman for his Kickstarter advice, Tom Healy for his assistance with the publishing process, Florian Tausch for help with German translation, François Doucet for help with French translation, the members of the Unplugged Games Club for the many game sessions, and the designers who have been so generous with their time and their insights into the gaming hobby and industry. Thanks above all to Patrick Duffy for his tireless help with layout and page design.



Richard Jansen-Parkes Twitter: @WinghornPress Richard Jansen-Parkes covers roleplaying games for The Board Game Book, and over the years has written about them for outlets including Tabletop Gaming Magazine, IGN, The Escapist and EN World. When he’s not busy thinking about goblins he works as a technical copywriter for science and engineering companies. His first sniff of roleplaying came though his childhood library’s stack of Fighting Fantasy books, which eventually lured him into the world of Dungeons & Dragons. He currently lives in Birmingham, UK, with his wife and cats.



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Contents l  The Board Game Story



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Games have intrigued humans throughout history. But in recent times the board game hobby has been booming. When did the modern age of analogue games begin?



l  Get Into Gaming



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Ticket To Ride 18  •  Machi Koro 18  •  Dixit 19  •  Splendor 19  • Kingdom Builder 19  •  Wordsy 20  •  Pandemic 20  •  Love Letter 20  • Carcassonne 21  •  Codenames Pictures 21  •  Catan 21  • The Resistance 22  •  Alhambra 22  •  Kingdomino 22  •  Star Realms 23  • Hey, That’s My Fish! 23  •  King Of Tokyo 23  •  Acquire 24  •  Quadropolis 24  • Sushi Go! 24  •  Hive 25  •  Ca$h ‘n’ Gun$ 25  •  Junk Art 25  •  Kronia 26  • Android: Mainframe 26  •  Deep Sea Adventure 26  •  Jaipur 27  •  Santorini 27  • Takenoko 27  •



l  Family, Casual and Party Games



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Keyforge: Call of the Archons 94  •  Wildlands 98  •  Dice Hospital 100  •  Capital 102  •  EXIT: The Game 104  •  Dragon Castle 106  •  Crystal Clans 108  • Century: Eastern Wonders 112  •  Starship Samurai 114  •  Pandemic Legacy Season 2 116  •  Queendomino 120  •  Skylands 122  • Railroad Rivals 124  •  Hunt for the Ring 126  •  Forbidden Sky 128  •  Sagrada 131  •  Monolith Arena 132  •  Photosynthesis 133  •  The Estates 134  • Ganz Schön Clever 135  •  Whistle Stop 136  •



Brass: Birmingham 140  •  Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition 144  •  Gaia Project 148  • Spirit Island 152  •  Altiplano 156  •  Castell 158  •  Gloomhaven 160  •  Battle for Rokugan 164  •  Imaginarium 166  •  Rajas of the Ganges 168  •  Root 170  •  Teotihuacan: City of Gods 174  •  Clans of Caledonia 176  •  1066: Tears to Many Mothers 178  •  AuZtralia 180  •  Yellow & Yangtze 182  •  Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis 1860-1861 184  •  Pandemic Fall of Rome 186  •  Coimbra 188  •  Rising Sun 190  •  Fallout: The Board Game 192  •  Heaven & Ale 195  •  Civilization: A New Dawn 196  •  Lowlands 197  •  Endeavor: Age of Sail 198  •



201



Fog of Love 202  •  Legacy of Dragonholt 206  •  Graphic Novel Adventures 208  • Stuffed Fables 210  •  Spy Club 212  • 



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l  Roleplaying Games Dungeons & Dragons 216  •  Pathfinder 220  •  Forbidden Lands 222  • Star Crossed 224  •  Star Trek Adventures 226  •  Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 229  •  Indie RPG Roundup 230  •



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Ticket to Ride: New York 54  •  Downforce 56  •  Blue Lagoon 58  • Welcome To Your Perfect Home 60  •  CIV Carta Impera Victoria 62  • The Lady and the Tiger 64  •  Azul 66  •  Sakura 68  •  Majesty: For the Realm 70  •  Hardback 72  •  Gunkimono 74  •  Topiary 76  • Gizmos 78  •  Penny Papers Adventures 80  •  Raids 82  •  Luxor 85  •  Reef 86  • Planet 87  •  Triplock 88  •  Karuba The Card Game 89  •  Nyctophobia 90  •



l  Medium Strategy Games



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l  Storytelling Games



Meeple Circus 30  •  Word Slam 32  •  Troll & Dragon 34  • Mars Open: Tabletop Golf 36  •  Decrypto 38  •  5-Minute Dungeon 40  • My Little Scythe 42  •  Pantone 44  •  TAGS 46  •  The Mind 48  • Rhino Hero Super Battle 49  •  Patchwork Express 50  •



l  Light Strategy Games



l  Complex Strategy Games



233



l  Miniature War Games Warhammer 40,000 234  •  Warhammer: Age of Sigmar 236  •  Warhammer Underworlds 238  •  Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game 239  • A Song of Ice and Fire: The Miniatures Game 240  •



l  Board Game Apps 92



242



BattleLore:Command 244  •  Splendor 244  •  Carcassonne 245  •  Ticket to Ride 245  •  Abalone 246  •  Camel Up 246  •  Hey, That’s My Fish! 247  • Star Realms 247  •  Pathfinder Adventures 247  •  Onirim 248  •  Twilight Struggle 248  •  Ganz Schön Clever 248  •  Onitama 249  •  Doppelt So Clever 249  •  Pandemic 249  •  Patchwork 250  •  Isle of Skye 250  • Kingdom Builder 250  •  Jaipur 251  •  Among the Stars 251  •  Galaxy Trucker 251  •



l  Gamers’ Glossary 252



l  Games Index 254



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The Board Game Story Games of skill and luck are as old as human civilisation, but board games have seen an extraordinary renaissance in recent years. How did the modern tabletop gaming scene develop? And what does the future hold for this vibrant and ever-changing hobby?



F



OR anyone new to the tabletop gaming hobby, the biggest problem can be knowing where to start. Today you can find games about fighting medieval battles, running restaurants, building railway networks and establishing trading empires that stretch across solar systems. Board, card and roleplaying games come with ever-increasing levels of visual polish, making them beautiful physical objects as much as fun ways to kill a couple of hours. And thousands of new games are being released every



year, adding to the already intimidating array of options on store shelves. In some ways it seems counterintuitive that board games should be enjoying such a resurgence in the 21st century. Digital games are more sophisticated and more ubiquitous than they’ve ever been before. PC and console titles have production budgets to rival blockbuster movies, and the rise of smartphones has given players a huge assortment of cheap and compelling video games to play wherever and whenever they like.



In spite of the high-tech onslaught, though, analogue games are rocketing in popularity. And to understand why they continue to draw new fans to the table, we need to look to their history. Games have been a part of human culture for about as long as it has existed. Archaeologists have uncovered gaming boards, pawns, dice and tokens across the globe, including some from the Middle East which date back around 5,000 years. Games including chess, go and backgammon have remained popular



Above: 1977’s Squad Leader recreated the tactics of Second World War infantry battles, and was one of a long line of wargames from publisher Avalon Hill. Top right: The release of Dungeons & Dragons had a seismic effect on the gaming hobby, captivating millions of players and influencing generations of analogue and digital game designers. Bottom right: Science fiction game Cosmic Encounter came with a host of playable factions and emphasised politics and diplomacy as well as aggression.



for millennia, suggesting there’s something fundamental in the human psyche which is powerfully drawn to contests of luck, skill and strategy. But while games have been played through the ages, the roots of their current renaissance lie much closer to our own time. The 1960s and 70s saw a host of tabletop wargames simulate historical conflicts, from the military campaigns of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to the battlefields of the Second World War. Releases like 1970’s PanzerBlitz, 1974’s Napoléon and 1977’s Squad Leader handed players command of units or entire armies of troops, with often-complex rules for manoeuvring across different types of terrain and launching attacks on their enemies. These strategic games cultivated an enthusiastic community of fans, and among them were two men destined to have a seismic effect on the hobby: Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. In 1974 they published the first edition of their fantasy adventure game Dungeons & Dragons, and while it adopted some familiar elements from wargaming, such as rolling dice to determine the outcome of combat, in other respects it was a completely different beast. Rather than becoming military leaders in charge of hundreds or thousands of soldiers, players took control of individual characters in exciting stories filled with magic, monsters and treasure. The game recreated fantasy tales in the vein of The Lord of the Rings, or the Conan or Elric series. Players described their characters’ actions and spoke their words, creating a level of immersion never before seen in games. Some fans portrayed the same characters in campaigns that stretched over years, gaining wealth, power and experience as they battled their way through underground caverns and overcame a host of deadly threats. D&D became not just a commercial success, but a geek-culture phenomenon, spawning a succession of adventure modules, novels, comics, a cartoon series and one of the worst movies to ever befoul cinema screens. It also inspired other roleplaying game creators, giving birth to an industry which included countless fantasy titles, as well as the likes of horror game Call of Cthulhu and the sci-fi Traveller series. Roleplaying games exploded into the public consciousness, with millions of players drawn to their blend of open-ended storytelling and tactical combat, and in the 1980s groups of concerned parents and religious figures accused D&D of being a recruitment tool for drugs and Satanism – which some players saw as a badge of honour. But other types of tabletop games were also experimenting with new and innovative ideas. Among them were those created by American game inventor Sid Sackson, whose



Top: Carcassonne is one of the best-loved games for introducing new players to the tabletop hobby, and a prime example of the European style of game design that values mechanical elegance and interesting decisions. Publisher: Hans Im Glück Bottom: The tense and challenging Pandemic puts all players on the same side as a team of medics battling deadly viral outbreaks. It’s a perennial bestseller and has spawned a succession of expansions and spin-offs. Publisher: Z-Man Games



work from the 1960s onward explored new possibilities in tabletop play and continues to inspire designers to this day. His credits include the dice game Can’t Stop and the deduction-based card game Sleuth. But arguably his most influential game is 1964’s Acquire, in which rival investors aim to buy up controlling stakes in competing businesses, guiding their expansion and orchestrating a series of mergers by placing building blocks on a square-grid board. At a time when mainstream board gaming largely revolved around roll-and-move



titles like Monopoly and The Game of Life, Sackson’s designs were incredibly innovative, and many still stand up to the best modern-day releases. But he wasn’t the only designer breaking boundaries.



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N 1977, the design collective of Peter Olotka, Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge, and Bill Norton published their science fiction game Cosmic Encounter. Its creators were a mix of community organisers and anti-war activists, and their tendency to challenge



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15 convention led them to create a game that was completely unlike anything else on the market. Players became the leaders of rival alien species competing to establish their presence on planets across the galaxy. The game included important elements of negotiation, cooperation and diplomacy as well as straightforward aggression, and it allowed players to win collectively by forming alliances rather than simply dominating their opponents. It also handed each of its species a different special ability, giving them their own distinct tactical advantages. Different combinations of player powers around the table could lead to complex and unpredictable situations, and it set the stage for countless games which went on to adopt similar faction-based approaches.



another distinct and important strand to tabletop geekdom. In 1993, the designer Richard Garfield released a card game called Magic: The Gathering. It cast players as dimension-hopping mages known as Planeswalkers, and revolved around battles in which they cast spells, used powerful enchanted items and summoned armies of soldiers and giant monsters in an attempt to crush their opponents. Rather than being sold as a complete game in a single box, Magic had players purchase sealed packs of cards, gradually growing their collections and experimenting with different decks and tactical approaches. This collectible format proved massively popular, and Magic has continued to thrive ever since. Its creative team develops an ongoing succession of new cards for the game, introducing new characters and worlds for players to explore, all accompanied by evocative fantasy artwork. Other card games followed Magic’s collectible model, including the Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon spin-offs, horror game Vampire: The Eternal Struggle and Garfield’s own cyberpunk computer hacking game Netrunner. For many fans, collecting cards became as big a draw as playing the games themselves, and rare cards could trade hands for eye-watering sums on the second-hand market. Today, digital games like Hearthstone attempt to offer similar experiences online.



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HILE American creators were exploring new territory in game design, one of the most significant developments in the story of the hobby unfolded across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1975, school friends Ian Livingstone, Steve Jackson and John Peake founded a small company called Games Workshop. They became the European distributor for Dungeons & Dragons, and went on to sell a multitude of other roleplaying and board games. Today, though, the company is best known for its dark universe of valour and violence. In 1983, the company released the first edition of its fantasy battle game Warhammer. Designed by the team of Bryan Ansell, Rick Priestley and Richard Halliwell, it was intended as a vehicle to increase sales of metal miniatures. Over the years it acquired a steadily growing body of fictional background lore, with forces of imperial knights, savage orcs, rat-like skaven and evil chaos cultists clashing in cinematic warfare on players’ kitchen tables. In 1987 the game received a sci-fi spinoff, Warhammer 40,000. Set in a dark future with humanity governed by a totalitarian regime, it introduced the iconic characters of the Space Marines, elite warriors in the service of an ancient god-emperor, as well as an assortment of alien races based on fantasy archetypes like dwarves, elves and goblins. But while it painted a universe engulfed in endless war, it still found space for a pronounced streak of grim humour, with deeply ingrained satire on religion and authoritarianism. Games Workshop became a global phenomenon. But while the appeal of Warhammer and subsequent games like Mordheim, Blood Bowl and Necromunda lay in their brutal combat, a very different approach to design had come to prominence in Germany. In 1995, designer Klaus Teuber released The Settlers of Catan. It cast players as ex-



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Top: Ticket to Ride Europe is one of a series of releases in the railway route-building series by designer Alan R. Moon. While its individual turns are quick and simple, it generates some fierce competition. Bottom: Card game Magic: The Gathering has become a mainstay of geek culture, and many other games have adopted its collectible formula in the decades since it was released.



plorers competing to develop a newly-discovered island, and it rejected elements of violence in favour of trade and building. Opponents harvested resources, built towns and established road networks. And crucially, they negotiated with their rivals to trade different types of goods, meaning that players involved in bartering had important decisions to make, even when it wasn’t their turn. Now rebranded simply as Catan, the game remains one of the most popular in the tabletop industry. It introduced an international audience to what would become known as the Eurogame school of design, which favoured mechanical elegance and strategic choices over direct conflict between players. Other releases including the tile-laying



games Carcassonne and Alhambra helped to popularise European-style games internationally, and American designers increasingly incorporated German-inspired influences into their work. Among them was Matt Leacock, the designer of the best-selling Pandemic. He had been impressed by The Lord of the Rings, a game by German designer Reiner Knizia which put players in the shoes – or hairy feet – of hobbits attempting to destroy the evil ring from J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels. At the same time, they aimed to evade the wrath of the dark lord Sauron. This cooperative approach appealed to Leacock, and he developed his own game which put players all on the same side as a team of medics battling to



Top: The annual Internationale Spieltage fair in Essen, Germany, better known simple as SPIEL, is the biggest and most important event in gaming, with thousands of games on show for fans to try. Bottom: The event attracts players from around the world, from hardcore strategy fans to parents and children looking for games to play together. Tens of thousands of board gamers attend each year.



halt the spread of dangerous diseases. U.S. designer Alan R. Moon also found success with European-style games, and his family-friendly route-building game Ticket to Ride has spawned a string of expansions and new versions, selling millions of copies in the years following its release in 2004. The cross-pollination of American and European styles has seen a run of games in recent years combining refined, European-inspired mechanical design with the kinds of dramatic sci-fi and fantasy themes generally favoured on the other side of the Atlantic. The resulting creative boom has seen the audience for tabletop games grow at an impressive pace, helped by increasing media coverage and by the availability of digital



adaptations, with players discovering games as smartphone apps and going on to pick up the original physical versions. The rise of online retail has also made games available to a much wider market. Online series like TableTop, in which the actor Wil Wheaton plays games with a revolving cast of performers, have helped the hobby reach new fans. And roleplaying game video and podcast series such as Critical Role and One Shot have transformed RPGs into a spectator sport, with fans tuning in to follow broadcast game sessions like episodes of a hit TV series. But while board games, roleplaying games and miniatures games like Warhammer have all established their own followings, there’s



ITH such a variety of games for fans to discover and a staggering number of new titles released every year, it’s tempting to wonder whether gaming’s creative well could be in danger or running dry. But designers continue to come up with bold new ideas, tweaking and reworking concepts that have come before into new and exciting forms. The emergence of crowdfunding services like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo have allowed creators to turn their strangest, most imaginative ideas into published products. And the demand from gamers for new ways to play shows no sign of abating. Tabletop games are embracing new technology, with some using companion apps as part of their design. It means that publishers can release new missions, game modes and challenges as digital downloads, making games more adaptable and responsive to their players than they’ve ever been before. And as the gaming audience grows, creators from an increasingly diverse range of backgrounds are bringing their own perspectives, ideas and experiences to the hobby. It’s a whirlwind of creativity driven by talent, enthusiasm and the support of fans around the world. And it seems certain that while games are in the midst of a golden age, even better things lie in their future



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The Board Game Book   Chapter 1



Get into Gaming



Get into Gaming 18



With thousands of new releases hitting shop shelves every year, getting into board games can be a daunting prospect. Luckily, there are some tried-and-tested games which combine simple rules and rewarding gameplay, making them perfect for anyone dipping their toe into the hobby for the first time. If you’re new to the tabletop world and don’t know where to start, these “gateway games” could be just what you’re looking for.



Dixit



Splendor



2008 Designer: Jean-Louis Roubira 3 – 6 players  25 – 30 minutes Age 8+   RRP £29.99   MSRP $34.99



2014 Designer: Marc André 2 – 4 players 20 – 30 minutes Age 10+ RRP £26.99   MSRP $39.99



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Ticket to Ride 2004   Designer: Alan R. Moon 2 – 5 players   30 – 60 minutes Age 8+   RRP £38.99   MSRP $49.99



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ITH its charming artwork and cute plastic trains, you’d be forgiven for thinking Ticket to Ride was a gentle game of steam-powered railway adventure. But beneath its amiable exterior, it’s a ruthlessly competitive beast. You and your opponents play travellers criss-crossing North America by rail. You’ll lay coloured trains on the map to mark your progress, earning points for connecting pairs of cities shown on secret objective cards.



What makes things interesting, though, is that once you’ve claimed a stretch of track, it’s off-limits to your opponents. You’ll be able to mercilessly block their paths, and it means that the fight over routes gets increasingly desperate as the game goes on. What starts out as a wide open continent quickly becomes a cramped battlefield with players



scrabbling to secure the links they need to seize victory. If you enjoy the game, you might want to try the follow-up, Ticket to Ride: Europe. It has a new map as well as rules for tunnels, ferries and stations. There are also expansions that let you explore Asia, Germany and Victorian Britain.



Machi Koro 2012   Designer: Masao Suganuma   2 – 4 players 25 – 30 minutes   Age 10+   RRP £24.99   MSRP $29.99



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GAME of small-town mayors with big aspirations, Machi Koro challenges you and your friends to grow your tiny villages into thriving cities. Starting with only a wheat field and a bakery, you’ll aim to put your town on the map, raking in cash, purchasing new buildings and constructing a set of prestigious landmarks. On your turn you’ll roll dice, with differ-



ent buildings providing rewards depending on the result. You might focus on small, dependable businesses like cafés and convenience stores, or costlier but potentially more lucrative ones, such as skyscrapers and stadiums. You could aim for variety, with a wide assortment of buildings covering everything from commerce and industry to entertainment, or you could specialise in one area,



dominating the market in retail or factories. It’s a quick, slick and intuitive approach to city-building, and you won’t need to concern yourself with tax rates, zoning codes or trifling annoyances like elections. Instead you’ll be able to focus on customising your town, and there’s a powerful sense of progression as it grows from a rural backwater into a teeming metropolis.



GAME of subtlety and imagination, Dixit revolves around beautifully illustrated cards, all showing strange, dreamlike scenes: a boy holding a candle inside a giant lightbulb; a towering castle lifted into the air by a huge balloon; a ship’s anchor lying abandoned in the middle of a bone-dry desert. On your turn, you’ll choose a card from your hand, placing it face-down on the table and vaguely describing it to the rest of the group. Your opponents then look at the cards in their hands and choose the one they think most closely matches your clue. You’ll shuffle the chosen cards together, then reveal them to your fellow players, who’ll try to decide which was the original card you played. You’ll only score points if some, but not all of your rivals successfully guess your card, and it means that you’ll need to think carefully about the clues you give. Rather than minutely describing the scene you’ve chosen, you might hint at its mood or colour, or say that it reminds you of a book or a song. It’s a tricky balancing act. Be too ambiguous, and there’s a chance that no one will guess correctly. Be too precise, and there’s a risk everyone will. In either case, you won’t get any points for your efforts, and getting it right takes real nuance and creativity.



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HIS game of renaissance jewel merchants sees players battle for wealth and prestige. You’ll invest in mines and shipping routes, open glitzy showrooms and attract Europe’s wealthiest nobles to marvel at your collection of diamonds, emeralds and rubies. If that sounds like a tall order, don’t worry. Splendor is a brilliantly simple game that takes minutes to learn, but still manages to offer interesting decisions at every turn. As you play you’ll choose between acquiring jewels, or using them to pay for upgrades to



your growing business empire. You’ll grow steadily richer and more powerful, with the action becoming increasingly frantic as players race towards the 15 points they need to claim victory. To stand a chance of winning, you’ll need to keep a close eye on your opponents, disrupting their plans while advancing your own. It takes some sharp analytical thinking, and Splendor squeezes every possible drop of tactical challenge out of its elegant, minimalist set of rules.



Kingdom Builder 2011   Designer: Dominic X Vaccarino   2 – 4 players   30 – 45 minutes   Age 8+   RRP £39.99   MSRP $59.99



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HIS game of rival rulers casts players as monarchs looking to expand their kingdoms. Starting with a tiny cluster of houses, you’ll draw cards on every round which let you colonise different types of terrain – fields, forests, deserts and canyons – steadily building an empire that stretches across the board. There’s more to wearing a crown than simple expansionism, though: you’ll also have to pay attention to the demands of your subjects. Miners want to be near mountains. Fishermen want to be next to water. Merchants demand roads between connected lo-



cations. Hermits want to be left alone on isolated spots on the map. You’ll find yourself with a different set of citizens to placate each time you play, and managing their often-conflicting desires takes some real thought. You’ll aim to work out which spots on the board are most prized by your populace, seizing them before your opponents can. To help you on your quest, you’ll be able to use a variety of special abilities to claim extra spaces or rearrange buildings you’ve already placed on the map. And with a modular board that offers a variety of setups, you’ll face a new challenge with every game.



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Wordsy



Love Letter



2017 Designer: Gil Hova 1 – 6 players 15 – 20 minutes Age 10+ RRP £19.99   MRSP $19.99



2012 Designer: Seiji Kanai 2 – 4 players 10 – 15 minutes Age 10+   RRP £9.99   MSRP $9.99 Image: Formal Ferret



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QUICKER, cleverer alternative to games like Scrabble, this lexicological brain-teaser will appeal to anyone looking for a chance to show off their vocabulary. Each round sees players creating words from a randomly drawn set of letter cards. But where other word games restrict the letters available for you to use, Wordsy lets you add whichever extra ones you’d like. It means that in the example pictured, you



could come up with twitching, depreciation or exempted, and while you’ll only score points for using the letters shown on the table, you’ll have a huge amount of flexibility to play with. With everyone working from the same shared set of letters, it’s far more about quick thinking, cleverness and originality than whether you’re lucky enough to draw useful tiles out of a bag.



2008 Designer: Matt Leacock   2 – 4 players   45 – 60 minutes   Age 8+   RRP £36.99   MRSP $39.99 NE of the most influential titles in modern gaming, Pandemic revolves around a group of medics fighting to save humanity from deadly diseases. And where most games pit players against one another as adversaries, this cooperative release puts everyone on the same side, working together to research cures and fight infections. Each round of the game sees disease strains spread around the world, jumping from city to city across a web of transport links. Your intrepid team will fly to far-flung locations to treat the sick, capture research samples and



TINY game of courtly intrigue, Love Letter packs a respectable dose of deduction into just 16 cards. You and your opponents take on the roles of suitors competing for the heart of a beautiful princess. You’ll aim to use your palace connections to get your love letter into her hands, while ensuring that your rivals’ are discarded before she ever lays eyes on them. You’ll start the game holding a card representing the person currently carrying your letter – anyone from palace guards to members of the royal family. As you play, you’ll pass your note along a chain of characters, each with their own special ability which you’ll use to foil your rivals’ plans and boost your chances of victory. Priests let you examine cards held by your opponents. Guards let you try to knock other players out of the game. The king lets you swap your card for one of your rivals’. The result is a constantly shifting set of circumstances, and you’ll need to use your powers of logic, observation and misdirection to win the princess’ affections.



2000 Designer: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede 2 – 5 players 30 – 45 minutes Age 8+ RRP £32.99   MRSP $34.95



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AILED by fans as a modern classic, tile-laying game Carcassonne casts players as medieval barons building an ever-expanding landscape of cities, roads and rolling farmland. Players take turns to play tiles onto the tabletop, forming a map that grows gradually over the course of the game. Building is only one half of your job, though. You’ll also be able to deploy workers to collect tolls, tithes and taxes from your subjects. Placing them on roads or cities under construction gains you points once



they’re completed, but it also puts you in at a distinct disadvantage, because you won’t be able to use them again until the structures you’ve assigned them to are built. It means you’ll face dilemmas on every turn about how to use your limited pool of wooden pawns. And if you’re particularly cunning you might also be able to swoop in on cities already under construction, letting your opponents do the hard work of building them, then snatching the resulting points from under their noses.



develop vital vaccines before civilisation collapses. It’s not going to be easy. You’ll face unpredictable outbreaks that can suddenly turn a manageable situation into a terrifying crisis. But you’ll also have an assortment of special abilities – a different one for each player – to help you react to the unfolding global disaster. With its expertly engineered atmosphere of mounting tension, Pandemic has remained one of the most popular games in the hobby ever since its release.



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Catan



1995 Designer: Klaus Teuber 3 – 4 players 60 – 120 minutes Age 10+ RRP £44.99   MSRP $49.00



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Codenames Pictures



Pandemic O



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Carcassonne



2016 Designer: Vlaada Chvátil   2 – 8 players   10 – 20 minutes Age 10+  RRP £16.99  MRSP $20.00



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HIS clever game of coded communication is a follow-up to 2015’s smash hit Codenames. It saw players divided into rival teams of spies trying to identify their own agents codenames from a grid of seemingly innocuous words. To help them with their choices, one member on each side took on the role of a spymaster, providing cryptic clues to guide their comrades towards the right answers. It was a simple premise, but it created incredible moments of confusion, tension and hilarity. It sold by the bucketload, and it’s no surprise that its creator quickly released a version swapping the original game’s words



for a set of weird and wonderful images. It might seem like merely an aesthetic change, but Codenames Pictures takes the original game’s brilliantly tight and accessible core and injects a dose of artistic ambiguity. Each card is open to all sorts of interpretations, with combinations of objects, animals and strange scenes that make it surprisingly tough to come up with clear clues. Like its massively popular sibling, it’s light, sociable and addictively fun, with a blend of subtlety and silliness that makes it a perfect game for parties. And with their reasonable price tags, there’s no reason you shouldn’t own both versions.



IDELY credited with kicking off a golden age of board gaming, Catan casts players as explorers competing to colonise a newly discovered island. To emerge victorious you’ll have to found settlements, trade with your rivals and build a network of roads to tame the uninhabited wilderness and let your people prosper. Originally released as The Settlers of Catan, the game was the first to introduce a worldwide audience to the German school of game design. Rather than throwing players against one another in head-to-head competition, it challenged them to carve out a foothold on the island, gathering resources like wood, grain and sheep, and negotiating with rivals rather than invading their territory or stealing their goods. The game’s focus on trading provided a constant source of player interaction, and it gave all players plenty to think about, even when it wasn’t their turn. Today, Catan remains one of the world’s most popular board games, and in the decades since its release it’s sold tens of millions of copies. It’s also spawned a succession of popular digital adaptations as well as a series of expansions offering new ways to build and explore.



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The Resistance



Star Realms 2014 Designers: Robert Dougherty, Darwin Kastle 2 players   15 – 20 minutes Age 12+ RRP £12.99  MSRP$14.95



2009 Designer: Don Eskridge 5 – 10 players   30 – 40 minutes Age 10+ RRP £18.99   MSRP $19.99



HIS family-friendly but bitterly competitive game of squabbling penguins sees players stranded on a floating iceberg, fighting over tasty fish while the ground beneath them crumbles into the sea. On each round you’ll move your gang of penguins around a board of hexagonal tokens. Each space awards a different number of fish. You’ll aim to finish the game with more than your rivals. But whenever a penguin leaves a patch of ice, it’s removed from the game, melting away into the ocean. It means the board gets smaller as the game goes on, with competition over the remain-



2003 Designer: Dirk Henn   2 – 6 players   45 – 60 minutes   Age 8+ RRP £34.99   MRSP $44.90



T ET in a dystopian future, The Resistance is a gloriously sneaky game of deception, deduction, manipulation and bluffing. Players find themselves on one of two teams: a group of rebels fighting to overthrow a totalitarian regime, or a ring of undercover spies working to keep it in power. The game plays out over a series of rounds, with rebel commanders choosing players to dispatch on missions to destroy imperial bases. But with the spies’ identities kept secret, the revolutionaries have no idea who’s really on their side, or who might stab them in the back. The result is a storm of confusion, betrayal and accusation as the villains attempt to pass themselves off as good guys, shifting suspicion onto innocent players and undermining the rebels’ faith in their teammates. To win you’ll need a world-class poker face, a razor-sharp ability to spot deception, and the cold, calm nerve to keep a straight face while lying to your friends. And if you’re looking for a similarly underhand game with a little more depth, try The Resistance: Avalon, which swaps the original game’s cyberpunk setting for the mists of Arthurian legend, introducing a collection of characters like Merlin, Oberon and Morgana, all with their own special abilities that add new layers of intrigue and confusion to the mix.



2003 Designers: Günter Cornett, Alvydas Jakeliunas 2 – 4 players 15 – 20 minutes   Age 8+ RRP £11.99   MRSP $12.95



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Alhambra



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Hey, That’s My Fish!



HE Alhambra palace in southern Spain is one of the world’s greatest architectural marvels. A stunning blend of Islamic and Christian influences, it attracts visitors from around the world. This award-winning game puts players in the shoes of the master builders tasked with its construction, creating an assortment of towers, chambers, gardens and pavilions. To do that you’ll need to recruit craftspeople from the surrounding lands. But there’s a problem: each of them wants to be paid in their own currency. To win in Alhambra you’ll have to keep a close eye on the buildings available to you,



drawing the right combination of ducats, dirham, florins and dinar from the bank. You’ll aim to snap up new extensions for your palace while your opponents are still busy sorting out their finances. Getting it right takes a little bit of planning, a touch of opportunism and a dash of luck. Acquiring buildings is only one half of the equation, though. They all come represented by tiles which you’ll use to build your palace, and you’ll need to carefully piece them together in a coherent design. It adds an evolving spatial puzzle to the game, and it takes time, practice and repeat plays to master.



2016   Designer: Bruno Cathala  2 – 4 players   15 – 20 minutes  Age 8+ RRP £16.99   MRSP $17.99



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2011 Designer: Richard Garfield 2 – 6 players   30 – 40 minutes   Age 8+ RRP £33.99   MRSP $39.99



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Kingdomino



NSPIRED by the traditional game of dominoes, this family-friendly tile-laying game sees players become monarchs vying to expand their domains. On each round you’ll choose from a selection of tiles, all showing different kinds of territory to add to your empire. You’ll lay down a new patch of land on every turn, growing your kingdom and earning points by connecting areas of the same type. Some tiles net you more points than others, but taking a less valuable one means you’ll get to choose before your opponents on the following round. It means you’ll constantly ask yourself whether you’re better off taking



King of Tokyo



ing food supply intensifying with every turn. You’ll try to strategically block your opponents’ penguins, stopping them from reaching the spaces they most want to get to. It’s even possible to set rivals adrift, leaving them marooned on a tiny patch of ice floating away from the rest of the board. With genuine tactical decisions, rules that take less than a minute to explain and toylike plastic figures, this is an ideal game for parents to play with kids. Be warned, though: things get rough out on the ice, and it’s more than enough to provoke a tantrum, even among grown-ups.



the biggest, shiniest prize on the table, or hanging back and grabbing something even better on a subsequent turn. It’s not always an easy decision, and with new tiles drawn from a randomly shuffled stack, you’ll need to constantly reevaluate your plans as you play. With three or four players, Kingdomino is tight and elegant. There’s also a more challenging two-player variant that sees you and your opponent building bigger kingdoms. And if you’re looking to add a little more complexity to the game, follow-up game Queendomino adds knights, towns and an angry dragon to the mix.



TAR REALMS is a head-to-head card game that challenges players to build fleets of mighty starships before throwing them into deadly combat against adversaries in deep space A stripped-down, streamlined example of a class of games known as deckbuilders, Star Realms sees you and your opponent playing cards in order to attack one another, or to buy a variety of new, more powerful spacecraft. As your fleet grows, you’ll open up new tactical options that can reduce your enemy’s once-proud navy to a sad, floating cluster of space junk. It’s an easy game to grasp, but it’ll take practice to master the art of spotting synergies between different cards, balancing defence and aggression, and culling ships you no longer need to ensure that your deck remains a hyper-efficient killing machine. Fast-paced, tactically challenging and massively replayable, Star Realms packs a lot of fun into a tiny box.



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ASED on classic kaiju monster movies, King of Tokyo hands players control of oversized creatures competing to bring chaos to the Japanese capital. You’ll play as a 50foot lizard, hideously tentacled sea monster or three-eyed alien invader, striving to inflict as much damage as possible on both the city and your rivals. The game plays similarly to the classic Yahtzee. On your turn you’ll roll a handful of chunky dice, earning points or damaging your opponents depending on the results. But while dice-chucking action is at the heart of the game, it’s not the only thing you’ll have to consider. Monsters begin on the outskirts of Tokyo,



and only one can occupy the city at any time. Smash your way into the centre and you’ll be able to rack up bonus points for the destruction you cause. But you’ll also become the target for everyone else’s attacks, meaning you could find yourself beaten to a pulp and unceremoniously dumped out of the game. There’s also a selection of power-up cards, which give your monster new traits and abilities like armoured skin, wings or fiery breath. If you’re looking for a slightly deeper city-smashing experience, sequel King of New York builds on its predecessor’s premise, with multiple city regions for monsters to fight over as well as military units that respond to the unfolding carnage.



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Acquire



Sushi Go!



Junk Art



1964 Designer: Sid Sackson   2 – 6 players 60 – 90 minutes Age 12+ RRP £34.99   MRSP $39.99



2013 Designer: Phil Walker-Harding 2 – 5 players 10 – 15 minutes Age 8+ RRP £12.99   MSRP $11.99



2016 Designers: Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim 2 – 6 players 15 – 30 minutes Age 8+ RRP £52.99  MSRP$69.99



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ECADES before the creative explosion in board game design, American gaming pioneer Sid Sackson developed an impressive collection of games that still stand alongside the most popular modern releases. Acquire is arguably the best of the bunch. It puts players in the shoes of investors bidding for control of companies represented by plastic buildings on a square-grid board. As each company grows, it takes up more space on the grid, and whenever two companies crash into one another, they merge, with the larger one swallowing the smaller. When that happens, investors get big cash



payouts, so you’ll try to ensure that you become the majority shareholder in the most lucrative companies over the course of the game. You might get in on the ground floor with plucky little startups, or swoop in like a vulture to take control of businesses painstakingly built by rival players. It’s impressively slick and totally ruthless, and while it might not be the most attractive game when it’s laid out on your table, it’s a smart and addictively competitive slice of corporate capitalism that continues to gain new fans more than half a century after it was first released.



Quadropolis 2016 Designer: François Gandon 2 – 4 players 30 – 60 minutes Age 10+ RRP £37.99   MRSP $49.99



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NSPIRED by high-tech restaurants where diners select their favourite sushi from a constantly moving conveyor belt, Sushi Go! sees players passing cards around a table, all representing different delicious dishes from Japanese cuisine. You’ll start the game with a hand of randomly drawn cards showing different varieties of maki, wasabi and nigiri. On each turn you’ll choose a card to place in front of you before passing the rest to the person to your left or right. It means that sets of snacks make their way around the table, with each player picking their favourites until none are left. At the end of each round you’ll work out your score, with different types of cards earning you different numbers of points. You’ll aim to collect high-scoring sets, but you’ll also need to keep an eye on your opponents and try to avoid passing them the cards they need. It’s light, quick, and it comes with impossibly charming artwork, with servings of sushi that look almost too cute to eat.



Hive



2001 Designer: John Yianni 2 players   20 minutes Age 8+ RRP £20.99   MRSP $31.45



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CHESS-LIKE game of skill and strategy, Hive hands players control of a collection of insects and arachnids represented by thick plastic tokens. Each moves in its own distinct way, creeping around other creatures, crawling over the top of them, or hopping from one part of the fray to another. You and your opponent will aim to cunningly manoeuvre your army of bugs in an effort to capture your rival’s queen bee by surrounding it on all sides. It’s a chin-stroking tactical exercise, but what sets Hive apart from similar games is the fact that it doesn’t come with a board.



Instead, the game begins with its pieces already in contact with one another in a wriggling, writhing scrum on your tabletop. Each bug’s options for movement are based on the position of the pieces around it rather than an arrangement of square spaces as in chess or draughts, and it means that as well as being incredibly portable, the game makes every move feel consequential. With no cautious early-game feeling out process before you get down to the serious business of trying to win, it drops players straight into the entertaining bit, making for some engrossing head-to-head struggles.



Ca$h ‘n’ Gun$ C



ITY building is one of the tabletop hobby’s great recurring themes, but few urban development games have ever combined elegant and accessible rules with rich and rewarding gameplay quite as seamlessly as Quadropolis. It sees players become urban planners vying to build a more pleasant and prosperous city than their rivals, and in the process it offers up a head-scratching competitive puzzle that’s smooth, smart and utterly compelling. On each round, you and your opponents will dispatch architects to claim available buildings from a central board and add them to your own city. You’ll aim to snap up



housing blocks, factories, docks, shops and civic buildings, arranging them in high-scoring configurations on your personal player board. At the same time, you’ll try to keep a handle on levels of pollution while attracting enough residents to ensure that your economy doesn’t run short of employees. Getting it right is a real challenge. Once you’ve mastered the basics you’ll be able to move on to the more interesting advanced mode, which tweaks the game’s building system and adds some new point-scoring opportunities. It’s a more abstract approach than games like Suburbia, but it’s a brilliantly thoughtful take on a well-worn theme.



2014 Designer: Ludovic Maublanc 4 – 8 players   30 minutes Age 8+ RRP £26.99   MRSP $39.99



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OU’RE part of a daring criminal gang. You’ve pulled off the heist of the century and returned to your hideout with bags of cash, jewels and valuables. Now it’s time to divide the loot – and things turn nasty. Ca$h ‘n’ Gun$ is a gloriously silly bluffing game that hands each player a foam pistol and challenges them to make it out of the room alive. On each round you and your opponents will simultaneously choose another player around the table and point your gun at them. They’ll have to decide whether to duck



for cover, or stand their ground and shoot it out for a share of the ill-gotten gains. But you can never be sure who’s holding a loaded gun. You’ll start the game with a handful of bullet cards, only some of which show a “bang” symbol. You’ll choose one to play secretly in front of you on every turn, only revealing it once your target has decided whether to get out of harm’s way or not. It turns each round into a game of mass-participation Russian roulette, and it’s a recipe for equal servings of tension and hilarity.



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SNAZZIER and more creative spin on stacking games like Jenga, Junk Art casts players as internationally renowned artists creating sculptures out of piles of scrap metal. Players use its collection of colourful wooden blocks to build precarious structures and, as a result, prove themselves to be some of the greatest creative visionaries in modern art. The game comes with a collection of different modes, all representing cities where you and your opponents can exhibit your work. In Indianapolis you’ll try to complete your sculpture before anyone else, in a high-octane dash inspired by the city’s famous Indy 500 motor race. In New York you’ll build until the police turn up, a nod to the historic culture of graffiti art. In Pisa you’ll pay tribute to the Leaning Tower, collaborating with your fellow artists to build a single structure that becomes less stable as it grows. With so many different ways to play, there’s plenty to keep you coming back to the table. Junk Art’s pieces come in a variety of odd shapes – some easier to stack than others. There are rings, cuboids, halfspheres and cylinders, and getting them to balance on top of one another takes some real skill. But the results are genuinely pleasing to look at – one-off abstract creations with arrangements of shape and colour that wouldn’t look out of place in a swanky gallery.



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Kronia



Jaipur



Santorini



2017 Designers: Sérgio Halaban, André Zatz, M­­í­chael Ua Séaghdha 2 – 5 players 30 – 45 minutes Age 10+ RRP £23.99   MSRP $24.99



2009 Designer: Sébastien Pauchon 2 players 20 – 30 minutes Ages 10+ RRP £17.99   MSRP $24.99



2016 Designer: Dr Gordon Hamilton 2 – 4 players   20 minutes Age 8+ RRP £29.99 MSRP $29.99



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HIS thoughtful tower-building game sees players become Greek gods competing to develop an Aegean island. On your turn you’ll take two simple actions: move one of your followers across the square-grid board, then build a structure on a nearby space. Over time, you’ll stack sections of buildings one on top of another until one player manages to claim victory by moving a worker to the top of a fully constructed tower. It sounds simple enough, but each member of the game’s pantheon comes with their own special powers, granting players new abilities or placing restrictions on their op-



Android: Mainframe 2016 Designers: Jordi Gené, Gregorio Morales   2 – 4 players   15 – 30 minutes   Age 10+ RRP £24.99   MRSP $29.79



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HE gods of Olympus have grown tired of the rulers of ancient Greece, and you could be in line to replace them in this game of bluffing and bravado. You’ll compete for the favour of Zeus, Poseidon and Athena, making offerings at their temples and vying for their support in your efforts to seize power. Players start the game with a hand of cards representing sacrifices to make to the gods, each with a different value. On every round you and your opponents will play cards face-down at temples before simultaneously revealing them. The highest-ranked card wins any clashes, advancing its player’s standing in the eyes of their chosen deity. What really makes Kronia exciting, though, is the way it plays on the psychology between players. Before you reveal your cards, you’ll be able to move them between temples. It means you can avoid competing with someone you suspect has a stronger card than you, or mount a sudden challenge against a player you think has a lower value. Often your decisions will depend on your ability to read your opponents, and it feels like the pure, concentrated essence of a high-stakes poker game.



ET in the same cyberpunk world as publisher Fantasy Flight’s hit card game Android: Netrunner, Mainframe is a game of rival hackers competing to loot data and credits from a multinational bank. Its action plays out across a square-grid board representing a compromised server. On your turn you’ll play cards from your hand to lay down strips of plastic in various configurations, representing your incursions into the system, and over time you and your opponents will seal off sections of the grid by fully enclosing them, earning points in the process. It’s similar to the public-domain game Dots and Boxes, but it layers clever cardplay on



top of its straightforward foundations, resulting in a game that’s far more tactically varied. Each player also takes on the role of a different character from the Android setting, each with their own set of special powers and abilities which give you your own distinct advantages to exploit as you play. With two players, Mainframe is a tight and fast-playing head-to head battle of wits. With three or four it ramps up its level of unpredictability, making it more about reacting to a rapidly changing board. Either way, it’s an enjoyable way to experience the joys of computer crime without incurring massive legal bills.



Deep Sea Adventure



2014   Designer: Jun Sasaki 2 – 6 players   30 minutes Age 8+ RRP £19.99   MRSP $23.00



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HIS dice-chucking game of underwater treasure hunters sees players scouring the ocean floor in search of priceless artefacts. You’ll explore the murky depths, attempting to dive deeper than your rivals and emerge with the most valuable plunder. However, you and your opponents will all be working with a shared air supply. You’ll want to plunge to the very bottom of the sea in search of the priciest trinkets, but it means you’ll risk running out of oxygen before you



can return to the safety of your submarine. The more treasure you carry, the more air you’ll consume, and if you find yourself straggling behind your opponents, it’s even possible to deliberately deplete their oxygen reserves, forcing them to drop their goodies and return to the surface empty-handed. It adds a real ruthless edge to the game, and it’s a potent blend of greed, daring, luck and careful judgement, all wrapped in an atmosphere of tension and raw antagonism.



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ponents. Some help you build more quickly, or move your workers more nimbly around the island. Others let you demolish parts of buildings, or even attack your rivals’ followers to knock them out of the game. Different combinations of gods make for games that play out in all sorts of interesting ways, and while Santorini comes with an incredibly simple mechanical core, it throws up a multitude of tactical possibilities. It’s also ridiculously pretty, with its board mounted on 3D plastic cliff faces and its cards gorgeously illustrated with an array of cartoon gods and monsters.



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HIS slick two-player card game sees players become traders in a sprawling city in northern India. You’ll aim to amass more wealth than your opponent by shrewdly buying and selling commodities ranging from leather and spices to gorgeous fabrics and glittering gems. What’s most impressive about Jaipur is the tension it sets up between players. If you’re the first to sell a particular type of item, you’ll gain a bonus for being quickest to the market. But you’ll also score extra points for selling higher quantities of goods on a single turn. It means you’ll have to strike a balance between diving in and selling your wares before your opponent has a chance to, and sitting back and collecting more stock, hoping for a bigger payout and praying that your rival doesn’t beat you to the punch. It’s a fantastically simple release that packs real hidden depth, and it’s a quick, accessible option for any time you don’t have a big enough group to get a larger game to the table. It’s also available as a polished and addictive smartphone app that’s perfect for a quick bite of brainy gameplay if you’re feeling bored on your morning commute.



Takenoko



Image: Bombyx



2011 Designer: Antoine Bauza 1 – 4 players   45 minutes   Age 8+ RRP £29.99   MRSP $49.99



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FTER centuries of conflict, the emperors of China and Japan have finally negotiated peace. To celebrate the occasion, the Chinese ruler has given his Japanese counterpart a gift: a rare giant panda, one of his country’s most iconic symbols. It’s a touching gesture, but there’s just one problem: the panda won’t stop eating. Takenoko casts players as members of the imperial court struggling to grow enough bamboo in the palace gardens to keep their new guest satisfied. As you play you’ll lay down new garden plots, install irrigation ditches to allow them to flourish, and employ



the expert assistance of the imperial gardener to help you grow more food than your opponents – all while keeping one eye on the unpredictable weather conditions, which you can use to gain advantages over your rivals. It’s not all about peaceful gardening, though. You’ll also be able to nudge the bear in the direction of your opponents’ crops, causing him to devour their growing plants before they’re ready for harvest. It’s a light, accessible game that still manages to offer a brainy competitive challenge, and it also comes with an impossibly cute miniature plastic panda.



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The Board Game Book   Chapter 2



Family, Casual and Party Games



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Cédric Millet on Meeple Circus Cédric Millet grew up playing classic board games and video games, but in 2009 he discovered Catan and the world of modern tabletop gaming. His favourite games include Vinos, Brass, In the Year of the Dragon and Troyes. Originally from a small town in the east of France, he currently lives in India and enjoys playing music with his family and friends.



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BGB: How did you come up with the idea for Meeple Circus? Cédric Millet: It was back in 2014. I had an idea of a game mechanism with meeples that could improve their abilities, and their colours would reflect their skill level. They would be either sent to a school to learn – change colour – or used on the board to achieve something. I was trying to build a game around this idea. I took a dozen meeples of various colours, some blank sheets and a pen, and started drawing boards. After a few hours, nothing satisfying came out. I took a small break, came back to my chair, sat and stared into the distance, and my hands automatically started to stack the meeples. I thought: “That’s it!” The game would be about acrobats of different skill levels, and the players would build acts using them as well as other wooden stuff. One hour later, the very first prototype was ready.



Meeple Circus Designer: Cédric Millet Artists: Angelina Costamagna, Mathieu Leyssenne, Sabrina Tobal Category: Family, Casual and Party



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T’S easy to understand the enduring popularity of stacking games. From the mass-market Jenga to the innovative Junk Art, they create moments of tension and hilarity as players painstakingly build towers of wooden bits, only to watch them crash to the floor. That’s exactly the appeal behind Meeple Circus, a competitive dexterity challenge that hands players control of troupes of acrobats vying for the applause of a fickle and demanding audience. The game plays out over three rounds. The first two are rehearsals where you recruit performers for your show: an all-star cast of tumblers, clowns, strongmen and trained animals to be stacked in all sorts of precarious ways. The aim is to snatch the most skilled and exciting acrobats from under opponents’ noses. Then, with the elements in place, you’ll stage a final performance for excited spectators. With a growing collection of wooden components, your show will evolve as the game goes on. You’ll attempt daring feats, with humans, horses and elephants all perched improbably on top of one another. But if you want to reach the heights of circus stardom, you will need brains as well as balance. You’ll face demands from your audience, represented by a row of randomly drawn cards. They might want to see acrobats standing on each others’ shoulders, doing headstands on horseback or pulling off all kinds of impressive stunts. You’ll aim to include those in your show, carefully placing your pieces in crowd-pleasing configurations while attempting to avoid bringing the whole pile tumbling to the



Players: 2 - 6 Playing time: 30 - 45 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £35.99  MSRP (US): $50.00 table. With a strict time limit on each round, there’s serious pressure to stack performers quickly. What really amplifies the pressure, though, is the progression between early rehearsals and final performances. While the first few rounds see players building their stacks simultaneously, the last spotlights one person at a time. With your opponents watching you build, balance and fumble, there’s a genuine feeling of performing in front of an audience. The combination of the ticking clock, tottering meeples and sudden stage fright is enough to make anyone’s hands shake. It’s an impressive blend of tension and silliness, but Meeple Circus also demands a touch of thought, and while its scoring system makes it a little too complex for the youngest players, it also sets it apart from simpler games like Jenga. The game also comes with an integrated smartphone app, which serves as a timer and plays background music while you build. It adds to the sense of fun, although we found that it caused some alarming battery drain. The game’s humour could also be a turn-off for some. Certain cards reward players for doing clown impersonations or singing circus music as they build. It’s either gleefully daft or … well, just daft depending on your perspective, and if you’d like some more straight-laced stacking, 2014’s Dimension might be a better option. But Meeple Circus brings a new spin to tower-building games. It’s pretty, tense, thoughtful and frantic: the only thing missing is the candy floss.



Pictured above: Meeple Circus sees players stack wooden pieces to create daring acrobatic spectacles. Publisher: Matagot



As well as physical dexterity, the game has quite a thoughtful side to it. It challenges players to find the most effective ways to score points by stacking different combinations of pieces. How did you come up with this element, and what do you think it adds to the experience of the game? As a fan of European-style games, I naturally added some “Euro” type mechanics to the design. And whenever a game uses meeples, 99% of players sit and stack them on top of one another whenever there’s a bit of downtime, so the game is definitely a nod to that. I also liked the idea that the game could be played at different levels: young children would mostly enjoy the stacking part, but there would be some optimisation challenges for more experienced players. The objective cards are also a key element for replayability. They prevent people from always building the same acts, and they appeal to players’ creativity. Even after years of playtesting, I am still surprised from time to time by players who stack the components in ways I’ve never seen! There’s quite a difference between the early rounds, where players build their towers simultaneously, and the final one, where they each take turns.



It almost feels like you’re performing in front of your opponents. Was that your intention, and how do you think it affects the atmosphere of the game? It was indeed the intention, from day one. I felt it made perfect sense thematically; being the head of a team of acrobats, your job is to entertain the audience! In fact in the early prototypes there was no simultaneous phase. It changed during the development to reduce the game’s length and reinforce the last round as the pinnacle of the game.



Whenever a game ‘uses meeples, 99% of players sit and stack them on top of one another whenever there’s a bit of downtime, so the game is definitely a nod to that.



31 Meeple Circus’ cheerful cover hints at the stackbuilding fun inside its box.



You can stack your wooden performers in an endless array of configurations.



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Meeple Circus puts you through various emotions and feelings: joy, stress, pride, frustration, hilarity, admiration. These ups and downs create the overall experience. Are you working on any projects at the moment that you’d like to talk about? A second expansion for Meeple Circus is planned for the second half of 2019. On top of adding new challenges and guest stars, it will bring some twists to the gameplay. And I am very excited about the giant collector’s edition that is on the way. I am developing two new games that are likely to hit the stores in 2020: a family game and a heavy Eurogame. It is a bit too early to be more specific, but I can say they both have in common with Meeple Circus the fact that their themes are tightly coupled with their mechanics!



You and your opponents will fight to claim the most useful animals and acrobats for your shows.



With steady hands and a little imagination, you can concoct some thrilling circus acts.



Inka and Markus Brand on Word Slam BGB: How did you first come up with the idea for Word Slam? Inka and Markus Brand: We wanted to develop a party game, and since we like cooperative games, we thought it should be based around teams. Markus’ first thought was to use a vocabulary limited to only 100 words to describe different things. I thought that wasn’t going to work, but we still started to develop the idea and found out it was almost possible. We ended up with 105 words. We put all of them on cards and tried to explain terms without talking, just by using the cards. We both were surprised by how well this worked.



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Word Slam Designers: Inka Brand, Markus Brand Category: Family, Casual and Party Players: 3+ Time: 5 - 30 minutes



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HEN you get down to it, many party games are pretty similar to charades. Popular releases like Codenames, Dixit, Concept, Taboo and Mysterium all see players trying to convey messages to their teammates while labouring under restrictions on how they can communicate. Word Slam is the latest addition to the bunch. It separates players into teams of roughly equal size, one on either side of the table. On each round, one person on each team takes on the role of a “storyteller.” Before play begins, they’ll choose a target word from a shuffled deck of cards. Then they’ll silently attempt to get their teammates to guess what it is. Victory goes to the side that manages it first. What makes things interesting, though, are the limitations the game places on how you can pass information to your friends. You won’t be able to speak or use gestures to guide them. Instead, you’ll use a set of cards showing a pre-set selection of words to push them in the right direction. You’ll attempt to form understandable clues with a limited vocabulary of just 105 words, propping cards into a plastic holder where they’re visible to your allies, but hidden from your opponents. It turns out to be a tricky proposition. If you’re trying to suggest the word “subway,” for instance, you might arrange your cards to read: “Fast vehicle journey down under city.” But other terms are harder to work with. How can you get your team to guess a phrase like “lightyear,” for example? Without any useful astronomical terms at your disposal, you’ll need to fall back on something like: “Up above sky,



Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £28 MSRP (US): $29.95 fast, long, science” and rely on their intuition to fill in the gaps. It’s often tough, and the limitations on the words you can use mean you’ll have to come up with some creative and off-beat ways to express yourself. A sumo wrestler could become: “Big heavy sports man from east country.” A vinyl record might be: “Thin black music circle.” You’ll need to work with synonyms, allusions and vague hints, and it injects huge ambiguity into the game, making for some brilliantly frustrating moments when your team fails to interpret clues that seemed blindingly obvious when you thought of them. The one weak point in Word Slam, though, is that for a team-based game, it doesn’t do much to encourage teamwork. As you try to guess what your storyteller is attempting to convey, you’ll naturally want to confer with your teammates. But discussing your ideas out loud risks handing vital information to the other side, and the result is that the game becomes less about collaboration, and more about sudden moments of individual triumph when someone blurts out the right answer. There’s also at least one slightly risqué card. If you’re playing with kids you might prefer to pick up the family edition. But Word Slam comes with a simple premise that even non-gamers can pick up quickly. Its multiple decks of objective cards, all rated for different difficulty levels, mean it can be exactly as challenging as you want. And it creates moments of tension and hilarity that you’ll be left talking about long after the game is finished. It’s hard to think of a better option for big gatherings of family and friends.



Pictured above: Word Slam challenges players to convey messages using a strictly limited vocabulary of words on cards. Publisher: KOSMOS



There are lots of word-based party games already on the market. How do you think Word Slam differs from them, not just in terms of gameplay but with the feeling it creates around the table? The special thing about Word Slam is that no player ever has to wait. When a new round starts, it’s everyone’s turn. The other interesting thing is that two teams try to explain the same term at the same time. Because of that, we don’t need a time limit – whoever is faster always gets the point. Both teams can listen to each other’s guesses. That’s why one team may get hints from the opposing team, too. This creates a dichotomy while guessing. You don’t want to help the other team, but you also need to try some terms. That’s really funny! Have you seen players come up with any particularly funny, interesting or unexpected combinations of cards while trying to get their point across? We have seen a lot. One of the most clever things we saw was when a player had set up a card upside down to describe the opposite of something. Players shouted wrong terms to lead the opposite team on a wrong track. Many players sorted the cards into groups, to explain a term step by step.



What are some of the things you have to consider when designing a party game like this which appeals to a wide audience rather than just to hardcore gamers? The most important thing was to keep the rules easy. Nobody likes reading rules — especially if you want to play a party game. We wanted the game to be explained in two minutes, and after that a group should be able to start playing right away. Playing the game should be always fun, without too much thinking about how to plan your turn or creating a brilliant strategy.



Nobody likes ‘reading rules —



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Word Slam – a brainy party game by husband-and-wife design team Markus and Inka Brand.



especially if you want to play a party game. We wanted the game to be explained in two minutes.



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What are some of your favourite word or party games by other designers, and what do you enjoy about them? Did any of them influence your work on Word Slam? We love Time’s Up! We really like the different requirements from round to round. We also like Dixit and Mysterium. It’s so much fun to explain something with pictures, even more when the artwork is so nice. Codenames is a very clever party game, we love that one, too! The most influence these games had on our development was that we realized how nice it is to play a really good party game. These games inspired us to invent a game in this genre, too.



Inka and Markus Brand are a husband-and-wife design team. They met at a friend’s wedding in 1999 and had their first date — a game night — one week later. Their published games include Village, Word Slam, Murano and the legacy game The Rise of Queensdale. Their favourite games include The Legend of Andor, TIME Stories, Ticket to Ride, Time’s Up and Pillars of the Earth. They live in Gummersbach, Germany with their children Lukas and Emely.



The game’s objective cards are divided by difficulty level, letting you tweak its setup for different player groups.



You’ll use a limited vocabulary of just 105 words to try to convey messages to your teammates. In this case, the target word is “vampire.”



Getting your message across can take some creative thinking. Here the objective is “triple jump.”



Alexandre Emerit on Troll & Dragon Alexandre Emerit lives with his family in Fontainebleau, France. He works as the head of the environmental department at a nature park, and loves outdoor activities including climbing, hiking and running. He grew up playing traditional French card games, and his favourite modern games include Puerto Rico, Carson City, Race for the Galaxy, Blood Rage and Robinson Crusoe.



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Troll & Dragon Designer: Alexandre Emerit Artist: Paul Mafayon Category: Family, Casual and Party Players: 2 - 5



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KID-FRIENDLY game of treasure-hunting adventurers, Troll & Dragon sees players delving into a perilous cave in search of priceless goodies to pilfer. The first thing that strikes you about it is its impressive production. It comes with a glittering hoard of plastic trinkets — golden nuggets and shining diamonds that beg to be picked up and played with. Its big, chunky dice make a satisfying clatter as they hit the table, and its artwork looks as though it could have been plucked straight from a big-budget animated film. It’s a powerful combination of aesthetic and tactile appeal, and it’s enough to get young players excited before they’ve even played their first round. Every turn consists of two stages, each with its own dangers. First, you’ll enter the diamond chamber, protected by an angry troll, rolling and re-rolling a set of dice in a dash to accumulate as many gemstones as you can carry. Any dice that come up showing a troll icon are locked, though, preventing you from rolling them again. Accumulate four trolls and you’ll be forced to flee, dropping all the treasure you’ve gathered during the round. Make it through the troll’s lair, and you’ll be able to progress to a gold-filled grotto guarded by a sleeping dragon, and it’s here that the game takes on a hectic and much more antagonistic feel. You will still roll dice in an attempt to gain treasure, but this time your opponents will be acting against you. They’ll roll a pair of red dice, aiming to score two dragon symbols to rouse the slumbering Pictured above: Troll & Dragon’s box represents caves full of treasure. Publisher: LOKI



Time: 15 - 20 minutes Ages: 7+ RRP (UK): £17.49 MSRP (US): $19.99 beast, causing you to drop all of your ill-gotten loot and run for your life. The only way to escape in possession of your gold and gems is to shout: “I’m leaving!” before your rivals manage to roll the symbols they’re looking for, and it makes for some tense and raucous moments as you roll as quickly and as many times as you can, desperately trying to hoover up just a few more precious pieces. Gold nets you more points than diamonds, and it provides a powerful incentive to push your luck and grab as much as you can. But it’s a real gamble, and it means you’ll need to balance risk and reward in some high-pressure situations. That’s not the kind of decision that kids tend to be great at, and watching their faces contort in excited frustration as the dice fail to shower them with riches is one of the most entertaining elements of the game for grown-ups. It fits nicely into the gap between similar options on store shelves: a little more complex and competitive than Zombie Dice, but less complicated than the cooperative dice-chucker Escape: The Curse of the Temple. And while it comes with a seven-and-up age rating, younger kids can definitely get in on the fun with adult supervision. The end result is a fast-paced and stress-inducing game that comes in a small box that’s perfect for taking on trips to keep kids entertained. It might not be the single most original piece of game design you’ll come across, but it’s that most valuable type of entry in any parent’s game collection: something quick and easy that children and adults can enjoy on an equal footing.



BGB: There are lots of games aimed at kids, but many of them aren’t as enjoyable for parents and older players. What about Troll & Dragon do you think gives it such a broad appeal? Alexandre Emerit: I design games I want to play, not with a particular target in mind. When I designed Troll & Dragon, I always saw it as a family game, but also as one that would be fun for adults. So what makes it appeal to the whole family? First of all, it has simple rules and strategies, great artwork thanks to Paul Mafayon, great components and a funny theme, so it’s easy for kids to get into. For adults, it’s simple fun and players are involved during each turn. And I think it’s fun at all ages to see other players failing miserably! Finally, even if you have a poor turn, you know you can make a comeback later in the game.



Board games are a great way for families to be together, and they’re a great way to learn various skills just by having fun — being focused, learning to fail, counting, bluffing, telling stories, respecting others.



What do you think are some of the benefits of parents playing games with their kids? I have two children aged 11 and four, and they both love board games. We live in a society where we are in a hurry most of the time and where screens are everywhere.



Where did the idea to use the game box as a component come from? I’ve always loved games that use their boxes, such as Château Roquefort, Niagara, and Kayanak. My first published game Boom, Bang, Gold uses its box as a mine. Players throw wooden sticks of dynamite



We live in a ‘society where we are in a hurry most of the time and where screens are everywhere. Board games are a great way for families to be together.



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Troll & Dragon sees players attempt to pilfer treasures from a pair of ferocious monsters. It encourages risk-taking, but it makes it dangerously easy to get too confident and lose your ill-gotten goodies.



into the box to make tokens jump and reveal gold. When I created Troll & Dragon I wanted to do something new with the game box as a component. Each player’s turn has two distinct phases, one that’s all about pushing your luck, and the other which is much more frantic and competitive as you roll against your opponents. What do you think this sudden change of pace adds to the experience? I think that if we had only one phase, the game would feel too flat. If it’s always frantic, players get exhausted. If it’s only push-your-luck, players feel less involved. When you mix the two phases you have a nice flow: a cool phase and a frantic one. It creates variety. I’ve seen players playing with this transition. They grab their gold dice and roll them quietly to gain one or two extra rolls before the other players grab the dragon’s dice. Troll & Dragon revolves around balancing risks and rewards, and sometimes getting it wrong can have pretty severe consequences. Some kids’ and family games avoid punishing players for poor decisions, but do you think children are more able to deal with these kinds of setbacks than people realise? Yes and no. I’ve played hundreds of games of Troll & Dragon with a lot of children and parents. Most of them find the game fun and balanced, and they are not sad if they lose. But I’ve also seen some kids bursting into tears as well as adults getting mad. For kids, it’s not too serious if they cry or shout. Losing is something they have to learn.



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Dennis Hoyle on Mars Open: Tabletop Golf BGB: What made you want to create a game about golf, and why did you choose to set it on Mars? Dennis Hoyle: It wasn’t originally my intention to make a golfing game or a Mars game. The story is: I made some square cards for a prototype for a different game I was working on, and placed the deck on my desk. One day, almost without thinking, I somehow folded one of the square cards into the shape that is now the Mars Open golf ball. At first I didn’t think anything about it. It sat on my desk for six months or more. Eventually I discovered it was fun to flick from place to place, and I began considering some vague ideas about its potential uses in a game. I chose Mars for the setting because there are many flat plateaus on Mars. Flicking your golf ball accidentally off the table is a major concept in the game. So, just as golfers on Mars might have to keep their ball on the plateau, tabletop golfers must keep theirs on the table. Setting the game on Mars also just seemed goofy and fun.



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Mars Open: Tabletop Golf Designer: Dennis Hoyle Category: Family, Casual and Party Players: 1 - 8 Time: 30 - 60 minutes



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HIS quirky, finger-flicking dexterity game sees players become astronauts on a mission to the red planet. And while you might expect humanity’s envoys to another world to spend their time planting flags and conducting scientific research, it doesn’t mean they don’t have time for a little recreation. Mars Open: Tabletop Golf is a game of interplanetary pitch-andputt. You’ll attempt to propel your ball across your table and into a square cardboard “hole,” with victory on each round going to the player who manages it in the fewest shots. In reality, though, that “ball” is a simple square of printed card, and while it looks unassuming at first, something magical happens when you fold it carefully along its corners. It becomes a piece of cunning aerodynamic engineering. Rest it on the table and give it a carefully calculated flick, and it sails through the air in a graceful arc, with the length of your shot depending on the amount of force you use. You’ll need to develop some skill and finesse, and the game comes with a host of tricks and techniques to master. You can chip your ball by sliding a finger underneath it and flicking upwards. You can pitch it by aiming right at the top of one of its protruding tabs. You can drive, long and low, by flicking towards one of its corners. You can apply draw and fade. In fact you can make a decent attempt at pretty much any real-life golf swing. There’s even an official rule that players must clap politely after each shot. Enforcing it is hilarious. None of this is easy, though. It takes practice, and it rewards pa-



Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £31.99 MSRP (US): $34.00 tience, skill and imaginative application. Striving for the perfect shot is powerfully addictive, and where similar games tend to rely on various bells and whistles to keep them interesting, Mars Open just has a selection of 3D cardboard obstacles, with cartoon art in a cheerful Martian pink. The entire game consists of working out ways to flick those amazing balls past those static barriers and into the hole. To inject a bit of variety, the rules booklet comes with an astonishing array of hole layouts. The basic “front nine” sees players learning some simple shots, working their way around various bits of scenery. After that, things get increasingly creative and bizarre. First you’ll add a sand trap, which prevents you from re-orienting your ball after it lands. Then you’ll incorporate the game’s box and lid as obstacles, oriented in various directions. Finally there’s a fiendish sequence of holes using items of furniture placed around your table to add distance and doglegs to the battery of challenges. You can design your own holes too, if the 45 included aren’t enough. It’s fast, fun and rewarding, if occasionally repetitive. Watching your opponents take their turns can be jaw-droppingly impressive or riotously funny, depending on how well they do. Taking your own shots can be scary, satisfying or both. There’s little more gratifying in all of gaming than sinking a holein-one in Mars Open, and its rulebook closes with a series of one-shot challenges which feel utterly impossible — until that magical 400th attempt when you finally get it right.



Pictured above: Mars Open uses a collection of clever physical elements to create a tough tabletop golf course. Publisher: Bellwether Games



Some of the holes are very imaginative, using the game’s box and even items of household furniture as obstacles. How did you design them, and what kinds of challenges were you trying to present to players with different setups? I tried to explore as many different hole design concepts as possible with as few variables as possible, adding new elements only when needed to continue to explore new concepts. The first few holes use just the hole plus one obstacle, but later holes introduce new obstacles, which exponentially increase the number of unique arrangements that are possible. A guiding factor in this process was my observation of how players interacted with the game in playtests. I found that whenever players began to design their own holes they quickly maxed out the number of variables, creating monstrously challenging or ridiculous holes. By comparison, relatively simple holes could seem quite bland next to these crazy ones, so I organised the holes in the rulebook to keep players’ interest longer and ensure they didn’t skip over



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Mars Open hands each player a cardboard “ball” which they’ll flick, poke and thwack across the course. It’s an ingenious piece of cardboard engineering, and it makes for a tricky dexterity challenge.



I wanted players to ‘have to think about how they were going to approach each hole and attempt to execute a specific strategy.



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approach each hole and attempt to execute a specific strategy.



The game’s retro-futuristic artwork looks like a modern-day twist on The Jetsons.



interesting, yet subtle, concepts. Furthermore I tried to design each hole with players’ strategic decisions in mind. Most holes involve an “easier but slower” path to the hole and a “better but more challenging” path. I wanted players to have to think about how they were going to



Dennis Hoyle grew up near Chicago, but currently lives in Texas. He has played board games since he was a child, but was introduced to modern games in high school through titles including St. Petersburg, Carcassonne, Caylus, Ticket to Ride and Catan. Today his tastes tend towards heavy European-style strategy games. When he’s not playing games, he enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter, volunteering at his church, hiking, running, travel and cooking.



The game invites players to design their own holes. Have you ever seen anyone create really strange and/or impressive layouts or incorporating elements that you would never have thought of? Absolutely. I love looking at #marsopen on Twitter or Instagram and seeing what people have designed. @DiscordJack gets a nod here for photographing a complete set of nine unique holes on Twitter, many of which include concepts I hadn’t yet explored.



The ultimate achievement is a hole-in-one, but scoring one takes skill and dedication.



Thomas Dagenais-Lespérace on Decrypto BGB: How did you come up with the idea for Decrypto? Thomas Dagenais-Lespérace: I’ve always loved hidden messages and secret codes. My grandmother is a bridge enthusiast – the game, not the structures obviously – and I’ve always been fascinated by the stories of her games, especially when she spoke about the codes that could be sent between each partner during the auction phase. The basis for Decrypto is the idea of recreating part of that experience: to send coded messages to an ally without being intercepted.



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I think human beings ‘have a very special relationship with mysteries ... I think these types of games are good at generating mysteries. Also, I think they make you feel intelligent when you play them: they allow for a specific kind of focused creativity that people enjoy.



Decrypto Designer: Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance Artists: Fabien Fulcheron, NILS, Manuel Sanchez Category: Family, Casual and Party



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ECRYPTO is a subtle word game of coded communication that divides players into rival teams of spies. On each round, one player on each side attempts to convey a cryptic message to their teammates, trying to come up with clues which are clear enough for their comrades to understand, but not so obvious that they allow their opponents to guess what they’re hinting at. At first it sounds jarringly similar to the 2015 smash hit Codenames, another espionage-themed party game with an emphasis on clever wordplay. But while both games share some superficial similarities, Decrypto is far more than an opportunistic copycat. Before the game begins, you’ll draw four cards at random, each showing a different word. You’ll line these up in a cardboard stand, making them visible to your team but not to your rivals. Each slot in your stand is marked with a number between one and four. When it’s your turn to pass a message to your teammates you draw a card showing a three-digit code determining the words you’ll have to point them towards, and the order in which they’ll have to guess them. Dropping hints is a delicate art form. Say you’re trying to guide your teammates towards the words: mushroom, shoe and musician. You could make things simple and say: “Fungus, footwear, guitarist.” That would almost certainly lead your partners towards the right answers but it would also hand useful information to your opponents. On each round, they’ll have the opportunity to guess your code. If they get it right twice, they win the game, and it means you have to be



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Players: 3 - 8 Playing time: 15 - 45 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £16.99   MSRP (US): $19.99 a little more opaque with your hints, employing some clever allusions to avoid giving too much away. You might want to say: “Mario, rollerskate, CD player,” and rely on fuzzy and ambiguous connections to get your message across. What’s really clever about Decrypto, though, is the fact that you will use the same four target words throughout the game. As you play, you have to come up with ever-more-creative hints. You can also take note of your opponents’ clues, looking for recurring themes to help you identify their hidden words. If they’ve mentioned grass, trees and green in previous rounds, maybe one of their words is related to nature, or gardens? If they’ve mentioned shelves, bags and credit cards, perhaps one of their cards has something to do with shopping? By piecing together the information revealed over multiple rounds, you’ll be able to spot connections – a kind of gradual jigsaw of word associations. It means that with each passing round you’ll be able to make better-informed guesses about your opponents’ codes. But at the same time, it gets more and more difficult to come up with clues of your own, and on your final turns you’ll struggle to think of hints that manage to be useful to your own side without handing the game to your rivals. The result is a whirl of confusion, frustration and triumph. Decrypto is a brainy and brilliant party game, and while it might be cut from the same cloth as Codenames, it’s unquestionably different enough to demand its own space in your collection.



Pictured above: In Decrypto, players become spies trying to pass secret messages and guess their rivals’ codes. Publisher: Le Scorpion Masqué



In recent years there seem to have been a lot of games which revolve around hidden information and subtle clues, like Codenames and Spyfall. How do you think Decrypto differs from some of the games that are already out there? There’s more interaction between teams in Decrypto than Codenames, and the approach to clues is quite different. In Codenames you’re trying to find that one word to link multiple words; in Decrypto you can use as many words as you want, but you want to link to only one word, not multiple ones, and you’re constrained by the fact that the other team is trying to intercept your code.



Spyfall has a similar approach to clues as Decrypto, in the sense that you’re trying to navigate the fine line of being vague but not too much, but apart from that I’d say Spyfall is a very different game, both in terms of structure and player experience. That being said, I love both Codenames and Spyfall and think they’re genius pieces of work, and I don’t think Decrypto is above them in any way, just different. Why do you think these types of games have been so popular? What is it about the atmosphere they create around the table that’s so appealing to players? I think human beings have a very special relationship with mysteries. There’s this deep need to find out the solutions. I think these types of games are good at generating mysteries. Also, I think they make you feel intelligent when you play them: they allow for a specific kind of focused creativity that people enjoy.



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Decrypto comes with a distinctive 60s aesthetic, and its box resembles an old mainframe computer.



The game has a really impressive physical setup. Is that something you had in mind from the start, or is it something that was added in the publishing process? How do you think this kind of approach adds to the game’s appeal? No, I didn’t really have anything in mind at the time I designed the game. That was all the publisher’s job! I’m really happy with the result, and I do think it adds a lot to the game’s appeal. Board games are beautiful objects in addition to being abstract sets of rules. Decrypto feels like a great party game, or something to play with casual players who might not normally play a lot of games. Are there any other games you enjoy which work with a similar kind of audience? If so, what do you like about them? Yes! I really like “gateway” games in general. I like being able to play with my family or with my non-gamer friends and introduce them to a new experience, and feeling like everyone’s having a good time. Dixit, Spyfall, Codenames, Chinatown, Sushi Go!, Ticket to Ride. There’s too many to mention!



Thomas Dagenais-Lespérace is a game designer living in Montreal, Canada. He studied classical music composition at university and has been creating games for around four years. He first became interested in tabletop gaming after playing the Spiel-des-Jahres winning Dixit, and his favourite releases include Spyfall, Chinatown, Mr Jack and Captain Sonar. His other interests include music, cinema, books, graphic novels, travel, art and philosophy.



The game’s cards use scrambled words which slot into special decoder screens.



You’ll note down your opponents’ clues, trying to spot links that could help you crack their codes.



Connor Reid on 5-Minute Dungeon to my character. To that end, we built 5-Minute Dungeon so that everyone has their own deck, their own ability and their own playstyle. I believe that the individual heroes are an essential component of what makes the game fun.



Connor Reid got his love of board games from his father — a lifelong fan of tabletop gaming. After graduating from college with a design qualification, he began working with him on gaming and web design projects. His crowdfunding campaign for 5-Minute Dungeon raised almost £250,000. He lives in London, Ontario Canada. BGB: What do you think is the appeal of games that pit players against a tough time limit? Are there any other tabletop games you think do it particularly well? And if so, what do they do that makes them work? Connor Reid: I think the main advantage of a timed game is that it transforms a simple task into a difficult one. It may be easy to stack some cups into a pyramid, but it’s incredibly challenging to do it fast. This forces players to think in a different way than a typical tabletop game, to not worry about the consequences of every single action, but to be decisive. I think there are a lot of great timed games out there, too many to list them all, but FUSE, Magic Maze, and Spaceteam all come to mind as inventive games that use time pressure to create memorable experiences.



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5-Minute Dungeon Designer: Connor Reid Artist: Alex Diochon Category: Family, Casual and Party Players: 2 - 4



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HERE’S a neglected sub-genre of games which use time limits to throw players into a roiling pressure cooker, challenging them to complete arduous tasks against a ticking clock. Timed games like Space Alert and XCOM: The Board Game create tension by giving players multiple crises to deal with simultaneously, and they’re often intimidatingly complex as a result. But fantasy-themed card game 5-Minute Dungeon manages to sit you and your friends on a red hot stove using just a few paltry paragraphs of rules. On each turn you’ll reveal the top card of a dungeon deck containing an assortment of deadly traps and ferocious monsters. Most feature sequences of symbols, an array of swords, shields, scrolls and arrows, and you and your teammates will attempt to play matching icons from cards in your hands to overcome a rolling succession of threats. The catch is that everyone plays simultaneously, and you’ll have just five minutes to run through the deck before confronting a final boss card. The challenge is to coordinate your actions, but the pressure to deal with each card as quickly as possible means that within seconds, things degenerate into a screaming, chaotic mess. To make things even tougher, you’ll aim to string together five successful runs, adding extra cards and a tougher boss to the deck with each attempt. On the first round, it’s just about doable, but by level three there’s barely time to communicate. Everyone slaps down or discards cards at breakneck speed, leading to wasted plays. That’s bad news, because as well as running out of time, you can lose the game by exhausting



Time: 5 - 30 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): TBC MSRP (US): $19.99 your pool of cards. The number of simple but critical choices the game throws at you is exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure. It makes for a delicious soup of high-pressure decisions, and the fact that each player plays as a different character, complete with special powers and their own specific deck, adds variety and tactical possibilities to the mix. Wizards, for example, can discard cards to pause the timer. Sorceresses can bypass obstacles thrown up by the dungeon deck. Both use the blue set of player cards, which contains monster-slaying fireballs and magic bombs. By using your cards and character abilities judiciously, it’s possible to get through the toughest runs by the skin of your teeth, but it takes coordination, practice and a Zen-like understanding of how your fellow adventures are likely to play. Even when it all comes together, unlucky draws can still derail your run. And while the instructions are simple and clear, the rules can feel clunky in practice; you might need some minor house rules to make things run completely smoothly. But 5-Minute Dungeon is fast, simple and often hilarious. In addition to the frantic pace of the game itself, many of its cards are laughout-loud funny, ranging from a ridiculously cute slime monster to a Rosetta Stone golem. To add to the mischief there’s a free timer app to download which narrates your adventures with a choice of silly voice actors. It deserves praise for actually taking only five minutes to blast through a round, but it deserves a lot more for packing so much fun into its tiny frame.



Pictured above: 5-Minute Dungeon is a fast and frantic game of fantasy adventure. Publisher: KOSMOS / Spin Master Ltd.



The game gets progressively harder with each run. Was it tough to make sure it was challenging, but not impossible? How did you go about getting the difficulty curve just right? This may be an unsatisfying answer, but we really just played the crap out of the game until it felt right. Since each round is only five minutes long, we were able to playtest a lot of rounds in an afternoon. It became the go-to game to play at lunchtime for several months. Don’t get me wrong, I do also have a giant spreadsheet detailing each hero’s strengths, weaknesses and card effects. But



Do you have any tips to help players get through the dungeon? If you find yourself constantly running out of time, make sure someone is playing the wizard, and that they use their ability a lot. That way your team can pause the timer and work out a plan when you’re stuck. Make sure you have a good mix of hero abilities. If you have two heroes with the same ability it can hurt your chances of making it through the dungeon. And call out what symbols you still need, not the ones you play. Saying “I’ve got a sword!” is good, but saying “We need a shield!” is better, as it helps the rest of the players know what action they need to take in order to help the team. 5-Minute Dungeon compresses a fantasy adventure into a lightning-fast and adrenaline-fuelled package.



game balance for 5-Minute Dungeon was mostly built around each hero “feeling” right. The difficulty curve of the game was built on hundreds of playtests and tons of small, but meaningful, tweaks. What do you think the various character classes add to the game? Were you trying to create particular experiences based on the types of characters in the group? I’m always a fan of character driven games, and I like to feel like I’m special in a game – that the things I can do are unique



Are you working on any projects at the moment that you’d like to talk about? Everything I’m working on right now is too early to talk about, but I’m pretty excited about the project we just finished: 5-Minute Marvel. It’s a Marvel comics edition of 5-Minute Dungeon with some unique mechanics, twice as many characters, five times the events, and more bosses than 5-Minute Dungeon! I’ve been a big Marvel fan my whole life, so this was an amazing project to get to work on. I got to work with some of my favourite Marvel heroes and villains, and with Alex Diochon’s artwork the game really came to life. If ever there was a dream project for me, it was this game.



Each round of the game takes just five minutes, but you’ll play through multiple dungeons, using your collection of special powers to defeat progressively tougher monsters and more powerful bosses.



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Hoby Chou on My Little Scythe BGB: You obviously enjoyed the original Scythe quite a bit. What about it appealed to you so strongly? Hoby Chou: Scythe had this really compelling storyline and accompanying artwork that immediately drew me in. Once I had a chance to get to know the game itself, I was instantly delighted by all the interesting trade-off decisions, the elegance of its core mechanics, and an environment that brings the threat of combat to the forefront rather than the combat itself.



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Most people probably wouldn’t think of playing a complex strategy game with their kids. What made you want to create a version for families? My daughter Vienna and I have enjoyed playing board games together since she was three years old. By age five she was already able to appreciate full “adult” games like Scythe. We wanted more of our own friends and family to enjoy the game with us, but had some challenges teaching the rules, so we decided to do something about it by starting a little father-daughter project.



My Little Scythe Designers: Hoby Chou & Vienna Chou Artist: Noah Adelman, Katie Khau Category: Family, Casual and Party Players: 1 - 6



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ESIGNER Jamey Stegmaier’s alternate history game Scythe was one of the surprise hits of 2016. Set in a 1920s Europe where giant mechanical war-walkers stamped across the countryside, it cleverly combined sets of interlocking systems and goals, creating an array of possible winning strategies. It struck a chord with Canadian gamer Hoby Chou, who wanted to share it with his young daughter, but found it was too complex. Undeterred, he took on the daunting task of streamlining the game to make it accessible for young children. The result was My Little Scythe. Originally an unofficial fan project, it’s now been embraced by the game’s publisher, getting a full-fledged release of its own. This family-focussed reworking transports players to a cutesified version of Scythe’s setting. On your turn you’ll take one of three actions: move your pieces on the board, randomly place resources on the map, or use some of them to gain useful boosts like magic spells. Along the way you’ll earn trophies by completing various tasks like delivering gems to the castle in the centre of the board, or accumulating collections of different power-ups. Up to this point, it all seems a little bloodless, which is appropriate enough for a game tilted at children. But underneath its friendly facade, there’s a more competitive edge. You’ll also be able to engage your opponents in combat, and rather than unleashing barrages of cannon fire, you’ll go head-to-head in cartoon-style custard pie fights. Ironically, this adorable family game, like its parent, borrows its



Time: 45 - 60 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £47.99 MSRP (US): $49.99 combat rules from 1979’s Dune, one of the most brutal conquest games ever designed. Each player secretly chooses the number of pies they want to throw and adds a spell card to boost their total. The highest number wins, and the loser sacrifices all of their thrown pies as well as their collected resources. In Dune, this winner-takes-all approach is tense almost beyond endurance. Here, in a 45-minute romp, it’s a rush of thrills to punctuate the light strategic decisions that make up the bulk of play. It all comes together in a package which is accessible, but still rewards clever choices. You won’t be able to repeat the same action twice in a row, so you’ll have to plan ahead for future turns. But it’s also important to be able to tweak your strategy on the fly, react to sudden changes in circumstances and grab any scoring opportunities that pop up. All of this is fine, but it can feel plodding without some pie fights to spice things up. At the other end of the antagonism scale, you can also gift resources to other players to gain friendship points – another potential means of earning a trophy. Either way, the game works best with enough players to ensure plenty of interaction. The listed age of eight-and-up is also a little ambitious given the breadth of some of the decisions, and younger players might need a bit of parental coaching. But with four or more players, My Little Scythe shines as a flexible, light version of its big sibling, and it’s amazing how little it loses for all the rules baggage it cuts away.



Pictured above: My Little Scythe puts a family-friendly spin on the hit strategy release. Publisher: Stonemaier Games



How did the original Scythe publisher Stonemaier Games come to publish your version of the game? I actually had never contacted Stonemaier Games about publishing this game. I had a lot of respect for Jamey, who not only gave me his blessing for this fan creation, but also encouraged me to share it as a printand-play. He asked if I’d consider sending him a copy, and eventually he emailed me to tell me that he and his partner Alan had played the prototype and loved it. They offered me a publishing contract shortly afterwards. I can’t fully articulate how I felt without revealing that just days prior to being offered the contract, I had lost my father to pancreatic cancer. This contract was more than just an achievement – it was a sign that things were going to be alright. When I read Jamey’s email, I nearly broke down in tears.



This family-friendly adaptation swaps gigantic battle mechs for cute cartoon animals.



The original Scythe’s brutal combat has been replaced by cartoon custard pie fights.



Even though My Little Scythe is a simplified take on the game, it still has a really interesting strategy element. Do you think kids are more capable of understanding these aspects of games than adults give them credit for? Indeed! I believe that if you treat someone like they are competent, then they will be competent. This applies to kids. It also helps if they are passionate about something in the game whether it be theme or challenge. When kids approach things with passion, they can pull off unbelievable things. Obviously my daughter also taught me that even at an early age, kids have the desire and capacity to play more complex games with adults. When parent gamers thank us for creating My Little Scythe, I think they are also thanking us for recognising this potential in their kids. As a parent gamer, there’s no better feeling than what you feel when your kid unexpectedly outplays you for the first time. Vienna is credited as a co-designer. What role did she play in creating My Little Scythe?



The game comes with characterful plastic miniatures representing players’ troops.



In the beginning, she was clearly my main inspiration. When you do something you love, and for someone you love, it pushes you to try fresh things that you’d normally never consider. Once we worked together to re-engineer certain aspects of the original game, Vienna knew exactly how to tie its design into its new theme. For example, Scythe’s “produce” action is replaced by a brand new resource discovery mechanic called “seek”. What started out as a great idea from Vienna has evolved into one of Jamey Stegmaier’s favourite mechanics in the final game.



Hoby Chou is a father of two from Vancouver, Canada who aims to bridge the gap between generations of gamers and promote the social, educational and cognitive benefits of board games for all ages. A lifelong game fan, he also enjoys long-distance running, hiking, camping and exploring nature. Vienna Chou enjoys gaming, reading, writing, sports and trying anything fun. Her interests include history, fairy tales and adventure books, and she enjoys writing stories and creating customised games. Her favourite activities include gymnastics, football, figure skating and swimming.



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Scott Rogers on Pantone BGB: The Pantone system seems like an unusual inspiration for a game. Where did the idea first come from? Scott Rogers: The original title of the game was Who’s Hue?, and it was inspired my game nights where I played a lot of Pictionary with my friends and family. While I am a pretty good artist, I noticed that several of them struggled with and were even embarrassed to draw the pictures during the game. I wanted to design a creative game but take the embarrassment out of the gameplay – hence the cards. The second inspiration was video games. I started my career as an artist creating 16-bit games. While the work often didn’t feel very creative, it got me used to “thinking in pixels” and creating abbreviated versions of characters. I showed the game to Cory Jones, the president of [publisher] Cryptozoic, and he got a look in his eye and announced: “I know the perfect licence for this game!”



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Pantone Designer: Scott Rogers Category: Family, Casual and Party Players: 2 - 20 Time: 10 - 20 minutes



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OARD games have an amazing ability to stimulate players’ imaginations, using a combination of evocative art, carefully crafted components and expertly honed mechanisms to create all sorts of moods, atmospheres and experiences. Looking at party game Pantone, though, it’s not immediately clear how it proposes to create anything. Open its box and you’ll find nothing but a collection of plain coloured cards. If your initial reaction is to wonder whether there’s something missing, it’s understandable. But dig just a little deeper and you’ll find that its simple setup inspires some genuine creativity. It’s named after the international system used to identify colours for things like painting, printing and filmmaking. While that might seem an odd source of inspiration, Pantone puts colour right at its heart. Essentially, it’s a charades-like game of silent communication. On your turn you choose an objective card from a randomly shuffled deck, each bearing the name of a different personality or fictional character. You then try to get the rest of the group to guess that person’s identity. But you have to communicate using nothing but coloured rectangular cards. You’ll have one minute to lay them on the table, forming a crude image of whoever you’re trying to represent. If it’s Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, for instance, you might arrange grey cards to form flowing robes, a pink one to suggest his face, and lay a white one on top as his long, wispy beard. It sounds simple enough, but you’re constrained by the uniform



Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £28.99 MSRP (US): $30.00 shape of the cards, and the resulting pictures end up looking like some bizarre cross between cubist paintings and 8-bit video game graphics. Do your job well and it’ll be clear enough for one of your fellow players to correctly guess the name on your goal card. If not, you’ll read out a list of clues to nudge them in the right direction. For “Shrek,” for example, your clues would be movies, swamp, donkey and ogre. If another player manages to shout out the answer, both you and they will score points. But your reward decreases with each clue you read, so artistic skills remain the most important element. It’s surprisingly taxing, and there’s some real satisfaction in working around the physical restrictions of the cards, angling and orienting them to suggest different shapes, or laying them one on top of another to create clever collage effects. But fun as it is, the game does come with a couple of rough edges. For one thing, it’s a pity that you’ll only ever work with people and characters. It’d be fun to try to build the Eiffel Tower, or the Statue of Liberty, or the Death Star. And many of the cards are quite US-centric, if you aren’t familiar with the latest Stateside TV programmes you may find yourself at a disadvantage. Finally, the game doesn’t come with a timer, you’ll have to set one on your phone. But Pantone brings a brilliant artistic spin to party gaming. Its palette of different shades do for pictures what Word Slam does for words, and while both games share a similar central premise, they exercise very different parts of your brain: one linguistic, one visual.



Pictured above: Pantone comes with a collection of plain coloured cards, but it’s a brilliant creative challenge. Publisher: Cryptozoic Entertainment



Have you seen players do any unexpected or especially creative things while trying to get their messages across? I see unexpected creations from players all the time. However, there have been two examples that have really stood out. The first was when a player spelt “Papa Smurf” out of all of the cards in the box. While the rules do not explicitly state that you can’t do that, it did feel a bit cheaty. The second was when a player took a black colour card and placed it in the centre of his hand. The character, of course, was Captain Jack Sparrow – who is cursed with the “black spot” on his hand in Pirates of the Caribbean. Why did you decide to specifically feature people and characters in the



Players’ creations resemble sprites from classic 8-bit video games.



Scott Rogers has worked on video games including Pac-Man World, God of War and Darksiders. As well as Pantone, he is the designer of the pulp science fiction board game Rayguns & Rocketships. A former Disney Imagineer, he now teaches video game and tabletop design at the University of Southern California and at the New York Film Academy. He lives with his wife and two children near Los Angeles.



game, rather than including other things like objects, buildings or places?



picture something completely different! And because there have been different versions of the characters over the years, there is a greater chance that their mental picture will be different from player to player. Many party games revolve around the idea of restricted communication, and Pantone does it in a very visually oriented way. Why do you think these kinds of sociable games are so perennially popular? Humans, by their nature, like to communicate, and comedy often arises when communication is limited or restricted in some way. That’s why so many sitcoms and comedy movies are about miscommunication. As long as a player can laugh at themselves, I think they will enjoy playing these types of games.



Pantone gives players mere seconds to construct recognisable images of characters like Bart Simpson.



What I like about characters is that we all carry these images of them in our heads. For example, if I say “Batman,” do you mentally picture the blue, grey and yellow costume from the Super Friends era, or the black and yellow costume from the Michael Keaton movies? You might even



Are there any artistic or creative games you admire by other designers? If so, what do you like about them? Did any of them inspire your work on Pantone? I always like games that allow me to draw. However, other than the surrealist game Exquisite Corpse, Pictionary and Telestrations, I don’t know about too many other drawing games. Perhaps it’s time to invent a new one!



The game is full of characters from film, television, books and comics. You might even encounter H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.



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Spartaco Albertarelli on TAGS BGB: At its core, TAGS is quite similar to the traditional game of Categories. What made you think it would be an interesting basis for a board game? Spartaco Albertarelli: Like most classic party games, TAGS is based on a simple and popular concept. The reason people like this kind of game is exactly because they find them “traditional” but with a twist, and in the case of TAGS the twist is the very short time limit. Playing as a first player gives you the advantage of having all the intersections on the board free, but during your turn the other players all have time to prepare for their own turns, thinking about the right answers and the best combinations of letters and categories. It’s simple, but it’s a real frenzy.



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The scoring system adds a new tactical layer to the game, and gives players even more to think about in a very short space of time. How do you think it affects the experience? I think it’s interesting to see how players play the game. Basically you can try to get as many marbles as you can, or try to focus your attention only on the most valuable ones. But the random factor is so strong that you never know which strategy is really the best until you start the turn. Every time you play it can be different.



TAGS Designer: Spartaco Albertarelli Artists: Annika Brüning, Marina Fahrenbach Category: Family, Casual and Party Players: 2 - 12



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HE very best party games have a couple of things in common: they’re simple and intuitive; they’re fast-playing; they offer an engaging brainy challenge. And perhaps most importantly, they’re funny. Games like Codenames, Spyfall and even mass-market releases like Pictionary are prime examples of this silly and sociable blend, and are some of the most popular titles in the hobby. Now a similarly smart and simple newcomer aims to give them a run for their money. TAGS is loosely based on a game you might have played as a child, where you pick a category, like countries or cities, and have to name an example of it for each letter of the alphabet. You might say: “Albania, Brazil, China…”, or: “Aberdeen, Barcelona, Caracas…”. It couldn’t be much more straightforward, and at first it’s hard to understand how it could form the basis for a full-featured game. But TAGS builds on this brilliantly simple premise to create a compelling mix of high pressure, quick thinking and linguistic dexterity. Its action takes place around a grid-like board with randomly drawn category cards along one edge, and a series of letters along another. At every point where they intersect, you place a marble. On your turn you’ll try to name examples of each topic for every letter on the board, picking up the corresponding marble for each correct answer. The tough bit? You’ll have to do it in just 15 seconds. It means you’ll frantically scour your brain for answers: a movie starting with P? An author starting with R? A sports team starting with



Physically, the game looks really impressive with the big chunky



Playing time: 20 - 30 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £27.99 MSRP (US): $29.95 N? With time ticking down, dictated by a merciless sand timer, you’ll need to think on your feet and rattle out answers at machine-gun pace. It’s only once you’ve played a few rounds, though, that you start to understand the cleverest bits of TAGS’ design. While some of the game’s category cards cover general-knowledge subjects like geography, music and history, others are far more subjective. You might find yourself trying to think of “dreams and aspirations”, “positive personality traits” or “things people are afraid of.” What’s really striking is how difficult it can be to jump from hardand-fast categories to more abstract ones. It takes real mental agility, and the pressure of the ticking clock only makes things more difficult. It means that you can have a blazingly successful turn, effortlessly spitting out answers and making yourself feel like an unparalleled brainbox, only to find yourself stumped and stuttering moments later as your mind goes blank. The result is that it’s impossible to take yourself too seriously, and it fosters a perfect party game atmosphere. There are a couple of points that might lessen the game’s appeal for some groups. While the ambiguity of some of the game’s topics is a key part of its challenge, it does open up opportunities to pick holes in one another’s answers. And the game comes with some more adult-oriented cards that see players looking for things like swear words and torture methods, which we’d recommend removing before playing with young or sensitive players. But this is a clever, frenetic game with bags of appeal, even for non-gaming friends and family.



Pictured above: TAGS takes a traditional word game and adds a new layer of challenge. Publisher: HeidelBÄR Games



TAGS combines a simple word game core with a punishingly quick time limit and impressive physical production. It’s packed with pressure, but fantastically fun.



Spartaco Albertarelli comes from Milan, Italy and has been working as a game designer and publisher since the mid 1990s. He has created or published more than 150 games, and has served as the Italian product manager for games including Monopoly, Risk and Dungeons & Dragons. His most popular game, Kaleidos, was released in 1994 and was nominated for the Spiel des Jahres in 1995, narrowly losing out to the influential Settlers of Catan. His next project is the motorsports game VektoRace, co-designed with Davide Ghelfi.



marbles and plastic grid. Why did you want to go with this kind of production rather than just using a board and tokens? I initially designed the game to be played with a board and tokens simply because I thought that marbles would be too expensive to be a component of a party game like this. But a good production manager knows how to reduce the supplying costs, and this makes marbles the perfect tool to get an element of randomness, a luxury look and a reasonable price. Most of the credit belongs to the publisher, HeidelBÄR. Working with such a good team is always a pleasure and an opportunity to learn something, even for a veteran game designer like me. In recent years there seem to have been a lot of brainy word-based games getting a great reception from players. Why do you think these kinds of games are so popular?



The board game market has waves of interest like in every other market. What’s on top of the heap today can become worthless in a few years, and I’ve seen many changes in the years I’ve been working in the industry. The original game which became TAGS was designed in 1997. Good game concepts never really die.



random factor ‘isTheso strong that you never know which strategy is really the best until you start the turn. Every time you play it can be different.



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The Mind Designer: Wolfgang Warsch Artist: Oliver Freudenreich Category: Family, Casual and Party Players: 2 - 4



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HEN you first encounter The Mind, it’s tempting to dismiss it as a bit of a gimmick. It comes in a tiny, unassuming box, consists mainly of simple numbered cards, and comes with almost no artwork. But despite its modest appearance, this quick cooperative game has become an unexpected hit, even gaining a nomination for the 2018 Spiel des Jahres award – generally considered the most important accolade in board gaming. It seems unlikely, but inside this plain-looking package there’s a surprisingly compelling experience waiting to be discovered. The game plays over a series of rounds. Each sees you and your friends dealt random hands of cards, all numbered somewhere between one and 100. You’ll aim to play them face-up on the table in ascending order. The tricky part? You’ll need to do it without speaking, signalling or otherwise communicating with your partners. It sounds like a mindless guessing game, but there are a few other elements laid over its dirt-simple frame, and they combine to create an atmosphere of excruciating tension that’s hard to appreciate until you’ve actually tried it for yourself. First, there’s the fact that you’ll play the game over a series of levels. On the first round, each player in your group receives just a single card in their hand. Most of the time, at this stage, it’s easy enough to lay them down in the right order. On the next attempt, you’ll each receive two cards, then three, then four, and onwards until you’ve either



Rhino Hero Super Battle Time: 20 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £9.99 MSRP (US): $10.99 defeated the game’s challenge or – more probably – played cards in the wrong order and lost all of your lives. Then there’s the fact that every card that hits the table gives you just a little more information to base your decisions on. You’ll look at the cards in your hand and the ones already played by your teammates, doing some quick on-the-fly calculations to work out whether you should play next. You can never be certain, but you can at least make an educated guess. What none of this does justice to, though, is the sensation of sheer pressure that builds around the table as you play. There are moments where you’ll be absolutely certain that you should play a card, only for the decision to blow up in your face. There are times when you’ll agonise over your choices, and while you hesitate, there’s every chance that another player will throw down an incorrect card to punish your indecisiveness. Being too cautious or too hasty can be equally damaging, and for a game that’s ostensibly meant to be played in silence, it generates a lot of relieved sighs, frustrated groans and elated cheers. If you’re looking for deep strategy or complex player interaction, you’re not going to find it here. But The Mind creates almost unbearable tension, and when you find yourself playing in perfect sync with your teammates, it feels almost as though you’ve connected on some subliminal psychic level. It’s an impressive achievement, built on the simplest set of rules you could imagine.



Pictured above: In The Mind, players attempt to play cards in numerical order. But it’s far trickier than it sounds. Publisher: Nürnberger Spielkarten Verlag



Designers: Scott Frisco, Stephen Strumpf Category: Family, Casual and Party Players: 2 - 4 Time: 10 - 20 minutes



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ITH some games, winning is less of a concern than just having fun. The sheer, simple joy of playing around with a box full of bits takes precedence over trifling things like strategy and tactics. Rhino Hero Super Battle is a prime example. A sequel to the 2011 stacking game Rhino Hero, it challenges players to build a three-dimensional skyscraper, taking turns to add new walls and floors to the constantly growing building. Things get increasingly precarious as the tower becomes taller and wobblier, and to make things more difficult, you’ll also have to place wooden superheroes on newly constructed floors as you play. Whoever manages to place their hero highest before the pile falls, wins. It’s a straightforward premise, but the game’s publisher, HABA, is known for producing kid-friendly releases with enough substance to keep grown-ups interested as well, and the game brings some intriguing twists to its card-stacking formula. On your turn you’ll choose from a hand of floor cards to add to the building, each of which requires you to add a different combination of cardboard walls to the developing stack. Some are short, others are tall, and it provides opportunities to get creative with your placement. Floor tiles that look completely unbalanceable can slot into some surprisingly stable positions – but only if you’re smart enough to spot them. Most of the time, though, it’s easy enough to place pieces on top of



Ages: 5+ RRP (UK): £20.99 MSRP (US): $29.99 one another, and the secret of the game’s appeal isn’t in its dexterity challenge, or the excitement of an imminent collapse or even – despite its brilliance – in the character of Batguin: an adorable wooden penguin dressed up as Batman. Instead, what makes Super Battle super is what you build: an evolving construction of card rafters and paper girders, lording over your table like a miniature tower block. It’s watching the glee on the face of your youngest child as they climb on to your dinner table to add another floor, because the stack has grown physically taller than they are. The fact that the tower gets so tall but stays comparatively steady makes the game brilliantly suited for families. It doesn’t require the same kind of painstaking balancing as the original Rhino Hero, which felt far more rickety and could quite quickly become tricky for younger kids. It’s also far less antagonistic than its predecessor, which revolved largely around making it difficult for your opponents to add new floors. This time around there are fewer restrictions on where and how you can build, and while your tower’s eventual collapse is inevitable, everyone has a chance of winning until the very end. It means you’ll be able to enjoy the dramatic toppling of this literal house of cards without tears or temper tantrums from players of any age, and it makes Rhino Hero Super Battle not only better than Jenga, but better than pretty much every other family stacking game.



Pictured above: Rhino Hero Super Battle’s stack of walls and floors grows taller and more precarious as you play. Publisher: HABA



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Patchwork Express Designer: Uwe Rosenberg Artist: Klemenz Franz Category: Family, Casual and Party Players: 2



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ERMAN designer Uwe Rosenberg has a well-deserved reputation for rich, deep and thoughtful strategy games. His acclaimed 2007 release Agricola handed players a few meagre resources and challenged them to build thriving farmsteads. His follow-up Le Havre was a tough economic game about the development of a French port city. And in 2016 he released A Feast For Odin, which cast players as the heads of Viking clans trading and pillaging their way to wealth and glory. Over the years he’s become known as a designer unafraid of taxing complexity. But in 2014 he took a side-step by unveiling Patchwork, a simple two-player game about competitive quilt-sewing. Like a kind of tabletop Tetris, it handed competitors square-grid boards and a selection of differently shaped tiles to fill them. Players jostled to grab the most useful pieces, each attempting to cover as much of their board as possible without leaving any gaps. It was an elegant puzzle, and it met with a positive reception from fans. Now Rosenberg has returned with a new spin on the concept – a smaller, faster version that streamlines and simplifies the original game even further – and it turns what was already a fantastically accessible game into an ideal choice for parents to play with their kids. The most noticeable difference between Patchwork Express and the full version is the size of its boards. Where the original used nineby-nine square grids, Express shrinks them to seven-by-seven. You’ll attempt to cover as much of your board as possible with tiles repre-



Playing time: 10 minutes Ages: 6+ RRP (UK): £17.99 MSRP (US): $24.99 senting patches of fabric. The smaller space results in a tighter, faster game that accommodates younger children’s shorter attention spans. Before you play you’ll randomly arrange the available quilt tiles in a circle in the centre of the table, placing a wooden pawn somewhere along their path. On your turn you’ll take one of the three tiles in front of the pawn and add it to your board, moving the pawn to take its place. You’ll need to consider not just the tiles that best fit on your grid, but the ones you’re leaving for your opponent. Adding certain patches to your quilt also earns you buttons – the game’s currency that allows you to buy bigger and more useful tiles. You will need to think about how to acquire them, and how best to spend them. Then there’s the turn structure, which simulates the difficulty of sewing more complicated patches. By taking less useful tiles, you’ll sometimes be able to take multiple back-to-back turns, and linking a series of subtle plays together can be powerfully effective. For a game pitched at ages six and up, it’s actually quite complex. But Patchwork Express fundamentally respects kids’ intelligence. It’s not afraid of asking young players to think a turn or two ahead, or to choose from a range of options with no obvious best course of action. If you’re not looking for a game to play with children the original is a better option. Some real plastic buttons would also have been a nice aesthetic touch, rather than cardboard tokens. But if you want to move your kids away from Snakes & Ladders and towards something that takes a little more thought, this is a great way to do it.



Pictured above: Patchwork Express is a clever tile-laying game in which players compete to sew beautiful quilts. Publisher: Lookout Games



The Board Game Book    Chapter 3



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Light Strategy Games



London’s often-silly, always-social board game night for grown-ups www.boardgameclub.net @BoardGameClubUK on Twitter BoardGameClubLondon on Facebook



Alan R. Moon on Ticket To Ride: New York



You’ll need to find the quickest ways to get between locations scattered across the board. Competition for routes quickly gets intense as opponents block each others’ paths.



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Your target routes remain a close secret until the end of the game, and you’ll never know which ones your opponents are going after.



The latest game in the long-running series crams its gameplay into a compact package.



Ticket to Ride: New York Designer: Alan R. Moon Artists: Cyrille Daujean, Julien Delval Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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AILWAY route-building game Ticket to Ride has sold millions of copies since its release in 2004, and its combination of simple rules and clever tactical gameplay have made it one of the world’s most popular tabletop titles. Along the way it’s spawned an ever-growing collection of new editions, taking players on steam-powered adventures across the globe. Ticket to Ride: New York is the latest addition to the lineup, and while every game in the series has come with new maps to explore and rules to discover, it makes some surprising changes to the original’s hit formula. The most obvious is that it’s the first Ticket to Ride game to shift its attention entirely away from trains. Rather than carriages and locomotives, it comes with a stash of plastic pieces in the shape of iconic New York taxis. In other respects, though, there’s a lot about TTR: New York that experienced players will find familiar. The game unfolds across a map of Manhattan, and your mission is to travel around the city visiting famous locations like Wall Street, Central Park and Times Square, racking up points by connecting pairs of secretly assigned destinations. You’ll use sets of coloured cards to claim routes on the board, and on every turn you’ll choose between adding new cards to your hand, or playing them to seize critical connections before your opponents have a chance to. But what’s really striking is just how effectively this new edition streamlines and condenses everything players have come to expect



Playing time: 15 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £19.99 MSRP (US): $19.99 from the series. Its board is tiny, and the routes between its locations are at most three or four spaces long. It hands players just 15 taxis to mark their path through the city, making for play sessions that end much more quickly than in any previous Ticket to Ride title. It takes what was already a fairly fast-playing game and compresses it into something you can easily bash through in a quarter of an hour - or less once you’ve familiarised yourself with the city’s geography. The other effect of this distilled approach is that New York is the most savagely competitive Ticket to Ride game to date. In previous entries in the series, a rival snatching a critical route from under your nose meant you’d need to find alternative ways to make your connections. Here there’s almost no opportunity to rescue a plan that’s come off the rails. You’ll need to aggressively carve a path across the city, elbowing opponents out of the way as you go. This isn’t just a smaller, faster Ticket to Ride, it’s a meaner, more ruthless one where every turn feels consequential. Whether you see that as a positive development is likely to depend on your own personality, and on the people you play with. Ticket to Ride is an established family favourite, and this unforgiving new spin has the potential to spark some discord as players wreck one another’s hopes of victory. But if you’re a fan of the original game who’s ready to move on to something with more of an antagonistic streak, this is it. It’s Ticket to Ride with an added jolt of adrenaline – slick, quick and totally merciless.



Pictured above: Ticket to Ride: New York condenses the hit route-building game into a smaller, faster package. Publisher: Days of Wonder



BGB: This version of Ticket to Ride is very fast-playing. Why did you want to create a smaller, quicker version of the game? Alan R. Moon: The intent was for it to be a quick intro to the Ticket to Ride system. Sort of a “gateway to the gateway.” I also wanted it to be a travel version of the game, a “filler” that people could play along with bigger, longer ones on their game night, or something people could play on their lunch break. It also introduces some different pieces to the system, which opens up so many other opportunities. How do you think the smaller board and shorter routes affect the experience? What I really enjoy about New York is that I can play a game with two players in less than 10 minutes. After that first game, the loser can then declare it’s the best of three. Heck, I can play six games in the same time it would take to play the base game. There are so many Ticket to Ride standalone games and expansions. What makes it so adaptable?



Picture: Douglas Morse and www.tabletopmovie. com



People have asked me if I knew the base game could or would be so expandable. The honest answer is no. I certainly knew it would be easy to make alternate maps, but it was only when I got into making the expansions, that I realised the system allowed so many new rules to be added. These rules didn’t make the game more complicated most of the time, they just created a new experience with the familiar components and mechanics of Ticket to Ride. Ticket to Ride is an introduction to gaming for many people, but it’s also possible to play pretty seriously. Why do you think the series appeals to both newcomers and experienced players? About a year after Ticket to Ride was released, I received two emails within 24 hours. One was from a nun who said everyone in her convent was hooked on playing Ticket to Ride. The other one was from a man who said that he had taken the game to his grandmother’s house and had played with his grandmother and his kids. The next day, his grandmother called him



Alan R. Moon was born in Southampton, England and moved with his family at an early age, first to Canada and then to the USA. He served as a radio operator in the United States Air Force before working for wargames publisher Avalon Hill. His published games include the bestselling Ticket to Ride series, Airlines, Diamant (with Bruno Faidutti) and Union Pacific. He lives in Syracuse, New York with his wife, Janet, and enjoys singing, watching Nascar racing and building model railways.



and told him that the next time he came to visit, he should bring “that train game.” Ticket to Ride has won quite a few awards and it’s sold tons of copies, but every time I think of those emails, I smile. As a designer, my goal was and is to design games that have the least amount of rules possible. Back when I worked on wargames, you could put anything into those games and the people who loved playing them wanted more, not less. On the other hand, designing family games is all about the elegance of simplicity. It’s great that really competitive players enjoy Ticket to Ride too, but this was a surprise to me. What about the theme of railways and travel appeals to you so strongly as a designer? I’ve just always loved railroads and trains. For people like me, the age of steam is the most interesting travel period. Most boys who have seen steam engines and the cars they pulled, at one time or another, thought they wanted to be an engineer. Every time I ride Amtrak, I’m still fascinated by the whole mode of transportation.



I can play six ‘games in the same time it would take to play the base game.



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Rob Daviau on Downforce



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Tactics revolve around outmanoeuvring your rivals, forcing them into choke points and bottlenecks.



Downforce Designers: Wolfgang Kramer, Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson Artists: Tavis Coburn, Michael Crampton Category: Light Strategy



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OWNFORCE is a racing game with a storied history. First published in 1974 under the title of Tempo, it’s been re-released over the decades as Formel 1, Top Race and Daytona 500, putting players behind the wheel of supercharged race cars in high-stakes battles of speed and cunning. Its latest reincarnation comes courtesy of design studio Restoration Games, which specialises in revamping classic titles for modern audiences, and the result is a fast-paced, adrenaline-fuelled contest that requires smarts, aggression and nerves of steel. You’ll start the game with a handful of cards, which you’ll use on your turn to move cars along the winding track. But most cards in the game move multiple vehicles when you play them – opponents’ as well as your own. To ensure you come out ahead, you’ll need to think carefully about each move you make, edging your way to the front of the pack and using choke points and bottlenecks to ensnare your rivals in traffic jams and ensure they can’t overtake you. When you pull it off, it feels magnificent. But it’s not so much fun for drivers caught on the other side of the equation, left scrambling to catch up after being left in the dust. Fortunately, though, while being first to the finish line is important, it’s not the only way to win. As well as tearing down the straights and navigating hairpin bends, you’ll be able to secretly bet on the eventual outcome of the race. It’s the kind of thing that would probably result in a police investigation in real-life motorsport, but here it adds a layer of subtlety to pro-



Players: 2 - 6 Time: 20 - 40 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £34.99   MSRP (US): $39.99 ceedings. If you’re confident in your own driver’s chances, you can bet heavily on yourself. But it means putting all of your eggs in one basket, and if you don’t come in first then you’ll lose any chance of victory. If you’re less optimistic, you can bet on an opponent instead, and it means that you suddenly have an incentive to help them, using your turns to benefit their car as well as your own. Deciding how to bet means carefully analysing the cards in your hand, the shifting state of the race and the plays your rivals make. It’s often a difficult choice, and with multiple opportunities to gamble over the course of the contest, it’s one you’ll need to make repeatedly. It adds a dash of tactical depth, and so does the selection of special power cards that grant you and your opponents useful abilities during the race – extra speed, greater control, and more flexibility in how you use your cards. You’ll auction these off before the race begins, and it’s the only part of the game that feels less than completely intuitive. While Downforce is a fantastic option for new gamers, they might prefer to play the simplified version that sees power cards dealt out at random. It’s not enough to make the game inaccessible, though, and Downforce generates some sensationally tense and competitive moments as opponents edge in and out of first place. Its double-sided board comes with two tracks for added variety, and its plastic cars have a great toylike appeal. It all adds up to a game that’s almost impossible to play without making enthusiastic “vroom-vroom” noises.



Pictured above: In Downforce you and your opponents’ racing cars will battle for first place on one of two twisting tracks. Publisher: Restoration Games



BGB: How did you first encounter the game that eventually came to be released as Downforce? What about it made such a strong impression on you? Rob Daviau: I discovered Daytona 500 around the time I started working at Hasbro in 1998. At the time I was playing all sorts of new games, learning what was out there. Daytona 500 came home with me and I ended up playing it a lot with my kids when they were young. Even when they grew up, we’d take it out once in a while. When Justin Jacobson and I were starting up Restoration Games, we started looking for games that we knew, that had been out of print, and that we had a soft spot for. This game made the list fairly quickly. Which aspects of the game did you change or refine for this new version, and what was the thinking behind those changes? We looked at all the other versions of this game that had come out before. Some had betting, some didn’t. Some had drafting



The game’s publisher, Restoration Games, specialises in updated editions of classic titles.



Rob Daviau is a 20-year veteran of the tabletop industry. In the course of his career he has worked on more than 80 published releases including Hasbro’s Risk 2210AD, Heroscape and Betrayal at House on the Hill. He created the legacy genre of evolving campaign games with Risk Legacy, and collaborates with designer Matt Leacock on the Pandemic Legacy series. Since 2016 he has worked with publisher Restoration Games to develop new editions of classic games for modern audiences including Downforce, Stop, Thief! and Fireball Island. rules. The tracks varied. The rules were slightly different. We played them all and started to put together a best-of version, but something that also felt new. We changed the way betting worked to speed it up, tweaked the card deck a little, came up with a second track, and then we had Downforce.



Physically, the game looks very appealing, not least because of the toy-like plastic cars. How important was the visual and tactile element in the design process? Very important! One thing we noticed about the previous versions is that the art was lacklustre. Either it hadn’t aged well or hadn’t been great the first time. And I hate to say that because I know that every publisher tries to put out a great product. We decided that a large game board, large As well as going head-to-head in high-stakes motor races, players also attempt to win financially by betting on the outcome. plastic cars, and



great art would set this apart from earlier versions What was the thinking behind starting Restoration Games, and how have players been responding to your new versions of older releases? People have been responding well! It was Justin’s idea, he’s the president of Restoration Games, and he asked me to come on board. I thought that the concept of the company was so fresh and different that I immediately wanted to be part of it. There are thousands of games that come out every year and each one is unknown to players. With our games, there is already a section of people who know about our games. Even if it is a small section of people, it’s a group that has been waiting to see it again. Are there particular characteristics or criteria you look for when you’re considering games to re-release? And are there any older games you think stand up particularly well to play by modern audiences? Our rule of thumb is that the game needs to be at least 15 years old, there has to be some reason to bring it back, and there has to be something to change. We tend to find games from the 70s, 80s, and 90s right now but we’re open to older games. And, of course, 15 years ago was 2004 so games are being added to our wish list all the time.



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Reiner Knizia on Blue Lagoon BGB: Where did the idea for Blue Lagoon come from? Reiner Knizia: To be an innovative game designer, I believe it is important to always find new entry points into the game design. Game design is an art, not a science, where you follow pre-defined development steps. As with many of my designs, I do not even remember how Blue Lagoon started. The first hours of a new design idea are usually defined by a rapid flicking between topological board layouts, thematic inspirations and play mechanic aspects until finally something tangible emerges. The rules for placing tokens are extremely simple, but they open up some very rich tactical possibilities. How did you find a balance between those straightforward mechanisms and satisfying gameplay? One of the most fascinating aspects of our industry is that people come from all different areas of life and background, but they all share the love of games. This variety is also reflected in the different game design styles, and the great variety of games we see today. I am a scientist, and my style certainly tends very strongly towards simple rules that lay out a very clear platform in front of the players on which they can engage with deep game play. This is what I am aiming at, and where a successful game design will finally end up after many, often meandering, playtesting sessions.



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Blue Lagoon Designer: Reiner Knizia Artist: Tomasz Larek Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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ETERAN designer Reiner Knizia has a reputation for reducing games to a slick and polished core. It’s a quality that shines in releases like Ra, Lord of the Rings and Tigris & Euphrates, and now he’s done it again with Blue Lagoon, a family-friendly game that conceals a vicious mean streak beneath its bright and sunny facade. It sees players become the leaders of Polynesian tribes exploring a tropical archipelago. You’ll aim to spread your people across a chain of islands, harvesting resources and building settlements in an effort to thrive and prosper. There are no complicated rules for growing your population, trading goods or fighting opponents. Instead, on your turn you’ll simply take a cardboard disc from a collection representing your tribespeople and place it on the board to claim an area of land or sea. Improbable as it sounds, that’s about as mechanically complex as the game gets. There are a handful of restrictions on placing tokens, but the real challenge comes from the different ways you can score points and push your tribe ahead of its rivals. Capturing certain areas of the board gains you resources including coconuts, bamboo and fresh water. You will earn points for collecting matching sets, but also for picking up at least one of each kind. It means you’ll need to carefully read the board, identifying the goods you’re able to grab then racing against your rivals to snap them up. But it also sets players two mutually opposed goals – claiming a va-



Time: 10 - 20 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £29.99 MSRP (US): $29.99 riety of different goods, and building collections of the same type. This idea of objectives that actively work against one another is a recurring motif in the game. You can boost your score by spreading your tribe across as many islands as possible. But at the same time, you earn points for each individual island where you have a majority of inhabitants. So, should you aim to cover as much of the map as you can or bunch your population in a handful of carefully selected areas? Finally, you’ll score bonus points for building an unbroken chain of settlers across the board, and it’s here that the game’s competitive streak really comes to the fore. As your rivals snake their way across the map, you’ll be able to strategically position your tribe members to block their path. Get it just right and you’ll prevent them from reaching points which are vital to their strategy. Pulling it off feels deliciously wicked. Having it done to you is rage-inducing. In this respect, Blue Lagoon feels similar to Ticket to Ride, the bestselling railway route-building game, and it’s a comparison it undoubtedly deserves. While its board starts out as an idyllic island paradise, it isn’t long before things start to feel cramped and crowded. The competition builds to a crescendo as space gets steadily tighter, and you’ll constantly scour the board for opportunities to rack up just a few more points, or to deny them to an opponent. The result is an ideal “gateway” game – the kind that’s perfectly suited to newcomers to the hobby – and in years to come it’s likely to be recognised as a classic.



Pictured above: The deceptively simple Blue Lagoon revolves around Polynesian tribes exploring a chain of tropical islands. Publisher: Blue Orange



The various ways to score feel like they’re simultaneously pulling players towards very different objectives. How did you come up with the scoring system? Life is great, there are so many opportunities and exciting things to do, and there is never enough time to do them all. It’s important to me that my games also create this great feeling of opportunity, and that you have to take decisions because you cannot pursue all the good moves. The scoring system, what the players are finally aiming for, is the most important aspect of creating such a clear but rich gameplay. The route-building aspect feels incredibly competitive. Was it important for you to incorporate such a ruthless element into the game?



59 Building huts solidifies your hold on territories, giving you new starting points for expansion in the game’s second round.



In a cooperative game, I expect the game system to throw lots of almost insurmountable challenges towards the players – see my Lord of the Rings board game – so that party of players have to work together or to perish. In a competitive game, I equally expect the game mechanism to lay out a rich basis for competitiveness between the players. If you are looking for competition, you will certainly find it in my games, like in Blue Lagoon. Many people think of your games as being quite abstract, but you’ve said in the past that they actually quite carefully represent their real-world inspiration. Did the history of the Polynesian people influence your design decisions? And if so, what aspects of their culture were you trying to represent? We have just talked about my preference for very simple rules which create a deep and challenging game play. The natural consequence of this is that I don’t provide pages and pages of thematic



The tropical archipelago starts as a wide open space for players to fight over.



Tribe members in boats form links between islands, letting you spread across the map.



With more than 600 published designs to his credit, Reiner Knizia may be the most prolific creator in gaming. His work includes Through the Desert, Lord of the Rings, Lost Cities, Modern Art, Ra, Tigris & Euphrates and High Society – all considered classics of the hobby. Known for his abstract, elegant approach to design, he has established a reputation for mechanical minimalism, using simple rules to create engaging and challenging gameplay.



background text, either in the rules or on the components. In my games, I prefer players to experience the main emotions that I relate to the theme within themselves. For example, imagine an oasis with a market. Imagine that I want to induce price movements. I will not have event cards which richly describe why the price decreases by two units. I will have a caravan of buyers show up on the horizon, and players clearly anticipating the additional demand will take care of the rest when trading their goods. I do not tell players the story, I let the players live through the story.



Benoit Turpin on Welcome to Your Perfect Home Benoit Turpin is a history and geography teacher and has been playing board games for more than 30 years. After graduating from mass-market family games, he discovered the roleplaying games Call of Cthulhu and Middle Earth Roleplaying. He moved on to miniatures games including Heroquest, Warhammer and Blood Bowl, and nowadays his favourite games include Decrypto, Agricola, Pandemic Legacy and the Unlock series of escape room games. Outside of gaming, he enjoys reading French graphic novels.



BGB: Welcome To Your Perfect Home feels a lot like a roll-and-write game, even though it doesn’t use dice. Why do you think these games have become so popular in the past couple of years? Benoit Turpin: I believe roll-and-writes are popular in part because they have that nostalgic feeling of playing Yahtzee as a child. And there’s an important tactile element. When you write on your sheet, it’s a permanent choice, and it creates a much stronger psychological tension than placing a tile on a board. The feeling that there’s no turning back is a very important part of the appeal, and I believe it is just the beginning. We will see a much wider range of roll-andwrites in the years to come.



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Welcome to Your Perfect Home Designer: Benoit Turpin Artist: Anne Heidsieck Category: Light Strategy Players: 1 - 100



Time: 25 - 30 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £23.99 MSRP (US): $17.99



N recent years, roll-and-write games have emerged as one of the most interesting trends in tabletop gaming. Quick and thoughtful, they’re often reminiscent of the mainstream favourite Yahtzee, with players rolling a handful of dice then scribbling down the results on a pad, trying to arrange numbers in high-scoring configurations. Different designers have brought their own spin to the format, and it’s impressive how much variety has sprung from this shared blueprint. But the flood of roll-and-write releases makes it hard for individual games to stand out. Welcome to Your Perfect Home does something bold with the formula, though: it ditches the dice. A game of house-building in the 1950s, it casts players as architects constructing desirable residential districts. You’ll start the game with a beautifully illustrated scoring sheet showing three neat rows of homes, a kind of picket-fenced utopia of post-war economic optimism. On each round you’ll choose from a selection of three numbered cards, writing its value on one of your houses and aiming to fill all three streets in ascending order over the course of the game. The clever bit, though, is that all of the cards are double-sided. One face shows a number which you’ll write on your sheet, while the other shows a bonus action, letting you do things like build backyard swimming pools, add leafy parks to your neighbourhood or hire estate agents to ramp up the value of your newly constructed homes. You’ll choose a linked pair of cards on each round, and it means you’ll simultaneously try to solve two different puzzles. On the one hand, you’ll aim to distribute house numbers as efficiently as you can,



keeping your options open and ensuring you’re able to add new ones on future turns. But on the other, you’ll also try to rack up extra points by making clever use of bonus abilities. Pulling off both simultaneously is tricky, and to make things more interesting, you’ll also randomly draw three objective cards before you play – planning edicts handed down by the mayor’s office. Each shows a different configuration of homes and amenities, with the first player to build each scoring a wad of extra points. It means that as well as relying on careful judgement, you’ll find yourself in a race against your rivals to fulfil each goal. It’s the only real source of player interaction, though, and there’s no meaningful way to interrupt opponents’ strategies. There’s an inescapable feeling of ‘multiplayer solitaire’ — something of a recurring theme in roll-and-write games — and if you’re the type of player who likes some more direct competition, it might limit your enjoyment. If you’re content to get absorbed in your own plans, though, Welcome to Your Perfect Home is a fantastic little puzzle. You’ll need to adjust to every randomly drawn card, striking a balance between building up your score and maintaining flexibility for future turns. It’s also complemented by some fantastic visual touches, with 50s-style fonts and a colour palette that speaks of diners, Cadillacs, bunny-eared TVs and drive-in movies. And best of all, it gleefully subverts the era’s gender dynamic, with female characters reviewing blueprints and overseeing construction projects while the men take care of the shopping and serve up delicious home-cooked dinners.



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Pictured above: Welcome to Your Perfect Home casts players as town planners building a suburban neighbourhood in 1950s America. Publisher: Blue Cocker Games



How did you come up with the central mechanism with pairs of double-sided cards? What kinds of decisions do you think it creates for players? The double-sided cards were not part of the early design. My goal was to make a deeper roll-and-write with only three dice, and where all rolls were potentially interesting. I loved the simplicity of it, but the mathematical calculations people had to do created a sour taste, so my publisher told me



Welcome to Your Perfect Home sees players laying out housing districts in 1950s suburban America.



to get rid of the dice, much to my distress. After many failed iterations, we came up with a card-based system that replicated the dice mechanisms without the maths. And the cherry on top was that it allowed for more immersion through graphic design; a greater sense of control for the players and the ability to give them more information to plan ahead. Every turn, you make a quick but meaningful decision that will impact how you play for the rest of the game. The game does a great job with its theme of 1950s America. What attracted you to this period as a setting? The early versions of the game were more abstract. It was based on an old design with a computer hacking theme, but that was dropped. Blue Cocker [the game’s publisher] were the ones pushing for a theme, and they were right. So as soon as the development process began, we looked for a theme: trains, skyscrapers, even cocktails. But very quickly the city-building theme attracted us for its ability to explain the main rule of the game – putting numbers in ascending order. And the 50s setting came immediately. Classic Americana has broad appeal. Brutalist Soviet housing



turn, you make ‘aEvery quick but meaningful decision that will impact how you play for the rest of the game.



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developments or 80s urban sprawl were not as endearing. The art style is fantastic, particularly the way it flips traditional 50s gender roles on their head. Did you have a particular look in mind while developing the game, or did that come together during the publishing process? The look was in our mind early on, but Anne brought it to life much better than we could ever have hoped for. She was the one to suggest flipping the gender roles on its cover and it immediately thrilled us. When we added illustrations to the player aids, I jumped at the chance to flip the famous Battleship ad of the 50s with the wife and the daughter in the kitchen while the boys are playing. Are there any other roll-and-write games that you enjoy? I am a huge fan of roll-and-writes, so I try to play all of them. I love the way they create tension in such a small format with excruciating decisions condensed into a few minutes. My favourite by far is Qwinto which is quick, tense and mean, with lots of highs and lows.



The reverse side of the game’s player aids come with 50s-looking advertisements, some of which flip the period’s gender roles on their heads.



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Rémi Ami on CIV: Carta Impera Victoria Rémi Ami is a French-Syrian game designer living in Paris. His favourite games include Civilization, Through The Ages and Galaxy Trucker. As well as making games, he also writes plays, including The Re-Creator which has been translated and performed in English. Like Carta Impera Victoria, it’s about trying to build a new world.



BGB: Civilisation building is a very common theme in gaming. Why do you think the idea of creating a society appeals to so many people? Rémi Ami: Maybe it’s because this world is too bad? Or at least, if not too bad, because it could easily be improved. Games offer players control, much more than real life does, and it’s so exciting to imagine starting everything over.



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CIV: Carta Impera Victoria Designer: Rémi Amy Artists: Christopher Matt, Ian Parovel Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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IVILISATION building is one of gaming’s great recurring themes. From tabletop hits like Through The Ages to video games like Age of Empires, there are countless opportunities to indulge your inner Napoleon. Now there’s a new addition to the field, and while some empire-builders can consume entire evenings, this slick, fast-playing release attempts to condense centuries of warfare, trade and political intrigue into a quick and compact card game. CIV: Carta Impera Victoria carves away at almost everything you might expect from a game about clashing cultures. You won’t be founding cities, conquering territory or fighting over natural resources. Instead, the action revolves around a deck of cards representing your society’s economic, technological and martial strengths. You’ll play a single card from your hand on every turn, with victory going to the first player to collect eight of any one type. At first glance, it doesn’t seem particularly evocative of the civ-building theme. But dig a little deeper and you’ll discover some interesting ways to develop your fledgling nation. As you play, you’ll unlock an array of special abilities by building sets of matching cards. Developing your military lets you conduct Soviet-style purges, throwing away cards you don’t need in the hope of replacing them with more useful ones. Building your economy lets you exploit your wealth to play extra cards on your turn. Devoting yourself to religion grants you divine inspiration, opening up a wider range of tactical options. It leads to a constant sense of growth as you gain new powers and find the most effective ways to combine them.



Playing time: 20 - 40 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £17.99 MSRP (US): $24.99 You’ll also be able to take a variety of powerful one-off actions: launching military assaults, imposing trade embargoes and stealing cards from opponents. It brings an aggressive streak to the game; disrupting rivals’ plans becomes as important as developing your own. To take advantage of these abilities, though, you’ll have to scrap some cards you’ve played on previous turns, making for some tricky decisions about which ones you want to keep. The result is that your civilisation will develop its own character as you play: militaristic aggressor, economic powerhouse or bastion of learning and culture. It may be unapologetically abstract, but CIV manages to capture at least a smidgen of the atmosphere of its more complex cousins. On top of its bare, mechanical frame there’s a suggestion that you’re dealing with a multifaceted society with its own strengths and weaknesses. It comes with stylish illustrations that give it a distinct visual character. And it works well as a quick, brainy two-player game, something that can’t be said for most empire-builders, which rely on higher player counts to facilitate alliances, diplomacy and betrayal. One criticism is that there’s no sense of exactly which civilisations you’re supposed to be controlling, and some faction-specific abilities would help to reinforce the game’s theme: conquering Romans, pillaging Vikings, monument-building Egyptians. It would be nice to see some real-world cultures introduced in future expansions. But this is a fun, tight, accessible design that crams millennia of human progress into a box you can throw in your backpack – a graband-go exercise in world domination.



Pictured above: CIV takes millennia of civilisation-building and condenses it into a simple but rewarding card game. Publisher: Ludonaute



Most civ-building games are quite complicated, but CIV has a very streamlined, abstract approach. How did you achieve that while still keeping the feeling of building a culture? The original idea was pretty easy to formulate: a civilisation game with only six types of cards. But balancing the six colours and the 11 effects was a whole different story. I worked for months on that, and after I thought I had reached the perfect equilibrium, the publisher told me: “Oh that’s a great game! It just needs balancing.” So we started balancing it again for another eight months! Everyone starts the game with the same blank canvas, but over time each civilisation develops its own strengths. What kinds of options were



you trying to give players in terms of the type of empires they could build? I don’t like games where you can’t catch up with a player who’s taken the lead—games where power calls for power. In CIV, each player adds exactly one card to their board on each turn, whatever effects they play and whatever amazing combos they make, unless they decide to sacrifice cards. So all the strategy is: when do I consider it is worth sacrificing cards, and which cards can I afford to sacrifice?. Also, although you start from scratch, you can’t choose to focus on a particular path like science or military before the game begins. If you want to win then you have to be able to adapt to what happens as you play. What was the idea of having the deck divided into three different ages? How did you try to capture the idea of civilisations advancing over time? It’s divided into three ages to help players know what they get in every age, which is necessary to build a strategy. You don’t get the same cards in early ages and late ages: history begins with religion and military, and ends with utopia after God is dead. And this definitely is my personal appreciation of history.



It may have a centuries-spanning theme, but CIV comes in a compact package.



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Military cards let players purge their hands of unwanted cards, replacing them with new ones from the draw deck.



Do you have any strategy tips for players? What are some of the things people should keep in mind if they want to win? In three and four-player games, influence and surprise are very important. You can’t win if everybody knows you’re ahead. With two players, it might take a few games for you to understand the power of some colours. Try things that you think will never work, you will be surprised! Are there plans for any expansions? If so, can you talk about what they’ll add to the game? No expansions are planned. The game feels a bit like an egg to me; you can’t add or subtract anything without breaking it.



Players build their collections of cards with each passing round, discarding some to trigger dramatic in-game events.



CIV’s first player token is a cast metal coin.



Peter C. Hayward & Tania Walker on The Lady and the Tiger Peter C. Hayward is an Australian game designer and author, currently living in Toronto, Canada. His all-time favourite game is Uwe Rosenberg’s A Feast for Odin, but he first fell into the hobby after playing the hectic spaceship-building game Galaxy Trucker. When he isn’t playing or designing games, he writes screenplays, plays with puppets, travels the world and takes care of his baby son. Tania Walker is an artist from Brisbane, Australia. As an animator, she has worked on film and TV projects including The Lion King 3 and The Three Musketeers. Her work in gaming includes illustrations for the card game Village Pillage and the Steven-Spielberg-inspired roleplaying game Kids On Bikes. gaming. I won’t name the card game we endlessly played, but I remember saying: “I can do better art than this. I’d like to illustrate a game someday!” Then I sold my old fridge to a bloke named Peter C. Hayward, and we hit it off and became friends, which is an extremely Brisbane way to meet. A full decade later, he approached me to illustrate his game, Dracula’s Feast. This kicked off a creative partnership that has led me to produce some of my best work.



Peter C. Hayward BGB: The game is based on a short story by Frank R. Stockton. Why did you think it could be the basis for a tabletop adaptation? Peter C. Hayward: The theme was originally just a filler - I was going to change it to something more “gamey,” but Tania insisted it stay as ladies and tigers so she’d get to draw them. She did an amazing job of it!



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The Lady and the Tiger Designers: Kevin Carmichael, Peter C. Hayward, JR Honeycutt, Ken Maher, Philip Tootill, Allysha Tulk Artist: Tania Walker Category: Light Strategy



Players: 1 - 6 Time: 15 - 20 minutes Ages: 6+ RRP (UK): £18.99 MSRP (US): $19.95



T’S common to hear players describe small games with hidden depth as packing “a lot of game into a little box.” But The Lady and the Tiger goes a step further, cramming five quick and simple games into its diminutive frame. They’re all played with the same deck of 18 beautiful gilded cards, illustrated by former Disney animator Tania Walker. Each has a colour: red or blue, and a suit: lady or tiger, and while it’s about the most minimalist set of components you could imagine, it provides the basis for a diverse collection of games with only one thing in common: none of them has much to do with the short story that inspired the project. First, and weakest, is Hoard. A single-player puzzle, it involves rearranging plastic gems distributed across four cards, combining them into sets which you can remove from the game. It’s not difficult to spot the best moves, though, which limits its staying power. Two-player game Doors is far more interesting. A bare-bones distillation of hidden identity games like The Resistance, it sees one player secretly draw a card showing either a lady or a tiger on a red or blue background. They then have to select cards from a face-up row, trying to build a set of four which all match at least one aspect of the card in their hand. Their opponent scores points by guessing the card they hold, and it results in a tight and gripping contest of deduction and subterfuge that crams a stunning amount of risk-and-reward strategy into a tiny and fast-playing package.



Labyrinth is described as a maze game, but it’s really a simple abstract challenge. Players attempt to move five stones from one corner of a grid of cards to the other. On each turn they move one stone and one card, with cards carrying any stones sitting on top of them. It’s a clever game of forward planning that sees players balancing attacking and defensive moves. Favor plays from two to four, and feels like a stripped-down version of Reiner Knizia’s classic auction game Ra. What’s amazing is how it retains that game’s succession of agonising decisions while ditching its Byzantine scoring system. Each round starts with a single card in the centre of the table – the “lot” which players will compete over. On your turn you’ll either add a card to the lot or start an auction, with players bidding using a pool of plastic gems. When that happens, you’ll have one chance to bid or pass, and choosing when to go in guns-blazing and when to sit tight and hoard tokens can be tough. The final game, Traps plays up to six. It’s a poker-style affair reminiscent of the light and fast-playing bluffing game Skull, and winning is all about holding your nerve and misdirecting your opponents. Some of the games in the bunch are derivative, one isn’t very good, all of them are short and simple. But when you add them together and combine them with gorgeous illustrations, the result is far more than the sum of its parts, making The Lady and the Tiger a rare find that could and should be in almost every gamer’s collection.



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Pictured above: The Lady and the Tiger features five games played with the same beautifully illustrated set of cards. Publisher: Jellybean Games



You ran a design contest to decide the games in the lineup. Was it difficult to pick the eventual winners? We got 67 responses in the end. I was blown away. I ended up sitting down with my husband and playing through as many as we could. I was absolutely stunned. When I launched the competition, I deliberately didn’t include the rules to my original game. My fear was that since the components were designed for that game, everyone else would inevitably come up with the same idea. But no one came up with anything even remotely similar. In fact, several of the final games in the box use the components even better than my original game did. The game’s artwork is gorgeous. What do you think it adds to the experience? A lot of designers make the mistake of thinking of a game as existing in a void. Like, if the mechanisms are good, nothing around it matters. But when people are playing your game, they’re not just experiencing the mechanics. The component



Each of the game’s five mini-games uses the same set of cards, but each comes with very different gameplay.



quality matters a great deal, because it’s a tactile medium – it’s what players are physically touching and feeling. The art is what they’re looking at. Tania Walker BGB: You previously worked as an animator at Disney. How did you make the transition to tabletop games? Tania Walker: It was almost wholly accidental. Disney had been my life’s dream since I was a kid. I loved it, but I wanted more creative control over my work. After I left, a friend introduced me to tabletop



The game’s stylish and expressive art is a powerful part of its appeal. Its ladies and tigers look like they’ve been plucked from a big-budget animated film.



How would you describe your art style? And how do you think it enhances the experience of The Lady and the Tiger? The Lady and the Tiger is in my native style. I think of it as “Disney fusion,” as I worked so hard to get into Disney that elements of their style inescapably form the basis of how I draw, even today. A sharp eye might also spot the flowing lines picked up from character designer Chen-Yi Chang, and occasionally the exaggerated curves of comic artist J. Scott Campbell. When painting this project I aimed to bring a lot of texture, splatter and grunge to it. This gives it life – all that messy imperfection. I think styles like mine are less common in games because there’s this association between cartoon styles and childishness, but that doesn’t have to be the case. The theme was initially a placeholder, but I’m so glad we ran with it, as it gave me the chance to showcase underrepresented women, including people of colour, along with a variety of body types often excluded from game art.



Artist Tania Walker includes a diverse mix of characters in her work, aiming to represent people of colour and a range of body types not always found in games.



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Michael Kiesling on Azul Michael Kiesling is a German designer whose credits include the towerbuilding game Torres, economic strategy game Coal Baron and the Spiel des Jahres winning Tikal, all co-created with design partner Wolfgang Kramer. An engineer specialising in automation technology, he enjoys solving puzzles, and his favourite games include 6 Nimmt!, Carcassonne and Qwirkle.



BGB: How did you first become interested in azulejo tiles, and what made you think that they could be the basis of a game design? Michael Kiesling: When I first presented the game to the publisher, it was actually a completely abstract design. They added the theme of azulejos later. Azul generates some tricky decisions using a very simple set of rules. How difficult is it to get find that balance? Designing a simple game is not easy. In fact, it can be more difficult than a complex one. You have to get everything just right. Getting the balance right required a lot of testing and a few changes. For example, my original design had players building a six-by-six grid of tiles, which the publisher reduced to five-by-five. That made the game shorter, and it was a very good decision.



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Azul Designer: Michael Kiesling Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 4 Time: 30 - 45 minutes



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PEN up Azul and you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a box of candy. Beneath its lid lies a bag of brightly coloured blocks embossed with intricate patterns in hues of flame red, burnished gold and royal blue. But while they might look good enough to eat, we wouldn’t recommend it; they’re not sweets, but tiles. Unlikely as it may seem, this award-winning release is all about tiling walls. It might not sound like the most thrilling premise for a game – particularly to anyone who’s ever redecorated a bathroom. But it turns out these ceramics have a story behind them. In 1503, King Manuel I of Portugal became captivated by the beautiful Moorish tiles in palaces across southern Spain. He ordered that his own residence at Evora be decorated with the same distinctive azulejos, and Azul sees players become artisan builders competing to win the king’s favour by giving his castle a radical makeover. The game revolves around a set of discs representing workshops producing tiles for the palace. Each round sees players take turns to choose a factory and take all the pieces on it of any one design. Once you’ve chosen your tiles, you’ll place them on your personal player board, earning points by building rows of matching types, and gradually creating a display which you hope will please your royal patron. There’s more to the game than just grabbing tiles, though. For one thing, the ones you don’t choose from workshops go into a pile in the centre of the table. Your opponents will be able to pluck pieces from this steadily growing selection, meaning you’ll need to think not just



Azul’s visual style is based on traditional Portuguese ceramic tiles.



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You’ll have to think about the tiles you add to your design, and the ones you leave for your opponents.



Designing a ‘simple game is Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £39.99 MSRP (US): $39.99 about the tiles you want for your own design, but the ones you could potentially be handing to your rivals. You’ll also earn bonuses by creating geometric sequences of rows and columns, and Azul conjures an absorbing puzzle out of just a handful of simple rules. But while it’s an impressively tight and elegant design, what’s truly brilliant is what happens when you pick a set of tiles but can’t fit them all on to your board. Any tiles you can’t use are discarded as waste, and they’ll hang around your neck for the rest of the game, knocking precious points off your score. While you’ll try to avoid that happening, sometimes it’s inevitable. It means that suddenly those candy-coloured tiles aren’t so sweet and innocent any more, and neither is Azul. With everyone jockeying to ensure their opponents are left with as many useless tiles as possible, you’ll need to combine careful planning, logical deduction and a little bit of ruthlessness. So the game comes with a subtle mean streak – particularly pronounced in two-player games. With higher player counts, it’s less noticeable. One-on-one showdowns are great for competitive types, three and four-player contests are ideal for a family game session. It all amounts to a compelling abstract strategy experience. It’s no wonder that Azul has received heavy praise from fans, as well as winning two of the most coveted awards in the hobby – the Spiel des Jahres and Deutcher Spiele Pries. Games that combine satisfying strategy and accessible appeal are rare; this is one of the very best.



Pictured above: Abstract tile-laying game Azul sees players compete to decorate a royal palace. Publisher: Plan B Games



not easy. In fact, it can be more difficult than a complex one. You have to get everything just right. Getting the balance right required a lot of testing and a few changes.



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One benefit of having such a simple set of rules is that adults and children can play together on an equal playing field. Was that important to you while you were designing Azul? I have to admit, that wasn’t something I considered when I was designing Azul. The accessibility for different ages is just due to the relatively simple rules of the game. My first idea was the distribution mechanism



The game’s chunky tiles come with a collection of beautiful designs, adding a jolt of aesthetic appeal to its quick and thoughtful gameplay.



for the tiles. After that, I started looking for a meaningful task – something for players to do with the tiles they had chosen. Do you think the game feels different with two players than with larger groups? If so, how do you think the experience changes with bigger or smaller groups of players? Azul is most tactical with two players. With more players around the table, the “luck factor” definitely increases. The game won both the Spiel des Jahres and the Deutscher Spiel Preis awards. Did you suspect while you were designing it that it would have this level of success?



I didn’t expect it to be so successful. The first sign I had that it was so popular with players was at the Essen Spiel game fair in 2017, where it was the most popular new game on the web site BoardGameGeek. Something like this is a once-in-a-lifetime event for a designer, if it happens at all. Are you working on any projects right now that you’d like to tell our readers about? I recently completed a new project, also called Azul, with the subtitle The Stained Glass of Sintra. I’m also working on a new three-dimensional construction game with a very interesting mechanism, which will be released at Spiel 2019.



Reiner Knizia on Sakura BGB: Sakura isn’t your first game set in ancient Japan. Is there something about that setting that strongly appeals to you? Reiner Knizia: I love history. It’s a very rich universe of experiences and fascinating themes and events. It’s also very easy to communicate, because when you see a game with a certain cover or a certain title, you get an instant idea of what it’s about. If I set a game in a fantasy kingdom then I have to write pages of detail on this world and the people who live in it. But if I say: “I’m in feudal Japan,” then I know where I am. If I say that I’m in ancient Egypt, then I know there’s a pharaoh, I know there are pyramids, I don’t need to explain. For this game the starting point was the central mechanism rather than the theme. I wanted this idea of getting close to something, but not too close. Then I asked myself where that could happen, and Japan had this concept where the Emperor was in front, you had to be very polite and keep your distance, and it just seemed to fit.



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Sakura Designer: Reiner Knizia Artist: Kevin Hong Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 6



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AMED for the delicate cherry blossoms that burst into bloom every year across Japan, Sakura was one of the prettiest releases of 2018. Its luscious artwork takes inspiration from films like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle – and appropriately enough, it’s all about artists. The game casts players as painters clamouring to capture portraits of the Emperor as he admires his palace garden. You’ll push past your rivals as you try to get close to your ruler, but you’ll also have to avoid accidentally touching him as you fight your way through the crowd, a massive faux-pas that will bring disgrace to your name. The action revolves around a simple card-based system. You’ll choose one from your hand to play on each round, moving your artist along a twisting garden path as it dictates. But each card comes with multiple effects: some let you jostle opponents out of your way, others let you move the Emperor himself. It quickly leads to a riotous shoving match where you can never be sure what’s likely to happen on any given round, and it’s all-tooeasy to run headlong into the Emperor, losing precious points in the process. What seems like a safe, sensible move can turn out to be a disastrous mistake, but only once it’s far too late to do anything about it. If you’re particularly mean, it’s even possible to nudge your opponents into the Emperor’s path, and Sakura comes with an element of ruthlessness that rewards cold hearts and sharp elbows.



Playing time: 20 - 30 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £21.99 MSRP (US): $30.00 It’s a fast-playing blend of chaos and control, but it loses some of its anarchic quality with smaller groups of players. It’s at its best with a thronging crowd of artists flailing and fighting their way across the board. With fewer players vying for position, there’s less potential for confusion and collisions, and the game feels a little flat as a result. Then there’s the fact that underneath its gorgeous outer shell, this is an undeniably abstract game. It values mechanical elegance over explicit evocation of its theme — something that’s long been a hallmark of Reiner Knizia’s designs. While it’s not so much a flaw as a matter of personal taste, if you’re looking for a deep sense of story or character as you play, you’ll be better off looking elsewhere. It’s also unfortunate that many of the cards in the game recycle the same pieces of artwork. It’d be nice to see more of artist Kevin Hong’s knockout visuals. But what’s impressive about Sakura is the way it uses a streamlined, efficient, orderly set of rules to generate such chaos. At times it feels less like feudal Japan than a paparazzi feeding frenzy around a celebrity leaving a modern-day nightclub. With any kind of long-term planning impossible, the fleeting moments of control where you can claw your way in front of rivals or shove another player under the bus become all-important, and it deftly packs a succession of momentary triumphs and stomach-churning setbacks into a hectic half-hour of gameplay.



Pictured above: In Sakura, players become artists clamouring to get close to the Emperor of Japan. Publisher: Osprey Games



There’s the potential to make what you think is quite a safe move, but then to find you’ve made a terrible mistake once you see your opponents’ cards. What kind of atmosphere were you trying to create for players? That’s exactly the point. You never know what’s going to happen. If you’re too careful then you’re not going to get close to the Emperor and you’re not going to score any points, but if you get too adventurous and push your luck too much then the other players can stitch you up. Because everyone’s playing at the same time, you’re always involved. It’s a quick game, and there are always some big surprises when the cards come down. You have this very simple, orderly set of rules, but they generate such chaos. How did you try to emphasise that element of the game? That is done via the cards, and that was the main focus of my playtesting. If the cards are too random, too luck-based, then people get dissatisfied. And if the cards don’t affect the game in powerful ways then people get bored. So it’s a real balancing act.



In some ways, is it harder to design a small, simple game than a bigger, more complex one? I think it’s difficult to compare. They’re just different designs. If you do a game for kids aged four to six then you have to approach it very differently. It’s a much simpler game, but it’s not easier to design it. And if you do a much bigger, more complex game that plays in 90 minutes, it’s not necessarily harder to design, it’s just that there are different requirements. For me there’s a nice mixture, because I work on some simpler games, some more complex games, and sometimes you don’t even know where a game is going to go. You start with a complex game, you take things away and suddenly it’s much simpler, or vice-versa. I was really impressed visually by the game. What did you think of the illustrations? You want to stand out from all the other new releases that are out there. I think Sakura’s artwork really does that, it really differentiates the game, and a lot of people really seem to like it. Artwork is very, very important because the first thing you see is the cover and the graphics. It’s the same as if I open a book and I just see letters, letters, letters. It’s not as exciting as seeing structure and pictures. If I get a good first impression then I might buy the book, and it’s just the same with games. You’ve designed a huge number of games. Is there a secret to producing that kind of volume of work? My personality is that I like to work. I like to focus on one thing in my life and do it really properly. It’s very rewarding to bring enjoyment to people, and my whole life is organised around creating good games. It doesn’t mean I spend all of my time in the studio, but I’m an early bird, and I’m here at four o’clock in the morning. I have lots of people who playtest. We discuss games a lot, and ideas flow from the group. Today I’ll sit here with one group and playtest, and then tomorrow I’ll sit with another group and play the same game. I see how different groups react, and the game takes big steps forward because so many people are involved.



With more than 600 published designs to his credit, Reiner Knizia may be the most prolific creator in gaming. His work includes Through the Desert, Lord of the Rings, Lost Cities, Modern Art, Ra, Tigris & Euphrates and High Society - all considered classics of the hobby. Known for his abstract, elegant approach to design, he has established a reputation for mechanical minimalism, using simple rules to create engaging and challenging gameplay.



You’ll aim to fight through the scrum to get closer to the emperor than your opponents.



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Sakura comes in a small box, but it packs a respectable dose of chaos and confusion.



Artist Kevin Hong’s illustrations are packed with character, like stills from a gorgeous animated film.



I set a game in ‘aIffantasy kingdom then I have to write pages of detail on this world and the people who live in it. But if I say: “I’m in feudal Japan,” then I know where I am.



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Marc André on Majesty: For the Realm BGB: Splendor was a huge hit with players, and Majesty seems to have a similar combination of simplicity and thoughtful gameplay. Did you have the same kind of audience in mind when you designed it? Marc André: I’m a big fan of so-called gateway games: clever, highly replayable, quick and with fluid gameplay. They’re sometimes quite addictive, and most importantly, they’re very accessible to a larger audience. With Majesty, I wanted to create a game with Splendor’s strong points, and I wanted also to improve on some aspects. So I wanted Majesty to have a strong theme and to be very interactive.



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Majesty: For the Realm Designer: Marc André Artist: Anne Heidsieck Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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ELEASED in 2014, Splendor is a hit game of renaissance jewel merchants whose elegant, brainy gameplay has won it countless fans. Now its creator has returned with another game that combines simple rules with a head-scratching challenge – but can it hope for the same glittering reception as its predecessor? Majesty: For The Realm casts players as medieval mayors vying to attract citizens to their growing towns. You’ll aim to recruit workers, nobles and soldiers, swelling your population and turning your unassuming backwater into a bustling, prosperous city. You and your rivals will compete to snap up characters represented by a shifting row of cards in the centre of the table. Each comes with its own special effect: gaining you gold, defending your town or attacking opponents. You’ll aim to build your workforce and generate more money than your competitors. But you’ll have to think carefully, because the cards you choose can have knock-on effects on other players. Hire a brewer, for instance, and you’ll increase the demand for grain, granting a bonus to anyone with a miller in their city. Recruit an innkeeper, and you’ll cause a spike in the market for beer, earning a few coins for anyone with a brewer. It’s a simple system, but it gives the sense of an interconnected economy, with different trades relying on one another for business. It also means you’ll constantly weigh the point-scoring potential of cards against the advantages they hand to your opponents.



Time: 20 - 40 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £36.99 MSRP (US): $39.99 Things get more complicated towards the end of the game. You’ll gain bonuses for the citizens you’ve accumulated, scoring points for having a diverse mix in your city, but also for collecting sets of the same types of workers. They’re two contradictory goals, and focussing too closely on one means you’re likely to neglect the other. It adds a touch of long-term planning to the game, but it also nudges up its level of complexity, and while Majesty is far from convoluted, it isn’t anything like as intuitive as Splendor. There are card synergies to get your head around. There’s more interaction between players. There’s an element of aggression, with opponents raiding each other’s towns and sending one another’s citizens to the infirmary. And its scoring system requires just a little bit of maths to determine who’s actually won. None of this is to say that it’s bloated or sluggish. With games playing out in just 12 rounds, it has a snappy pace and each of your actions feels genuinely important. One disappointment, though, is the lack of diversity in the game’s art. There isn’t a single non-white character, and it’s a jarring oversight. But Majesty is fast, thoughtful fun. It may not have the kind of pick-up-and-play simplicity that’s made Splendor such an enduring favourite, but it’s an engaging game in its own right, and with an advanced mode that lets you explore new strategies once you’ve got to grips with the basics, it promises to stay fresh after repeat plays.



Pictured above: Majesty: For the Realm challenges players to fill their medieval towns with millers, innkeepers, soldiers and nobles. Publisher: Hans im Glück/Z-Man Games



It’s slightly more complex than Splendor. Is it hard to find a balance between interesting gameplay and this kind of accessibility for new or inexperienced players? The simpler a game is, the more abstract it gets. To fit the theme, designers usually end up generating more rules. The balance is hard to find – maybe impossible!. Actually, I don’t think Majesty is more complex than Splendor, but you need a few more minutes to explain it, for sure.



I wanted to ‘create a game with Splendor’s strong points, and I wanted also to improve on some aspects.



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The way that players’ choices can create benefits for their opponents is very interesting. It feels like a very simple way to represent an interconnected medieval economy. How did you develop those interactions, and what do you think they add to the game? I had the basic mechanism in my head, with players picking cards and those cards’ effects being multiplied when combined in matching sets. But to create the different triggered effects, I needed a theme. The idea



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Each round sees players gaining new citizens, but adding residents to your town can often hand useful bonuses to your rivals.



of life in a medieval city occurred to me, and I wrote the initial rules in less than three hours. Mills produce grain for brewers, who provide beer for the inns, and so on. When a player picks up a card, they think about what they gain from it, then take into account the long-term effects of their decisions. The dilemma of what you earn versus what other players gain from your choices gives you plenty to think about. The military element, with players sending each other’s characters to the infirmary, adds a subtle element of direct aggression. Why did you want to include that in the game? It seemed both obvious and risky, as a lot of players nowadays have issues with games involving aggressive interactions. The military part of the game received a lot of attention during playtesting. It was a lot of work, but I was happy to end up with a game which includes interactions between players besides just counting victory points at the end! Losing the leftmost card of your player board is actually quite realistic, as peasants in medieval times usually were the first victims of feudal conflicts. I don’t think the game becomes more



Marc André was born in the south of France and played chess with his family from the age of four. In the 1980s he discovered tabletop roleplaying, and he immediately became interested in creating games of his own. His bestselling game Splendor was nominated for the 2013 Spiel des Jahres prize.



Card combinations come with different advantages. Brewers benefit players with lots of millers and innkeepers.



competitive because of this. Majesty’s just a bit mean … which feels really good, don’t you think? Do you have any hints and tips to help players win? No, and I’m happy with this answer! Majesty is largely about opportunities, but you can’t forget about the end-of-game scoring, and it requires a real strategy you build from turn to turn. No two games are the same, reversals happen all the time and players need to be very flexible. The goal of the game is ultimately having fun, not winning at all costs.



Jeff Beck on Hardback Jeff Beck is a board game designer and enthusiast who first got into games when he beat his uncles in a family Monopoly tournament (“Don’t judge,” he says. “We all start somewhere.”) Today he plays games every night with his wife and their four daughters. His favourites include Sushi Go Party, For Sale and Flamme Rouge. He is one of the owners and organisers of Tabletop Network, a professional development conference for board game designers.



BGB: Hardback is a successor to Tim Fowers’ Paperback. What did you enjoy about the original game, how did the opportunity to work on a follow-up come about? Jeff Beck: I perhaps shouldn’t admit this in public, but I actually had not played Paperback before starting work on Hardback. I was just completing fulfilment for my previous game, Word Domination, which Tim Fowers had consulted on. As you can probably guess from the name, it’s a word game — a genre I’m a big fan of. Tim knew there was a fair amount of interest in a Paperback expansion, but was focused on other projects, and asked if I would be interested in giving it a go. What I came back with was a bit too much for just an expansion, so Hardback was born.



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Hardback Designers: Jeff Beck, Tim Fowers Artist: Ryan Goldsberry Category: Light Strategy Players: 1 - 5



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N 2014 the quirky card game Paperback combined Dominion-style deckbuilding with the kind of clever wordplay normally associated with games like Boggle or Scrabble. It handed players collections of cards, each showing a single letter, and challenged them to combine them into high-scoring words. Its thoughtful approach and lexicological leanings made it a standout indie success in a field crammed with generic science fiction and fantasy releases. Follow-up Hardback sticks to the same premise. You and your opponents become aspiring 19th-century novelists competing for recognition and critical acclaim. On your turn you’ll draw a hand of five cards, using them to form words and enhance your literary reputation. But while word-wrangling is at the heart of the game, there are also some deeper tactical considerations. As well as letters, cards come with a variety of special abilities. Some generate money, letting you purchase new cards from a shared row in the centre of the table, expanding your repertoire of letters and letting you come up a wider range of words. Others reward you with victory points, edging you steadily towards victory. Some let you scrap cards from your collection, to refine your deck to ensure you draw your most valuable cards on every turn. And others come with powers that trigger when you play them in particular combinations. It means you’ll need to pay attention to both the immediate challenge of making the best possible words, and the longer-term puzzle of crafting your deck, putting together cards that complement one



Time: 45 - 90 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £33.99 MSRP (US): $19.99 another and getting rid of ones that don’t. The result is that while in the early game you’ll score paltry numbers of points and generate a few meagre pennies at a time, it won’t be long before you’re making much more dramatic plays, raking in cash and racking up points. It’s a rewarding feeling, but you could make the same observation about any decent deckbuilding game, and releases like Star Realms do at least as good a job of making players feel increasingly powerful. But Hardback has a few more literary flourishes up its sleeve. One is the flexibility of its word-crafting. If you find yourself stuck, you can play any card from your hand face-down and treat it as any letter. While you won’t get that card’s rewards, it means you’ll never end up saddled with a useless combination of consonants. Then there are its ink pots – carved wooden tokens you’ll earn as you play which let you draw extra cards into your hand. There are the optional literary award cards, which give bonus points for the longest words. There’s the variant game mode which gives players a special power, including some which let you interfere with your opponents’ plans, adding an element of cutthroat competitive interaction. It means that even once you’ve become an accomplished author, there’s still plenty about Hardback to discover, and it’s all tied together by beautiful presentation, with characterful illustrations and some appropriately creative typography. Whether you’re a complete newcomer or a Paperback fan looking for a little more depth, this is a polished refinement of the original game’s inventive formula.



Pictured above: Hardback is slightly more advanced follow-up to the popular word game Paperback. Publisher: Fowers Games



What were some of the main differences you wanted to inject into Hardback, and how do you think the feel of the two games differs As Hardback was designed to be a followup game, the first step was to read every critique of Paperback I could find, to determine what changes to focus on. Right away I came up with two big issues: first, that the starting hands all felt a bit samey, and second, that it was an unpleasant experience to draw a hand with either no wild cards,or all wilds cards. One was a very hard hand to use, the other was very



flexible, but scored no points. Both of these issues led me to one of the primary changes in Hardback — the complete removal of wilds. Rather than relying on drawing a wild card from your hand in order to provide flexibility, I came up with the idea that any card could be wild if it was played face-down instead of face-up. The result is that Hardback is a much more flexible game as far as spelling is concerned.



There are not many ‘deckbuilding games where an otherwise desirable card can really mess up your current turn strategy.



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Deckbuilders have been through a real boom period, with lots of designers playing with the concept. Does that make it challenging to come up with something new in the field? You are absolutely correct; with so many great deckbuilders already on the market, it’s pretty hard to arrive at something new. Thankfully, the “word game” portion of Hardback provided some really interesting



Different combinations of letter cards bring different rewards including money and victory points. You’ll aim to snap up the ones that work most effectively together.



As well as its basic mode, Hardback includes a more advanced variant and a dedicated solo mode.



platforms for me to jump off of. For example, there are not many deckbuilding games where an otherwise desirable card can really mess up your current turn strategy. However, in a word game, if you draw a “Q”, it can completely mess up the word you’re planning on spelling. Are you currently working on any projects you’d like to tell readers about? I have a little asymmetric two-player game, Getaway Driver, which should be available very soon. One player plays the driver on the run, while the other plays the police force trying to catch them. It’s fast and frantic and extremely thematic. And in development is a new, as yet untitled game that I am especially excited about. It’s a cooperative, asymmetric engine-building game set in the hostile reaches of space. Players work together to generate the resources they need to stay alive while fending off a variety of deadly disasters.



Hardback’s box art fits perfectly with its literary theme, and the game looks equally at home on your game shelf or your bookshelf.



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Jeffrey D. Allers on Gunkimono Jeffrey D. Allers has played and designed games since he was a child. He first discovered modern German board games after moving to Berlin in 1994. In 2004 he joined a gaming group where game designers tested their new creations, and he soon began bringing his own projects BGB: Gunkimono started life as Heartland, a game about farming in central United States. How did this rethemed new version come about? Jeffrey D. Allers: Heartland went out of print, but it continued to get positive reviews and it soon became quite expensive on the second-hand market. Naturally, I hoped that another publisher would eventually reprint it. Eventually Dan King, who runs the Game Boy Geek YouTube channel, reviewed it favourably and wanted to see it reprinted, so he connected me with Scott Gaeta of Renegade Game Studios.



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Gunkimono Designer: Jeffrey D. Allers Artist: George Sellas Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 5



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HIS game of rival Japanese daimyō sees players wrangling for honour and influence in the country’s military hierarchy. And while many games set in feudal Japan are complicated strategic affairs, Gunkimono, which roughly translates as “war stories,” keeps things refreshingly simple. Players start the game with a hand of domino-style cardboard tiles, all showing different varieties of soldiers: a mix of archers, spearmen, swordsmen and cavalry. As you play you place them onto a squaregrid board, earning points for creating continuous areas of matching troop types. The larger the area, the greater your reward. It’s not hard to grasp, but Gunkimono judiciously tosses in other elements that add a little depth. As well as earning you victory points, each of your units comes with an honour value. For each one you play, you’ll choose between using it to boost either your score, or your standing on one of the five honour tracks at the edge of the board. Increasing your honour comes with big benefits. Push your rankings to certain levels, and you’ll be able to build castles on the board, laying claim to areas of connected tiles. These generate extra points on each of your turns – a huge advantage, and a powerful incentive to start placing strongholds before your rivals have a chance to. But there’s a catch. While you can use your troops for either of these purposes, you can choose just one for every unit you add to the board. You’ll need to constantly consider the best ways to use the tiles in your hand, deciding between gaining immediate boosts to your score,



Time: 45 - 60 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £36.99 MSRP (US): $40.00 or making long-term investments that could win you the game. You’ll need to plan moves carefully, but also react to situations as they present themselves, and it’s reminiscent of other tile-laying games like Acquire, the 1964 game of expanding business empires, and Tigris & Euphrates, in which players develop rival kingdoms in ancient Mesopotamia. But what differentiates Gunkimono is the way its atmosphere changes once players start building their strongholds. What begins as a gentle and fairly dry game of point-scoring optimisation reveals its competitive core as players build over rivals’ territories, laying tiles on top of units to break up high-scoring groups. This three-dimensional element brings added nuance to the game, and opens up opportunities to join multiple groups together or split others apart. It means you’ll need to think carefully about the best ways to harvest points, but also about the scoring opportunities you’ll inevitably create for your opponents. It all combines to create a classical abstract feel. It’s the kind of game you could almost imagine actually being played in ancient Japan. So it’s surprising to learn that Gunkimono is based on Heartland, a 2009 release which cast players as farmers in the American midwest. Its design features a few minor mechanical changes, but for the most part it simply swaps corn for katanas in a samurai-themed re-skin. But while its gameplay may only be loosely married to its theme, it’s still combines a constant stream of interesting tactical decisions with rules that become second nature once you’ve played a few turns.



Pictured above: Gunkimono is a slick, abstract tile-laying game set in feudal Japan. Publisher: Renegade Games



On every turn players need to think not just about how they place their units, but whether they use them to boost their score or increase their honour. What kinds of strategies does that open up for players? When I design games, it’s important for me to give players the right number of options. If there are too many, it can be overwhelming, but if there are too few, the game is not engaging enough. With this game, I felt that scoring for tileplacement alone was too one-dimensional. I needed a second option, and that’s where the honour track came in. But even there, I felt it was good to have two different options: either race to the top of a track in order to score a big bonus, or advance on all five tracks equally in order to build fortresses, which then go back and influence the tile-laying part of the game. Someone recently pointed out to me that most of my published games present players with the dilemma of scoring now or saving



to the table. Since then, more than a dozen of his games have been published around the world. As well as making games, Jeffrey writes and teaches about game design and has recently been using games to build links with Berlin’s refugee communities.



up in the hopes of scoring later. I suppose it reflects my philosophy of life, a mixture of carpe diem and the discipline of delayed gratification. Unlike some tile-laying games, Gunkimono lets players place their tiles on top of ones already on the board. What does this threedimensional element bring to the game? The three-dimensional tile-laying is proof that Heartland was actually a theme-first game. It was the abstraction of planting new crops every season, and I even had a crop rotation rule, players cannot place the same crop on top of a previously placed one. In terms of the gameplay of Gunkimono, it allows for a very dynamic game board, yet there are also ways to use the verticality to protect the groupings of troops that are marked by a player’s fortress. Keeping the levels unequal makes it difficult for opponents to break it up. Were there any tile-laying games that influenced your work on Gunkimono? It’s predecessor, Heartland, was one of the first games I designed, so I hadn’t yet had the chance to play many tile-laying games other than Carcassonne. The idea for the game came out of the theme of farming in Iowa, where I grew up, and where the perfect square fields literally look like a game board. The original mechanisms were derived from that theme. Are you currently working on any projects you’d like to talk about?



As you play, you’ll advance on honour tracks representing your increasing standing in different aspects of feudal Japan’s military hierarchy.



75 Gunkimono’s art style is inspired by traditional Japanese paintings.



Players carefully lay tiles to create conjoined groups of matching troop types.



I’m always working on a combination of new and old prototypes, but it’s best not to say too much about them until they are announced by publishers. I will say that I’m thankful to be able to get most of my older games back in print in the same way as Heartland/Gunkimono, and that there will be more reprints of other games coming soon!



Each player takes on the role of a rival daimyo, represented by beautifully illustrated player tokens.



Danny Devine on Topiary BGB: Where did the idea for Topiary come from? Did you have the gardening theme in mind from the start of the design process? Danny Devine: Topiary began as a poker variant, actually. It was a five-by-five grid of playing cards where you would swap cards from your hand for face-down ones in the grid. It was fun, but what was I going to do with a poker variant? So it sat on the shelf for a few years until I started thinking about how it could be applied to a tabletop game. It came together really quickly after that. I used components from games I already had and tested the new idea out. That being said, I didn’t have a theme. I thought about buildings, animals, trees — and when I got to trees my friend suggested topiary sculptures and it just clicked. Almost instantly I knew what I wanted the art to look like too and just went for it!



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I knew I wanted to ‘keep the game tight and to make every move matter, so players are very limited to the number of moves they can make.



Topiary Designer: Danny Devine Artists: Danny Devine, Jeff Oglesby Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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OPIARY is the proper name for hedge sculpture: the art of trimming bushy plants into ornate and eye-catching designs. It takes patience, skill and creative flair, and now it’s inspired a tile-laying game that’s light and quick to play, but nevertheless manages to generate some genuine competitive antagonism. Its action plays out around a garden where some of the world’s top topiary sculptors have gathered to display their work in a prestigious competition. To win, players aim to draw visitors’ attention to their own creations while blocking their view of their rivals’. It sounds a bit mean-spirited for what’s supposed to be an artistic celebration, but it’s the basis for a fast and fun abstract strategy showdown. Before you play, you’ll create a five-by-five grid using a random assortment of face-down square tokens. Each shows a plant carved into one of a collection of different designs – dinosaurs, elephants, whales and other weird and wonderful shapes. Each player also takes a hand of tiles for themselves, kept secret from their opponents, and a collection of coloured wooden meeples – visitors to the sculpture garden. On your turn you’ll place one of your visitors on an edge of the grid, facing a row of tiles, then look at a face-down token from that row and either return it to its position face-up, or swap it for a tile revealed from your hand. As the game goes on, players uncover more and more tiles until they eventually run out of meeples, and it’s here that Topiary’s combativeness really comes to the fore. Each visitor you’ve placed around the



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Time: 15 - 20 minutes Ages: 8+ Category: Light Strategy RRP (UK): £28.99   MSRP (US): $30.00 grid will score you points based on the sculptures they can see from their position. But each sculpture tile also comes with a number representing its height. Tall pieces block views of smaller ones. It means that as you place tokens, you’ll aim to create lines that maximise your own score while cutting off ones that benefit your opponents. With some careful observation, you’ll sometimes be able to do both at once. But as the garden becomes increasingly crowded, your lines of sight will criss-cross with your opponents’ in an increasingly complex web. It means that your moves become trickier and more consequential towards the end of the game, and placing a single tile can often help or hinder everyone around the table simultaneously. The choices you face balloon in complexity as the game rolls on, but its straightforward turn structure ensures it rarely gets bogged down in too much silent analysis – a perfectly balanced blend of simple rules and tough decisions. It’s been compared by some to Photosynthesis, another plant-themed game with tall trees blocking light from reaching smaller neighbours. Some have asked whether there’s room for both on the market. But it’s an unfair comparison, because aside from one central similarity, Topiary offers something very different. It’s lighter and shorter than Photosynthesis. Its turns are faster. It doesn’t come with a system for gaining or spending energy, and it feels decidedly more abstract. It provides tough choices as well as some immensely satisfying opportunities to scupper your opponents’ plans – because all is fair in war and gardening.



Pictured above: In Topiary, players fill a grid with hedge sculptures aiming to block their opponents’ views. Publisher: Renegade Games / Fever Games



Players’ turns are very simple, but the game generates some tricky decisions, particularly in the latter turns. How did you try to combine a minimal set of rules with genuinely interesting choices? I’m glad to hear that, simple yet meaningful choices are what I strive for when designing. For Topiary, I had the grid that players filled in as they played from my poker game. I knew that was simple and that it was fun and satisfying to do. Building off of that, I knew I wanted to keep the game tight and to make every move matter, so players are very limited to the number of moves they can make. I think it’s tight restrictions and an easy-to-remember turn sequence that make the game so accessible. Did any other games inspire your work on Topiary, and if so, what did you enjoy about them?



The game’s grid evolves over multiple turns, with players adding new tiles and placing visitors around the edges. In a welcome inclusive touch, it also comes with a set of wheelchair-using meeples.



Nothing specific jumps to mind for Topiary, but I can say that Ticket To Ride has been a constant inspiration to me for years. Ticket To Ride is without a doubt what created the obsession with fast simple turns. Every single turn is a desperate feeling of: “Can I take just one more action!?” What are some of the things players should keep in mind as part of their strategy in the game? If you play with the drafting variant at the beginning of the game – which I recommend after you are familiar with the mechanics – try and set yourself up with a way to score bonus points by seeing the same types of topiaries. Having a matching set of tiles can help score you bonus points on the board as well as giving you points for tiles remaining in your hand if you decide to keep them.



Danny Devine was born and raised in Reno, Nevada. He works as graphic designer for a slot machine manufacturer and lives with his wife, their two sons and a feisty little dachshund. He discovered gaming through actor Wil Wheaton’s YouTube series TableTop and explored Small World, Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne and Pandemic. His published games include Mob Town, Ghosts Love Candy and Sprawlopolis.



Topiary’s quick and simple turns conceal a level of challenge that increases with each passing round. Its latter stages provide some genuinely tricky choices.



Are you currently working on any projects you’d like to tell readers about? I am always working on projects. 2019 should see the release of two more games. The first may be of interest to Topiary fans, it’s called Kohaku, a tile laying game about building beautiful koi ponds. I find it to be very relaxing and puzzly. I also have a game called Dragon Fruit, which is a card game about growing strange fantasy style fruit trees. It involves drafting, hand management, and clever sequencing as you try and grow the tallest trees and empty your hand.



Phil Walker-Harding on Gizmos BGB: Engine-building games are a perennial favourite in the hobby. Why do you think they have such a strong appeal? Phil Walker-Harding: I think engine building is fun because there’s something quite visceral about constructing some sort of machine on the table in front of you. Seeing your abilities and power grow throughout a game is a very strong feedback loop as you play. You really feel you’ve built something and that it’s paying off. I’m sure there’s something going on psychologically, too, involving the feeling of achievement and reward. With Gizmos I tried to design a “pure” engine-building game that was only about the engine. There are really no other mechanisms or goals to get in the way.



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What do you think the giant cardboard energy orb dispenser adds to the experience? The original prototype that I pitched to [the game’s publisher] CMON was just a deck of cards! Eric Lang, their head of development, was very keen to add a tactile element that would take its table presence to the next level, and the marble dispenser certainly does that. I think it gives you the feeling of actually playing with a machine. It also actually speeds up the play time, because you never have to reshuffle a deck or handle cards.



Gizmos Designer: Phil Walker-Harding Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4 Time: 30 - 50 minutes



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HE most striking thing about Gizmos, a game of madcap inventors from Sushi Go! creator Phil Walker-Harding, is an elaborate cardboard contraption that spits out an assortment of multi-coloured marbles as you play. It’s an impressive feat of engineering: a collection of carefully folded components that slot together to create a spectacular centrepiece for your game session. As a physical gimmick, it’s undeniably cool. But even the cleverest arrangement of bits doesn’t mean much without a compelling game to back it up. Fortunately, Gizmos provides fast-paced and lightly brainy gameplay that more than lives up to its aesthetic allure. The game sees players become contestants for the top prize at a prestigious science fair. To win, you assemble an improvised machine haphazardly bolting components together to harvest victory points. With each passing round you’ll accumulate different types of energy – Gizmos’ in-game currency represented by coloured orbs from the central dispenser. You’ll use these to pay for additions to your contraption, and while you’ll score points for each new component you build, they’ll also grant you a selection of special abilities to use on future turns. Some let you hold extra energy reserves, others convert one type of orb into another; and some offer new ways to score, rewarding you for incorporating elements in your expanding design. The result is that choosing the right add-ons becomes decidedly tricky. At times it might seem like a good idea to rapidly acquire a bunch of cheap, readily available components. At others, it might



Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £32.99 MSRP (US): $34.99 make more sense to spend a few turns hoarding energy before grabbing something more expensive and powerful. You’ll constantly search for synergies and combinations to exploit. When you get it right you’ll set off explosive chain reactions, adding new bits to your invention and raking in handfuls of energy in one dramatic swoop. The most impressive thing about Gizmos, though, is how it wraps such a clever and addictive challenge around such a simple and fast-playing core. Even when it starts throwing difficult decisions at players, it never becomes slow or sluggish. Its stripped-down approach to engine building has the same intuitive feel and sense of growing power as the revered gem trading game Splendor, and there’s huge variety in its devices, with the potential to throw them together in all sorts of interesting and imaginative configurations. One thing worth noting before you play, though, is that the feel of the game varies with the number of players at the table. With four, it reveals an aggressive side. The increased competition for the choicest resources turns it into a frenetic mosh pit, with rivals snatching energy and components from under one another’s noses. With two players, it’s a little more calm and considered. There’s less potential for rivals to run up against one another, and it emphasises the game’s more thoughtful side as you plan your perfect machine. But whether you’re after a head-to-head battle of wits or a furious multiplayer scramble, Gizmos is fantastic combination of good looks and clever tactics.



Pictured above: Engine-building game Gizmos sees players become eccentric inventors. Publisher: CMON



The game flows very quickly, but it’s still possible to put together some really powerful combinations of cards. How did you try to strike a balance between keeping things fast and intuitive and having a satisfying sense of tactical depth? Earlier versions of the design had a civilisation theme and were a bit more



Phil Walker-Harding lives in Sydney, Australia, where he divides his time between creating games and working at his church. He first encountered modern board games through Catan, Carcassonne and Lost Cities, and his releases include the hit card-drafting game Sushi Go! and the 2016 Spiel des Jahres nominee Imhotep. His interests outside the hobby include theology, classic Hollywood movies and the Beach Boys. complex, so I had quite a few different types of powers in the design that seemed to suit that theme well. When I changed the theme and streamlined the game, I kept in only the powers and abilities that were easy to understand and had little rules overhead.



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I think engine building is fun because there’s something quite visceral about constructing some sort of machine on the table in front of you. You really feel you’ve built something and that it’s paying off.



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The ability to research, to look for a card in a deck, and file, store a card for later, could



The game’s centrepiece is a cardboard contraption that dispenses marbles as you play.



have been removed to make the game even smoother, but they are very important to planning and building the type of machine you want Are there any engine-building games from other designers you particularly enjoy? A big inspiration for Gizmos was Race for the Galaxy. I love how in that game you are building up a tableau of cards which increases your options and abilities very quickly. It is incredibly satisfying to build a little space empire and watch it run. I actually don’t play too many more complex engine builders. I think a big part of the appeal for me is trying to construct something, watching it succeed or fail, and then having another try right away. Are you working on any projects at the moment that you’d like to tell readers about? I have another very different family game coming from CMON next year which I am really excited about, so keep an eye out for that! An expansion for my polyominoplacement game Bärenpark is in the works, which adds some fun new elements to the game. I have also been experimenting with some more narrative-based designs recently, and that is an area of design I find quite exciting.



Gizmos’ box hints at its theme of eccentric inventors.



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Henri Kermarrec on Penny Papers Adventures BGB: Roll-and-write games have become very popular recently. Why do you think that is? Henri Kermarrec: There have been a few roll-and-write games hitting the market this year, that’s a fact. What I find fascinating is that they were all developed independently from each other. It means that a lot of game designers wanted to create roll-andwrite games at the same time. Those game designers do not communicate with each other, they often live in distant countries, so what happened? There’s something strange about the concept of “ideas in the air.” It’s difficult to explain their popularity without entering into some hazardous analysis. Most of them are easy to set up and quick to play — two things gamers are looking for more and more. Above that, those games have some sort of a “bingo effect.” When the dice are rolled at the beginning of each turn, everyone is silently praying to their own gods to have the good numbers. But after that pagan ritual, each one can use their brain to rationally place the results of the dice on his or her grid. It’s almost a metaphor of human nature, between barbarism and civilization! (I told you it would be hazardous…)



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Penny Papers Adventures Designer: Henri Kermarrec Artist: Géraud Soulié Category: Light Strategy Players: 1+



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N recent years, roll-and-write games have become one of the biggest trends in the tabletop hobby. They share the same basic formula: players roll dice, then scribble down the resulting numbers on scoring pads to earn points, and releases like Ganz Schön Clever, Qwixx and Qwinto have all brought their own spin to the concept. With such a glut of games hitting the market, though, it’s easy to miss some real gems. The Penny Papers Adventures series may not have generated the same buzz as better-known dice puzzles, but its three games combine thoughtful challenges with a playful pulp-fiction overlay. And while many roll-and-write games feature little in the way of player interaction, these ones come with a dash of aggression, letting you and your rivals mess with each other’s strategies. Each game in the series revolves around the adventures of the eponymous explorer Penny Papers and her sidekick Dakota Smith, and each follows a similar pattern of play. On every round, one player rolls a set of three chunky wooden dice. You and your opponents will all jot down the results on your score pads, either using each number individually or adding multiple dice together for a higher total. But the games all come with their own set of objectives, and you’ll need to put some real thought into how to use the dice at your disposal to most effectively bump up your score. The simplest entry in the set, The Temple of Apikhabou, sees Penny and Dakota delve into a forgotten burial chamber. You’ll score points by creating an ascending chain of numbers across a grid representing



Time: 10 - 15 Ages: 7+ RRP (UK): £14.99 MSRP (US): TBC a complex of subterranean vaults, or by filling multiple adjacent spaces with matching numbers. Skull Island takes on a piratical theme, depositing players on an unexplored island where they hunt for buried treasure. This time, you’ll aim to place matching numbers so that they form cross-references on the map, pinpointing precious gems and gold doubloons. Finally there’s Valley of Wiraqocha, which is the most complex of the three (and that’s just when you attempt to pronounce it). Players write down numbers representing the areas they explore, placing various buildings next to different types of terrain to score points. It’s more difficult, and probably the best of the bunch. If you’re looking for more of a challenge, its scoring sheets come with a more restrictive reverse side featuring lakes you’ll need to navigate around. The games’ real standout feature, though, is the way they let players interfere with one another’s plans. One die in each set comes with a danger symbol – mummies, skulls and snakes, respectively. Whenever a player rolls one on their turn, you’ll hand your scoring sheet to an opponent, letting them place an obstacle that blocks off a space. It means that as well as the unpredictable dice, you’ll have to work around your rivals doing their best to wreck your clever schemes. Add on a satisfying solo mode, and you have a collection of cheap, simple but taxing games that deserve to be much more widely recognised. They also feel like they’d make brilliant smartphone apps, and hopefully a digital version lies in their not-too-distant future.



Pictured above: Each round of Penny Papers Adventures sees players using the same set of dice to fill in their own personal scoring sheets. Publisher: Sit Down!



Each game in the Penny Papers series uses a similar roll-and-write formula, but they all come with their own set of objectives, and they range in difficulty from the simple Skull Island to the more demanding Valley of Wiraqocha.



have been a ‘fewThereroll-and-write games hitting the market this year, that’s a fact. What I find fascinating is that they were all developed independently from each other.



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Most roll-and-write games don’t have much interaction between players, but in Penny Papers players can disrupt their opponents’ plans. What do you think it adds to the gameplay experience? Penny Papers was designed for a family audience. When playing with some kids with my first prototypes, it was really lacking some fun element. Players were



Where most roll-and-write games feature little or no player interaction, the Penny Papers releases allow you to draw on your opponents’ sheets, messing with their plans and adding a dash of antagonism to proceedings.



not talking to each other, there was no communication during the game. In French, board games are called “jeux de société,” which nearly means “games to be social,” to have a good time interacting with each other. Here, it wasn’t the case. So I used this mean mechanic to have players talk to each others during the game. And it works! Are there any other roll-and-write games you especially enjoy? If so, what do you admire about them? Well, I love Roll Through the Ages. I played it a lot a few years ago. I kept insisting on



Henri Kermarrec lives in Brittany in the west of France. He first fell into the gaming hobby through the Fighting Fantasy series of adventure game books. From there he discovered tabletop roleplaying games, Magic: The Gathering and board games of all kinds. He has been designing games for more than 10 years, and he also works in the industry as a graphic designer.



playing it again and again, because I wanted to see if some strange tech tree strategies would work. My other favourite roll-andwrite game is the classic Qwixx. It’s simple, and really tight. I’ve played dozens of games of Qwixx with my family. The Penny Papers games are all playable solo. Why do you think people are increasingly interested in solitaire play? I think it’s not a new thing that people like to play solo. I think a lot of people play crosswords, or sudoku or video games alone. The new thing is that they are playing board games solo. I guess it’s a sign that board games are more and more pushing their boundaries. They’re not only seen as a social activity, but a cultural media in itself. And we can thank video games for that, they have done a great job of legitimising the act of playing as an adult.



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Matthew Dunstan and Brett J Gilbert on Raids



Matthew Dunstan



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Raids Designers: Matthew Dunstan, Brett J. Gilbert Artist: Biboun Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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IKINGS seem to be in fashion in gaming. From the apocalyptic battles of Blood Rage to the more quietly contemplative A Feast for Odin, there are plenty of opportunities to hop aboard your longship for a spot of exploring and pillaging. Raids is one of the latest additions to the bunch, and where other Norse-themed games can be long and complex, this fast-playing family-weight release makes things much simpler. You and your opponents become jarls of rival Viking clans, captaining your ships around a rocky fjord, raiding villages and slaying monsters as you go. On each turn you’ll move your longship clockwise around the board, choosing any location to stop at. Each comes with a tile dealt from a randomly shuffled stack, and you’ll acquire a growing collection as you play. Goods tiles earn you victory points. Runestones gain you an increasing bonus as you collect them in bigger sets. Weapons boost your strength in fights against mythical creatures. With no dice or cards to determine how far you move on your turn, you’re free to choose the locations you want to sail to. You might want to explore as many places as possible to pick up as many tiles as you can. Or you might want to focus on one or two scoring strategies, snagging particular tiles before your opponents can beat you to it. At some point, though, you’ll inevitably find yourself lusting after the same location as one of your rivals, and in fitting Viking style, that’s when fights break out. Whenever you move to a space occupied by an opponent, you’ll engage in a quick and ruthless bout of



Time: 30 - 45 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £43.99   MSRP (US): $35.50 combat, taking turns to sacrifice rapidly mounting numbers of crew – represented by axe-wielding wooden meeples. Whoever is willing to throw more of their troops into this meatgrinder gets to remain on the disputed location. It’s effectively a game of chicken, and while players who recruit more Vikings have a distinct advantage, it’s also important to consider how many of your warriors a given objective is worth. Waiting to see whether you or your opponent will break first creates some genuine tension. But battles also resolve at a lighting pace, and it means that while only two players will ever be involved in any given scrap, the rest of the table isn’t left twiddling their thumbs. Just about every aspect of Raids is impressively intuitive, but that’s not to say it doesn’t come with meaningful tactical choices. It challenges players to read the random assortment of tiles on the board and choose the ones that most matter to them. It also adds to its sense of drama on each of its four rounds. Rewards become richer, monsters grow more powerful, and you’ll incrementally upgrade your ship, augmenting it with add-ons that make you more deadly or net you extra points. The result is that while it plays out quickly, it manages to pack a palpable feeling of growth into its gameplay. It also benefits from impressive production, with a punchy, vibrant art style and real metal coins adding to its appeal. In a hobby crowded with Viking games, this may be the quickest and simplest way to Valhalla.



Pictured above: The fast-playing Raids casts players as the heads of Viking clans battling monsters and each other in a quest for glory. Publisher: Iello



Brett J Gilbert



BGB: Where did the idea for Raids come from? Matthew Dunstan and Brett J. Gilbert: Part of the origin of Raids was a desire to place the core travelling mechanism of Tokaido [a 2012 Japanese-themed game by designer Antoine Bauza] within a more directly interactive game. The ‘player at the back moves next’ idea is simple and compelling, but Tokaido was just a little too gentle for our tastes. From the very beginning players were Vikings sailing between islands, stopping to upgrade their longships, deliver goods, and fight marauders. The other main creative drive for Raids was an effort to push ourselves to make games using only cards. The initial prototype consisted solely of playing cards; even the ship you moved was a card. And although they might seem to have nothing in common, this basic component restriction is the genesis of a whole series of our designs, including Pyramids and The Great City of Rome.



Matthew Dunstan was born in Sydney, Australia and has lived in the UK since 2011. His aunt introduced him to games like chess and euchre, and he later discovered modern releases like Catan through school friends. His favourite games include Hansa Teutonica, Five Tribes and Race for the Galaxy. He works as a research scientist, loves weird socks and is obsessed with the Eurovision Song Contest. Brett J Gilbert is originally from the English Midlands and has lived in the Cambridge area for around 15 years. As the youngest of three siblings, he lost a lot of games as a child, but his family changed and adapted some of their favourite games, leading to his interest in game design. He appreciates elegance and simplicity in games, explaining: “I don’t want to play a game that’s smarter than I am.”



It feels very much like a family game, but it’s a little more directly competitive than many releases pitched at a family market. Do you think there’s more room for a bit of raw antagonism in all-ages games than many people assume? Absolutely! But we think our game lets every player choose their own path: some moments may call for aggression, others for more peaceful manoeuvres. It’s up to you. However, we’ve played Raids with many groups, and no matter their age, there will always be some players who waste no time in embracing the opportunity to fight – often with no thought for the cost or consequences! The combat system, with players competing to see who’s willing to sacrifice more Vikings than their opponent, is an interesting aspect of the game. How did you come up with it, and what effect do you think it has on the overall experience?



It wasn’t the first mechanism we tried, but once we happened upon it, it stuck. One of the key decisions was to decide to fix the number of Vikings that would be committed at each step of a battle: first one, then two, then three, and so on. For a family game, this makes it a lot easier for players to quickly size up their opponents and calculate their chances in a fight. If you were able to sacrifice any number of Vikings, which we tried in several versions of the game, then this decision became too mathematical and dull. Ditching the maths allows players to focus on the most enjoyable part of the game: looking your foes in the eye and challenging them to battle! Another vital aspect of the combat is that the attacker must always be the first to sacrifice a Viking. This introduces some unexpected tactics that allows for a less aggressive way to hinder your opponents. It can be advantageous to sail to a tile that you are certain your opponent wants, only to immediately sail away when challenged,



As you make your way around the board, you’ll encounter an assortment of vicious monsters, forcing you to fight or flee.



Where some Viking-themed games are long and complex, Raids condenses its action into a quick and simple package.



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leaving your opponent’s ship one Viking lighter, and you with just the advantage you need for the next battle.



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The game comes with a bunch of different scoring conditions. What kinds of tactical choices do you think that presents to players? We always like games which offer different experiences to players each time they play. One way of doing this is to embed several different strategies into a design. In Raids, there are many different paths for a player to take: collecting a lot of runes, being armed to the teeth in order to take down as many monsters as possible, or even trying to preserve your crew over the entire game in order to score big with Mjolnirs. However, you have to be careful to ensure that these strategies are not so distinct that players have no cause to interact. There are only a few tiles that relate to each strategy in each of the four “voyages,” and they are distributed randomly around the board. If the tiles you want are near the end of the voyage, do you simply sail straight to them, or do you consider boosting your score through other means? Upgrading your ship is another important element in the game. Why was it important for you to have that sense of progression? I’m not sure if we thought of it in terms of progression – in the initial design it was just obvious to us that if you were playing as Vikings you would want a way to personalise your own longship with a variety of cool sails and weapons. When the game was purely cards, there was a nice sense of achievement each time you inserted new equipment cards into your ship, making it longer and more impressive – so there was definitely an aesthetic drive to this choice as well. Later on in the design process, making the decision to limit the number of Vikings a player could have on their ship offered a nice opportunity to balance the relative strength of these upgrades: better cards would have fewer shields on them, further



You’ll add goods, weapons, sails and banners to your longship as you play, creating your own set of advantages and point-scoring opportunities.



85 On every turn you’ll be able to sail forward to any space on the board, but if you arrive at the same location as an opponent, you’ll find yourself locked in combat, losing members of your crew.



Luxor Designer: Rüdiger Dorn Artist: Dennis Lohausen Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 4 Raids sees players distribute location tiles in a random order for each new round, meaning no two games will ever present quite the same challenge.



limiting the number of Vikings they could hold. This was one of those serendipitous moments when a number of different problems could all be solved with a simple set of simultaneous and connected design choices, and introduced even more strategic decisions into the game. There have been a lot of games with Viking themes in recent years – Blood Rage, Raiders of the North Sea, A Feast for Odin – why do you think Norse history and legend appeals to so many players? The appeal is not just to players: there is something epic and adventurous in Norse history that appeals to game designers and publishers too. Part of this is the expeditious, combative, resourceful, rugged



and ambitious Viking archetype that we are all familiar with, and in which gamers and designers can find concepts that can be mapped to many common aspects of hobby games: exploration, territory control, survival, resource management, crafting – the list goes on. Perhaps it is also pertinent that Viking history is, well, pretty old – and has already been well established as a mythic and romanticised version of itself. Which is to say: however grim the reality, everyone is several steps removed from any sense of genuine brutality. It’s all just cartoon violence, committed by roundfaced and bearded men in pointy hats. It’s actually not an historical theme at all: it’s fantasy. And therefore anything goes, including tentacled sea monsters the size of mountains!



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N first inspection, you could easily mistake the Egyptian-themed Luxor for a Monopoly-style roll-and-move game. It hands players control of teams of archaeologists exploring an ancient tomb, and its board features a winding track representing the dark subterranean passage leading to its central burial chamber. As you play you’ll move your adventurers – wooden meeples complete with Indiana-Jones-style cowboy hats – along its twisting path, collecting priceless artefacts along the way. Sit down and play, though, and you’ll quickly discover that while Luxor has some passing similarities to mass-market games, it also comes with plenty of interesting tactical decisions to chew over. On each round you’ll play a movement card to push your adventurers further into the tomb. Each space they land on grants you a reward, handing you treasures or shooting them further along the track, potentially catapulting them ahead of your rivals. You’ll score points for your collected artefacts at the end of the game, but you’ll also gain a bonus based on how far you penetrate into the crypt, and it sets up a dilemma: do you take your time, minutely exploring every hidden nook in search of goodies to scavenge? Or do you try to rush ahead of your opponents, treating the game as more of a straight-up race? Usually, the answer lies somewhere between the two. But what makes things tricky is Luxor’s clever card-based movement system. Throughout the game you’ll use a hand of five cards to move your meeples, but you’ll only be able to play the left- or right-most card



Time: 30 - 45 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £39.99 MSRP (US): $35.99 in your hand on any given turn. With no way to shuffle or rearrange the cards you hold, you’ll need to think carefully about the order you play them in, getting the right ones into the right positions at the right times to pull off winning combinations of moves. It’s slick and intuitive, but it takes some careful planning. And to add another layer of complexity to your choices, you’ll also be able to add new and more powerful cards to your hand over the course of the game. These open up new actions, letting you catch up with opponents or move multiple meeples on a single turn, and the process of adding them to your hand feels almost like a light element of Dominion-style deckbuilding. Once you’ve used your new cards, though, they’ll go into a communal discard pile, and there’s the risk that your opponents will draw them on future rounds. It means that while they can hand you useful advantages, they often don’t last very long, and capitalising on them takes some judicious timing. It all amounts to an ideal option for introducing new players to the hobby, with its track-based movement providing some familiar ground for anyone who’s played games like Ludo. It combines mechanical simplicity with just the right degree of tactical depth. Its one major flaw, though, lies in how it tackles its grave-robbing theme. Luxor’s artwork depicts an all-white cast of archaeologists plundering Egypt’s cultural heritage. It’s a misstep at a time when representation in games is becoming a bit of a hot topic, and the only sour note in what’s otherwise a brilliant addition to almost any family game shelf.



Pictured above: In Luxor, players become Indiana-Jones-style adventurers competing to reach the heart of an ancient Egyptian tomb. Publisher: Queen Games



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Reef Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi Artist: Chris Quilliams Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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ORAL reefs are some of the world’s most astounding ecosystems: labyrinthine structures made up of countless tiny creatures, all bound together in a delicate evolutionary balance. From a collection of simple individual parts, they grow into something ornate and wonderful, and that’s something you could also say about Reef, a game inspired by these natural marvels. At its heart, it’s an abstract multiplayer puzzle that sees players attempt to build patterns using polyps – sea creatures represented by delightfully bright and chunky plastic pieces. On your turn you’ll take one of two simple actions, either taking a card from a face-up row in the centre of the table, or playing one from your hand to add new pieces to your personal player board. But from just these two basic building blocks, Reef creates a game that’s tight, elegant and deceptively brainy. Each card you play does two things. First, it allows you to take a pictured set of coral pieces from a shared pool in the centre of the table and place them on your player board. Then, you’ll score points if you’ve managed to build a particular pattern shown on the card. You might need to place pieces of certain colours next to each other, or to stack corals one on top of another to create towers of different heights. What makes things tricky, though, is that cards never give you the pieces required to complete their own objectives. A card might give you green pieces, but let you score with purple, or give you purple,



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Planet Time: 30 - 45 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £36.99 MSRP (US): $39.99 but let you score with yellow. It means that maximising your score takes some clever planning, and you’ll need to think carefully about the order in which you pick up and play cards, building your way towards high-scoring plays over a series of quick-fire turns. As more cards are revealed with each passing round, you’ll look to spot new scoring opportunities as they arise, and with your opponents all vying to snatch the most useful ones as they’re dealt from the deck, it soon becomes clear that behind its bright colours and toy-like plastic bits, Reef is a game with a razor-sharp competitive core. If you’re able to place more than one repetition of a point-scoring pattern on your board, you’ll be able to multiply its reward – a potentially game-winning move. It means that every card you pull into your hand brings you a step closer to victory, but in other respects, it also leaves you a step behind. While holding more cards gives you more options on future turns, it doesn’t actually earn you any points, and hoovering up too many risks losing momentum to opponents who are actually making plays. With such a simple structure, turns whiz by at a rapid pace, and because you can plan your actions while others are taking theirs, there’s next to no down-time as players lose themselves in lengthy analysis. Its simple rules, fast play and vibrant pieces ensure there’s no great barrier to playing Reef, and it shows that Century: Spice Road, from the same designer, was more than just a one-off among family gaming gems.



Pictured above: Your coral reef grows with every turn as you hunt for ways to score points. Publisher: Next Move Games



Designer: Urtis Šulinskas Artist: Sabrina Miramon Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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HE idea of world-building is nothing new in games, but few releases take the concept quite as literally as Planet. It sees players compete to create worlds from a selection of terrain tiles, combining forests, mountains, oceans and deserts to build habitats for a diverse array of animals. Rather than laying your tiles side-by-side on a board, though, you’ll attach them to a three-dimensional plastic planet – a magnetic dodecahedron that you’ll gradually transform from an empty shell to a rich ecosystem. And while planetary formation in our universe might take billions of years, here it shouldn’t take you more than about half an hour. Before you play, you’ll separate the game’s tiles into a row of randomly shuffled stacks. On each round you’ll reveal one of them, then take turns to choose a single terrain tile to add to your planet. Along the way, you’ll also try to fulfil objectives shown on a collection of face-up cards, and what elevates Planet from a plastic novelty to a game that’s seriously worthy of your attention is the way these goals shape your choices as you develop your strategy. Each round sees players compete over a new set of objectives. You might want to have the largest conjoined area of frozen tundra, or the most individual regions of forest. You might aim to build certain types of terrain next to one another, or to keep other types apart. Many of the game’s goals are diametrically opposed to one another, and you’ll need to work out which ones to pursue, and which to ignore. To complicate matters further, each player also receives a secret per-



Time: 20 - 30 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £29.99 MSRP (US): TBC sonal objective before you play. It means you’ll never be completely sure which tiles your opponents value most, and it adds a subtle psychological element as you try to guess your rivals’ motivations. On their own, these factors would make for a fun drafting game. But combined with Planet’s unorthodox components, they turn into something special. The tactile sensation of turning your evolving world in your hands, examining it from all angles as you consider where to place your next tile has the same appeal as trying to find your next move on a Rubik’s Cube. And the 3D playing surface means that there’s no edge to your “board,” so that even on your final turn you’ll carefully orient your terrain to squeeze out a few more vital points. The downside is that it makes it difficult to see other players’ tiles. You’re allowed to examine your opponents’ planets whenever you like, but in practice it’s so fiddly and disruptive to the flow of the game that you probably won’t want to. There’s also a noticeable difference in two, three and four player games. With fewer players competing for tiles, games feel fairly relaxed and non-confrontational. With a more crowded table, you’re more likely to have the terrain you need snatched by one of your rivals, and the result is that it feels more heated and competitive. But Planet is a fantastic combination of fast-playing simplicity, brain-teasing gameplay and physical polish. And its innovative 3D setup means it’s probably the only game that can honestly claim to put the whole world in your hands.



Pictured above: Planet’s 12-sided worlds and magnetic pieces create a three-dimensional puzzle. Publisher: Blue Orange



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Triplock Designers: Adam Carlson, Josh Carlson Artist: Josh Carlson Category: Light Strategy Players: 1 - 2



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ANY games are, in some sense, puzzles. From the brilliant stained glass crafting game Sagrada to the mechanoid obstacle course of Ricochet Robots, a huge selection of releases aim to create the same kind of brain-teasing appeal as a tricky crossword or a tough sudoku. Triplock is the newest member of the club, and while at its core it’s mechanically abstract, it comes wrapped in some impressive thematic packaging. A steampunk game of thieves, safe-crackers and anarchists, it boasts artwork full of cogs and gears depicted in shades of soot, smoke and burnished brass. It challenges players to be the first to open a complex lock using their powers of logic and memory, with just a little hint of luck thrown in for good measure. The game revolves around stacks of shiny poker chips on a neoprene board. Each represents one element of the lock you’re trying to crack, and each consists of a double-sided chip representing an advanced security gadget, concealed like the filling in a sandwich between two brown “failsafe” tokens. To crack the lock you’ll need to discover which security measure is hiding in each stack, then turn, shuffle and manipulate the piles, attempting to arrange them in a sequence shown on a randomly-drawn objective card. It sounds simple enough, but there are, of course, a couple of catches. You’ll roll a pair of dice on each turn to determine the actions you can take: things like peeking at hidden chips, removing failsafes or swapping the positions of stacks on the board. You can take both of



Karuba: The Card Game Time: 15 - 30 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £23.30 MSRP (US): $29.95 the actions you roll, but you can also choose to ignore the dice altogether, taking a single action of your choice instead. It means you’ll constantly need to think about whether it’s worth cutting your options in half to pull off moves that edge you closer to victory. It’s not a complicated game; it’s easier to play than it is to explain. What’s much tougher, though, is playing well. You’ll rely on a mix of logic and deduction, and with things in a constant state of flux as chips shift and shuffle around the table, simply remembering where things are can be half the battle. What might be most impressive though, is that Triplock physically feels like the act of lockpicking. You reach out, caressing, lifting and flipping interlocking stacks of chips with your fingers, and twisting them into predetermined sequences feels like lining up tumblers with a hairpin. The sense of immersion it conjures with a minimum of rules and components is incredible. To add to the tension in two-player games, there are traps – hidden cards which give you a bonus when your opponent unwittingly triggers them by taking certain actions. It provides opportunities for all sorts of devious mind games. But unusually, Triplock is equally enjoyable played solo, and it comes with a series of single-player scenarios linked together in a short narrative. Between the stories and the emergent theme, Triplock evokes a palpable air of mystery. But its greatest trick of all might be tickling your imagination and your logical circuits at the same time.



Pictured above: Triplock casts players as safecrackers in a steampunk world of gears, cogs and gadgets. Publisher: Chip Theory Games



Designer: Rüdiger Dorn Artist: Claus Stephan Category: Light Strategy Players: 2 - 6



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UNGLE adventure game Karuba was one of the best family games of 2015. A puzzlish tile-laying challenge, it saw players leading parties of explorers along forest paths in search of ancient temples. Its route-building formula combined kid-friendly simplicity with some genuinely challenging decisions, and its broad appeal earned it a nomination for that year’s Spiel des Jahres award – gaming’s equivalent of an Oscar for best picture. Now its designer has returned with Karuba: The Card Game, and while this new take comes with a smaller box and a shorter play time, it loses none of the brain-teasing appeal of its big sibling. The original Karuba handed each participant an individual player board, with adventurers and temples placed in identical starting positions. Players received matching numbered path tiles on every turn, building routes through the forest in an attempt to connect explorers with their destinations and trying to avoid leading them into disastrous dead-ends. It meant each player faced exactly the same challenge and had access to the same tools to solve it. But the process of hunting through stacks of tiles for the right one on every turn was a little grating, and it brought a stop-start pace what was otherwise a fairly fast-playing game. This card-based successor makes things much simpler. You’ll start with a shuffled deck of 16 cards, all showing different configurations of paths – straight sections, junctions and crossroads. Some also come



Playing Time: 15 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £13.99 MSRP (US): $19.99 with pictures of explorers or temples, and on each round you’ll draw a hand of three before choosing two to play in front of you, steadily building a grid of twisting trails and trying to lead your adventurers to their goals. It’s not complicated, but it’s perilously easy to put the wrong cards in the wrong places, painting yourself into corners and cutting off routes in the process. Getting lost in the jungle isn’t the only danger you’ll face. On each round you’ll also compare the numbers on your chosen cards with your opponents’. Whoever has the lowest combined total will be forced to discard one of their cards, putting them at a distinct disadvantage. The result is that Karuba: The Card Game comes with a mean streak that’s absent in the original. With a bit of careful observation, it’s possible to take a guess at what your opponents might have in their hands, strategically playing higher values and forcing them to lose cards. And with the lowest-numbered cards among the most useful and versatile in the game, you’ll need to think carefully about when it’s safe to play them. It brings a new element of tactical thinking and player interaction, and this added dash of aggression might not be to everybody’s taste. But it’s impressive just how effectively the card game condenses Karuba’s core into such a small, tight, fast-playing package. It trims the fat from what was already a lean, elegant design, and as an added bonus it supports larger groups of players than its predecessor.



Pictured above: This smaller, quicker, card-based version of adventure game Karuba loses almost none of the original board game’s appeal. Publisher: HABA



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Nyctophobia Designer: Catherine Stippell Artist: Peter Wocken Category: Light Strategy Players: 3 - 5



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MAGINE: you’re lost at night in a pitch-black wood. It’s so dark you can barely see your hands in front of your face. Instead you hold them out, fingertips feeling the grating bark of the trees that surround you. Somewhere nearby, you can’t tell how close, you hear ragged breathing and a voice. “You’re next,” it says. “My axe is hungry. You’re next.” That’s the premise behind Nyctophobia, an extraordinary cooperative game which sees terrified victims pursued by a bloodthirsty killer. One player takes on the role of the antagonist – either a maniacal axe murderer or a malevolent witch. The rest play as their quarry, attempting to flee to the safety of their car and escape with their lives. It’s a situation plucked straight from films like Friday the 13th, The Descent and The Blair Witch Project, and as if it weren’t already terrifying enough, it throws one more complication into the mix: none of the victims can see. The game comes with a set of completely opaque blackout glasses which you’ll wear as you play, leaving you with no visual impression of the board in front of you. The villain is the only sighted player, and before the game begins they’ll set up the board, placing areas of jagged plastic trees, smooth rocks and the all-important getaway vehicle. It means you’ll be left with only your sense of touch to guide you, and on your turn the hunter player will take your hand, guiding it to the location of your pawn and letting you feel around your surroundings. It’s an unsettlingly intimate gesture, and it adds to the sense of



Time: 30 - 45 minutes Ages: 9+ RRP (UK): £35.99 MSRP (US): $39.95 unease as you move your fingers, trying to form a mental map of clear spaces and obstacles, never knowing whether your next move will lead to salvation, or bring you face-to-face with the implacable horror that’s stalking you through the forest. Getting out alive might sound like an impossible task, but even without the ability to see, you’ll have a handful of ways to boost your chances of survival. Players can talk to one another, building up a patchy idea of the board layout. They can hide, keeping them temporarily safe from their pursuer. And they can find and throw rocks as a desperate means of self defence. Nyctophobia’s designer made it to play with a blind relative, and while it’s intended as an accessible game for visually impaired players, its sensory deprivation also means that it conjures a fantastic sense of raw dread. Being hunted is creepy and disorienting. The hunter, by contrast, gets to play some delicious mind games with their prey. This kind of survival horror is a tricky thing to pull off in a game. The entire genre is built around the idea of hideously outmatched victims trying in vain to evade a merciless killer, and while it makes for some chilling on-screen moments, its central pillars of futility and inevitable doom don’t make for a comfortable play experience. But Nyctophobia manages to build a genuinely fearful atmosphere while still letting players feel that they have a fighting chance. Its novelty does fade over time, but while it lasts, it offers something genuinely compelling. There’s nothing else quite like it in all of gaming.



Pictured above: Developed by designer Catherine Stippel to play with her blind uncle, Nyctophobia recreates the feeling of a chilling horror movie. Publisher: Pandasaurus Games



From Legendary designer Matt Leacock comes...



The Forbidden Series The Board Game Book    Chapter 4



You escaped the island...



Medium Strategy Games 92



You survived the desert...



...but can you weather the storm?



Family gaming adventures, where fun is never forbidden To stock, Retailers please contact Coiledspring Games 020 3301 1160 or www.coiledspring.co.uk



fact that Keyforge is an impressive game in its own right. Each published deck comes with a combination of cards from different factions. There are the Brobnar, a race of giants who pulverise enemies with raw strength and aggression. There’s House Logos, a collection of scholars and scientists who defeat their rivals with the power of intellect. There are the legions of Dis: demon warriors who don’t mind sacrificing their own allies in order to destroy those who stand in their way. There are sneaky thieves, devout knights and even a Martian faction complete with ray guns and flying saucers. On each round you’ll choose just one of the houses in your deck to activate. From there you’ll only be able to play or use the abilities of cards belonging to that house. It’s a marked difference from Magic, where players rely on specific cards to generate mystical energy in order to summon their troops to the table, and it neatly disposes with the problem of “mana screw,” where it’s possible to be stuck with no resources, unable to do any-



What’s strikingly ‘different is the way



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Keyforge: Call of the Archons Designer: Richard Garfield Artists: Various Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2



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N 1993, designer Richard Garfield released a card game that would change the course of the tabletop industry. Magic: The Gathering cast players as mages travelling between parallel dimensions. Along the way they cast powerful enchantments, summoned armies of dangerous creatures and attempted to defeat their opponents in intense, spell-slinging battles of wits. It became a huge success, and over the years Magic has drawn tens of millions of players to the table with its blend of evocative artwork, fantasy storytelling and cerebral gameplay. But what really made the game stand out on its release was its innovative distribution model. Rather than purchasing a complete game in a box, players bought random selections of cards in sealed packs. The result was that collecting and trading cards became almost as much a part of the game as actually playing. But more importantly, it also meant that players had incredible freedom to build and refine their decks, trying out different combinations of troops and spells, and experimenting with a huge range of tactical possibilities. Over the years, other card games like Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh have taken Magic’s collectible formula in a variety of different directions. Digital upstart Hearthstone has adapted the concept for fast and furious online play. And Garfield himself has produced titles including the horror-themed Vampire: The Eternal Struggle and the cyberpunk computer-hacking game Netrunner. Now he’s returned with a new take on card-based combat, and in the process he’s turned some fun-



Time: 15 - 30 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £36.99 (base set) MSRP (US): $33.99 (base set) damental assumptions about these kinds of games on their heads. Keyforge: Call of the Archons transports players to The Crucible, an alternate dimension where the universe’s mightiest warriors have assembled to do battle. Like Magic, it hands players command of forces of soldiers, wizards and beasts, deploying units to the battlefield in an effort to crush their opponents. But what’s strikingly different is the way the game strives to be deliberately uncollectible. Rather than creating their own fine-tuned custom decks, players buy them pre-assembled, with cards selected by a computer algorithm. Each deck comes with a unique name and its own design on the reverse side of its cards, making it impossible to mix elements from one deck into another. Instead, it challenges players to learn the strengths and weaknesses of each individual set of cards, with its publisher guaranteeing that no two decks will ever be exactly the same. It eliminates some of the most intimidating aspects of collectible card games for newer players, minimising the amount of deck-crafting work required before you can actually sit down and play, and ensuring opponents with larger collections don’t have an unfair advantage. It also removes the possibility of a second-hand market where sought-after cards can change hands for vast sums of money, and it side-steps the phenomenon of “net decking,” where players attempt to copy decks that perform well in high-level tournaments rather than coming up with winning strategies of their own. But as interesting as all of this is, it’s important not to overlook the



Pictured above: Keyforge is the new “unique deck” game from designer Richard Garfield. Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games. Images: Fantasy Flight Games



the game strives to be deliberately uncollectible. Rather than creating their own fine-tuned custom decks, players buy them pre-assembled, with cards selected by a computer algorithm.



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thing as your opponent sails to an unopposed and unsatisfying victory. Instead, Keyforge goes to great lengths to ensure you’re always able to do something – usually something fun and interesting – on every turn. The other big difference is in Keyforge’s condition for victory. Where Magic sees players attacking one another in an attempt to reduce their opponent’s life points to zero, this latest offering is more about advancing your own position than destroying your rivals. You’ll be able to use your creatures to



Every Keyforge deck contains creatures and items from three different factions, but you’ll only be able to activate cards belonging to one of them on each of your turns.



Each Keyforge deck is generated by a computer algorithm, and no two will ever be identical. It means that, unlike games such as Magic: The Gathering, players can’t copy winning decks from high-level tournaments, and it ensures some unpredictable and entertaining match-ups. Image: Fantasy Flight Games



harvest æmber tokens. Collect six, and you’ll be able to forge a key – the game’s victory points. Forge three keys, and you’ll win the contest. What complicates matters are the many ways in which your opponent will be able to mess with your plans, sending their creatures to destroy yours or stealing your hard-won æmber before you’re able to put it to good use. As you play, you’ll assemble an efficient point-scoring machine, but you’ll struggle to use it to its full potential before your rival manages to chip away at vital components. It can sometimes mean that the pace of play slows down, with both sides preventing each other from taking a step forward. But most of the time it makes for some big, swingy, dramatic turns. It’s hard to know whether it will find an audience, though. Some of the problems that



Keyforge sets out to solve are also some of the things that most powerfully appeal to fans of collectible card games like Magic. The potential to express yourself by building decks is a potent draw. It’s unclear exactly how many players are interested in playing head-to-head contests but not in the planning, scheming and experimentation that come with constructing custom decks. But Keyforge is far more than just a rehash of the blueprint established by its creator more than a quarter of a century ago. It’s fun, it’s frenetic, and the vast number of possible decks means you’ll encounter a fresh set of challenges with each opponent you face. It’s going to be interesting to see where its publishers take it in the coming years, and whether its bold approach will find a foothold in an already crowded card gaming universe.



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Richard Garfield on Keyforge: Call of the Archons BGB: You’re best known as the inventor of collectible card games. Keyforge turns that idea completely on its head. How did you come up with the concept for the game? Richard Garfield: In the early days of Magic one of the ways we played was in limited leagues – groups of players who kept the same sets of cards for months at a time. This method of play was a lot of fun; players got familiar with particular decks and made a reputation with them, and they had to use bad cards as well as their best. Sometimes to keep players from accidentally mixing their league decks with other cards we would stamp the backs with unique identifiers. I wondered if there would be a way to print the decks with unique identifiers. Every once in the while I would revisit the idea, until a few years ago I asked some printers about the possibility of dynamically generated decks and was told that they were just getting the capability to do that at the scale I needed.



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In other card games, including Magic, there’s the phenomenon of “netdecking,” where players copy decks which have performed well in high-level tournaments. What effect do you think that has on the way those games are played, and how does Keyforge’s randomised distribution model change things for players? In the beginning [with Magic] everyone would construct their own decks. But as time went on, the best deck designers in the world would start posting their decks online and players began to use those rather than anything locally designed. This still leads to an interesting game if the environment has a lot of top-level decks. However, the variety



Richard Garfield was born in Philadelphia and spent much of his childhood in Asia. While studying mathematics, he created the original collectable card game, Magic: The Gathering, which became one of the most successful and influential products in the history of the tabletop industry. He is also the designer of Netrunner, King of Tokyo and Bunny Kingdom. He has a strong interest in gaming history, and loves to travel with the love of his life, Koni. He is currently doing his best to teach games to their baby twins.



is far lower that the concept of trading card games allows, and even promises. Rather than an essentially endless number of decks, players might see, say, half a dozen with only subtle differences between them. If Keyforge is played the way it was intended – where players get small numbers of decks which they compete with between each other – then there will be no netdecking. Everyone’s deck will be unique, and the play of that deck will require consideration different from most other decks. There’s an algorithm which puts together the individual decks and ensures that each one is unique. Does it simply generate random selections of cards from three houses, or does it intelligently try to build useful and interesting combinations? It is as random as I could get away with and still have a sense of cohesion. There are cards that can only appear in singles, there are cards that check to make sure the deck can support them to some degree, and there are cards that pull in other cards so they always appear as sets. Whenever there were deck generation decisions, I erred on the side of variety. I hated the idea of killing good deck possibilities along with the bad. A crude



example of that was an early proposal that decks have no repeat cards, because all the problems we had seen in playtesting came from multiple copies of the same card. If we did that we would have rid the Keyforge universe of many troubles, but the number of cool decks we would lose would be huge, so this was an option we quickly discarded. The house system is a really interesting alternative to resourcebased systems in other games, like gold or mana. How did you develop it, and what kinds of decisions does it present to players? The house system grew out of two things: trying to give each deck a sense of character, and the knowledge that a traditional card-costing method was unnecessary. By making different houses with distinct characteristics and restricting your cards to be pulled from those houses only, you can get a lot of character. I played around with a lot of designs that involved mixing three factions into a deck – for example, an adventuring game where each player was a character with three character classes. As I played around with these various prototypes I settled on the house method of play rather than something like a mana system. I was a bit worried at first because I like how the game state grows in complexity with mana in a game like Magic, but I soon found that the game state often got quite interesting in these prototypes as well, since creatures, artefacts, and archived cards could accumulate over many turns.



The game is set in The Crucible, an alternate dimension where the universe’s mightiest warriors have been brought to do battle. With its mix of giants, demons, Martians and mad scientists, it’s a madcap blend of disparate thematic elements. Image: Fantasy Flight Games



There’s a real sense of humour to the game. Were you keen from the start that its tone shouldn’t be too heavy, and how do you think this distinguishes Keyforge from other card games that have a more straight-faced approach? In general I resist game flavour that takes itself too seriously. With Keyforge in particular I thought a serious approach would feel bad with all the swingy effects and strange combinations I wanted to see in the game. I



97 Each of Keyforge’s factions comes with its own strategic approach. House Logos uses the power of science and technology to defeat its enemies, but the random mix of cards in each deck means they might be paired with stoic knights, cunning thieves or wild beasts. Image: Fantasy Flight Games



wanted to put players in a playful frame of mind rather than a competitive one. I think there is enough depth in the game to play seriously, and players who are interested in that will be rewarded, but the swinginess and uneveness of the environment makes it better to begin with a more casual attitude. Some of the reactions to the game online have been quite cynical – particularly from folks who haven’t actually played it. Why do you think that is? There are a lot of reasons this approach might rub people the wrong way. The most obvious is that trading card games are loved by many players and the audience that loves TCGs generally loves deck construction. And there is no reason they shouldn’t – it is a wonderful and deep form of gameplay. What they generally don’t see is why the focus on play rather than construction could be a positive for many players. Another reason is that trading card game players think about games of this sort as being a challenge to find the best deck. I think people who engage with Keyforge this way will be disappointed. It’s supposed to be more about playing as well as you can with what you have. One last reason people are often cynical is that they see the power differences between decks and can’t stand the idea of losing because they have a worse deck. There are many players for whom winning



The game’s art style reflects its chaotic combination of factions, with lots of vivid colours, dramatic scenes and intriguing characters. Image: Fantasy Flight Games



is very important, and they are offended when a player wins a game by anything other than skilful play. Someone who feels this way really won’t like what Keyforge offers. There is a lot of skill to the play, but luck and deck quality will also factor in.



The best players will win more often than others, but perhaps not as often as some folks would like. To me being offended by a bad deck is like being offended that playing Civilization 6 on top difficulty is unfair.



Martin Wallace on Wildlands BGB: Where did the idea for Wildlands come from? Martin Wallace: I started with the idea of super-intelligent, all-powerful aliens grabbing warriors from different periods of time, dividing them into teams and letting them fight against each other. So you could have, say, a Roman legionary and an American GI on the same team. I had previously worked with Osprey Games on my game London. So, I showed them my design, and they happened to be looking for something that would be a vehicle for miniatures. They couldn’t go with the background I had come up with because it was pretty similar to Heroscape [a 2004 Hasbro battle game]. So they went with a fantasy setting, but not a typical one. You’ve got these very different factions with their own individual personalities, so it’s not just: “We’ve got orcs. We’ve got a paladin.” It’s a bit more quirky than that.



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Wildlands Designer: Martin Wallace Artists: Alyn Spiller, Yann Tisseron Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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ILDLANDS is a game of small-scale battles pitting bands of fantasy warriors against one another in fast and furious combat. It’s hardly a groundbreaking theme; walk into any game store and you’ll find more swords-and-spells skirmishers than you can swing a battleaxe at. But this latest take on the genre elegantly distils squad-based clashes, balancing streamlined gameplay with a rich tactical challenge. The game comes with four factions, each with its own strengths: pit-fighters excel in close combat; mages blast enemies with arcane attacks; fleet-footed nomads duck and dodge. You’ll throw your combatants into the fray, launching assaults on enemies and attempting to collect magical crystals scattered across the board. Players control their troops using decks of command cards – a different set for each squad. Each card shows a collection of symbols allowing fighters to move, attack in combat or defend themselves against enemy aggression. On your turn you’ll play as many as you like to issue orders to your warriors, but it requires some careful judgement. Cards offer an array of possible commands, and it’s hugely important to choose the most effective ones.. Should you spend three or four cards to send your axe-wielding werewolf charging recklessly towards an enemy? Or does it make more sense to consolidate your position, moving your entire party into place for a coordinated attack? Should you play a clutch of cards to launch a volley of arrows at an opponent, or keep some in your hand to defend yourself in case they launch a counterattack?



Time: 30 - 60 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £59.99 MSRP (US): $80 Certain cards let you interrupt opponents’ turns, leading to an air of action-movie unpredictability with players launching surprise assaults or diving out of the way of incoming damage at the last moment. It’s a fast-flowing system. But what’s really impressive is the way it handles everything – movement, melee combat, missile and magic attacks – using only sets of symbols. There are no complicated text effects, no character-specific abilities. And while that seems like it should detract from the game’s thematic immersion, it manages to make factions feel very distinct. There are hand-to-hand monsters, hulking meatshields and sneaking snipers, and your tactics will vary massively depending on the team you command. There are a handful of points where the game falls a little flat. On some turns your most sensible option will be to take a breather and refill your hand with cards. And while up to four players can compete at once, it loses some of its tactical nuance in mass brawls, where there’s a tendency for players to gang up on a weakened opponent. Then there’s the game’s art style. It would be nice if the cards showed fighters in dramatic poses – clashing swords with adversaries or conjuring dangerous spells. Instead, they’re shown standing around looking vaguely bored. But mechanically, Wildlands is an incredibly slick fantasy fighting game. Its publisher has released new factions and maps which offer new tactics and environments. But as a standalone release, there’s plenty to keep you coming back for more sword-swinging adventure.



Pictured above: Wildlands’ base set comes with four factions to control, each represented by a set of plastic miniatures. Publisher: Osprey Games



What makes it stand out from other fantasy skirmish games? I’ve designed it to be a quick-playing arena combat game. You open the box up, choose your faction and you’re ready to go. You don’t have to worry about drafting cards or anything like that. You get a faction and you have to fight with what you’ve got. I’ve tried to keep the core gameplay as simple as possible. When it’s your turn you can take as many as actions as you like as long as you have the cards to do them, so it’s very smooth-flowing. You can potentially achieve a lot in a single turn with an explosive set of actions All of the faction decks come preconfigured. Did you consider letting players tweak or customise them at all? No, there’s no deck building at all. I played Magic: The Gathering many years ago, but I’m not someone who’s terribly into constructing decks. And it’s not like there’s a shortage of deckbuilding games out there. Wildlands is more about choosing your fixed deck and learning how to play it well. The way the game is designed, each of the characters has their own abilities. Some are faster, some are better at melee or ranged combat. All of those abilities have been chopped up and distributed between the cards. You couldn’t include that in custom-



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Wildlands’ base set comes with an underground dungeon and a ruined city to fight over. But additional boards provide new environments to explore and battle over.



built decks. That chopping up of abilities is a key part of the game. Are there any plans to add new battlefields or teams to the game? You get a double-sided map with the base game: a dungeon and a ruined city. During development I also made one with open, rolling hills. The other I thought of as Finland, because it’s basically flat terrain but with lots of bogs and woods. And there will be new teams coming with their own decks and their own sets of abilities. We’re also working on rules for solitaire play. It’s kind of like a quick playing Gloomhaven. You might not know where the enemy is but there’ll be a deck that determines what they do. I think it could be turned into a really good solo dungeon crawl game, but one that could be played in a third of the time of Gloomhaven.



Martin Wallace is a UK-born game designer currently living in Brisbane, Australia. A former history teacher, he is the creator of the revered economic strategy game Brass, deckbuilding war game A Few Acres of Snow and A Study in Emerald, the official board game adaptation of author Neil Gaiman’s short story combining the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu Mythos. When he’s not designing or playing games, he enjoys travel and hiking.



Each faction in the game specialises in particular types of tactics.



Wildlands’ quick and simple approach makes for fast-paced and unpredictable battles.



Mike Nudd on Dice Hospital Mike Nudd grew up in south-east England and has been gaming since he was a teenager, when he fell in love with roleplaying and had a part-time job at his local Games Workshop. For the past 15 years he has organised tournaments for the long-defunct but recently resurrected card game Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. His favourite games include Battlestar Galactica, Eclipse, High Frontier and Twilight Imperium, and he is the designer of the 2014 game Waggle Dance, which sees players compete to produce honey by building thriving colonies of bees.



Dice Hospital’s inclusive art represents a diverse range of characters.



BGB: What made you want to design a game about hospitals? They’re not necessarily the first place people think of when it comes to fun and games. Mike Nudd: I actually took on the project from Alley Cat Games as a redesign and development task – the hospital theme originated from the designer of the prototype version Stan Kordonskiy. However, as soon as I saw the prototype I agreed with Caezar Al-Jassar from Alley Cat that the synergy between the mechanics and the theme was strong, and that the theme had been under-utilised in the world of tabletop games and was worth keeping.



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Dice Hospital Designers: Stan Kordonskiy, Mike Nudd Artists: Sebastián Koziner, Sabrina Miramon Category: Medium Strategy Players: 1 - 4



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OSPITALS aren’t the first places you’d associate with good times, but that hasn’t stopped them serving as the inspiration for some seriously worthwhile games. Digital releases like 1997’s Theme Hospital and the Trauma Center series on the Nintendo DS have seen players running healthcare facilities and performing delicate surgical procedures. And in the tabletop world, there are plenty of games with medical themes – most notably the bestselling Pandemic. Board games set in actual hospitals are harder to find, with the mass-market Operation providing the best-known example. But now analogue games are catching up. Dice Hospital sees rival hospital managers battling to recruit staff, upgrade facilities and treat a stream of patients arriving at their doors. The game starts players out on an even footing, with identical boards representing their fledgling medical centres. At the start of each round you’ll receive an intake of new patients represented by chunky dice. The numbers on their faces represent their condition, and you’ll aim to improve them as you play, rotating them to ever-higher numbers. If they improve past their sixth side, they’re cured and you’ll be able to discharge them to earn points. You and your opponents will all have access to the same set of basic clinics and treatment rooms. But as you play you’ll form your own individual strategies, building new extensions like radiology departments, immunotherapy clinics and cardiology centres that let you per-



Time: 45 - 60 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): TBC MSRP (US): $54.99 form more effective treatments. Along the way you’ll also hire a team of specialists, each of whom excels at treating certain types of illness, and it means that before very long you’ll have established your own strengths and areas of excellence. That doesn’t mean things are going to be easy, though, and the game throws some difficult decisions in your path. You’ll have a limited number of staff at your disposal, meaning that you often won’t be able to treat all of the patients in your wards. Neglect them for too long, and they’ll die, costing you hard-won victory points. And with a limited number of beds, there are even occasions when you’ll be forced to accept that certain patients are beyond your help, giving up on saving them in favour of newcomers with a higher chance of survival. It feels antithetical to everything we’ve come to expect from TV hospital dramas. But it’s the kind of decision that real-world medical professionals make every day, and it’s impressive how straight-facedly Dice Hospital tackles such hard subject matter. A more valid criticism is that the game doesn’t feature much in the way of player interaction; it’s largely about finding the most efficient way to run your own hospital. The upside to this is that it comes with a superb solo mode. But its sense of “multiplayer solitaire” won’t be to everybody’s taste. If you can look beyond that, though, this is a fantastically clever puzzle. When you win, you feel like a genius. When you lose, there’s an addictive urge to reset and attempt to do better next time.



Pictured above: Dice Hospital uses sets of dice to represent patients with improving or deteriorating conditions. Publisher: Alley Cat Games



You treat the theme in quite a serious manner. You don’t incorporate the same kind of zany humour as games like Theme Hospital. Was that important to you? It was definitely important to Alley Cat Games to keep the game grounded, and not make it too “cutesy” or whimsical. At the same time, we didn’t want to focus on too many negative aspects, due to the impact this might have on player investment and replay value. The notions of letting patients die for the greater good, or just to free up beds, these



things are certainly a form of commentary on the way that the NHS and other health services are run in the real world. I think we achieved a fine balance here. Aside from drafting for patients and specialists, there isn’t a lot of player interaction in Dice Hospital. Some people find that off-putting, but do you think it adds something to the game’s competitive puzzle? The game is what it is. Having seen how well Roll Player by Thunderworks was received by fans and critics alike in 2016, we were fairly confident that an audience existed for this type of game that offers this type of deep puzzle experience matched with relatively light player interaction. Now the game is being released we are discussing potential game expansions, and how these might change the gameplay – and in particular the level of player interaction – to further broaden the game’s appeal. The solo mode is a lot of fun. Was it important to you that it should work with one player? It seems like that’s becoming more common in the hobby: why do you think people are getting more interested in games they can play alone? I would say the industry has seen an increase in demand for games that have solo modes. We’re also now starting to see solo-only games. In fact, if I recall correctly there was a very successful solo game on



You’ll use staff including nurses and specialists to treat patients with an array of different ailments, trying to cure and discharge them while minimising deaths.



Kickstarter earlier this year. This demand seems to be coming from people who don’t have time to organise more social gaming sessions, or who don’t have access to other local players that they can game with. Social anxiety might also be a factor. Also people who are coming from a video game background are more used to playing on their own. I’m sure though that if you asked most tabletop gamers they would say they would prefer to play with other people. My concern as a game designer is that some games just don’t work solo. Creating a game for many players is a very different proposition to making a game for just one, and if a game doesn’t adapt well then you’re probably better off not trying.



say the industry ‘hasI would seen an increase in demand for games that have solo modes. We’re also now starting to see solo-only games. If I recall correctly there was a very successful solo game on Kickstarter earlier this year.



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With each passing round you’ll improve your hospital, adding new departments and hiring staff to treat patients more effectively.



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Filip Miłuński on Capital BGB: City-building games are pretty common, and many of them use tilelaying systems. What do you think makes Capital different from the rest? Filip Miłuński: When I created Capital I was looking for an innovative system of tile distribution and selection. It was a long process, and in the end I failed miserably. But I learned that sometimes forcing innovation is not a good idea. The unique and most important elements for Capital were the restriction on the size of your district and the overbuilding mechanism, where new buildings can be placed on top of older ones. Then there was the element of destruction in the form of the World Wars.



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Capital (aka Warsaw: City of Ruins) Designer: Filip Miłuński Artists: Tytus Brzozowski, Grzegorz Molas Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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ITY-BUILDING is one of the most enduring themes in gaming, and from the SimCity-inspired Suburbia to the engrossing puzzle of Quadropolis, there are countless options for players looking for a quick fix of civic administration. With plenty of city-builders already on store shelves, it’s tempting to ask whether there’s really a pressing need for any more. But Capital, also released as Warsaw: City of Ruins, combines tried-and-tested approaches to urban planning with some intriguing innovations. Like many city-construction titles, it’s a tile-laying game that sees players incrementally grow a small town into a thriving metropolis. Players are tasked with developing different districts of the Polish capital, and on each round you’ll draft a hand of tiles, choosing some and passing others to your opponents. When you’ve finished, you’ll arrange your selections in various point-scoring configurations, aiming to build residential areas, parks, shops and industrial zones. Up to this point, it’s pretty standard stuff. But Capital throws a few spices into the mix. The game plays out over six rounds, representing different eras in Warsaw’s history. As you progress, you’ll draw more industrial and cultural tiles, opening up new scoring opportunities and studding your city with workshops, factories, theatres and museums as it develops into a bustling economic and social hub. You’ll also compete for special tiles representing the city’s most important landmarks. Each offers useful bonuses or new ways to score points. To claim them, you’ll need to fulfil different objectives such



Ages: 10+ Play time: 45 - 60 minutes RRP (UK): £29.99 MSRP (US): $49.99 as having the highest number of a particular type of tile in your city. It forces you to strike a balance between a long-term point-scoring strategy and the immediate fight for special buildings. But while for the most part Capital is all about building and development, it also incorporates an element of destruction. Twice during the game, you’ll lose some of your carefully placed tiles as Poland is caught up in the violence and tragedy of the World Wars. That sounds like it ought to come as a huge blow to your plans, but it can actually open up new opportunities. With older buildings demolished, there’s a chance to add higher-scoring ones to take their place, and as you enter the game’s final rounds you’ll see gleaming shopping centres and sports stadiums pop up as you enter the modern era. The result is that your city is incredibly mutable. There’s a real sense that it’s evolving and developing over time rather than simply expanding as in most city-builders. And you’ll also be limited to building your tiles in a tight four-by-three grid, overlaying new neighbourhoods on top of old ones as you go. It adds to the sense that your district is changing over a period of decades, and it means you’ll need to think carefully about the tiles you want to cover up, and the ones you want to leave in place. The result is that Capital never runs out of steam, and it presents you with interesting choices right until your final turn. Even if you already have two or three similar games on your shelf, there’s more than enough room for this excellent city-builder to join them.



Pictured above: Capital sees each player build a section of Warsaw, adding homes, businesses, parks and landmarks. Publisher: Granna



What elements in the game do you think make it feel uniquely connected to Warsaw? One of the foundations was the idea of milestone buildings. In the city’s history, whenever it entered a new era there was usually some building or structure which became the symbol of the new time period and the changes it brought. I wanted to show this in gameplay. The best example of it is Palace of Culture and Science which is the symbol of the communist period. It was built by the Russians right after the Second World War. In the game it penalises players who invest in commercial areas – capitalism and rewards players who invest in factories and industry – communism. I was always hunting for these kinds of connections between theme and gameplay.



Filip Miłuński is the creative director of publisher Lucky Duck Games and the founder of the Monsoon Group, Poland’s biggest game design initiative. He enjoys video games and competitive card games and plays the ukulele and cajon drum. He enjoys discovering new games and usually plays as purple. He has two children, Feliks and Lena.



with a Warsaw historian, then I came up with mechanisms representing the function of those structures. The core gameplay of Capital is very tactical. You’re usually thinking about the current tile and about having enough money for construction. But milestones invite you to think about your long-term strategy. If you see Palace of Culture and Science, you know that switching your economic engine to industry before epoch four ends may be a good idea. At the same time, they create replayability because you play with a different set for every game. Like many city-builders, Capital is a tilelaying challenge. But it comes with plenty of interesting innovative touches.



On each round, players are competing to claim different buildings, each of which comes with its own special bonus or scoring opportunity. What kind of tactical possibilities does that open up for players? I created the special tiles with the theme in mind. I started by discussing the most important set of buildings in each epoch



Most games understandably portray war as a catastrophe, but in Capital the destruction of parts of the city open up possibilities for redevelopment. What was the intent behind that decision? That was hard. I wanted to really show the impact of the Second World War on my city, but at the same time I needed to keep the game working as a system. If I had chosen to be 100% true to history, the game would end after epoch four, because Warsaw was almost completely destroyed during the uprising against the Nazis in 1944. I wanted to show this, but not to hit players with a huge, unfair setback by ruining their strategies and getting rid of half of their tiles. The current rule is a compromise. When you lose two tiles after the fourth epoch it’s usually painful. But it doesn’t ruin your strategy and may open some possibilities as well.



core gameplay ‘ofTheCapital is very



The game takes place over six rounds, each representing different periods in Warsaw’s development. It includes elements of destruction during the World Wars, but it also allows for the construction of iconic buildings from the city’s past and present, each of which affects players’ strategies in different ways.



tactical. You’re usually thinking about the current tile and about having enough money for construction. But milestones invite you to think about your long-term strategy.



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Inka and Markus Brand on EXIT: The Game Inka and Markus Brand are a husband-and-wife design team. They met at a friend’s wedding in 1999 and had their first date — a game night — one week later. Their published games include Village, Word Slam, Murano and the legacy game The Rise of Queensdale. Their favourite games include The Legend of Andor, TIME Stories, Ticket to Ride, Time’s Up and Pillars of the Earth. They live in Gummersbach, Germany with their children Lukas and Emely.



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EXIT: The Game Designers: Inka Brand, Markus Brand Artists: Inka Brand, Markus Brand, Silvia Christoph, Franz Vohwinkel Category: Medium Strategy



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N recent years there’s been a worldwide craze for escape rooms – real-life games where players find themselves locked inside specially constructed environments and have to solve a series of fiendish puzzles to get out. Rooms come with elaborately designed themes, sealing players in abandoned hospitals, underground bunkers or derelict spaceships, and many boast carefully arranged props, lighting and even live actors adding to the sense of immersion. The EXIT: The Game series attempts to condense the experience into a form that fits on a kitchen table. That might seem impossible, but these small-box games use some brilliant design touches to create just as much brain-burning tension as their real-world inspiration. It’s difficult to say much about the games without giving away vital information, but each deposits players in a different location, from a creepy abandoned cabin to an isolated polar research facility. They use combinations of cards and printed booklets to create a succession of challenges, giving you just enough information to get started before leaving you to figure out what you’re supposed to do. At first it can feel a little disorienting, but you’ll quickly start to spot subtle hints hidden in artwork, text or in the puzzles themselves, and it creates a sense of discovery that feels a lot like the process of scouring a real escape room for clues. With each riddle you solve, you’ll unlock at least one more, and it adds to the sense that you’re progressing through the game environment, uncovering new details as you go. At times you’ll need to solve multiple puzzles simultaneously, and it



Players: 1 - 6 Time: 45 - 150 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £13.50   MSRP (US): $14.95 means that you’ll want to split your group into smaller teams to tackle different problems. With different tasks testing your powers of logic, observation, code-breaking, pattern-matching and spatial reasoning, it also means that each player can focus on the things they find most intriguing. If a particular problem leaves you stumped, you can turn your attention to another, and nobody at the table ends up feeling surplus to requirements. Occasionally you’ll run into puzzles that you just can’t collectively solve, and when that happens the game has a built-in system of hints to help you get back on track. What’s impressive, though, is that each puzzle comes with multiple levels of help. If you find yourself slightly stuck, you can turn over a hint card to get a vague suggestion about how to progress. If you still need help, you can reveal the next one to get more explicit advice. Even when you aren’t able to crack a code or decipher a diagram, you can get just the amount of assistance you need without sacrificing the satisfaction of coming up with your own solution. One potential stumbling block for some players might be the EXIT series’ lack of replayability. When you complete an instalment, you unveil its secrets and won’t be able to play it again. You’ll also have to fold, cut and write on components as you play, meaning you can’t pass games on to friends once you’ve finished. But while you’ll only get a single session out of each game, it makes for some fantastically brainy game nights — all for less than the cost of a trip to the cinema.



Pictured above: The Exit series uses cards, booklets and simple props to pack fantastic escape room puzzles into small boxes. Publisher: KOSMOS. Image: KOSMOS



BGB: How did you first come up with the idea for an escape room themed series of games? Are you big fans of real-world escape room challenges? Inka and Markus Brand: We went to our first live exit room in December 2014 with our entire family. We were very excited about the experience, and we talked about it with our editors from Kosmos Games. It turned out that they had already had the idea of publishing a game based on escape rooms, so we were probably in the right place at the right time. We are still big escape room fans today. In total we have visited more than 40, and we still can’t get enough of them!



We collect new ‘puzzles all the time. Whenever someone has a cool idea, we write it down and put it in a box so that we’re prepared when we start with a new EXIT game. Of course we mix the types of puzzles in each game.



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Why do you think escape rooms have become such a big trend around the world? We don’t really know. Maybe because it’s a live team task. When playing an escape room, you realise very quickly that it would be difficult to solve it on your own. Everyone thinks differently — that’s what makes it so exciting. You see how differently people tackle problems. If you solve all of the riddles and end up coming out of the room, you made a really great group experience. Once you have tried it, you want to do it over and over again.



There’s a real sense of progression to the game, almost like you’re searching a real environment for clues. How did you try to create this feeling? We imagine exactly that: a real situation. When we start working on a new EXIT game, we think about where we could be and what could happen to us. We can control the order of the puzzles very easily. We just need to hide clues and parts of puzzles in locked items at particular points in the game. It means we make sure that the players have to open an item first, before they can tackle the next puzzle. Sometimes we have more than one riddle which can be solved at the same time. That means the players can progress faster if they are well organised. This often creates a kind of flow feeling and gets players excited about going on until the end of the game.



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The individual puzzles themselves are very varied, and they test a lot of different skills. How do you decide on the mix of riddles that go into each game? We collect new puzzles all the time. Whenever someone has a cool idea, we write it down and put it in a box so that we’re prepared when we start with a new EXIT game. Of course we mix the types of puzzles in each game. They should have a lot of variety. Sometimes you need scissors, another time you have to fold something, or write something down. You never know what comes next; that’s how the games remain exciting. Is it difficult to keep coming up with new puzzles as the series grows? How do you keep things feeling fresh and challenging for players who have played the earlier games? Our puzzles are often inspired by the stories the games tell. We try to find riddles that mesh and put them together. We’re careful not to use any similar riddles. Of course it’s getting harder with every new EXIT game, but it still works. If the day comes when we think our ideas are not cool or fresh enough, we will immediately stop creating new EXIT games.



The series has explored locations including haunted houses, sinister laboratories and creepy museums, with further releases planned for the future. Images: KOSMOS



Lorenzo Silva on Dragon Castle BGB: Where did the idea for Dragon Castle come from? What made you think that mahjong solitaire had the potential to be turned into a fullfeatured multiplayer game? Lorenzo Silva: Here in the West, the game we think of as “mahjong” is actually the solitaire variant. It really doesn’t have anything to do with the traditional Chinese game, which is all about set-collection, skill, strategy and calculation. The only thing they have in common is their tiles. But the tile-collection mechanism of solitaire mahjong has been popular for decades. There’s something fundamentally satisfying in searching for a couple of matching tiles to remove and slowly demolishing a huge structure. During the 2016 Lucca Comics and Games convention here in Italy, Luca Ricci approached me with the idea of making a board game based on mahjong solitaire. After a couple of email exchanges we started to work separately on our ideas. Then after a couple of months Hjalmar Hach joined the team. We had a huge change of pace and the project gained steam.



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Dragon Castle Designers: Hjalmar Hach, Luca Ricci, Lorenzo Silva Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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AHJONG is one of the world’s most popular games. From its historic home in China, it’s spread across the globe, drawing millions of players to the table. Along the way, it’s also spawned the simplified digital version known as mahjong solitaire – a game responsible for untold hours of lost productivity as bored office workers sneak in a few rounds on their PCs while the boss isn’t looking. With its pile of white plastic tiles and collection of multi-coloured icons, Dragon Castle looks almost exactly like mahjong solitaire, and it’s easy to write it off as a straightforward clone. But despite the visual similarity, the two are very different breeds of dragon. The game revolves around a randomly assembled stack of tiles in the centre of the table. On your turn you’ll choose a pair showing a matching symbol, exactly like the computer game that inspired it. The key difference, though, is what you do with your tiles once you’ve chosen them. Rather than simply discarding them, you’ll place them onto a grid on a personal player mat, either spreading them across your available spaces, or stacking them one on top of another. Your goal is to create adjacent sets of four or more matching symbols, and whenever you do you’ll be able to turn them face-down to score points, with bigger groups of tiles netting you greater rewards. Sometimes, though, you’ll find yourself in a position where you don’t have two matching tiles to take. When that happens, you’ll gain



Time: 30 - 45 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £46.99 MSRP (US): $49.99 a little rubber shrine which you can place on top of one of your stacks, gaining bonus points based on its height. It means that from the very start of the game, you’ll have to choose between two competing priorities. If you can pick up lots of pairs, big sets are a route to big points. If not, then building tight and high, and perching shrines on the top of your towers is the way to go. The game begins with most of its tiles hidden in the depths of the main stack, only revealed as players remove the ones piled on top of them. As new tiles appear, you face an agonising wait to see whether another player plucks off the pieces you need before you have a chance to get your hands on them. It’s all about optimising your actions and maximising your points. But the ever-changing selection of tiles demands that you constantly reevaluate your plans. And while you’ll need to think carefully about each of your moves, it’s also vital that you keep an eye on the symbols your rivals are collecting. You’ll want to stop them from obtaining them, but also to avoid being dragged into fights over particular types of tiles. It creates a tricky interplay between sets of mutually opposed goals, and it drives Dragon Castle along at quite a pace. But in spite of its snappy tempo, it’s a brutal, brain burning, ever-shifting puzzle of the most intense and unforgiving kind. And with optional cards that add new powers and point-scoring opportunities to the game, it also packs some impressive replayability once you’ve mastered its basic mode.



Pictured above: Dragon Castle uses mahjong-style blocks, but it creates its own compelling competitive puzzle. Publisher: Horrible Games / CMON



You have two methods of scoring points – placing shrines and completing sets of tiles. How did you come up with the scoring system, and what kind of tactical decisions do you think it creates for players? We were striving for a simple but deep game, easy enough to be taught to your mom when she passes by and says: “Oh, mahjong, I know this game”, but with enough strategy to appeal to core players too. The double scoring mechanic is part of that. On one side you want to make huge sets of tiles to score lots of points, but then you expose yourself to possible counterdrafting strategies from your opponents. Moreover, the bigger the sets you make, the less sets you will complete overall during the game, and this means fewer shrines and fewer bonus points. But if you decide to push for smaller sets to build lots of shrines, you have two different problems: gathering enough shrines to place, which slows you down at collecting tiles, and trying to build them on the highest floor possible to score more points. So these simple choices create a constant sense of tension. What made you want to add the spirit and dragon cards to the game? How do you think they alter the way it feels to play? Spirit cards give players special abilities to use once each turn, opening new strategy options and potentially drastically changing the way you play. Dragon cards instead affect the way you build your castle on your



Lorenzo Silva lives in Milan, Italy with his wife and son and runs the board game studio Horrible Games. He first fell into the gaming hobby through Dungeons & Dragons, and roleplaying still has a special place in his heart. He later moved on to other games including Talisman and Warhammer. His interests outside of gaming include horror movies and punk rock music.



107 As you play you’ll remove tiles from the central pile, using them to create a new one on your personal player board.



The game comes with a selection of spirit cards which grant players special abilities, represented by stylish illustrations.



board and add new ways to score bonus points. The different spirits and dragons can lead to a very large number of possible combinations, with a lot of interesting interactions that deeply change the feeling of the game. For us the best way to play Dragon Castle is with two dragons and one animal spirit, but we worked hard to have a game that was appealing and with interesting choices even without this additional layer.



Are you currently working on any other projects you’d like to talk about? We’re currently working on The King’s Dilemma, a legacy-style game, based on decisions that the players, the council of the king, have to take. Every decision will make you open sealed packs of cards and the story changes forever. For every group of players the game will be a unique experience. It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but in a box.



Crystal Clans Designers: Andrea Mezzotero, Colby Dauch, J. Arthur Ellis Artist: Martin Abel Category: Medium Strategy



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he first thing that strikes you about Crystal Clans is its vibrant cartoon artwork. A fantasy-themed card game, it casts players as generals commanding armies of fearless soldiers and dangerous creatures, and it paints its world in shades of flame red, neon pink and electric blue. It looks like a modern-day answer to He-Man or Thundercats, with forces of brave knights, shape-shifting merfolk and villainous necromancers. Once you’ve finished drooling over its illustrations, though, you’ll notice another distinguishing feature. Where most card-battlers like Magic: The Gathering revolve purely around players’ carefully crafted decks, Crystal Clans comes with a board – a physical battlefield for you and your opponent to fight over. As you play you’ll carefully manoeuvre your troops between regions, seizing territory, defending your base and launching merciless attacks against your rival. You’ll need to constantly read the battlefield, reacting to your opponent’s threats and exploiting their weaknesses. It’s a real tactical challenge, but you’ll be able to use your units’ array of special powers to help you in the fight. Some boost allies’ strength in combat, or reduce enemies’ defences. Others fly high above the field, speeding to the places where they’re most needed, or pin down your opponent’s forces, keeping them out of the fray. Each of the game’s factions comes with its own set of abilities. The Blood Clan swamps its enemies with huge hordes of warriors. The Skull Clan uses dark magic to raise fallen fighters from the dead. The Flower Clan controls and incapacitates its foes rather than facing them head-on in combat. Mastering these distinct play styles takes practice, and it makes for some varied and exciting clashes between different combinations of clans. There’s more to the game’s strategy, though, and one of its most intriguing elements is the way it lets players combine their units into squads by stacking their cards one on top of another. It means they’ll move and fight as a group, amplifying the danger they pose to anyone who strays into their path. Whenever units collide, combat ensues, and it’s one of Crystal Clans’ high points. Before determining the result, you and your opponent will secretly choose cards from your hands that can tilt the tide of battle in your favour. It adds a poker-like element to proceedings, and you’ll lock eyes like cowboys in an Old-West saloon as you simultaneously flip your cards to reveal who’s come out on top. It means you’ll be able to squeeze some narrow and unexpected victories out of what look to be horribly one-sided fights, and you’ll never be able to mount an attack without at least a little bit of trepidation about the outcome. It all combines to make for some slick and brain-teasing contests. But what’s most impressive about Crystal Clans is its initiative system. Where card games like Magic or Hearthstone use resources like mana or gold to determine what players can do at any given time, Clans comes with a numbered track along the edge of its board. Each action you take pushes a blue gemstone marker towards your opponent’s side, giving them the opportunity to respond to your moves with equally powerful plays of their own. It makes for a frantic seesaw contest with a constantly ramping sense of action and drama. At this early stage, the game’s biggest flaw is its lack of support for customisation. It comes with six pre-constructed decks, with other



Players: 2 Playing time: 30 - 60 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £36.99  MSRP (US): $39.95



clans set to join the lineup in a series of expansions. If you want to build your own decks, you’ll have to wait for a rules update from the publisher. Until then, though, there are enough clever ideas in this box to keep any commander occupied.



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Crystal Clans combines strategy elements from collectible card games with a board-based system for fighting foes and capturing territory.



You can combine multiple units to create bigger, tougher forces. But finding the ones that best complement each other can be tricky.



Each clan has its own play style, and clashes between various factions call for very different tactics.



Preceding page: Each faction in Crystal Clans comes with its own visual style and tactical approach. Publisher: Plaid Hat Games



The game’s punchy, colourful artwork adds visual flair, and enhances the distinct character of each faction.



Andrea Mezzotero, Colby Dauch, and J. Arthur Ellis on Crystal Clans BGB: Where did the idea for Crystal Clans come from? Andrea Mezzotero: Crystal Clans started from my lifelong passion for one-vs-one card games, and in particular for Summoner Wars. I played it a lot, I thought that the idea of a card game that used a board was amazing and wanted to try and design something that used the same concept, but in a different way. Also I had the idea of a card game with the feeling of a real-time strategy video game, where you make your moves while the opponent makes theirs. I tried various mechanics until I found that what now is the initiative track worked exceptionally well.



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The initiative system is one of the game’s most striking features. What do you think it brings to the game? AM: The system eliminates a lot of the book-keeping usually associated with duelling card games. In these kinds of games you often have a resource like mana, gold or credits to spend, and specific mechanics to manage it. The initiative track removes a lot of complexity and gives the game a back-and-forth feeling, and it’s very intuitive to understand that each of your actions is creating opportunities for the opponent to react. The spatial element of moving units on the board is something you don’t find in card games like Magic or A Game of Thrones. What does the need to think about deploying and manoeuvring your troops add to the experience?



Andrea Mezzotero is an Italian card game geek whose favourite games include Android: Netrunner and Summoner Wars. Crystal Clans is his first published release. Colby Dauch is the head of game design studio Plaid Hat Games. His credits include Hasbro’s Battleship Galaxies, card battling game Summoner Wars and the post-apocalyptic City of Remnants. J. Arthur Ellis is Plaid Hat Games’ playtesting manager, and the designer of zombie horror game Raxxon, set in the Dead of Winter universe.



AM: The spatial element of the board really opens up the decision tree of the game. In addition to deciding if you want a unit on the battlefield, you also have to decide where you want it, because moving squads around costs initiative and that initiative can really pile up if you are not careful. Having a board also enables the possibility of fast and slow units with different movement costs. From the experience point of view, having a spatial element also makes the player feel more like a general commanding her troops than when unit movement is abstracted away, like in Magic. Players can use cards as individual units, or they can group them together to form squads. What kinds of decisions does that create? J. Arthur Ellis: I love building a squad because you’re essentially doing a little bit of your own unit crafting by stacking the units. You can think about the total attack and defence and what it’ll cost you, and what abilities you want for the squad. You also get to think about what the squad might look like after it’s taken damage in battle,



As well as the clans included in the base game, players can add new factions to the mix with expansion packs. A handful are already available, with more planned for the future, and each brings its own new set of strengths and strategic approaches to the game.



and how it can still be useful to you. Instead of just having individual units that fight on their own, you have units working together and combining their strength in a very direct way, and making themselves bigger than the sum of their parts. The battle cards system makes combat unpredictable, and it forces you to think about a couple of different possible outcomes depending on the card your opponent plays. How did you come up with that? JAE: Another great thing about the battle card system is how each card is both a unit and a battle card, so players need to decide whether a powerful hero is more important as a unit, or as a boost in battle. Andrea had all that built in when we got it. I made changes based on wanting to see more variety of effects, more theme, and giving players some control over their results. Gaining crystals has some powerful effects on the game, and the fact that they’re drawn at random can make for some unexpected changes in tactics. How did you develop them, and was it difficult to ensure they didn’t unbalance the game? JAE: It’s hard in games to balance rewarding a player who’s achieved a goal, and not letting them run away with victory. I love the way the crystals balance that dynamic. You get your reward – a onetime effect that you can really leverage to your advantage – but you also hand your opponent a lot of initiative, so they can catch up. What was the idea behind releasing the base game before introducing the deck construction element? Do you think it makes it a bit more accessible to new players? JAE: We knew most players play games like Summoner Wars and Crystal Clans by playing the base decks only, so that was our main focus in development, and the way we wanted to introduce people to the game. Not only is deck construction a future feature, but even when it is introduced, every new release will continue to be a fully assembled clan deck ready to play.



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The Water Clan specialises in adaptability, unpredictably changing the state of the battlefield and leaving their enemies scrambling to adapt. Other clans aim to win through aggression, speed, dogged determination or sheer weight of numbers, and match-ups between different factions all feel very different to play.



All of the clans have very distinct play styles. How did you develop them, and how would you describe their different personalities? Colby Dauch: I started off by doing a little world building and then developing a list of names for clans that would occupy this world. In conjunction with that I’d ask myself: what kind of clan would this be? What would their tactics be like? What is the primary thing they are trying to do in the game? I’d then design powers around that base strategy. The Flower Clan are pacifists who try to find paths to victory that don’t involve direct conflict. The Meteor Clan are knowledge seekers. They try to learn their opponents’ plans and foil them. The Stone Clan is steadfast, and they build things that last on the board. And the Blood Clan puts family above all else. They’re a horde; they stick together and attack in large groups. The card illustrations look like something from a high-quality animated series. It’s also a bit brighter looking than a lot of games. How do you think this kind of presentation adds to the overall experience?



Where similar games sometimes use complicated resource systems to determine what players can do on their turn, Crystal Clans uses a simple track on the side of its battlefield. More powerful actions move the token towards your opponent’s side of the board, allowing them to retaliate with some of their own biggest units.



CD: Martin Able is the artist on this game. When an artist takes pride in a project and makes it their own, really giving themselves to it creatively, I feel like the game becomes imbued with their contribution in a way that I can’t imagine the game without them. The style and world building not only



impact initial impressions, but I believe they affect the play experience. We’ve started writing bios for the different characters, and our writing style was greatly informed by Martin’s art style. We want the writing to come across as a fun action adventure cartoon as well.



Emerson Matsuuchi on Century: Eastern Wonders BGB: Where did the idea for the Century series come from? What drew you to the historical spice trade as a theme, and why did you think it would be a good subject to explore through games? Emerson Matsuuchi: The original prototype didn’t have a theme to it. It was initially an experiment to see if distilling some of my favourite mechanisms in European-style games to their core elements would work as a game in its own right. When deciding on a theme for the game, I took some advice from other designers to have a theme that would appeal to the audience for this sort of game. While some may not find spice trading all that exciting, having this theme strongly hinted at what the game was about.



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Century: Eastern Wonders Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi Artists: Atha Kanaani, Chris Quilliams Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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UBLISHED in 2017, Century: Spice Road was a card game of medieval merchants that saw players trading spices on the land route between Europe and China. It combined brainy gameplay and elegant mechanical minimalism, but what really caught many players’ attention was the fact that it was the first instalment in a trilogy – a collection of games that could be played on their own, or combined to unlock new play modes and challenges. Century: Eastern Wonders is the second episode in the series, and while at its core it has a lot in common with its predecessor, it brings some engaging new twists to the table. You and your opponents become the leaders of rival expeditions to the Indonesian Spice Islands, sailing between settlements, trading with their inhabitants and aiming to establish the region’s most profitable mercantile company. The most striking addition in this latest release is its board. Where Spice Road revolved entirely around cards, Eastern Wonders introduces a collection of tiles representing small, scattered islands. Each lets you trade different types of spices, and you’ll navigate from one location to another in a quest to acquire precious cloves, chilli and ginger. Once you’ve loaded your ship with cargo, you’ll rush to get your goods to market and earn yourself a fistful of victory points. With different markets demanding different combinations of spices, you’ll need to work out the quickest ways to get your hands on them – visiting the right islands in the right order, eliminating any unnecessary steps. You’ll also have to think tactically: should you be an op-



Playing time: 30 - 45 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £33.99 MSRP (US): $39.99 portunist, going after easy objectives that net you a mere few points, or chase more difficult goals that come with much bigger rewards? Then there’s your ship to consider. Over the course of the game you will be able to upgrade it, letting you carry extra cargo, move more quickly across the board or harvest additional spices. Choosing the right upgrades can be a dilemma in its own right and adds another facet to your decision-making. It’s a lot to keep on top of, and the fact that you’ll assemble the board at random every time you play means it’s endlessly replayable. It packs the depth and strategic feeling of much bigger, longer and more complicated games, but it crams it all into a slick package that plays in easily under an hour. Considered on its own merits, Eastern Wonders is a richer, more engaging and all-around better game than Spice Road. It feels more thematically connected to the time period it explores, although it notably avoids dealing with any of the thorny issues of its colonialist theme. But a big part of its appeal lies in the ability to pair it up with its predecessor, and this “Sand to Sea” mode uses the game’s modular board along with the cards from Spice Road, creating a new way to play that comes with tougher choices and more tactical options, but barely increases the complexity of the rules. Whether you’re playing it on its own, or in conjunction with its older sibling, it’s worthy of a place on anyone’s game shelf. It’s going to be interesting to see what the final entry in the series brings to the mix.



Pictured above: Century: Eastern Wonders is the second entry in designer Emerson Matsuuchi’s spice-trading series. Publisher: Plan B Games



The idea of a linked series of games that people can play individually or combine to make new, bigger games is really interesting. Where did that idea come from? What were some of the challenges of making games that could fit together like this? That was all [publisher] Plan B Games. At the time the games were announced, I only had an idea of what the second game could be. The third game didn’t exist at all. Having different Eurogame mechanics that could combine together wasn’t the difficult part of the process. Having the combined game be an enjoyable game was a challenge. The other challenging aspect was having a set of mechanics in a design be enjoyable to play in a self-contained package as well as provide a fun experience when combined with an earlier game —



Software developer Emerson Matsuuchi is the head of tabletop game studio Nazca Games. A tabletop gamer from an early age, he traces his love of the hobby to discovering Dungeons & Dragons as a child. He started designing his own games a short time later, and his published designs include the Century series, the abstract Reef and the upcoming Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game. especially one that was not designed with this kind of fusion in mind. In a literal sense, the third game was exponentially more difficult to design as it was planned to have it combine with the first two games. To account for each possible combination of games, four sets of rules had to be designed, developed and tested. It has been a very labour-intensive project. Eastern Wonders has the feeling of a bigger, more complicated economic strategy game, but it never gets clunky or inelegant. How did you try to fit this kind of gameplay into such a tight package? Eastern Wonders is based on the core mechanic of Spice Road where players are trading cubes for other cubes, and eventually for victory points. The new dimension that was added was movement and a board to travel on. Since Spice Road has a very small ruleset, our goal was to make a game that would appeal to the audience of Spice Road with a similar yet different experience without adding much complexity to the rules. Having played the combined Spice Road and Eastern Wonders setup, it’s definitely my favourite way to



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Eastern Wonders is the second game in the Century series.



play. How do you think it changes the experience? It is also my favourite way to play between Spice Road and Eastern Wonders. It adds just a few more options on your turn. The main element that it adds is that each card now be used in one of two ways.



You’ll look for ways to assemble collections of spices, trading one type for another until you can take them to one of the game’s port tiles to sell them and gain victory points. It takes some clever planning and an ability to think two or three turns ahead.



Isaac Vega on Starship Samurai



Image: Bebo of Be Bold Games



Isaac Vega was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in Ohio, where he spent his youth playing card games and video games. His design credits include the narrative-driven zombie survival game Dead of Winter and the fantasy card and dice game Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn. His favourite games include Scythe, Codenames, Imperial Settlers and Dominion, and his hobbies include drawing, reading comics, binge-watching TV and hanging out with his friends. He is a Vice President of publisher Plaid Hat Games.



BGB: Where did the idea for Starship Samurai come from? Isaac Vega: I was inspired by the Gurren Lagann and Gundam animes that I have seen over the years. I honestly think machines fighting each other has a large appeal because it just looks cool. It takes the whole experience of combat to such an epic scale. Who wouldn’t want to be in control of a machine the size of a building battling in space? The visuals of it are enough to get people enjoying it. People like big things, and it’s fun to look at!



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Starship Samurai Designer: Isaac Vega Artists: Gunship Revolution Studios Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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OMETIMES a game can draw you to the table solely on the strength of its visual appeal, and with its collection of miniature fighting mechanoids, Starship Samurai is a prime example. Its chunky plastic robots come endowed with extra arms, metallic wings, and an arsenal of oversized weapons calculated to appeal to anyone who grew up watching giant battle mech cartoons. Fortunately, there’s more to this game of far-future space battles than a set of pretty toys. A stripped-down exercise in sci-fi tactics, it sees players battle for control of a galaxy of scattered worlds, all with an aesthetic overlay of feudal Japan. As you play you’ll deploy fleets of fighter ships, vie for influence with powerful galactic clans and, of course, send giant samurai droids to rain destruction on your enemies. Each round sees players fighting over an assortment of planets drawn from a randomly shuffled deck. You’ll aim to conquer each one by dispatching squadrons of ships into orbit around it, hoping to outgun your opponents. Once everyone has committed their units, you’ll compare your forces’ strength, with victory going to whoever brings the most firepower to the fight. Each planet in the game offers a different reward to whoever manages to claim it. But with a limited supply of units at your disposal, you’ll only be able to challenge for one or two worlds on any round. You’ll need to decide which ones you most need for your interstellar empire and deploy your troops to the battles that matter most. Even when you do unleash what seems like an overwhelming force,



Time: 75 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £54.99 MSRP (US): $59.95 though, there’s no such thing as a certain victory. You and your rivals will also play tactics cards which can dramatically affect the outcome of a fight. Some grant one-off strength bonuses, others teleport ships into the fray from elsewhere in the game, and some simply disintegrate enemy units. It lends combat an agonising element of uncertainty, and it’s one of the game’s real high points. Defeated units aren’t removed from play. Instead, the victor’s ships return to their base while the losers’ stay on the board to fight on the following turn. It makes it hard for one player to establish a runaway lead, but sometimes it makes things feel bogged down and static. With your ships already deployed, it can be difficult to elbow your way into new fights. But while this can lead to frustration, Starship Samurai has an extra string to its cybernetic bow. As well as dominating planets, you can score points by currying favour with various spacefaring factions. The game comes with a separate board to track your standing with different clans, and it means you’ll be able to focus on fighting battles or engaging in subtle political manoeuvres. Starship Samurai combines great miniatures with an exciting premise, but it can sometimes feel a little thin on flavour and detail. Its combat, especially, often feels more like crunching numbers than crunching enemies. But at the same time it offers plenty of challenging choices, and perhaps this slightly abstract feel is just the price to pay for such smooth accessibility in an often complex genre.



Pictured above: Players fight for control of planets while attempting to improve their prestige in the eyes of the galaxy’s ruling clans. Publisher: Plaid Hat Games



What was the process of coming up with those giant mechs like? What kind of feel and characteristics did you want them to have in the game? The goal of Starship Samurai is pretty much feudal Japan in space, so we wanted the aesthetics to represent that time period’s stylings. The mechs themselves all have names and abilities inspired by legendary samurai. Samurai were respected elite generals and warriors during that time period. I wanted the game to reflect that inspiration by making them the most interesting and powerful units in the game.



Starship Samurai combines the warfare and political wrangling of feudal Japan with sci-fi strategy.



The game is inspired by giant robots from Japanese animation, and it comes with some suitably impressive models representing hulking combat mechanoids.



control could come tumbling down when it really matters. I wanted to invoke that feeling of epic, tide-shifting battles in space in a quick and simple system. The battle cards helped do just that. They added the tension that was needed to make players always feel like they are on the edge of their seat.



Players need to divide their attention between the effort to control planets and the political wrangling to gain favour with various clans. What kind of effect do you think that has on strategy in the game? I think it escalates the feeling of a grand scale war. Not all battles that need to be fought happen on the battlefield. Sometimes you need to engage in a battle of minds as well. The push and pull of alliances with lesser clans was essential to crafting that narrative I wanted to portray It feels like this game is a glimpse into a much bigger setting. Do you think we’ll see future releases in the Starship Samurai universe? Hopefully we’re able to put out more games set in the Lotus Galaxy. I have so many more ideas for it. But right now I am working on some other worlds I am really excited about.



How important do you think the plastic miniatures are to the game’s appeal? I purposely made this game because I wanted to make a game with big chunky plastic minis. Up until then I hadn’t really done so. I don’t necessarily think it had to be a game with miniatures in order to work, but I do think it added appeal, and certainly made some miniature painters happy. The game’s combat system with battle cards means that even when you have what looks like a superior force in a fight, it’s hard to be completely confident that you’ll win. What kind of feeling were you trying to generate with combat, and how did you design cards to create that experience? Exactly that: for combat never to be a sure thing. You could be dominating in one location, but with the right combos your



Starship Samurai features exquisite depictions of the locations players are battling over.



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Pandemic Legacy Season 2 Designers: Matt Leacock, Rob Daviau Artists: Atha Kanaani, Chris Quilliams Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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T’S no exaggeration to say that 2008’s cooperative disease-fighting game Pandemic is one of the most important releases in modern board gaming. It casts players as a team of doctors and scientists fighting to eradicate deadly viral strains, jetting around the world to treat the sick and develop vaccines before the human race is wiped from the face of the earth. The game gives each player their own distinct role and special power, letting them treat patients, manoeuvre across the map or research cures more effectively. It uses links between cities as pathways for infections to spread, creating troublesome hot-spots as each disease worms its way around the globe. And it employs an ingenious cardbased system to throw an unpredictable succession of crises at players, creating a palpable air of tension that becomes more and more intense as the game goes on. It’s become the standard by which all other co-ops are judged, and it remains one of the best-selling games in the hobby. In the years since its release it’s seen a succession of expansions and spin-offs which add new twists to its original gameplay. But none have created anything like the same kind of stir as the Pandemic Legacy series. In 2015, Pandemic creator Matt Leacock and fellow designer Rob Daviau released a campaign-based version of the game with a story that unfolded over multiple play sessions. Players’ decisions in one play-through directly affected the situation they faced on the next, with cities descending into anarchy and transport routes closing down



Time: 40 - 60 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £72.99 MSRP (US): $79.99 as global order collapsed in the face of biological Armageddon. It was a story worthy of a heart-pounding thriller novel, but what really enhanced the game’s narrative punch was the way it encouraged players to physically alter its components as they progressed through its plot. They attached stickers to the board to represent increasing levels of chaos around the world. They opened sealed compartments to reveal new plastic pieces. And they discovered new rules at key points in the campaign, imposing tough new restrictions to work around as well as powerful new abilities to help in their quest. It wasn’t a new idea. In 2011, Daviau explored similar concepts in Risk Legacy, an inventive reimagining of the popular mass-market strategy game. But for many fans, Pandemic Legacy perfected the approach, and the game received gushing praise from players and critics alike – even if some sceptics questioned the value of a campaign which couldn’t be played more than once. It won a clutch of awards, and its story-first attitude saw it receive attention not just from the gaming press, but from mainstream news outlets. All of this success meant that the game’s sequel carried the weight of fans’ expectations from the moment it was announced. And while the easiest course for its designers might have been to deliver more of the same, they instead introduced a collection of new ideas. Set 71 years after the events of the original campaign, Season 2 starts with the bleak revelation that the players’ heroics have all been in vain. A subsequent epidemic has devastated humanity, leaving



Pictured above: Pandemic Legacy Season 2 is the sequel to the critically acclaimed campaign-based game of heroic medics and scientists. Publisher: Z-Man Games



much of the planet a depopulated wasteland. The only areas of comparative safety are the “havens” – giant ocean platforms where survivors have taken shelter. Isolated from the ravages of the plague, the inhabitants have worked to keep a small network of cities alive, providing them with food and other essential supplies. But while they’ve managed to keep humankind from extinction, something’s gone wrong: after leaving to attend a high-level meeting, the havens’ leaders have all disappeared. Players take on the roles of the citizens left behind, faced not only with the responsibility of continuing to support struggling cities, but with the mystery of what’s happened to their missing administrators. It’s a markedly different tone from Season 1, with much more of an emphasis on exploration and discovery, and it’s reflected not just in the storyline, but in the game’s mechanical core. Where Season 1 started out with the standard world map that Pandemic players are accustomed to, its sequel begins with much of its world obscured. For your first game, only the area around the Atlantic Ocean is visible. To unveil other parts of the globe, you’ll have to spend time and resources to undertake scouting missions, adding stickers to the board to represent the regions you’ve uncovered. Another big change is that rather than desperately fighting to remove disease cubes from the board, this time you’ll battle to add resource cubes to cities, collecting them from the havens and delivering them to different locations to keep their populations alive. Other tweaks add a touch of danger and unpredictability. As in Season 1, your characters can suffer damage in the course of their adventures, and taking too many wounds will lead to their deaths. But this time around, rather than dying after a set number of injuries, each character’s reference card comes with scratch-off boxes similar to a lottery scratchcard. Whenever you take a hit, you’ll remove one to discover whether it’s a flesh wound or a mortal blow, and it amplifies the sense of risk that runs through the heart of the game. In many respects, this incarnation of Pandemic Legacy feels like a deliberate reversal of many familiar aspects from Season 1. Where the first instalment’s world shrank as cities fell into ruin, here the map opens up over the course of the campaign. Where the first game cast players as a crack team of elite medical specialists, this time you’re a rag-tag bunch of survivors. It’s a significant departure from much of what players have come to expect from Pandemic, and where fans of the original game were almost guaranteed to enjoy its first legacy outing, this one stands or falls much more on its own merits. But no matter whether you prefer the first or second offering, it’s impossible not to be impressed by the game’s ambitious world-building. It has the feeling of a slow-burn sci-fi Netflix series, and it asks some big questions about who we allow to lead us, why we trust them, and whether we really need them in the first place. Its creators have said that the next iteration of the series will be its last, and that feels like a sensible decision. It would be a shame to see a genuinely groundbreaking set of games succumb to the law of diminishing returns. But it’s going to be interesting to see what other designers do with similar campaign-based concepts in the years to come, and whether Pandemic’s injection of narrative creativity proves infectious across the hobby.



Pandemic Legacy Season 2’s map starts out largely blank. As you explore, you’ll uncover new areas of the board, all with new plot elements to discover and crises to manage.



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As in standard Pandemic, players draw cards on each turn to determine where problems arise around the world. But in other respects, the game is very different from the releases that have come before it.



Even when you think you have things under control, the game throws sudden surprises in your path that can leave you scrambling to prevent catastrophes.



Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock on Pandemic Legacy Season 2 Rob Daviau is a 20-year veteran of the tabletop industry. In the course of his career he has worked on more than 80 published releases including Hasbro’s Risk 2210AD, Heroscape and Betrayal at House on the Hill. He created the legacy genre of evolving campaign games with Risk Legacy, and collaborates with designer Matt Leacock on the Pandemic Legacy series. Since 2016 he has worked with publisher Restoration Games to develop new editions of classic games for modern audiences including Downforce; Stop, Thief! and Fireball Island.



Matt Leacock grew up in the midwestern United States. He developed an interest in game design after being introduced to Acquire and Civilization by his father and his uncle, and he enjoyed breakout success with the cooperative diseasefighting game Pandemic. His other releases include the Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert and Forbidden Sky trilogy and the tabletop adaptation of classic British children’s television programme Thunderbirds.



118 BGB: Pandemic Legacy Season 1 was heavily praised by fans and critics. Did that create any sense of pressure while you were working on Season 2? Rob Daviau: We started on Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 six months before Season 1 came out, which helped tremendously. By the time Season 1 came out and we realised how well it was doing, we had already mapped out a lot of the game and had already done a round of playtesting. That helped us stay focused on making the game better, rather than starting from scratch.



The first game is about preventing the fall of civilisation, and it felt quite claustrophobic as the safe areas of the map got steadily smaller. Season 2 is much more about exploring and opening up new bits of the game world. Why did you want to turn the central proposition around like this, and what were some of the ways you tried to create this feeling? RD: We deliberately wanted to make Season 2 feel different from Season 1. One of the things we tried was to turn it



Where Season 1’s artwork and graphic design largely matched the original Pandemic’s, the latest instalment has its own colour scheme and futuristic visual flavour.



inside-out. We asked ourselves, what would happen if cubes were good instead of bad? What if you had already lost when you started the game? What if the world was gone and you had to bring it back? That enabled us to explore a different space instead of just doing Season 1 again with a slightly different story. Matt Leacock: Both Rob and I really enjoy exploration games. In some ways, we were also exploring the world as we designed it. We had a rough idea when we set out, but like story writers, we needed to find our way as we developed the plot and the world. Another strategy was to deliver the story to the players in fragments. We set the game in the future so you could gradually learn about the past as well as living the game in the present. Season 1 gave players a degree of choice over how much risk they placed their characters under. Players knew when they were in danger of dying and could take steps to protect themselves. Season 2 makes things much less predictable. What was the thinking behind that, and how do you think it alters the atmosphere of the game? RD: We really wanted Season 2 to feel more post-apocalyptic, more uncertain. The characters aren’t heroes – at least, not in the beginning. They’re everyday maintenance workers, teachers, radio operators, and so on. They don’t know what they’re capable of. Their jobs are mundane, because the people who would be the heroes are gone. ML: The fact that the characters don’t know how much disease they can be exposed to helps heighten the tension. Players can’t just say: “Oh, I’ll take this one hit and I’ll be fine.” Every time you scratch off a circle on your character card, you’re worried if this might be the end of them. Post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction seems to be having a bit of a boom period at the moment. Were there any books or movies that influenced your work on Pandemic Legacy Season 2? And why do you think people are so drawn to these kinds of themes? RD: The Road Warrior and the usual ones from when we were growing up. ML: The Passage by Justin Cronin, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, and Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood were big influences. I don’t think either of us is sure why this genre is so popular. Perhaps it’s anxiety over the speed of change in our culture – that we feel if things keep going at this rate that we’re ultimately doomed, and we want to try out the thought experiment to see



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As in Pandemic Legacy Season 1, you’ll add stickers to the map and write on the board to permanently change the game as you play through its campaign. It means that each of your choices comes with consequences that can come back to bite you several games later.



what living in the grim “after” world might look like, to see how we might cope Season 1 was nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres, but eventually didn’t win. Season 2 has since been awarded a special prize by the jury. Was that a surprise to you?



Characters come with special skills, and can suffer injury or death as a result of the dangers they face.



RD: Yes, that was very surprising. I woke up early in the morning because I had just come back from Europe when the announcements came out. I had jetlag so I was up on European time when it was announced and there was no one else awake in my house or on Twitter or anywhere who I could share that with or even ask: “What does this mean?” I think they carved it out because the Pandemic Legacy series is just a little bit different from standard games. ML: It was completely unexpected. I’m not sure what their process was, but I agree with Rob. The game doesn’t fit the traditional mould, so perhaps they thought this was the best way to recognise it. As a storytelling medium, are there things you can do in games that aren’t easily available in other formats, like novels or films? Ways you can draw players into the plot that other media don’t have access to? RD: In this case, it’s like a roleplaying game. You are the main characters and you are shaping the plot. And even though Matt and I can be sort of directing things behind the scenes, the players are making these actions. Whether they’re taking a risk or sacrificing a city or pushing their luck, it really makes your pulse race a lot more than if you’re watching someone do it. In a book, you can skip ahead a few pages and



see what’s going to happen. In this, you’re writing it as you go; you don’t know what’s going to happen until you make those choices. If you sold the rights to Pandemic Legacy: The Movie, who would you want to direct it and who would you like on the cast? ML: I’d want it to be focused on Season 2, as I think the visuals of the havens make a visually compelling setting. Margaret Atwood would write the screenplay and Guillermo del Toro would direct. I’m not sure about the cast, but it’d be multigenerational with people from the time before. It’d win “best makeup” at the Oscars. Are there any current projects you’d like to tell the readers about? RD: We are working on Season 3. It’ll be the last of a trilogy. I’m also chief creative at Restoration Games and we’re putting out 2-5 games a year, which keeps me busy. I have other games in the works but they are too early to talk about. ML: In addition to finishing up Season 3, I’m designing a new line of dice games called Era. The games feature beautiful 3D components that I prototype at home on a laser cutter. I’ve been enjoying the exploration of the physical and materials aspect of tabletop games lately.



Bruno Cathala on Queendomino Bruno Cathala is the designer or co-designer of games including Five Tribes, Yamataï, Cyclades and the award-winning family hit Kingdomino. He lives in the French Alps and enjoys fly fishing, cycling and playing the guitar and ukulele.



BGB: Kingdomino was a huge hit. Did you suspect before it was released that it would be as successful as it has been? What about it do you think appeals to so many people? Bruno Cathala: When I’m working on a new game, I always believe in it, but you can never really know how it will be received by the gaming community. That’s why I only ever work on games that I would actually want to play myself. It means that by the end of the design and publishing process, even if it’s not as well-received as I expected, I’m still proud and glad to have built something I really enjoy.



is there ‘toQueendomino offer more challenge,



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adding a seventh type of domino face and letting you spend money to construct buildings ...



Queendomino Designer: Bruno Cathala Artist: Cyril Bouquet Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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ILE-LAYING game Kingdomino was one of the biggest hits of 2016. It cast players as medieval monarchs competing to build thriving domains using an assortment of terrain tiles, and its quick pace and family-friendly simplicity saw it awarded the Spiel des Jahres prize – generally considered to be the most prestigious accolade in gaming. Now its designer is back with a new release that takes the original game’s lightly brainy blueprint and adds some intriguing new elements for fans to discover. Queendomino shares the same mechanical core as its predecessor. Each round sees a random selection of tiles laid out for players to add to their growing kingdoms, all showing different types of territories like fields, forests, grasslands or stretches of water. You’ll use them to gradually build a square grid, gaining points by connecting contiguous areas of matching terrain. The clever bit, though, is that players who choose the least valuable tiles on offer get the first pick of those available on the following round. It means you’ll need to think carefully about when to grab high-scoring territories, and when to sit back and keep your options open for subsequent turns. But while at its heart this follow-up is similar to the original Kingdomino, it comes with some new tactical options that bring added complexity to the mix. As you play, you’ll be able to deploy tiny wooden knights to various regions, collecting taxes and earning coins. You’ll be able to use these to purchase a variety of buildings, each of which comes with its own special effect. Some simply hand



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Playing time: 20 - 30 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £29.99 MSRP (US): $29.99 you victory points at the end of the game, others grant you bonuses for incorporating particular types of lands into your kingdom. It’s a major tweak to the original scoring system, and it makes the process of working out your strategy considerably more complicated. You’ll need to think about the buildings on offer and how well they combine with the territories you’ve already incorporated into your domain. You’ll race to accumulate the funds needed to buy them before your opponents can snap them up. And if all else fails, you’ll be able to dispatch an angry dragon to remove buildings from the game, burning them to the ground to deny them to rival rulers. Essentially, these changes mean you’ll be able to create your own victory conditions, cleverly exploiting synergies between buildings. While Queendomino isn’t a heavy game by any stretch of the imagination, this added element of planning and calculation means that it doesn’t have quite the same family appeal as its predecessor. It’s a little longer, and a little too complicated for younger kids, but it’s a trade-off that sacrifices a little of the original game’s accessibility in exchange for a more thoughtful and varied experience. It takes the addictive core of Kingdomino and develops it into a much more fully-featured game, and if you’re a fan of the original looking to move on to something with a little more depth, this is a brilliant evolution. If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you can even combine both games to build some gigantic realms. Be warned, though - you might need a bigger table!



Pictured above: Queendomino takes the blueprint of the award-winning Kingdomino and adds a new layer of complexity. Publisher: Blue Orange / Coiledspring Games



As far as Kingdomino is concerned, I was convinced that it could appeal to a wide range of gamers. But I never thought about it winning the Spiel des Jahres! I think there are a couple of things that can explain its popularity though. For one thing, its rules are really easy to explain. If someone teaches you the game, you can teach it to other people even weeks later without having to read the rules again. It also has an ability to gather different generations around the table. Some people have told me that they play with five-year-



Queendomino introduces special buildings, revenue-generating knights and an angry dragon, all of which add new strategic twists. Image: Blue Orange.



old children, and some that they play with elders, more than 90 years old. How do you think the new elements in Queendomino change the experience for people who have already played Kingdomino? What about the game feels different? Kingdomino is designed with families in mind. It’s for people who want to have a fast, simple, and fun time without having to think too much. Queendomino is there to offer more challenge, adding a seventh type of domino face and letting you spend money to construct buildings, each with its own way to generate victory points. I wanted to add more of a brainy element. If you already know the original game then there isn’t too much more to learn. But this one offers more decisions, some money management, and some other small things that lead to a really different game experience, more suitable for experienced players. The main change is that in Kingdomino, if you want to optimise your score, you have to make big areas including a lot of crowns. In Queendomino, depending on the buildings you have, you will want to separate some areas and to build up others. It’s possible to play a bigger game with a seven-by-seven square grid, and it’s become quite a popular game mode for both Kingdomino and Queendomino. How do you think that changes the game?



Players can combine tiles from Kingdomino and Queendomino to play a longer, tougher game with much larger maps.



It’s definitely my favourite configuration. Having the possibility to play on a sevenby-seven grid offers players more time to build their strategies. It makes the game longer, for sure. But you have time enough to really optimise the possibilities of the specific buildings you get during the game. You should not have asked me this question, now I want to play it again, immediately! Do you have any future plans for the game? Can we expect any more expansions or standalone games in the series? Next year I will be releasing standalone two-player dice game. It’s a roll-and-write game where you build your dominoes by rolling dice. It’s fast, simple and addictive. Perfect to play on trains or planes. And in 2020 I’ll be releasing Dragonimo, a version of the game for children aged four and up. After that, we will see. I have other ideas!



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Shun Taguchi on Skylands Japanese designers Shun and Aya Taguchi produce board games under their Studio GG brand and release them at the Tokyo Game Market, which takes place twice a year and showcases releases from a community of independent designers from Japan.



BGB: Skylands was first released in Japan as The King of Frontier. Where did the idea for the game come from? And how did it come to be released in Europe as Skylands? Shun Taguchi: The King of Frontier was my first game. It was inspired by games like Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy, Carcassonne and Walnut Grove. It was introduced to its European publisher, Queen Games, by the Japanese game designers’ group Japon Brand. Apart from the new fantasy theme, are there any mechanical differences between Skylands and The King of Frontier? The main difference is that players cannot choose the same action on two successive turns. The other thing that was added is the drafting process for tiles when players take the explore action.



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Skylands Designers: Aya Taguchi, Shun Taguchi Artist: Patricia Limberger Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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N 2013, Japanese indie publisher Studio GG released The King of Frontier, a game about groups of pioneers competing to develop an undiscovered country. It earned praise for its fast-flowing gameplay, and now it’s received a western release – along with a fantasy re-theme – as Skylands. The game begins with its world destroyed by an unspecified calamity, leaving remnants of its land masses floating through the air. Players become powerful wizards, harnessing magical energy to join these scattered islands back together. On each turn, you’ll choose one a set of available actions. The first is to discover new islands by revealing a set of tiles from a randomly shuffled stack and choosing one to add to your personal player board. Different tiles come with different configurations of terrain, and as you build your map, you’ll have to carefully align each one so that it meshes with those you’ve already placed. Once you’ve built a few islands, you’ll be able to populate them using wooden pawns to represent different types of inhabitants. You’ll also purchase special lands and buildings which grant a variety of bonuses to their owners. It means you and your opponents will develop subtly different strategies, pursuing your own paths towards victory. Finally, you’ll be able to move your citizens into cities you’ve completed on your board, scoring points for each inhabitant as you attempt to restore your shattered civilisation. Each of the game’s actions is simple enough on its own, but what’s tricky is chaining them together in the ways that net you the highest



Time: 30 - 40 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £38.99 MSRP (US): $TBC possible number of points. And to complicate things further, whenever you do anything in the game, your opponents will all get to take a slightly less powerful version of the same action. It’s an approach borrowed from releases like 2002’s Puerto Rico and science fiction card game Race for the Galaxy, and it means that everyone around the table stays involved at all times, facing a stream of decisions even when it isn’t their turn. It also introduces a crucial element of timing into your tactics. As well as asking yourself what you want to do on each turn, you’ll look for opportunities to take actions when they benefit you more than your rivals. It means you’ll need to be acutely aware of your opponents’ circumstances as well as your own, and getting it right can often mean the difference between winning and losing. In truth, there’s really almost nothing about Skylands that’s entirely original. Its system of choosing different actions has been used to great effect in games that have come before. Its tile-laying element feels a lot like playing Carcassonne, albeit with each player building their own board. But when the two elements combine, they bounce off of one another in some very interesting ways. It’s also not massively deep. Once you decide on a strategy, you’ll stick with it, trying to maximise its efficacy rather than adjusting to events. But in this, it actually achieves an admirable balance. If it were any longer, it would undoubtedly feel flimsy. But as a half-hour game with a straightforward setup, it provides a quick brain-teasing bite with just enough substance to avoid outstaying its welcome.



Pictured above: Skylands challenges players to build a chain of floating islands. Publisher: Queen Games



In Skylands, the special tiles are developed by Queen. We cannot comment on those fine balance adjustments. Each tile is developed to complete the puzzle, to score victory points, or to let players score points more effectively. Do you have any advice for players to help them win? It is important to play while imagining what the completed board will look like. Also to use some of the special tiles, and to select actions that will give you an advantage. Japanese games have become increasingly popular in the west in recent years. Why do you think that is? And what is the tabletop gaming community like in Japan? Is it a mainstream hobby, or more of a specialist interest?



The action selection system is similar to games like Puerto Rico and Race for the Galaxy. What are the benefits of this kind of mechanism, and what kinds of tactical decisions do you think it presents to players? It is superior in that it is possible to introduce interaction between players without adding extra external elements to a game that’s primarily about building your own board. Whatever actions you choose on your turn, all players benefit from it, so it’s important to take the actions that give you tactical advantages. The combination of action selection and tile-laying uses two very simple ideas to create some interesting choices for players. What were you trying to achieve by combining these two elements? We wanted to create a game which didn’t only do tile laying, but also let players produce resources from the tiles they added to their board, and then construct special tiles using those resources. However, this system with everyone building their own board had almost no player interaction. Therefore, we employed the action selection mechanism to enhance the connection between players. Special tiles give players new abilities and ways to score victory points, and combining them can be powerful. What strategies do those tiles make possible? Was it difficult to ensure their effects were well-balanced?



Above: Skylands comes with a collection of special buildings and terrain tiles for players to add to their boards. Right: As you play you’ll add citizens to your growing domain, moving them into cities to score points.



The game is a re-themed and mechanically tweaked version of the Japanese release The King of Frontier.



I think the Tokyo Game Market has been a great influence. It’s an event where many creators all exhibit their new games for players. I don’t think board games are a mainstream hobby yet, but these days it is becoming more and more popular. Are you currently working on any projects you’d like to talk about? Our game Little Town Builders will be published soon by Iello. It’s a map-based worker placement game, and whenever you place a worker, you get to take actions in the eight spaces surrounding them on the board.



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Glenn Drover on Railroad Rivals Glenn Drover was born and raised in Downers Grove, Illinois, a suburb to the west of Chicago. He started gaming in the early 70s, playing wargames and Dungeons & Dragons before eventually discovering PC gaming. His interest led to a career in the digital games industry, where he worked at leading publishers including MicroProse, Maxis, Activision, PopCap and Electronic Arts. His board game credits include Railways of the World and Age of Empires III. He recently co-founded tabletop publisher Forbidden Games, and aims to continue his games career well into his old age. Railroad Rivals sees players become aspiring railway magnates in the era of steam locomotives.



BGB: Where did the idea for Railroad Rivals first come from? Glenn Drover: I was looking at the rules for a domino set that my son had gotten as a Christmas gift. It seemed like a good place to start to develop a tile-laying game: a simple mechanic that could be built upon. The railroad theme hit me almost immediately, and then the idea that the game could have more streamlined versions of all of the classic elements of more complex railroad games: connecting cities, pick-up and deliver, and railroad stocks. From that point, the game almost designed itself.



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Railroad Rivals Designer: Glenn Drover Artists: Jacoby O’Connor, Mark Page Category: Medium Strategy Players: 1 - 5



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HE tabletop hobby is so saturated with train games that it’s hard to imagine we need another. From family-friendly releases like Ticket to Ride to complex economic strategy titles like Age of Steam, railway building is one of the most extensively explored themes in all of gaming. But while the train game scene might be more crowded than a rushhour commuter service, recent release Railroad Rivals manages to do some new things with the concept. In the process it combines the competitive meanness and intensity of the most complicated rail titles with straightforward rules and a refreshingly fast playing time. It manages this through an audacious bit of geographical cheating. Where most railway games come with a map for players to expand their steam-powered empires across, Railroad Rivals takes a different approach. It uses a collection of city tiles with different railroad companies listed on each edge. Only tiles with matching companies can join up. So while Seattle, Washington and Fort Worth, Texas are two thousand miles apart in the real world, here they can be adjacent. As mad as it looks and sounds, this topographical shorthand keeps things very simple. On every turn, players reveal tiles representing various cities and stocks in railway companies. They then bid in an auction, paying victory points to choose tiles before their rivals. Seasoned gamers will want to use the marginally more complex but much more interesting advanced bidding rules, but either way the auction is the meat of the game. Your goal is to hold stock in lucrative



Time: 30 - 60 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £47.99 MSRP (US): $49.99 railroads, and companies gain value over time by making goods deliveries between linked cities. The result is that auctions very quickly escalate from polite exchanges to vicious economic bloodbaths. There are times when you’ll want to grab a city tile to maintain control of deliveries on a highly profitable line. At other times, though, you’ll want to snap up stocks, especially when one or two streak ahead in value. Whatever happens, the only way to cut off rival bidders is by being willing to pay more victory points than them, gambling that your investments will repay your expenditure. Single points spent or withheld can have massive consequences, and whether they win or lose, all of the players will feel hard-done-by at some point during the game. It builds to a crescendo of simmering tension and resentment, and while the final few turns can be predictable, last-minute plays can occasionally swing the result in your favour. The game also includes some mini-expansions. Water towers let you make two-stage deliveries. Hotels offer bonus points to their owner whenever anyone completes a delivery to their location. Both are worth trying once you’ve mastered the basic game. The only thing about Railroad Rivals that leaves a sour taste is its single-player mode. The challenge it sets is so easy that it makes you wonder how extensively it was tested. But everything else slots perfectly into this pint-sized package of pain. Becoming a railway magnate has often been this nasty, but never this easy.



Pictured above: Unlike most railway games, Railroad Rivals uses a clever tile-laying system instead of a map. Publisher: Forbidden Games



One big difference between most railway games and Railroad Rivals is that it doesn’t feature a map. What made you consider this approach? With tile drafting and tile laying being the primary mechanic, there would definitely not be a map. This seemed like a strength rather than a weakness to me, since it seems like almost every other railroad game is centred around a map. That said, I did realise that railroad gamers would prefer that the city tiles have historically accurate connecting railroads on them. Not having a map board allows the



creation of the “map” as the players place their tiles. The map that is created does not look exactly like the United States in where the cities are relative to each other, but each connection between two cities is one that existed historically. In gameplay terms, the ability to draft and lay tiles representing the cities gives the players much more freedom in pursuing a strategy that can optimize the value of their railroad stocks. Other rail games have featured stockholding in the past, but few of them have done it as simply as Railroad Rivals. How did you come up with such a streamlined take on the idea? The entire game was designed in a feverish 30 minutes. Once I had determined that there would be city tiles laid to form rail line connections, I needed a way for those connections to pay off. Having a second set of tiles that represented the various railroad companies occurred to me almost immediately. The final piece was that the “pick-up and delivery” of cubes, a common feature in many railroad games, could be used to increase the value.



The game comes with an optional advanced auction system as well as two included expansions. Why was it important to you to have this degree of variability? The simple auction method works quite well and is easy for entry-level gamers to grasp. However, one of the main features for our line of games at [publisher] Forbidden, is that they be appealing to casual as well as hardcore gamers. I wanted to add in a slightly more complex and clever mechanic for determining player order; especially since the order of the draft is so critical. The two buildings, the water tower and the hotel, add quite a bit of strategy to the game without adding very much complexity. Are you currently working on any projects you’d like to talk about? Yes, several. I’m currently finishing a social dungeon crawl meant to be played in a bar (or any libatious location) and a casual Civil War game for the PC. I’m also tinkering with several early designs, including another train game, a sequel to Raccoon Tycoon called Lizard Wizard, and a light civilisation game.



The game comes with cheerful cartoon art, and a diverse mix of characters for players to choose as their in-game persona.



Using rail lines to deliver goods increases the value of their shares. You’ll aim to invest in the most profitable networks.



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Francesco Nepitello on Hunt for the Ring BGB: The Lord of the Rings series is one of the most popular fantasy stories ever told. How did you try to ensure that Hunt for the Ring stayed true to the feeling of the original books? Francesco Nepitello: Research is the most important part when designing a game based on a literary source. When we started working on the game we returned to the books, reading and re-reading the first chapters several times over. And as always happens with The Lord of the Rings, there is so much more there than you remember! We discovered many little details about the story that proved very useful when we started to design the board and cards for the game.



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Hunt for the Ring Designers: Marco Maggi, Gabriele Mari, Francesco Nepitello Artists: John Howe, Francesco Mattioli Category: Medium Strategy



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AMES based on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien face the problem of authenticity. They’re obliged to stay true to their source material, retaining the feel of Middle Earth. But sticking too rigidly to the plot of the novels risks railroading players through the events of the fantasy series, robbing them of any sense of agency. It’s a tricky balancing act. But Hunt for the Ring, the latest in a succession of Tolkien-themed releases from Italian publisher Ares Games, manages it flawlessly, capturing the atmosphere of danger and adventure that’s captivated readers for decades, while giving players room to construct their own open-ended but plausible narratives in a world of orcs, elves and dwarves. Although it supports up to five players, it’s easily at its best with just two. One player controls the courageous hobbit Frodo Baggins and, later, the wizard Gandalf. The other commands the terrifying Ringwraiths hunting Frodo down in the service of the evil lord Sauron. The game plays over two halves. In the first, Frodo dashes from his home in The Shire to the village of Bree. In the second, he makes his way to the Elven stronghold of Rivendell. Both revolve around Frodo moving in secret. Rather than manoeuvring a pawn on the board, his player writes his location on a piece of paper hidden behind a screen. The Ringwraiths, meanwhile, roll dice to determine the actions available to them. At first they’ll search across wide areas, but over time they’ll narrow their focus, scouring smaller locations in an attempt to pinpoint and destroy their prey. Pictured above: The terrifying Ringwraiths hunt Frodo on his adventures. Publisher: Ares Games



Players: 2 - 5 Time: 90 - 180 minutes Ages: 13+ RRP (UK): £47.99   MSRP (US): $49.95 Frodo isn’t defenceless, though. He has a set of cards which he can use to confuse his pursuers and throw them off his scent. Many involve places or characters from the books, allowing him to place ally tokens on the board to block the wraiths’ movements. They provide some much-needed respite from the chase, but the sinister hunters aren’t the only danger Frodo faces. Taking too long to reach his destination risks having him corrupted by the malevolent power of the ring, and it serves as a brutal time limit that adds another source of tension to the game. Once the hobbit has been found, it’s hard for him to hide again, and this tends to mean that the game can go one of two ways. On a good day it makes for a thrilling flurry of card plays and a frantic race to the finish. On a bad one, Frodo finds himself unceremoniously cornered and corrupted. If the wraiths stumble onto him by sheer accident, it’s a sad and unsatisfying end. If Frodo survives to part two, he’s then on autopilot, his course determined by a series of randomly drawn cards. His player instead controls Gandalf, trying to protect him from the pursuing undead. It’s intriguing and makes each half of the game feel distinctly different. The final question, then, is whether success or failure in the game comes down to clever card play and cunning mind games, or luck of the draw. In reality, the answer is a bit of both. But Hunt for the Ring never fails to tell an engrossing story – and one of which Tolkien would likely have approved.



It’s a very asymmetrical game with players on each side doing very different things. What kind of feeling were you trying to create for players controlling Frodo or the Ringwraiths? One of our main goals was to give the Ringwraith players the feeling that they have a great power, but that it’s useless without knowing where to strike. The Black Riders are moving across a territory that is unfamiliar to them, and the hobbits are taking advantage of it. On the other side, we wanted Frodo to feel that every decision is crucial, as being located by the Ringwraiths can be lethal. Games like Fury of Dracula and Letters from Whitechapel have used similar systems of hidden movement in the past. Did any of those games provide inspiration for Hunt for the Ring? Why do you think these kinds of games are so appealing to players? Gabriele Mari, the designer of Letters from Whitechapel, worked with me and Marco on The Hunt for the Ring, exactly because we wanted to create a game that was able to evoke the same genuine tension. The searching players are under stress simply because they don’t know the whereabouts of their opponent, while the player being hunted knows that every move they make could be the fatal blunder their opponents are waiting for. Hunt for the Ring focuses on one particular part of the Lord of the Rings story. You’ve previously explored



As with its publisher’s other Lord of the Rings releases, Hunt for the Ring does an impressive job of conjuring the feel of its source material through its visual design.



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While Frodo plays alone against a team of antagonists, he’ll be able to call on the support of friends and allies from J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved series of fantasy novels.



other aspects of the setting with the wargames War of the Ring and The Battle of Five Armies. Are there any other events from the books you’d like to use as the basis for games? I am also the main designer for The One Ring series of roleplaying games, so I think there’s no part of the story I haven’t touched or that I won’t likely touch in the future. But as far as board games are concerned, Moria



Francesco Nepitello is a game designer from Venice, Italy. He and his design partner Marco Maggi have been creating roleplaying games, board games and card games for adults and children for almost 30 years. Their work includes tabletop adaptations of the Marvel Universe, Doctor Who, Conan the Barbarian and the weird fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. He enjoys games which are deeply thematic and visually beautiful, and holds a black belt in aikido.



could be a good setting for the ultimate “dungeon crawl,” the archetypal location for a heroic adventure. Why do you think the work of J.R.R. Tolkien continues to inspire new games so long after they were first published? The novels are more than just fantasy fiction. As with real mythology, the stories resonate with readers across different generations in different ways, but they never go out of fashion. As far as games are concerned, Tolkien’s “legendarium” has become a subject matter that can be mined for ideas in the same way as real history can. There is so much going on in the books, and so many points of view that it’s impossible to run out of inspiration.



Matt Leacock on Forbidden Sky BGB: A lot of people see Forbidden Island as an accessible cooperative game for players looking for something a touch simpler than Pandemic, but the subsequent games in the series have become a little more complex. Were you trying to create a path for players to follow as they gained experience? Matt Leacock: The goal with Forbidden Desert was to increase the challenge and depth for players who had mastered Forbidden Island. This also made it more appealing to hobby players who might have found Forbidden Island too easy.



I had a bit of a hard ‘time coming up with the unique differentiator for the third game and had a few false starts before Forbidden Sky took shape. I feel more confident when it comes to keeping complexity under control.



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Forbidden Sky Designer: Matt Leacock Artist: C.B. Canga Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 5



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ESIGNER Matt Leacock is best known as the creator of Pandemic, a hit cooperative game released in 2008 which throws players into the role of medics battling deadly diseases. But while it may be Leacock’s greatest hit, it’s not his only foray into co-op gaming. His follow-up release, Forbidden Island, sees players working together as a team of treasure hunters on a stretch of land sinking rapidly into the sea. Quicker and simpler than Pandemic, it offered an easier introduction for inexperienced gamers. Its sequel, Forbidden Desert, kept core elements of its predecessor’s gameplay but added a touch of complexity. Players found themselves stranded in a desolate landscape and had to build a steampunk-style airship while navigating around shifting sand dunes. Now its designer has returned to the series with Forbidden Sky, and once more he’s created a new set of problems to overcome. The latest release sees players stuck on a floating platform thousands of metres above the ground. Designed to harvest electricity from lightning, it’s an airborne launchpad for rockets blasting into space. Unfortunately, it’s also caught in the heart of a raging hurricane, making it not the safest place to find shelter. To escape with your lives, you and your teammates will need to explore the platform and repair its faulty electrical system, allowing you to take off in a plastic rocket that looks like something from a Jules Verne story. Before the game begins you’ll lay down a tile representing a section of floor, and as you play you’ll expand it by laying



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Matt Leacock grew up in the midwestern United States. He developed an interest in game design after being introduced to Acquire and Civilization by his father and his uncle, and he enjoyed breakout success with the cooperative disease-fighting game Pandemic. His other releases include Forbidden Island, Forbidden Desert and the Pandemic Legacy series with Rob Daviau. coming up with the unique differentiator for the third game and had a few false starts before Forbidden Sky took shape. I feel more confident when it comes to keeping complexity under control. I really love making games that are simple to learn, so that part comes more naturally. It’s also been fun linking the games together through their storyline. The players’ helicopter takes off from Forbidden Island and then crashes at the beginning of Forbidden Desert. If players win in Desert, they take off in the airship that they repaired – which then lands in Forbidden Sky. And if the players win at Sky, they take off in the rocket. Who knows where that will take them? The settings for the series have become increasingly imaginative and dramatic over the years, incorporating more exotic science-fiction elements. Where did the idea for the floating rocketport come from? I brainstormed different locations for the airship to take the players at the beginning of the game, and was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film Castle in the Sky. I thought it’d be fun if the players were caught on a power platform in a lighting storm since it’d provide plenty of peril with the twin dangers of falling from great heights and electrocution. Once I had the



players playing with electricity, I needed something for them to power. A rocket provided a great callback to final takeoffs in the other two games and felt like the perfect next thing to lift off in.



I brainstormed ‘different locations for the airship to take the players at the beginning of the game, and was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film Castle in the Sky.



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Players have to lay wires to complete circuits and win the game, but the elements they need to place can also electrocute them if lightning strikes. What was your thinking behind making this key requirement for victory actively harmful to the players?



Time: 50 - 60 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £39.99 MSRP (US): $39.99



The real trick with designing the sequels was trying to keep some familiar elements while still ensuring that each new game had its own purpose so that players don’t see any of the games “replacing” the others in the series. I had a bit of a hard time



down new ones from a randomly shuffled stack, creating a new environment for every game session. Along the way you’ll connect cables and capacitors as you fight to restore power. If messing around with electrical equipment in the middle of a storm sounds dangerous, that’s because it is. The platform will be struck by lightning repeatedly during the game. Any characters caught too close to a lightning rod will be zapped, dying if they suffer too much damage and resulting in an instant loss for the entire team. The current also travels through the wires you’ve laid, though, and it means the game’s environment becomes increasingly deadly as you get closer to completing your goals. It makes for some heart-pounding moments as you try to reach safe areas of the board and avoid a fatal shock. As fans of the Forbidden series will expect, you and your companions each play as different characters with a selection of special abilities to help in your fight for survival – laying down extra lengths of wiring, healing injured comrades and leaping over gaps in the platform’s walkways. As in Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, carefully coordinating individual powers is the key to victory. What’s arguably most impressive, though, is how literally the game takes its concept of circuit building. The components you lay down as you play actually carry a current from a battery. When you finally connect them, the game’s rocket flares with glowing LEDs and roars as its engines come to life. It’s a very fun gimmick, and it adds a visual high note that feels like a fitting reward for a hard-won victory.



Storm cards provide increasing danger throughout the game, threatening to electrocute characters or throw them over the edge of the aerial platform.



Pictured above: Forbidden Sky’s setup is the most impressive in the series to date, it features a functioning electric circuit connected to a model rocket. Publisher: Gamewright



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design, but Sophie Gravel of publisher Plan B asked if there was any way the players could build their cities using actual physical components. One year and a laser cutter later, we had a new edition that really grabbed players’ attention. She and her



Sky, I ‘hadIn Forbidden the concept of



Players build the game’s platform from a set of randomly shuffled tiles, creating a different layout for each play-through.



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I loved the tension this introduced. It’s more efficient to wire the components as you play the game, but doing so makes the board really deadly. So the players have to carefully balance the long-term risk of running out of time with the short-term risk of getting electrocuted. One developing theme in your games over the years has been your increasingly interesting use of physical components, from thread and spools in Knit Wit to the electric circuit in Forbidden Sky. How important do you think physical bits are to the overall experience of a game, and are there any other designers or publishers who you think are doing particularly impressive things in this regard? I first really started prototyping physical components while working on Thunderbirds. In that game, I modelled the Thunderbirds vehicles in craft foam so that



I could get a better handle on their scale and how easy they’d be to manipulate. I really enjoyed the experience and started investigating the physicality of components more in each new project. In Forbidden Sky, I had the concept of wiring up a rocket long before we thought to use actual electricity. When the publisher floated the possibility, I jumped on it – it seemed like such a natural fit. I had to experiment quite a bit to get parts that could reliably conduct electricity with so many connections. I tried everything from conductive ink to actual wires and alligator clips to Thinking Putty doped with carbon. Players really liked the game before the electrical components were in it, but once they were added, you could see their eyes light up. My latest project, Era: Medieval Age, makes use of sculpted 3D pieces that were an absolute joy to develop at home. The game was originally a roll-and-write



Characters come with their own special abilities, and using them effectively together is critical to their survival. But taking too much damage results in death, and losing one player means defeat for the whole group.



wiring up a rocket long before we thought to use actual electricity. When the publisher floated the possibility, I jumped on it.



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team have done incredible work in this area – they were responsible for the spools in Knit Wit, the beautiful pieces you’ll find in Azul, as well as all the playful components that you find in the Pretzel line of dexterity games. This is the third game in the series. Do you think we’re likely to see any more? Are there any other settings you’d like to explore with this kind of cooperative play? I hope we’ll see more as I really enjoy designing them. I’ll check in with [publisher] Gamewright in a few years to see if they’re interested in doing a followup. I think it’d be fun to have a Forbidden game set in a space station, an underwater city, or a volcano.



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Sagrada Designers: Daryl Andrews, Adrian Adamescu Artists: Adrian Adamescu, Daryl Andrews, Peter Wocken Category: Medium Strategy



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Forbidden Sky’s light-up plastic rocket is an impressive toy in its own right.



HE Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona is one of the world’s greatest architectural marvels. A towering church famed for its blend of art nouveau and gothic styles, it’s one of history’s longest-running building projects, with construction beginning in 1882 and not set to be completed until at least 2026. Today it’s Spain’s most visited historical monument, known around the world for its daring design, exquisite sculptures and, perhaps best of all, for its breathtaking stained glass windows. These have inspired Sagrada, a thoughtful puzzle which sees players compete to create beautiful windows, combining colours and shades of glass to bathe the building in a delicate symphony of light. Appropriately for a game with a pronounced visual theme, it’s incredibly pretty. It comes with a big bag of semitransparent dice in an array of different colours, representing panes you’ll arrange to complete your masterpiece. On each round you’ll roll a randomly drawn handful. Then you and your rivals will take turns to choose dice and add them to your windows – a set of personal player boards with grids of square-cut holes which you’ll fill up over the course of the game. It sounds easy enough, but there are some tough restrictions to work around. You won’t be able to place dice of the same colour or the same value next to one another, and the result is that Sagrada feels a lot like a sudoku puzzle. On each round you’ll try to choose the dice that you can most easily fit into your expanding design, carefully placing them in spaces that keep your options open for future turns.



Players: 1 - 4 Time: 30 - 45 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £36.99   MSRP (US): $29.99 It’s a simple system that confronts players with some difficult decisions. But what really makes Sagrada shine are the handful of elements it layers on top. Before you play, you and your opponents will draw hidden objective cards which reward you for building particular configurations of colours. It means you’ll all be working towards different goals, and it also introduces a subtly sharp-elbowed competitive element as you try to work out which types of dice your rivals are interested in, giving you the chance to snatch them away before they can incorporate them into their designs. Each player also gets a sheet of card which slots into their window frame, placing further restrictions on how and where they can place certain types of dice. It adds one more wrinkle to what’s already a tricky series of choices, and in a brilliant touch, the various sheets all come with printed difficulty ratings, meaning you can hand easier ones to inexperienced players or tougher ones to skilled veterans. Before the game begins you’ll also draw a set of cards representing tools available to use while crafting your windows. Each lets you take a different special action, bending the game’s rules to provide a sliver of flexibility in how you can place or rearrange your dice. It means that every time you play, you’ll have a new challenge and a new set of tools at your disposal; Sagrada squeezes incredible replayability out of a very simple premise. It also comes with a deeply satisfying solo mode. If you’re into brain-bending puzzles, this is a fantastically accessible and absorbing option to get your teeth into.



Pictured above: The sudoku-like puzzle of Sagrada sees players using dice to build stunning stained glass windows. Publisher: Floodgate Games



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Monolith Arena



Photosynthesis



Designer: Michał Oracz Artists: Otto Szatmari, Jakub Fajtanowski, Aleksandar Mihajlovic, Raypier Art, Nakarin Sukontakorn, Bogdan Tufecciu



Designer: Hjalmar Hach Artist: Sabrina Miramon Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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N 2006, the post-apocalyptic battle game Neuroshima Hex transported players to a grim future where survivors of a global catastrophe clashed over territory and resources. Unlike many skirmish games, it eschewed plastic miniatures and boards full of elaborate terrain, instead depicting its combat as a more abstract, but still tactically rich struggle played with cardboard chips on a simple hex grid. Over the years it received a succession of expansions adding new armies for players to command. Now, though, it’s received a fantasy overhaul in an entirely new version: Monolith Arena. The new game’s setting is every bit as bleak its sci-fi predecessor’s. It hands players control of forces of humans, demons, elves and dwarves competing not in war, but in a savage bloodsport in honour of magical standing stones. Before you play, you and your opponent will each choose a faction to control, taking stacks of six-sided tokens to represent your soldiers, beasts and champions. You’ll shuffle them to form face-down piles, drawing and playing new chips on every turn, and once your armies enter the arena, things quickly escalate into a confrontation that’s every bit as cerebral as it is violent. Each warrior in the game comes with a set of icons denoting their strengths and special abilities. Most important, though, are the swords pointing towards different edges of their tokens, indicating the directions in which they can attack. Some of your units unleash devastating assaults, but only in a single direction. Others might deal less damage, but spread it among surrounding foes.



Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 4 Time: 30 - 45 minutes   Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £47.99   MSRP (US): $50.00 It means that painstakingly positioning your troops becomes all-important, but warriors aren’t all you’ll have at your disposal. Scattered through your stack of chips, you’ll also find command tokens letting you issue instructions to your units and initiate rounds of combat. When that happens, nimbler troops get their attacks in before slower ones, and a well-placed group of comparatively weak characters can take out a monstrous adversary before they have a chance to crack back. The result is that timing becomes a critical element in your strategy, and you’ll also have to consider your faction’s set of special abilities. Human knights perform devastating cavalry charges. Stealthy elves specialise in ranged attacks and assassinations. Dwarves deflect damage with heavy armour. It makes for some stylistic clashes, with players trying to exploit their own advantages and negate their rivals’. And if you’re looking for added complexity, the advanced mode sees the titular monoliths come to life – lumbering stone towers that conceal some of your most powerful units inside. It packs some serious depth, and its tight, cramped board means there’s no way to avoid slugging it out with your opponent. What it isn’t, though, is a replacement for Neuroshima Hex. If you’re a fan of the original game, there isn’t enough that’s new to entice you to make the switch. But in the coming months and years, its publisher will be releasing new material for the game, and if it develops a distinct personality of its own, its pull might become a little harder to resist.



Pictured above: Monolith Arena’s compact board makes it hard to avoid combat. It quickly leads to a high casualty count. Publisher: Portal Games



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NE of the most appealing things about tabletop games is their physical presence. There’s a tangible allure to rolling dice, shuffling cards and moving meeples that PC and console games can never replicate, and many game makers put as much thought into their creations’ tactile and aesthetic appeal as the mechanical foundations of their gameplay. But while there are plenty of lavishly produced releases, few manage to look quite as gorgeous as Photosynthesis, a beautiful strategy game which grows a lush and vibrant forest on your kitchen table. The game puts players in control of different species of trees, all vying to dominate the woodland canopy by absorbing more life-giving sunlight than their rivals. As you play you’ll plant seeds to stake out areas of the board as your territory. Over time you’ll grow clusters of trees, reaching towards the sky to soak up light and cast shadows over your opponents, denying them the chance to grow and thrive. At its heart, Photosynthesis is all about the ability to plan ahead. It features a carved-out yellow disc representing the sun, which moves to a new position on the edge of its board with each passing round to cast its rays from a new angle. Any trees that catch its light generate energy, which their controllers can use to spread new seeds or incrementally grow their tiny saplings into towering giants of the forest. Growth is important for two reasons. The first is that to score points in the game, you’ll need to advance your trees through their entire life cycle, nurturing them as they creep steadily higher until they eventu-



Time: 30 - 60 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £39.99 MSRP (US): $39.99 ally die and are removed from the board. But what’s equally important is that taller trees can engulf their smaller neighbours in shade, denying vital energy points for their owners. It’s a brutally competitive notion in a game that looks so serene on the surface, but it reflects the harsh reality of nature, where the slightest edge can mark the difference between survival and extinction. And what makes it especially challenging is that it almost always takes two or three turns to see whether your decisions bring you closer to victory or defeat. Each seed you plant is an investment, and you’ll need to consider the shifting of the sun, your rivals’ tactics and your ability to harvest energy to work out whether it’s worthwhile. Photosynthesis presents players with a conveyor belt of questions. Should you expand outward, planting more seeds and covering more of the forest floor than your rivals? Or should you concentrate on growth, focusing your attention on a small number of trees and attempting to tower over your opponents? Should you try to advance into the centre of the board, gaining points for controlling the heart of the woods? Or should you stick to the edges where there’s less risk of being overshadowed on all sides? Your choices are rarely straightforward, and they only become tougher at higher player counts. It means that while this game is one of the prettiest to hit players’ tables in years, there’s more to it than just good looks. It also comes with a refined and graceful competitive core which squeezes some tantalisingly thorny decisions out of a minimalist set of rules.



Pictured above: With its steadily expanding cardboard forest, Photosynthesis is one of the most visually striking games you can have on your table. Publisher: Blue Orange



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The Estates Designer: Klaus Zoch Artists: Daan van Paridon, Thijs van Paridon Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 5



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ROPERTY development is a business with two very different faces. There’s the one it presents to the world: a utopian vision of spotless streets and gleaming skyscrapers. And then there’s the one it prefers to keep hidden: a seething cesspit of corruption, safety violations and dubious investments by overseas oligarchs. It’s this split personality that The Estates, a game of rival building companies competing to milk money out of a public housing project, attempts to encapsulate. As you play, you and your opponents will create a neighbourhood from the ground up, building towering apartment buildings from colourful wooden blocks. But you’ll also engage in bribery and dirty tricks to maximise your profits and leave your rivals with nothing but a pile of regrets and a massive overdraft. The game revolves around a board showing a construction site — three streets with foundations laid, waiting for the players to come along and erect their masterpieces. Each turn sees one player take on the role of an auctioneer, who chooses a wooden block from a selection and offers it for sale to the highest bidder. The winner gets to place it on one of the three streets, either on an empty spot, or on top of a building already under construction, and the district gradually takes shape over the course of the game, with buildings growing taller with each passing round. It’s pretty to watch, but it hides a morass of fraud and duplicity. For one thing, there’s the fact that each building on the board will only generate cash for one person, even if multiple players contrib-



Ganz Schön Clever Time: 40 - 60 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £46.99 MSRP (US): $59.99 ute to its development. Players take control of construction companies, colour-coded to match the wooden bricks that form the growing apartment blocks. But only companies with cubes on the top floors of buildings completed by the end of the game receive money. Taller buildings generate more cash, and that repeatedly causes a dilemma. Should you place a roof on a building you currently control, finishing it off and ensuring that it remains in your possession? Or should you continue to let it grow, increasing its potential reward, but risking the possibility that a rival will snatch it from your grasp? Then there’s the fact that only two of the game’s three streets will ever actually be finished. Buildings in completed rows generate income for their owners at the end of the game. Buildings in the unfinished row attract fines, meaning players who have invested heavily can be left penniless. With various ways to manipulate building permits, making streets easier or more difficult to complete, it’s possible to ruin your rivals’ day by letting them build up what looks like a winning property portfolio, then savagely shifting the goalposts. If that’s not disreputable enough for you, you can always just blatantly embezzle funds, or bribe the mayor to increase the value of your own buildings. It’s positively scuzzy, but The Estates pulls off all this dirty dealing with impressively clean and elegant rules. Its auction system means that money continually circulates around the table, and it also benefits from beautiful production. It may be utterly amoral, but it’s undeniably fun.



Pictured above: The Estates casts players as corrupt construction bosses developing a city housing block. Publisher: Capstone Games



Designer: Wolfgang Warsch Artist: Leon Schiffer Category: Medium Strategy Players: 1 - 4



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HE rise of roll-and-write games has been one of the most exciting recent developments in analogue gaming. Smart and addictive competitive puzzles, they see players rolling dice and scribbling down the results on paper scoring sheets, gaining points based on how they arrange numbers. Ganz Schön Clever, by The Mind designer Wolfgang Warsch, is one of the most popular releases in this wave of dice-chucking challenges. After a warm reception for its initial German version, it’s now being published in English, helpfully subtitled “That’s Pretty Clever!” The game makes no attempt at any kind of theme, and its scoring sheet features a collection of tracks, grids and boxes that look a bit like some kind of complex scientific diagram. But once you sit down and play, its initially confusing layout quickly starts to make sense. On your turn you’ll roll six dice, colour-coded to match the different areas of your score pad. You’ll choose one and use it to fill in a box in the corresponding area. The yellow die lets you cross off spaces in an interlinked grid, aiming to complete rows and columns. The purple die lets you fill in a row of boxes in ascending numerical order. The orange one lets you use numbers in any arrangement, but multiplies players’ scores to incentivise them to use bigger ones. What complicates things is that you’ll earn bonuses for reaching certain points in each zone, gaining the ability to re-roll dice or fill in extra boxes on your turn. It means that with some careful planning and a touch of luck, it’s possible to set off powerful combinations,



Time: 20 minutes Ages: 10+ RRP (UK): £12.99 MSRP (US): $14.49 using a chain of bonuses to complete big sections of your sheet in a single well-executed swoop. Pulling this off feels great, but Ganz Schön Clever isn’t the only roll-and-write game to play with this kind of interconnected setup. What sets it apart from similar releases, though, is the way your choices open up opportunities for your opponents. Whenever you pick a die on your turn, you’ll discard any which show a lower value from your pool, placing them on a silver plate in the game’s box. Once you’ve taken your actions, your opponents will each get to choose one of your rejected dice, using it to complete a space on their own sheets. It means that as well as your own plans, you’ll have to pay attention to your rivals’ positions, and there are times when you’ll want to avoid taking potentially useful dice to ensure you don’t hand an opponent the tools they need to defeat you. It makes for some multi-layered strategies, and while you might want to pursue a particular plan to rack up points as efficiently as possible, you’ll also need to react to the whims of the dice, occasionally making the best use you can of an unlucky roll. When it all comes together and you pull off an impressive win, it feels fantastic. It’s also an incredibly compelling solo game, and it’s dangerously easy to blaze through your pad of score sheets trying to beat your own high score. It provides a strong argument for downloading the app version, although it’s likely to cost you hours of productivity as you bow to the temptation for just “one more game.”



Pictured above: Roll-and-write games are one of the hottest trends in tabletop gaming, and Ganz Schön Clever is one of the most popular. Publisher: Schmidt Spiele / Stronghold Games



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Whistle Stop Designer: Scott Caputo Artist: Stephanie Gustafsson Category: Medium Strategy Players: 2 - 5



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N the late 19th century, railways linked the east and west coasts of the USA for the first time. It marked the start of a rail explosion that saw the country blanketed by tracks, allowing goods and passengers to cross the nation with previously unimagined speed. Whistle Stop casts players as a group of transport tycoons in this age of rampant expansion. And while some train games can be sadistically complicated, it strikes a pleasing balance between simple rules, fast turns and a deceptive level of challenge. Players start the game with a collection of trains perched on the eastern edge of its board. To the west are the destinations you’ll aim to reach to score victory points. But between your start and end points is an empty gulf. As you advance westward, you’ll use tiles from your hand to fill in the gap. Each comes with a different configuration of routes – straight lines, gentle curves and hairpin bends – and you’ll move your locomotives along new tracks as you lay them down. You’ll constantly evaluate the changing state of the board, steering routes towards the places you want your trains to end up. But you’ll also stop at small intermediary stations along the way, picking up different types of goods and delivering them to locations where they’re in demand. It opens up possibilities on your turns as you move your trains in calculated ways to grab high-scoring sets of resources. These elements are common enough in other rail games, but what makes Whistle Stop shine is its array of options for upgrading your trains. You can add an extra boiler to your engines, increasing the



Time: 75 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £54.99 MSRP (US): $59.95 number of tiles you can hold in your hand and expanding your tactical options on each round. You can use coal cars to lug extra fuel on your journeys, improving your ability to move around the map. You can use mining cars to convert your coal supplies into golden nuggets, netting yourself extra victory points. These upgrade abilities are extremely powerful. Often, in fact, they’d be enough to severely unbalance the game. But there’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to hang onto them once you’ve acquired them. Other players can pay to snatch them away for themselves, and it means that once you’ve got your hands on an upgrade you’ll aim to use it as quickly and as effectively as you can before an opponent sets their greedy eyes on it. On their own, the individual elements of the game are all simple enough. But combined, they create plenty of tricky and nuanced decisions. Working out how to move your trains, how to lay your tracks and the best ways to gain, spend and deliver different resources takes careful consideration. It does fall down slightly in a few places. It’s possible to find yourself frustratingly wedged behind opponent’s trains. Its rulebook could be a little clearer. And the network you build on the board doesn’t look much like a real rail system – more like a plate of steel spaghetti. But Whistle Stop takes a few simple elements and uses them to build a much more complex and interesting whole, and that makes it well worth climbing aboard.



Pictured above: Train game Whistle Stop uses a simple set of rules to generate surprisingly tough decisions. Publisher: Bezier Games



SPECIALISTS IN TURNKEY



Communication is vital for every step of game production. Team Strom knows this. From Start to Finish, we will answer questions, ask questions, follow-up, and checkin with YOU. That is who we are and the foundation our company is built on.



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Complex Strategy Games



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Strom Mfg.’s core manufacturing and design capabilities are concentrated in:



ALL Forms of Print and Packaging • ANY Game Component Wood Meeples • Plastic Trays • Custom Dice • Drawstring Bags Custom Injection Mold Miniatures • Cast Metal Components Final Assembly • Freight Forwarding Our founder and company president, Tom, has over 23 years of manufacturing experience in the tabletop game industry. From plant manager for one of Mattel’s leading contract manufacturing companies to Director of Manufacturing for Out of the Box Publishing ( Apples to Apples ) here in the US. He has been on and knows both sides of the “booth”.



STROM MFG CLIENTS FROM



Strom Mfg. has worked with over 75 different publishers globally in the board game industry. This has enabled us to manufacture countless game titles over the years and gain a vast amount of diverse experience. Because of this, we have a unique perspective that allows us to find solutions to the problems and challenges you will face in your day to day operations. With full-time staff on the ground in China, we have the distinct advantage of directly overseeing the factories that we work with. This is invaluable to ensure that our customers’ expectations are clearly communicated and enforced at the factory level. These core capabilities, combined with our experienced logistics, quality control, and sourcing teams have allowed us to enjoy great success in the toy and game industry.



[email protected] CALL: 815-797-1103 From Kickstarter, veteran game designer or, an established company, whatever your project may involve, complex or simple we invite you to call or email us directly. Strom MFG. 440 East Market Street, Suite 1 Somonauk, IL 60552



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Brass: Birmingham Designers: Martin Wallace, Gavan Brown, Matt Tolman Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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N 2007, designer Martin Wallace released Brass, an economic strategy game set at the dawn of the industrial revolution. It challenged players to build empires of mills, mines and metalworks, turning them into sharp-elbowed business magnates chasing prestige and profit. Now, more than a decade later, its creator has returned with an updated version that seeks to hone and perfect what some already consider to be one of the greatest games ever made. Brass: Birmingham is one of a pair of new editions. Its sister title, Brass: Lancashire is a revamped version of the original game featuring new artwork and modest rules tweaks. Birmingham, though, takes the action to an entirely new setting. Where Lancashire focuses on the textile trade in the north-west of England, its new sibling transports players to a city at the heart of British heavy industry. You’ll race to construct breweries, potteries, coal mines and ironworks, battling to build a thriving collection of businesses and amass more money than your rivals. It’d be a tall order at the best of times, but Brass takes place at a precarious point in history. The game begins on the cusp of the age of steam: a slow and simple world driven by honest manual labour. By the time you’ve finished playing, though, you’ll have been mercilessly thrust into modernity – an era of thundering engines, belching chimneys and roaring furnaces.



Time: 60 - 120 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £39.99 MSRP (US): $39.99 In its early stages, the game is all about building. Starting from modest means, you’ll establish different industries in towns and cities spread across the board. At the same time, you’ll build canal routes connecting your businesses to the mines and ironworks that supply them with materials, and to the markets where you’ll sell your wares. With each new venture you create, you’ll increase your income and rake in victory points, growing steadily richer and more powerful in the process. But it all comes crashing to a halt at the mid-way point of the game when the advent of the steam engine unceremoniously disrupts your plans. Your carefully laid canals are swept from the board as the coming of the railways renders them obsolete. No sooner have you built a lean and efficient network of interconnected industries than you’ll find yourself scrambling to reestablish the links between your scattered workshops and collieries. It’s a brilliantly effective representation of the relentless tide of progress, and it means that even as you create your fledgling empire, you’ll need to think about how it can survive in the face of change and upheaval. But while this process of building and rebuilding is at the heart of Brass, it’s just one of a collection of incredibly clever design elements. There’s also the way the game handles resources. Creating new



Pictured above: Brass: Birmingham is an updated take on designer Martin Wallace’s revered game of industrial economic strategy. Publisher: Roxley Game Laboratories



buildings requires iron and coal, which you’ll harvest from mines and foundries. But you’ll always take them from the nearest available source on the board, whether it belongs to you or an opponent. It means that even by creating a lucrative new mill or factory, you could be helping another player by buying their raw materials. And on the other side of the equation, it’s possible to strategically open mines near hotspots of industrial development, figuring out where your rivals are most likely to build and capitalising on their efforts by cornering the local market in fuel and metal. The game even simulates the principle of supply and demand, and a boom in construction can see the prices of resources shoot up, leading to huge rewards for anyone who’s invested heavily in their production. Then there’s the route-building element of laying down canals and railways. Transport links are the veins and arteries of the industrial economy, and you’ll use them to obtain resources and gain access to vital markets. But again, you’ll rely on your opponents’ waterways and rail lines to do it. While it’s tempting to focus on building big, ostentatious developments across the game’s map, there’s an equally valid strategy of relentlessly laying down tracks and instead becoming a transport tycoon. You’ll earn points for linking towns and cities. And places with the highest levels of development offer great rewards for players who can connect them to their supply networks. Even seemingly minor details, like the game’s turn structure, contribute to its strategic depth. The player who spends the least money during each round gets to act first on the following one, gaining an important advantage. It incentivises economy of action, and just like a real business, you’ll ask yourself how you can squeeze the greatest benefit out of the smallest possible expenditure. It all combines to brilliant effect: an utterly absorbing blend of long-term planning and short-term opportunism. It’s not a game for people just beginning to explore the heavier side of the tabletop hobby, though. While



Publisher Roxley Games has built a reputation for the stellar quality of its releases’ art and physical presentation, and Brass: Birmingham is no exception.



its mechanical subsystems all flow together seamlessly once you’ve got the hang of them, there are some tricky rules points which can trip up inexperienced players. But if you aren’t intimidated by a bit of complexity, Brass: Birmingham is a captivating experience. There’s a sense running through it of the interconnectedness of capitalism, and players are deeply involved in each other’s business from the first turn to the last. You’ll try to be shrewd and savvy enough to spot opportunities and aggressive enough to seize them before anyone else. It’s a brain-bending thrill ride where every decision matters, and it builds to a crescendo as you battle to become the greatest entrepreneur of your age.



The game’s board comes with day and night sides and, while they’re mechanically identical, it’s an impressive aesthetic touch.



It’s topped off with stunning presentation. The double-sided game board comes with identical map layouts, but different day and night colour schemes, and while the darker side makes it difficult to make out some of the details, it’s definitely dramatic. The artwork on the board, cards and tokens is wonderfully evocative of the setting, and you can almost smell the smoke in the air and feel the grime between your fingers as you play. It’s an incredible achievement on every level: it’s aesthetically beautiful, it’s strategically challenging and it works as a two-player battle of wits or as a multiplayer free-for-all. It’s easy to see why its predecessor has won such high praise, but Brass: Birmingham is the definitive edition of a masterpiece.



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Martin Wallace on Brass: Birmingham



You’ll aim to produce goods and connect them to lucrative markets by building sprawling transport networks — a process that requires iron for your foundries, coal for your trains and beer for your workers.



Martin Wallace is a UK-born game designer currently living in Brisbane, Australia. A former history teacher, he is the creator of the revered economic strategy game Brass, deckbuilding war game A Few Acres of Snow and A Study in Emerald, the official board game adaptation of author Neil Gaiman’s short story combining the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu Mythos. When he’s not designing or playing games, he enjoys travel and hiking.



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BGB: Brass is already such a highly regarded game – what made you think it was time for an updated version? Martin Wallace: That is a rather long story. Originally I was attempting to sell a number of properties to Fantasy Flight Games. They were interested in Brass but then the previous publishers claimed they still had rights to the game. Eventually I was able to seize the rights back, but in the meantime FFG went cold on the idea. Then Roxley Game Laboratories contacted me and asked if they could acquire the rights, and the rest is history.



What was it about England during the industrial revolution that appealed to you? What made it seem like a good topic to explore in a game? I had got into the rut of designing games with military dimensions, such as Struggle of Empires. One of my playtesters suggested something more purely economic, like Age of Steam. I picked the industrial revolution as it was a period I had studied for my degree and was very much part of the surrounding landscape. I’m not sure I thought it was a good topic and had no idea how successful the game would become, but then you never really know how things are going to go.



As the game progresses you’ll be able to build steadily more advanced and useful factories and mines, ramping up the pace of industrial development.



The idea that you have this huge disruption half way through the game, with industries and transport links being swept away, is really interesting. It seems like the kind of thing that could be really irritating if it was executed in the wrong way — destroying all the players’ hard work — but Brass makes it one of the most engaging parts of the whole experience. How did you develop that element of the game? I had to build in the transition from canal to railways. Britain was unusual in that the Industrial Revolution started when only canals were available for transportation. The game makes it seem as if the canals are swept away but that is not the case, really they are already working at full capacity and railways are now the only way to expand the transportation network. There’s also a real sense of the interconnectedness of all the different participants in this aggressive industrial capitalist economy. You’re constantly trying to take advantage of your rivals’ moves. What kind of feel were you trying to create with that approach? I wanted to convey the idea that this period was not a zero-sum game where you only gain when somebody else loses. There are many examples in economic history of dynamic systems that seem to lift themselves up through the interaction of the component parts. Brass tries to capture the idea that everybody is advancing, just some are going faster than others. The artwork and presentation in this edition are fantastic. What do you feel that adds to the whole experience? In the old days you could get away with poor artwork, but not nowadays. Games have to be visually inviting. Given how well the game did on Kickstarter, I think Roxley did a good job on that front.



The deluxe version of the game comes with thick casino-style chips for players to keep track of their scores.



143 As well as developing industries in towns and cities around the English midlands, you’ll aim to build a network of transport routes, first using canals, then by creating railway links. Mining resources, manufacturing goods and establishing yourself as a railway magnate are all profitable options, and to win you’ll need to balance all three.



I wanted to ‘convey the idea that this period was not a zero-sum game where you only gain when somebody else loses. There are many examples in economic history of dynamic systems that seem to lift themselves up through the interaction of the component parts.



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Brass: Birmingham is deeply steeped in the real-life history of the city and the surrounding region, which was one of the engines of the English industrial revolution.



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Twilight Imperium Designers: Christian T. Petersen, Dane Beltrami, Corey Konieczka Artist: Scott Schomburg Category: Complex Strategy



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T’S more than 20 years since Danish designer Christian T. Petersen released the first edition of Twilight Imperium, a sprawling game of spacefaring civilisations engaged in warfare, trade and diplomacy. In that time it’s gained an almost mythical status in the hobby. Players speak in hushed, reverent tones about its deep and varied strategies, its complex set of mechanical subsystems and its legendary eight-hour play sessions. Over the years, it’s been updated in a succession of revised editions, each tweaking and refining the game’s setup while retaining its core feeling of galaxy-spanning space opera. Now it’s returned in its fourth incarnation, and while it’s still a truly epic proposition, it’s also the slickest and most elegant version of the game that’s ever been released. Space, as the author Douglas Adams once observed, is big. So it’s appropriate enough that Twilight Imperium comes in a big box. Open it up and you’ll discover a bewildering collection of tiles, chips, tokens, cards, dice



Fourth Edition



Players: 3 - 6 Time: 240 - 480 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £134.99   MSRP (US): $127.49



and plastic spaceships – hundreds upon hundreds of pieces. Set it up for your first playthrough and you’ll also find that it’s incredibly hungry for tabletop real estate, with its hex-grid galaxy surrounded by player mats and rules references. It’s positively intimidating, and that’s before you get to grips with its 32-page rulebook. But while Twilight Imperium is a gargantuan beast, fetishising its sheer size does it a disservice. Its scale is undoubtedly the first thing that strikes you, but you’ll need to dig deeper to uncover its true appeal – the subtle and nuanced story of war, peace, power and betrayal that it weaves as you play. Each game begins with the collapse of an empire. The Lazax, rulers of the galaxy, have fallen. The world of Mecatol Rex, from which they ruled their star-spanning domain, has been reduced to a war-torn shell. With the throne empty, the galaxy’s other factions vie to fill the power vacuum and establish themselves as the sector’s dominant species. There are the expansionist humans of the



Federation of Sol, the advanced engineers and scientists of the Jol-Nar, the pirates of the Mentak Coalition and the nomadic merchants of the Hacan – a species of humanoid lions whose trading network stretches across inhabited space. In all, there are 17 different factions for players to control, each with their own strengths, special abilities and strategic approaches: battle-hardened fighters, cunning negotiators and advanced cosmic navigators who bend the laws of physics to outmanoeuvre their rivals. With so many different races to choose from, there’s massive variety in each game’s potential setup, and the mix of factions around the table has a profound effect on the feel of the game. That’s compounded by the fact that you’ll build its board from a collection of tiles showing planets and regions of open space every time you play. It means that no two games of Twilight Imperium will ever present the same strategic challenge. At first, your goals seem simple enough. From a small, isolated corner of the board



Pictured above: The latest edition of Twilight Imperium comes in a box big enough to strain your shelves. Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games



you’ll aim to expand your borders, building fleets of spaceships then sending them to colonise worlds and reap their resources. But it won’t take long before your expanding territory starts to rub up against your neighbours’, and when that happens there’s potential for trade, political wrangling or straightforward violence. Exactly which you choose will depend on a host of factors. If you’re controlling a particularly aggressive faction, and your opponent has some vulnerable-looking planets, you might want to swoop in and attack. If you’re more concerned with building your economy, you might seek to establish a mutually beneficial trading partnership. Or if you’re more interested in what’s happening in other areas of the board, you might agree to ignore one another for the time being – each hoping that your neighbour will remain friendly, but always worrying that they might stab you in the back. What complicates your decisions, though, is the game’s system of objectives. As you play you’ll race against your opponents to fulfil goals on a randomly drawn set of cards. You might have to seize control of certain types of planets, research particular technologies or build your political power. It means you’ll constantly need to analyse the objectives on offer, working out the ones you can most effectively pursue and denying your opponents the chance to complete others. But what truly defines the experience of Twilight Imperium is its multi-layered process of bargaining and negotiation. On each round players collectively take part in a galactic council to vote on laws – effectively temporary new rules for the game – which incentivise certain actions or dissuade others. You might enact arms reduction measures which force players to destroy some of their planetary defences, or establish a research network that grants new powers to everyone around the table. You might even vote for the public execution of one faction’s representative, destroying their political influence for the remainder of the round. It leads to heated discussions full of pleading, promises and threats, and the game complicates things further by letting players agree treaties between their own specific factions. You’ll sign peace accords, military support agreements and pledges of technological assistance, adding yet another element to the game’s twisting diplomacy, like a nesting Russian doll of intrigue and opportunism. And it’s here that Twilight Imperium reveals the paradox that lies right at its heart. Because in spite of its mam-



Each game of Twilight Imperium features a different configuration of tiles with planets, asteroid fields and expanses of open space. With such varied setups and a host of different factions for players to command, each play-through feels like a brand new epic space opera.



moth size, its evening-consuming play time and the incredible quantity of stuff it packs into its oversized box, ultimately none of it matters as much as the evolving relationships between its players. It expertly provokes rivalries, shaky alliances, cynically motivated partnerships and moments of utter black-hearted betrayal. It painstakingly engineers situations rife with the potential for conflict, then challenges players to pick the right fights at the right moments. Often, you’ll get that decision wrong. Occasionally, the consequences will be disastrous. At a fundamental level, Twilight Imperium understands the appeal of its brand of space-opera storytelling. It builds a detailed universe complete with wars, catastrophes, religious schisms, centuries-long rivalries



and unfathomable scientific advances. But ultimately it’s all a backdrop to the complex social and political interaction playing out around the table. What makes the game so memorable, and what utterly justifies its demands on your time and your wallet, is the way it makes such a vast theme feel so intensely personal, to the point where small victories become genuinely exhilarating and setbacks come like crushing blows. More than any other empire-building game, it leaves you feeling that you’re in command of a mighty civilisation with its own culture and history, and in spite of its multitude of mechanical moving parts, it makes it incredibly easy to step out of your own head and start thinking from the perspective of your adopted starfaring species.



Players take turns to choose strategy cards at the beginning of each game round, gaining useful advantages based on their choices. Knowing which ones to take at which moments in the game can be critically important.



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Corey Konieczka on Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition



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BGB: Twilight Imperium is now on its fourth edition. Why did Fantasy Flight decide it was time to revisit its design, and what are some of the main changes you think longtime players will notice? Corey Konieczka: Twilight Imperium Third Edition came out in 2005, and we’ve learned a lot since then, from production values, to game design, and even rules language. TI3 is a beloved game in our catalogue, and we were excited to see what we could accomplish with the Twilight Imperium’s gargantuan box comes packed with cards, tiles, chips and tokens. It’s a positively intimidating prospect, and even setting the game up is a complicated and time-consuming process. But the reward for your patience is one of the most resources and skills captivating strategic experiences in all of gaming. we have today. Long time players will notice that the heart of TI3 remains unchanged, Was it tough trying to balance Very early in development, we met with but lots of the subsystems have fans’ expectations from previous Christian Peterson, the creator and designer been reworked and modernised, editions with the desire to do of Twilight Imperium, and talked about our including technology, trade, and certain things differently? favourite things from the previous edition politics. Twilight Imperium was the first game that as well as what we’d change. Luckily, we We’ve also included our favourite Fantasy Flight Games ever produced, and agreed on the majority of the changes at the elements from the previous edition’s it is an important part of our DNA. I was very beginning. Then it just came down to expansions, and integrated them more a huge fan of the third edition, and I had figuring out what we could actually fit in fully into the game. In the end, the the honour of designing a large portion the box. game remains unapologetically epic, of its expansions. Both myself and Dane but it is a little faster, tighter, and more Beltrimi, TI4’s lead developer, used our own How do you think the selection of streamlined. love of the game as our measuring stick. factions in any individual game affects the experience of play? And are there any combinations you think are especially interesting? Each race caters to a different play style, and each player should choose a race that fits what they enjoy most. For example if you love getting technology, the Universities of Jol Nar can research faster than anyone else in the game. If you prefer diplomacy, then the peaceful Xxcha are probably more your speed and can pacify even the toughest warmonger. Races not only have unique abilities, but they Each player controls a different faction, all with their own particular characteristics and in-game also have a unique flagship, race specific advantages. The Emirates of Hacan are a species of bipedal lions, and they use their galaxyspanning trade network to dominate interplanetary commerce. technologies, and a special ability they can give to one ally. With 17 races in the box,



the combinations make every game a unique experience. While I can’t think of a particular combination of races that is more interesting than others, some individual races can really change the play environment for everyone. The trickiest is probably the Necro Virus who, lacking any creative spark, cannot research technology themselves and must steal it from other races. One of the really defining aspects of the game is the complex diplomacy and political interaction it sets up between players. How did you go about trying to create those relationships within the game, and what do you think they add to the experience? One thing that often surprises first-time players of Twilight Imperium is that it is not a wargame. Sure, you can invade other players’ systems and conquer their planets, but this is not the main goal of the game. Players spend just as much time working with their neighbours to keep the peace, so we made sure to provide many conflicting goals that made it difficult to stay at peace forever. This tension has always been at the heart of Twilight Imperium. In the fourth edition we really wanted diplomacy and politics to come to the forefront. One way we did this was by introducing promissory notes to the game. Each player starts with some of these cards, but a player can’t use their own promissory notes. These cards are bargaining chips that players can give to other players to bestow powerful abilities, for example, preventing the owner of the card from attacking you. Another mechanic that works this way are trade goods and commodities. Each player generates commodities, but these tokens are a resource that has little value to their people. Instead, players can give these tokens to other players at which time they become valuable trade goods. These sorts of mechanics give players lots of opportunities to strike deals and form alliances with each others. And alliances of course, present opportunities to stab each other in the back. There’s the potential for huge variety in each game’s setup, and it means players won’t face the exact same situation twice. But are there any general strategic approaches or tips you can give to help players win? The best advice I can give new players is to focus on completing objectives. Many players try to play Twilight Imperium as a conquest game and that mindset will almost always lose you the game.



Corey Konieczka has been designing games for as long as he can remember. He has worked on dozens of board games and expansions, including Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game and Star Wars: Rebellion. When not designing games, he enjoys video games, reading books, playing music, and writing strange nonsensical stories.



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Building and deploying fleets of ships is a core part of the game. But while having the biggest fleet and the most powerful flagship are definite advantages, getting bogged down in costly wars can mean that your empire doesn’t make progress in other areas such as trade, science and expansion across the galaxy.



Over the years, lots of other games have taken on similar empire-building science fiction themes. Are there any you’ve been impressed by? And why do you think Twilight Imperium remains so popular more than 20 years after it was first published? It is very hard for me to play other space empire-building games and not be thinking of Twilight Imperium. In my opinion, no



other game feels as epic. I think the main reason for TI’s popularity is the third edition’s amazing system design. That edition took the best parts of Twilight Imperium and married them with some brilliant, Euro-inspired mechanics that still feel very modern. I think another reason for the game’s popularity is that very few games fully embrace the long playtime needed to really provide an epic experience.



economic power or more efficiently transform planets. Choosing which ones to devote your civilisation’s scholarly efforts towards is a critical part of your game plan, and it’s made all the more difficult by the fact that only one player can reach the very top level of any branch of technological development, making for some intensely competitive research races.



If there’s one thing ‘that defines Gaia Project, it’s that it understands the distinction between competition and combat.



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Gaia Project Designers: Jens Drögemüller, Helge Ostertag Artist: Dennis Lohausen Category: Complex Strategy Players: 1 - 4



S



INCE its release in 2012, fantasy empire-building game Terra Mystica has established a cult following among fans who appreciate its deep and cerebral strategic challenge. It hands players control of a collection of fantasy races including halflings, mermaids and giants, each attempting to enlarge their domains by seizing territory and engineering it to create their own perfect habitat. Now its creators have returned with a science-fiction sequel that takes its expansionist blueprint into the furthest reaches of space. At first glance, Gaia Project looks to have a lot in common with its much-loved predecessor. Once again it puts players in command of competing factions aiming to extend their borders and establish thriving empires. But where Terra Mystica saw players compete for control of a fantasy world, this time you’ll take charge of spacefaring aliens attempting to colonise a galaxy full of tantalisingly uninhabited planets. It’s a well-worn theme, and it immediately invites comparison to the other recent space-themed release, Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition. Both come with big boxes, multi-hour playing times, chunky rulebooks, giant piles of components and hefty price tags. But get them to the table and it’s soon clear that while they tackle similar themes of interstellar empire-building, they do it in very different ways, and it’s fascinating to see how their designers have taken the concept in totally different directions. At the heart of Gaia Project is a premise that will be familiar to



Playing time: 60 - 150 minutes Ages: 15+ RRP (UK): £89.99 MSRP (US): $99.99 anyone who’s already played Terra Mystica. Each of the game’s alien races wants to claim and colonise the planets scattered around its modular hex-grid board, and each comes with its own set of abilities to help you in your imperial ambitions. You’ll be able to choose from a host of factions including the human Terrans, the yeti-like Itar and the insectoid Taklons. What complicates things, though, is that each species can only survive on a certain type of planet. Gaia Project’s universe is dotted with worlds, some blue and green like Earth, others home to vast deserts, seas of molten magma or endless inhospitable ice fields. If you want to settle these worlds, first you’ll have to terraform them so they can support your chosen life forms, and each faction finds certain types of planets easier to transform than others. The mechanoid Bescods, for example, can easily geo-engineer swamp or ice planets, but have a much tougher time with deserts or volcanoes. It sets up an immediate conflict, because the planets you most eagerly want to terraform will make ideal homes for your rivals just as they are, and they’ll do everything in their power to reach them before you’re able to stake your claim. This far-future land grab is the foundation of Gaia Project, but what makes it really rich and rewarding are the tough strategic decisions it piles on top. The game comes with a separate board representing a collection of different technologies, and researching them grants you an array of benefits, letting you navigate to distant worlds, boost your



Pictured above: Based on the fantasy favourite Terra Mystica, Gaia Project sees players terraform worlds to build thriving space empires. Publisher: Feuerland Spiele / Z-Man Games



As well as science and exploration, though, you’ll also need to develop the worlds under your control. At first you’ll build simple mines to generate income, but over time you’ll replace them with bigger and more prestigious buildings: trading posts, research stations and academies that grant you money and resources on every turn, boosting you towards economic and scientific supremacy. It leads to the feeling that you’re growing from a humble, upstart collection of planets to a galaxy-spanning empire, becoming bigger and more powerful with each passing round. By themselves, these factors could combine to make a complex and challenging game. But on top of it all, Gaia Project adds



You and your opponents will vie to take control of planets scattered around the board, and while there’s no laser-blasting combat in Gaia Project, it still manages to be fiercely competitive.



a multitude of scoring objectives. Before you begin, you’ll draw a random set of goal tiles – one for each of the game’s six rounds. Each rewards a different type of action, handing you victory points when you complete tasks like building structures or linking your worlds together to create powerful planetary federations. It means that as the game progresses you’ll try to tilt your strategy in



Where other sci-fi empire builders can emphasise aggression, Gaia Project is much more about careful long-term planning and calculated use of resources.



different directions, and the fact that you’ll be able to see all of the upcoming objectives from your very first turn means you’ll aim to fulfil as many as you can, developing nuanced, multi-layered strategies that gradually unfold as you play. It’s a lot to hold in your head at one time. But the one thing that’s conspicuously absent from Gaia Project is combat. There are no deep-space battles between fleets of hulking warships, no orbital artillery bombardments, no fearsome infantry assaults on planets. Compared to most interstellar empire games, it’s remarkably bloodless. That doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly competitive, though. In fact, if there’s one thing that defines Gaia Project, it’s that it understands the distinction between competition and combat. You’ll metaphorically fight for control of worlds. You’ll battle to outshine rivals in research. You’ll vie to make the best use of the strengths and powers of your particular alien faction. And while you won’t throw laser bolts or photon torpedoes across the board, this is a game where victory goes to the person with the biggest brain, not the biggest plasma cannon. Conquering its universe is a deeply analytical process: one that revolves around carefully laid plans, judiciously timed plays and constantly hunting for opportunities to establish tiny but all-important advantages over your rivals. It may lack the aesthetic polish and overwhelming sense of grandeur of Twilight Imperium – its artwork in particular is a bit of a let-down – but it presents a very different take on the idea of conquering space, and it’s mentally draining in all sorts of glorious ways.



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Helge Ostertag on Gaia Project crucial planets for expansion, for founding a federation, for securing a condition for the final scoring. So there is no combat, but players have to react to each other’s actions, plan their turns a few steps ahead and try to find the best timing for their strategy. You want to do several things at the same time, but you have to decide what is most urgent and what can be left for a later turn.



BGB: What made you want to create a sequel to Terra Mystica, and why did you want to take it to a science fiction setting? Helge Ostertag: We got a lot of feedback from people playing Terra Mystica, and a very common suggestion was to put the game into a science fiction setting, so we started talking about it and it led us to create a sequel. We found it intriguing how a different kind of setting and a different map would influence the gameplay, and along the way we noticed that we could include new twists to the game mechanics to improve certain aspects of the experience.



For a game as ‘complex as Gaia Project, the solo mode is a great way to discover all the different factions and to try out different strategies.



What do you think are some of the main differences between how Terra Mystica and Gaia Project feel to play? Terra Mystica is more cutthroat because your opponents can block you off from some crucial spaces on the map. Gaia Project is more forgiving concerning map position, but it’s also a more complex game, with some additional layers of decision making. The research board is a big difference to Terra Mystica. In each game of Gaia Project you have a new combination of technology tiles and corresponding research tracks, which will influence the way you develop your faction throughout the game.



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The game comes with a lot of different factions to control, each with their own play style. What kinds of different experiences were you trying to create with the different alien races?



Each of the game’s factions comes with its own player board, as well as its own strategic approach. Mastering them takes time and practice, and you may want to use the dedicated single-player mode to experiment with them all.



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With an array of icons, symbols and mechanical subsystems to get your head around, Gaia Project isn’t for the faint of heart. But if you relish the prospect of a demanding game with lots of buttons to push and levers to pull, it comes with a huge amount to discover.



We tried to give each faction their very own approach on how to play the game. Some factions are more science and research focused, like the Titan factions or the Itar. Some have a focus on Gaiaforming, like Terrans or Bal T’ak, others have a strong power-based ability like the Taklons or the



Nevlas. Some factions have an obvious strength, others have more subtle abilities, some are versatile all-rounders that can be successful in many setups, while some factions are much more situational. Any combination of races you haven’t played with yet is an interesting new experience to discover. Most space-themed empire-building games come with an element of combat, but even though Gaia Project doesn’t have any fighting between players, it still feels intensely competitive. How did you try to encourage that sense of competition? We built a lot of aspects into the game where players compete: getting the one very important power action before another player gets it, trying to be the first player to reach the top level of a specific research track, or winning the race to develop an advanced technology. Even though Gaia Project isn’t as cutthroat on the board as Terra Mystica, there are still



As well as claiming planets and voyaging across space, you’ll aim to advance your position in different branches of technological development, earning a host of useful rewards in the process.



The game gives players different scoring objectives on each round, and they’re chosen at random from a selection so that each game comes with different goals to aim for. How do you think that affects players’ strategies? The round objectives placed during setup force players to adapt their strategy to a path that ideally works towards the scoring options during each round. You can’t just find a single best strategy for a certain faction, because it won’t result in the best way to score in any individual game. It means there is a gap between the ideal way to build up your economy and the best way to score points, and players are trying to narrow or ideally close that gap. The game comes with a dedicated solo mode. Why was it important for you to include this in the game, and do you think there’s increasing interest in people playing games on their own? We wanted a solo mode since more and more people are interested in playing games on their own. It has been a clear trend over the last few years. For a game as complex as Gaia Project, the solo mode is a great way to discover all the different factions and to try out different strategies. Now that there are two games in the Terra Mystica series, could we see it become a trilogy? Are there any other themes or settings you’d like to explore? There are some expansions in the making, but no standalone games. We are interested in other themes, but for other games. And it is too early to talk about those at the moment.



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Different spacefaring species thrive on different types of world, and you’ll attempt to geo-engineer planets as you gradually spread across the galaxy.



Are you working on any other projects at the moment that you would like to talk about? I am working on another Terra Mystica expansion, it is nearly finished and has the working title Age of Innovation. It will introduce a new set of variable factions and new favour tiles as well as technology tiles, which are more



advanced and are all unique. It will be like the renaissance age but within the world of Terra Mystica, so you will look into the setting, its maps and its basic rules with a new perspective and discover new possibilities, new strategies and more variability. I am also working on an adventure game with roleplaying features.



Helge Ostertag grew up on the edge of the Black Forest in the south-west of Germany. He enjoys playing games including Race For The Galaxy, Rajas of the Ganges, Russian Railroads, Hawaii and Raiders of the North Sea with his wife, and his gaming group’s favourites include Terraforming Mars as well as classics like Power Grid and El Grande. Today he lives near Frankfurt and works in healthcare.



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Spirit Island Designer: R. Eric Reuss Artist: Joshua Wright Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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ROM the hugely influential Catan to the newbie-friendly Small World, exploration and colonialism are some of the most common recurring themes in gaming. But while plenty of releases explore the concepts of empire and expansionism, almost none of them seriously consider the plight of indigenous cultures. Where native peoples do appear, it’s often simply as a roadblock, impeding players’ attempts to seize new territory, and few games have much sympathy to spare for those displaced by aggressive newcomers. Spirit Island takes a defiantly different approach. A cooperative game set on an island beset by foreign invaders, it puts players squarely on the side of the indigenous inhabitants as they struggle to repel an existential threat to their way of life. You’ll take on the role of guardian spirits – the pantheon of demigods worshipped by the native Dahan – using your mystical powers to repel the interlopers before they can despoil your land. On each round you’ll play cards to invoke various abilities. Some let you push invaders away from parts of the board. Others rain damage on colonists, destroying their towns and strongholds. Some move Dahan villages, pulling your people out of harm’s way. And others let you engage in terrifying psychological warfare, leaving your enemies despairing, demoralised and wishing they’d never set foot on your soil. It’s an impressive arsenal, but in spite of all of these ways to strike back against the intruders, Spirit Island is punishingly difficult, large-



Time: 90 - 120 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £72.99 MSRP (US): $57.49 ly because its invaders attack and expand with relentless speed. You’ll clear them from sections of the board, only for them to flood back in even greater numbers, a bit like the dreaded disease cubes in Pandemic, and once they’ve established themselves in a location they can do some serious damage. As the colonists tighten their grip, they’ll begin to ravage areas of the board, placing blight tokens representing the environmental damage left in their wake. They’ll clear your spirits’ presence markers from the map, reducing your ability to deploy your powers in the areas they’re most needed. And they’ll kill off the Dahan, ruthlessly destroying their villages until they’ve been wiped from their island home. Defeating this implacable enemy is a pretty stiff task, and to pull it off you’ll need to pay attention to a multitude of factors. The game comes with a set of eight guardian spirits, each with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. The combination of the player powers around the table has a huge effect on your strategy, and you’ll need to discuss your abilities with your teammates, reacting to the changing state of the board and finding the most powerful ways to unite against an ever-increasing threat. You might find yourself playing as a slow but powerful rock spirit, using your immense strength to defend against enemy incursions. You could control a living incarnation of nightmares, instilling pure dread in invaders and causing them to flee for their lives. Or you might be-



Pictured above: Many games cast players as colonists laying claim to newly discovered lands. Spirit Island flips the idea firmly on its head. Publisher: Greater Than Games



come the embodiment of lightning, striking hard and fast at vulnerable targets without a thought for defensive tactics. Whichever spirit you play as, you’ll need to adapt to its individual play style, and while the game comes with some brief advice on how best to pilot each one, it’ll take trial, error and experimentation to discover the subtle nuances that arise in each new playthrough. A big part of using your powers to their fullest advantage lies in planning ahead and anticipating the invaders’ actions. The game controls your adversaries using a deck of randomly shuffled cards determining the lands they invade on each passing round, and with some careful observation you’ll be able to spot potential trouble spots, shoring up your defences before they fall into enemy hands. But you’ll almost always find yourself with more than one developing problem to deal with at once, and often you’ll have to choose between addressing an immediate crisis or heading off one that’s developing elsewhere on the board. It can quickly start to feel mentally draining, especially when combined with the game’s complex iconography and rules that make it easy to miss triggered effects and abilities. It means that Spirit Island isn’t a game you’ll master on your first, second or fifth play, and even when you do, you’ll be able to incorporate different scenarios and tougher antagonists, ensuring that things don’t become too simple once you’ve cracked its core puzzle. If you’re looking for a quick, accessible hit of cooperative action, you’ve come to the wrong place. This is a game that has no qualms about confronting players with a tough challenge. It’s also worth noting that while the game claims to support between one and four players, a huge part of its appeal lies in interactions between different spirits, and its solo mode is a pale imitation of the standard multiplayer setup. It also does nothing to address the problem of “alpha gamers” – overly assertive players with a tendency to dictate their comrades’ turns as well as their own. If anyone in your group has a tendency to get pushy, you’ll have to police them yourselves. But if you’re willing to invest some time and effort into learning its synergies and strategies, there’s an exciting and intelligent experience waiting to be discovered. In the opening turns, when your situation seems desperate, you’ll wonder how you could possibly survive the colonial onslaught. But weather the storm and you’ll unlock new powers, letting you unleash bigger, more dramatic effects that can tilt the struggle in your favour. You’ll suffer setbacks and losses, but while it might take you a few attempts to get past the early game, once you do you’ll be rewarded by an intoxicating sense of soaring power and righteous vengeance as you topple cities and kill swathes of colonists. It all amounts to a bold inversion of board gaming’s standard settler tropes, and it’s refreshing to feel as you play that you’re unequivocally on the side of the good guys.



Players take on the roles of guardian spirits, aiming to rid the island of colonialist invaders. To help them, they have access to an assortment of deadly powers, unleashing the fury of nature against the interlopers.



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While some spirits specialise in killing invading troops and destroying towns, others exert psychological pressure, using the power of fear to leave enemies broken and demoralised.



Many games over the years have put players in the shoes of colonial settlers and explorers. Spirit Island turns the concept on its head, with players working together to preserve an island for its indigenous population.



R. Eric Reuss on Spirit Island some partnerships with obviously good synergies, but even in more subtle cases, understanding what your partners’ spirits are and aren’t capable of can let you pull off amazing things.



R. Eric Reuss has been making games since his childhood. In college he played Magic: The Gathering, and he later discovered modern board games after buying El Grande as a holiday gift for a friend. He lives with his wife, Anne, and their two children near Boston, Massachusetts, and enjoys reading, rock climbing, jam-making, martial arts, travel and playing Dance Dance Revolution. BGB: Board games like Catan and Small World have a history of putting players on the side of colonising powers. What made you want to reverse the roles and have players defend their island against invaders? R. Eric Reuss: In many ways it was the sheer number of games with colonial themes, and how lopsided that felt. More specifically, I was playing a game – Goa, perhaps? – which entirely abstracted away any local indigenous peoples. This struck me as pretty emblematic of board games of the day, and got me thinking about what a game from an opposing perspective would look like.



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Each spirit in the game has its own special abilities. What was the design process like for them? And how do



you think different combinations of spirits affect players’ tactics? Most spirits in the game were developed alongside the core game engine itself, so whenever the underlying rules changed, the spirits needed to change too. I’d start with some sort of seed or inspiration, and I used theme to inform mechanics and vice versa. Of course, after that came a lot of testing. As for combinations, different spirits have different strengths, and may interact with the game in fundamentally different ways. For example, the spirit called A Spread of Rampant Green can impede invaders’ progress by throwing itself in their path. But the Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares can’t actually hurt the invaders. So you need to fill in for your partners’ weaknesses and take advantage of their strengths, while they do the same for you. There are



As well as the basic game, there are some tougher variants with different adversaries. What were you trying to do with those more advanced game modes? I think nearly any co-op game needs some sort of way to scale difficulty, or as players get better it won’t provide enough challenge to be interesting. I knew from the get-go that I wanted Spirit Island to have fairly granular difficulty increases, and to alter play dynamics in new and interesting ways. At first I used a system of banes and boons: individual effects you could mix and match to make the game easier or harder. But players weren’t super-excited to use them. They were mechanically interesting, but not thematically appealing. The idea of bundling together a progression of difficulty boosts as a single colonising nation – an adversary – had a sense of identity that was very appealing. It takes a while to master the rules as well as the winning strategies, and most groups are probably likely to lose their first few games. As a designer, how do you get people to commit to that learning process without making it feel like work?



Different spirits come with different abilities, and using them in a coordinated way is crucial.



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I think nearly any co-op game needs some sort of way to scale difficulty, or as players get better it won’t provide enough challenge to be interesting.



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With a different combination of spirits for every game, there’s an huge variety of tactical possibilities to explore.



Partly by trying to make a game that’s fun to play even if you don’t win. You get to grow more potent, learn new powers, pull off some combos. And partly by trying to keep the overarching game structure pretty simple. The biggest surprise of the game’s initial release was how difficult it turned out to be for many groups of players. Thankfully, when it comes to co-ops, so long as the play was fun most folks seem to enjoy tackling games that are tough! The game has a very distinct art style and visual design. How do you think that affects its atmosphere? From the early days, I wanted to sign Spirit Island with a publisher who’d make it visually appealing, and Greater Than Games was totally on-board with that. They wanted to go with a lighter, brighter, watercolourish look for the game. I think it was both



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to reflect the vibrance and diversity of the natural world, to differentiate it from other games, many of which had very dark, oilpainting-looking art, and perhaps to give a sense of hope. I think it definitely gives the game a distinctive feel. Are you currently working on any projects you’d like to talk about? My design time is mostly being spent on Jagged Earth, an expansion for Spirit Island, but I do have a game tentatively titled SCIENCE! or DIE that will hopefully see print in 2019 or 2020. It’s a real-time cooperative spatial-and-dexterity game: you design cures to deadly diseases, then need to literally build those designs as towers of wooden blocks. It’s fast, spatial fun that balances speed and thought. If you rush too much, you’ll make designs that are hard to build, or knock things over. But ponder too much, and you’ll run out of time.



A separate board dictates the invaders’ moves and charts their incursions into the heart of the island.



Different spirits have different strengths, and may ‘interact with the game in fundamentally different ways. For example, the spirit called A Spread of Rampant Green can impede invaders’ progress by throwing itself in their path. But the Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares can’t actually hurt the invaders.



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The game’s art style evokes its tropical island setting.



Reiner Stockhausen on Altiplano Reiner Stockhausen was born in Aachen, Germany and currently lives nearby in Belgium. He founded his publishing company, dlp games, in 2009. He previously worked as a newspaper editor, and his interests include literature, art, music and photography. His all-time favourite game is Pandemic, which he says is “the perfect mixture of great mechanisms and a very exciting theme.”



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BGB: Altiplano isn’t your first bagbuilding game. Why do you think Orléans became so popular with players? And why did you decide to revisit a similar mechanism in Altiplano? Reiner Stockhausen: Strictly speaking, my first bag-building game was 2011’s Siberia. It only had one bag shared by all of the players, which made luck much more of a factor when drawing tiles. With Orléans it was important that the players had a degree of control because they could manage the content of their bags, but on the other hand it was always a surprise which tiles they actually drew. I think this mixture of surprise and predictability is an important part of the game’s appeal. Altiplano has had a completely different development. I had actually partially designed it at the time Orléans was being developed, and at first it used completely different mechanisms. The bag-building element was added right at the end of the process, and it gave the game its decisive impulse.



Altiplano Designer: Reiner Stockhausen Artists: Klemens Franz, Andrea Kattnig, Jeff Oglesby Category: Complex Strategy



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RLÉANS, published in 2014, is a game of rival nobles in medieval France which sees players compete to recruit citizens before despatching them to build thriving trade empires. Fans praised its tough decisions and open-ended strategy, and now its creator has returned with a spiritual successor. Altiplano shifts its setting to the Andes mountains, with players harvesting cacao beans and selling alpaca-wool blankets in an effort to become the wealthiest trader in their village. Like Orléans, it sees you and your rivals steadily accumulate tokens representing the goods you produce on each round. You’ll add them to a black cloth bag, randomly drawing handfuls to represent food from your fields, stone from your quarries and wood from your forests. Different tokens let you take different types of actions and you’ll aim to carefully manage the contents of your bag to ensure you have access to useful materials. It feels a lot like a Dominion-style deckbuilding game. But while it forms the core of Altiplano, it’s only one part of a much larger whole. The game hands you a positively bewildering array of ways to score points and push yourself ahead of your opponents. You might want to focus on crafting highly sought-after goods. But that takes time and effort, and there’s an equally valid strategy of aggressively producing less prestigious but more attainable items. Alternatively, you might want to build houses, which grant you a bonus for holding certain types of resources such as wood or fish, then corner the market in



For people who have previously played Orléans, what are some of the differences they’ll notice in Altiplano? The biggest difference is that the used tiles in Orléans immediately go into players’ bags, while in Altiplano, they’re only added to the bag when it’s empty. It means you can never tell exactly when you’ll draw a particular tile, but you can be sure that you’ll draw it eventually. In that respect, Altiplano is nearer to deckbuilding then to a bag-building game. The game feels very open in terms of the strategies available to players. There’s no single “best” way to play. How did you try to create that sense of freedom? I always try to include several possible strategies in a game, which takes a lot of time. It’s important to find the right balance for all of them in order to have the possibility to win or lose with each strategy. It’s also important to have different points of interaction between players to allow them to snatch away resources and force their opponents to react as best they can.



Is there a risk when you give players such a lot of freedom that they feel lost and can’t decide what to do? Is there anything you can do as a designer to prevent that? That’s right. When they first played the game, people often felt overwhelmed because they couldn’t anticipate any successful strategy. One thing that helps with that is the role cards which players receive at the start of the game. It gives them a hint towards a certain type of strategy. And also the mission cards, which I first thought of only as a little expansion, were helpful to turn players’ decisions in a certain direction. Physically, the game looks very impressive with its cardboard alpaca, but also with all of the locations as separate components on the table. Why did you want to do this rather than having everything on a single board, like most other games? The simple reason for not having a fixed game board is that the different locations can be placed randomly in each new game to give it more variety. The design – artwork and components – is always very important, and players appreciate the look and physical production, so we plan the components of the game very carefully at the same time as developing the mechanisms.



Players: 2 - 5 Time: 60 - 120 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £49.99   MSRP (US): $65 those goods to exploit your advantage. You’ll also be able to sell your wares at the village market, using the income to buy special upgrade tiles and gain moves which aren’t available to your opponents. It quickly gets complicated, but it means you’ll carve out your own strategy with every play-through, and it’s incredibly satisfying seeing your clever schemes bear fruit. Rather than pointing players at a single shared goal, Altiplano hands you each a basic set of tools then challenges you to make the best of your situation. It makes it easy to make bad choices, but it also creates an incredible sense of freedom. It’s the game’s most enticing aspect. But it’s a shame that in some respects, Altiplano undermines the very thing that makes it so appealing. Before you play, you and your opponents will each draw tiles which grant you special abilities. Using them to their full advantage is important, but they also nudge each player towards a particular game plan. It feels like being presented with a vast network of branching paths to explore, then being gently shoved off down just one of them. There’s also very little in the way of interaction between players. In theory you’ll compete for some of the same upgrades and abilities, but there are so many on offer that the competition never feels all that intense. None of it is enough to derail the many things that Altiplano gets right, though, and it’s enough to make you hope for more games in Stockhausen’s bag-building series. And as a final added bonus, it even comes with a cute cardboard alpaca.



Pictured above: Altiplano is a follow-up to its designer’s highly regarded bag-building game Orléans. Publisher: dlp games



Despite its relative complexity, Altiplano boasts a friendly art style.



Rather than a single board, Altiplano comes with region tiles that can be laid out in any configuration, creating different possible setups for any play-through.



Buying upgrade tiles from the game’s market unlocks useful new abilities.



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Aaron Vanderbeek on Castell BGB: What made you think Castell towers could be the basis for an interesting game? Aaron Vanderbeek: I spent two weeks in Barcelona in 2014 and was so affected by the experience that I really wanted to make a game about some aspect of Catalonian people and culture. I made quite a few prototypes about different traditions, events, holidays, and the initial prototype of Castell showed immediate promise. I hope to eventually make some more games about other aspects of Catalonian culture.



The intended ‘progression was



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for the player to start with a very basic castell, and end with some of the best castells that have ever been made.



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Castell Designer: Aaron Vanderbeek Artists: Ossi Hiekkala, Jeanne Torres, Paul Tseng, Dan Wagner Category: Complex Strategy



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HE Catalan tradition of castell sees teams of daring acrobats standing on one another’s shoulders to build gigantic human towers. It’s a spectacular test of strength, balance and coordination, and it probably violates any number of health and safety regulations. A quick YouTube search brings up some truly hair-raising videos of structures that reach the upper storeys of surrounding buildings – often with small children clambering to the very top. Now it has inspired a tabletop tribute. But while the most obvious way to capture the danger and drama of these living skyscrapers might seem to be a Jenga-style stacking game, Castell takes a very different approach. It’s a thoughtful, strategic and fiercely competitive challenge that rewards clever and careful planning. You and your opponents become the heads of rival casteller troupes, travelling between the cities of Catalonia to recruit new members, hone your tower-building skills and perform for audiences at festivals from Barcelona to Vilafranca. On your turn you’ll be able to take a variety of actions depending on your location. Each city in the game comes with a random selection of new castellers to add to your group. Strong, stout types provide a stable base for your structure. Lithe, lean ones are ideal for making up the middle layers, and nimble youngsters can scramble to the top of the pile. To outbuild your opponents you’ll need a diverse mix of participants, and that means travelling across the region to snap them up before your competitors have a chance to.



Designer Aaron Vanderbeek created Castell as a homage to Catalonia after visiting the region while travelling.



Players: 2 - 4 Playing time: 60 - 90 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £57.99   MSRP (US): $60.00 Having the right people in your troupe is only half the battle, though. You’ll also need to boost their abilities by training in an array of different physical skills. As you grow stronger and more capable, you’ll be able to build ever-more ambitious towers, gaining new ways to stack people one on top of another. It creates a deeply satisfying sense of progression as your small, inexperienced group grows larger and more proficient – an incremental process that feels a bit like a Rocky training montage, but without anyone getting punched in the face. It’s seriously engaging, and it’s just one of the elements that makes Castell a standout release. There’s the delicate balance between perfecting your own group and competing against your opponents’. There’s the gorgeous, evocative artwork that seems infused with Catalan sunshine. There’s the way turns never get bogged down, in spite of the multitude of tricky decisions the game throws at players. But the best thing about Castell is its captivating logistical puzzle. As you expand your troupe and build your skills, you’ll have to keep a close eye on the schedule of upcoming local festivals, arriving at exactly the right cities at exactly the right time to compete for glory and victory points. It makes thinking a few rounds ahead and wringing the maximum possible reward from every one of your turns all-important, and getting it right leaves you feeling impossibly clever. It’s hard to believe that it’s the first published design from creator Aaron Vanderbeek. For a newcomer to the industry, it’s a towering achievement.



Pictured above: Players tour their troupes around Catalonia performing at festivals and local shows. Publisher: Renegade Games



Looking at those human towers, the obvious option for a tabletop version would seem to be a stacking dexterity game. Why did you think there was scope for something deeper and more strategic? Of course my first thought was a dexterity game, and I spent a long time thinking about what a castell dexterity game might look like. Each time I went down this path it always felt like some kind of party game, which in my mind would not ultimately do the tradition of castell justice. I tried very hard to think about integrating dexterity and strategy, but I think these genres have foundational differences. It was only when I finally gave myself permission to remove the dexterity element from the initial concept that the first prototype of Castell emerged. There’s a real sense of progression as your troupe gets bigger and you develop new skills. How did you try to build that sense of constant growth into its design?



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Training in various regions allows your castellers to acquire new skills, letting them build taller and more ambitious towers. To win you’ll need to recruit the right acrobats for your troupe, hone their abilities over multiple rounds and arrive at cities in time to perform for enthusiastic crowds.



My focus was on designing the towerbuilding rules to closely resemble the actual castells made in real life. So the intended progression was for the player to start with a very basic castell, and end with some of the best castells that have ever been made. Since you are always adding castellers to your team, the game functions somewhat like an engine-builder, though I doubt anyone would describe the game as such.



Aaron Vanderbeek is originally from Massachusetts, USA. He discovered games at a young age on the iconic NES video game console, and he first encountered tabletop gaming through Catan, El Grande and Magic: The Gathering. Today his favourite games include Isle of Skye, Yokohama and Castles of Burgundy. He plays piano and organ, and recently relocated to Berlin where he works as a video game designer.



The game’s artwork is very evocative of its setting. Did you have a particular look in mind? I was really hoping for a realistic style that portrayed castell positively and honestly. Most portrayals of castell by board games have been playful and silly. And while there is a playful, celebratory quality to Castell, it also represents intense focus, dedication, and togetherness. Luckily, I managed to hire an incredible artist that I had great confidence in based on his other work. I contacted Ossi Hiekkala based on his work on Flamme Rouge, which used a style close to what I was hoping for with Castell. He understood right away and was really receptive to my specific notes when trying to represent the people and castells as correctly as possible.



It adds up to a gripping exercise in high-stakes strategy. On each turn you’ll find yourself with a hand of cards and a rapidly changing situation on the board, attempting to work out how to use one to overcome the other. As soon as you start to fail, you’ll already be plotting how to do better next time. It’s a constant process of planning and reacting to events as they unfold, and it’s addictive as hell.



The campaign handles ‘players dropping in and out very well. Its difficulty systems ensure a smooth challenge as the character count changes. There’s even a built-in system which ensures that characters enter and leave play over the course of the adventure.



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Gloomhaven Designer: Isaac Childres Artists: Alexandr Elichev, Josh T. McDowell, Alvaro Nebot Category: Complex Strategy



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N first inspection, Gloomhaven seems like a crazy proposition. A dark fantasy adventure that plays out over a campaign of linked game sessions, it comes in a box so big it could contain dozens of ordinary releases. Just reading its rules, punching out its cardboard components and setting up your first game will consume hours of your time. But once you start to play, you’ll discover that as well as a massive stack of card and plastic, this gargantuan package contains a rich and detailed world and an epic narrative that’s straining to break free. Dungeon crawl campaigns are nothing new in board gaming. The likes of Descent and Warhammer Quest have long given players the chance to explore darkened caverns, accumulate treasure and skewer some unfortunate goblins. Most generate some excitement, but eventually fizzle out over time as their novelty starts to fade. Gloomhaven has much less chance of hitting that brick wall. That’s partly down to its plot, in which the players slowly uncover a sinister conspiracy. Mostly, though, it’s due to its brilliant tactical combat engine. Each character starts with their own deck of ability cards. The wizard-like Spellweaver, for example, has a card that lets them launch fireballs at enemies, and another that lets them fly across the board. The game’s warrior, the Brute, has a shield-bash attack that stuns adjacent monsters, as well as a nasty trample ability that lets him stamp over enemies in his path. Each character type has a pool of cards to



Players: 1 - 4 Time: 60 - 120 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £139.99   MSRP (US): $139.99 choose from, and you can customise your deck to suit your strategy and play style, with new cards becoming available as you gain experience over the course of your adventure. It lets players tailor their characters to their tastes, but up to this point it doesn’t do much to distinguish Gloomhaven from other games in its genre. The clever bit, though, is that each card comes with two different effects, one printed on each half of its face. In most cases one is aggressive while the other lets characters move or defend against enemy attacks. On each turn you’ll choose two cards to play, using the upper ability from one and the lower from the other. One of your cards also serves as your initiative value, determining when you’ll get to act during a round, and it makes every turn a fascinating puzzle. Your Brute might want to play Leaping Cleave to attack a group of enemies. To do that he needs to act before they do, and to move himself into striking distance. However, both the attack and the movement are slow. Do you play a card that lets him move more quickly? Expend your single-use Boots of Striding for an extra move? Or do you abandon your plan and use another attack altogether? The answers are never obvious, and figuring out your best course of action never feels dull. It makes for a constant succession of tough choices, and they become especially gripping when combined with the game’s punishing difficulty level. Inexperienced players are likely to die often, and you shouldn’t feel bad if you end up playing on the game’s easy setting.



Pictured above: Gloomhaven’s giant box is practically big enough to curl up and sleep in. Image: Cephalofair Games



Unlike some dungeon-crawlers, which put one player in the role of an evil overlord controlling the monstrous antagonists, Gloomhaven is entirely cooperative. But unlike most co-ops, it forbids discussion of numbers or specific effects when planning your actions. So while you might know that your comrade is planning to attack a particular cultist, you won’t know how, or when, or how much damage they’re about to inflict. Gloomhaven’s restrictions on communication are a neat solution to a recurring problem in cooperative games – the tendency for overly assertive players to hijack other players’ turns – and along the way it adds an element of confusion and unpredictability that brilliantly captures the whirling chaos of combat. It also works as a solo game,



The game’s antagonists are represented by cardboard standees, and while they’re small, they pack an impressive amount of artistic detail into their illustrations.



Each player’s character brings their own set of abilities to the fight. You’ll use character sheets to keep track of their status.



Gloomhaven’s campaign sees players explore a variety of environments, each with their own hazards to overcome and enemies to confront.



and it’s great fun, but playing with a group elevates it into something special. In fact, you can do both. The campaign handles players dropping in and out very well. Its difficulty systems ensure a smooth challenge as the character count changes. There’s even a built-in system which ensures that characters enter and leave play over the course of the adventure. Each new character starts with a specific goal, such as exploring certain areas or killing particular foes. Once they’ve achieved their objective, they retire, and you can unlock a new type of hero from the box. It give characters a real sense of personality, and the reward you receive for achieving a goal takes some of the sting out of losing them for the remainder of the quest. Unlocking characters is only one aspect of the game’s legacy system, though. The campaign map starts as a blank slate, with the exception of the city of Gloomhaven itself. As you complete scenarios, you’ll add stickers to the board showing new areas to explore. And best of all are the envelopes: little packages of delicious mystery that you’ll open as the plot unfolds. If you’re interested in a quick hit of combat, there’s also a random dungeon generator for one-off games. But with such a compelling story mode, there’s little reason to bother. Of course, all of this comes at a price. There’s a reason for that outrageously large box. All those decks, all those character classes, each with their own unique action and damage cards. The slew of monsters, each with different levels, boss variants and a dedicated action deck. A stack of item cards as thick as your thigh. Juggling all the components is fiddly and frustrating in the extreme. Digital organiser apps like Gloomy Companion can help, but the game comes with some serious admin to keep on top of. In the final reckoning, though, Gloomhaven is worth the effort. It’s a monumental thing: a labour of love on the part of the designer to create a world and bring it to life. The secrets of its campaign and the tactical depth of its combat combine to create an utterly gripping experience. It’s just a shame that its high demands of time, price and shelf space will prevent some gamers from enjoying its glories.



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Isaac Childres on Gloomhaven BGB: Gloomhaven is a really huge, ambitious design. What made you want to create a game on this kind of scale? And did you ever wonder whether it might just be too big to be viable? Isaac Childres: I think the central driving force behind the ridiculousness was the desire to create a non-linear campaign game. I wanted to give players the freedom to explore a vast, open world, forcing them to make real choices about what they would do and where they explored. Everything else – the multitudes of scenarios, characters, and enemies – was all an extension of that. I didn’t want players to feel the game was repetitive, so through all of their journey, there had to be new, exciting things to experience. And I absolutely had times when I thought: “What have I done?” But I didn’t quite realize the scale of everything and the size of the box until it was past the point of no return. This was what I wanted to make, so this is what I was going to do. The main concern was that the $100-plus board game wouldn’t do well outside of Kickstarter, but I wanted it to have a retail



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Isaac Childres lives in Lafayette, Indiana with his wife, Kristyn. Originally from Bakersfield, California, he moved to study physics at Purdue University, where he received his PhD in 2015. He discovered games through releases including Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Agricola and Caylus, and his favourites include Gaia Project and Glass Road. When he isn’t designing games, he enjoys video gaming — mostly roleplaying games and dungeon crawls.



presence as well. In the end, I just did it and hoped for the best. Dungeon-crawling adventure might be the most firmly entrenched theme in gaming. Why do you think it continues to be so popular? And how challenging was it to make a game that stands out from others in the genre? I think there’s just a visceral appeal to running around and chopping up monsters. It’s what I did as a kid with action figures. It’s what I did in high school and beyond with Dungeons & Dragons and video



games. Dungeon crawlers give us a chance to combine that rush with our love of board gaming. The surprising thing is how much of a rut the genre got stuck in. Everything is just using a basic action set to move around and roll dice at enemies. I’m not saying it wasn’t hard to make Gloomhaven, but it wasn’t hard to make something different.



want players ‘toI didn’t feel the game was repetitive, so through all of their journey, there had to be new, exciting things to experience. And I absolutely had times when I thought: “What have I done?” But I didn’t quite realise the scale of everything and the size of the box until it was past the point of no return.



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Gloomhaven relishes tactical dungeon-crawling combat, but it also benefits from a pronounced narrative element, with players exploring an open realm in a campaign of interconnected game sessions. And while it’s already a huge, sprawling proposition, its creator has begun to produce expansions adding more opportunities for adventure.



The card-based action system throws up some interesting dilemmas for players. What kinds of choices were you trying to present them with, and how did you try to make different character classes feel distinct through their respective decks? The two main things here are that I wanted players to make difficult choices, and also to give them the room to plan things out. I wanted players to be able to look at their hands and say: “In a perfect world, I would play these two cards, then these two, then these two.” One card might be good now, but it could be great later, so when do you use it?



Players control an assortment of rogues, wizards and warriors, represented by a collection of plastic miniatures. Image: Cephalofair Games



Another important aspect is the adaptability. At every step along the way, you have a chance to adapt your plan, adjusting to unplanned events. And then making all the classes! It was very challenging, but also very rewarding. Coming up for a theme for a class and how that will affect the mechanics of the cards, and then making all the abilities – that stuff is my favourite part of the design process. Obviously we don’t want to give too much away about the plot, but how did you go about developing the narrative aspect of the game? And what opportunities does a tabletop game give you for storytelling that wouldn’t be present in other media, like novels, comics or movies? You just gotta sit down and write it out. I took a lot of inspiration from other fantasy sources, but, in a way, it was a lot like designing a campaign for D&D, which I have a lot of experience with. What this has over traditional media is that you can give autonomy to those experiencing it. They get to decide how the story is going to play out. Gloomhaven has been very heavily praised by fans and critics. Did you suspect while you were working



on it that it might have this level of success? And how has it felt to see the reaction it’s received? I knew it was going to be successful. I really enjoyed playing it. Everyone else I showed it to really enjoyed playing. I knew I had something special, but I don’t think anyone but the most delusional could have expected the ridiculous magnitude of success the game has had: so many glowing reviews, selling out faster than we can print the game. It has been so fulfilling and validating. I couldn’t have asked for anything better, and I am just thankful every day that I get to wake up and keep working in this industry. Are you currently working on any projects you’d like to talk about? The first expansion to Gloomhaven, Forgotten Circles, is coming in early 2019. My design work on that is done, but I’m excited to see what people think of it. And then I am also putting a lot of work into the Return to Dark Tower project that Restoration Games is doing. It has been a great experience working with Rob Daviau and Justin Jacobson on that, and those guys are doing some crazy things with that tower. I’m just designing a game, but they’re going to turn it into something amazing.



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Floor tiles let players build dungeons for different scenarios.



Item cards boost characters’ abilities at critical moments.



Molly Glover and Tom Jolly on Battle for Rokugan BGB: The realm of Rokugan has quite a bit of history behind it. Were there any challenges involved in working with a setting that’s special to many players? Molly Glover: I had not played any of the games within the Legend of the Five Rings universe, but I was very intrigued by the setting and keen to learn more about it. The only real challenge I faced was making sure that the mechanics of the game felt like they belonged in the world of Rokugan; I worked really closely with our L5R story group guru to ensure I was getting it right. I also spent hours poring over the L5R wiki pages. It was really important to me that abilities felt like they belonged to their clans, and that anyone who used the dark magic found within the Shadowlands paid a price to do so.



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Battle for Rokugan Designers: Molly Glover, Tom Jolly Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2 - 5 Time: 60 - 90 minutes



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N 1995, the Legend of the Five Rings card game introduced players to the land of Rokugan, a fantasy kingdom inspired by feudal Japan. Its warring factions employed armies, assassins and cunning political schemes to increase their power, and two years later the setting spawned a roleplaying game that explored the violence, magic and intrigue of the realm in immersive detail. Battle for Rokugan is a strategy board game set against this long-running backdrop. It sees players become feuding warlords, and while conquest games can often get caught up in complexity, it uses some deft design touches to create a see-saw of strategy and subterfuge that you can learn and play with impressive speed. The crux of the game will feel familiar to anyone who’s played publisher Fantasy Flight’s A Game of Thrones: The Board Game. On your turn you’ll draw a random collection of counters representing your forces, like armies, navies and ninjas. These vary in strength, and you’ll place them face-down on the board, threatening your rivals’ territories or defending your own. There’s no fuss over supply lines or troop recruitment, no fickle dice to betray your cause. There’s just a collection of jabbing arrows threatening one another across a map. But with the strength of your units hidden from your opponents, it creates agonising tension. What is that, edging towards your territories? A feeble one-strength army, or a terrifying force coming to reduce your province to ash? Once you and your opponents have placed your tokens for the turn, you’ll reveal them and resolve their effects. The stakes are high;



Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £36.99 MSRP (US): $39.95 conquering provinces is crucial to winning the game. But it rewards successful defences too. Whenever you repel an enemy attack, your territory increases its defensive strength as its population fortifies it in response. It also becomes more valuable to your opponents, offering additional victory points to whoever can successfully capture it. Each clan comes with its own set of special powers, and some add a layer of intrigue to the game, letting you peek at your opponents’ tokens before they’re revealed. You’ll be able to play cards that let you spy on your rivals, and it results in an agonising drip of detail: enough to wet your lips, but never to quench the thirst for information. These simple foundations create a game of mounting pressure, uneasy alliances and elaborate double-bluffs. Mistakes are costly, and the balance of power can swing fast, keeping everyone in contention until the last moment. But the game is so quick and relatively straightforward that losing never feels mean or unfair. There are also some hidden objective cards which spice up the action, granting bonus points to players who conquer certain territories. And each region on the map also has an associated power card which grants a different special ability to whoever manages to seize it. You’ll never be sure which cards are in the mix, which keeps everyone on their toes. Proper strategy demands that players learn which cards might be out there, putting newcomers at a disadvantage – the only real weak point in the design. But don’t let that deter you. Print out a reference guide and get stuck in to this superb distillation of board-based samurai brutality.



Pictured above: Set in the fantasy realm of Legend of the Five Rings, Battle for Rokugan is a game of tactics and intrigue. Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games



The system of placing face-down tokens on the map seems similar to A Game of Thrones: The Board Game. Was that an influence on your design? Tom Jolly: I designed that basic mechanic for the game some 15 years ago, and left the design on my shelf for many years, then finally got around to dusting it off and fine-tuning it. I’d never played A Game of Thrones: The Board Game, so the fact that a similar mechanic existed for that game was a complete surprise to me. I still haven’t played A Game of Thrones, so I can’t really compare the two. What do you think the various clan powers add to the game? How do players’ experiences differ based on the factions they control? MG: It was important that the clans felt different. We didn’t want each player to feel like they were just a colour being called a clan, but were actually representing that clan and its particular philosophies and strengths during the game. Someone playing as Crab will do best if they focus on defence, while someone playing as Crane will base their strategies around their power to win ties. I think it adds to the



Molly Glover



Tom Jolly



Battle for Rokugan’s territories offer rich rewards for players who can claim them, and secret objective cards make some regions especially valuable.



replayability of the game, as it makes sense to experience each clan before you decide which is your favourite. Players have some secret objectives, incentivising them to try to conquer particular regions on the map. What does this additional level of secrecy bring to the game? MG: I didn’t want players to be able to “math out” the winner before the game ended. That’s not a fun play experience. The secret objectives felt both thematic to Rokugani culture, where you never know what unspoken machinations your opponent may be up to, and provided a way for the end scoring to have a little more excitement. Territories that successfully repel attacks become tougher to conquer, but also more valuable over the course of the game. What was the thinking behind this, and what effect does it have on players’ strategies?



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Designer Molly Glover immersed herself in Legend of the Five Rings’ lore to create the game.



MG: A place that has been defended by its people is one that has grown stronger for it. I wanted to represent that concept, the feeling of a clan experiencing threats to its lands and strengthening those areas’ defences as a response. A province that has never known war has no reason to build stronger walls or to post sentries. A province that has been attacked, however, knows better.



Molly Glover is a huge nerd who loves video games, comics and weird television. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, Nick, their dog, Peaches, and their cats, Triskaidekaphobia and Gatsby. She enjoys long-distance running, cooking and horror fiction, and when she’s not making games she’s a professional performer and comedian. Tom Jolly was born in Los Angeles and was raised on a steady diet of games. Around 1975, he discovered Dungeons & Dragons and Cosmic Encounter, and in 1983 he released the magical battle board game Wiz-War, which remains a favourite with players to this day. He worked for 27 years as an electrical engineer in the space industry, including on the Titan rocket programme. He lives with his wife, Penny, and writes short fiction for several magazines and web sites.



Bruno Cathala and Florian Sirieix on Imaginarium BGB: Imaginarium takes a fresh approach to the popular steampunk genre. What made you want to explore it as a theme? Florian Sirieix: It wasn’t such a common theme when I first started working on Imaginarium. At the time I had three main inspirations. I was a huge fan of the steampunk game Spyrium from Ystari Games, I had a fantastic steampunk clock in my living room, and I listened to a lot of electro-swing music, notably a song called Rock it for Me by Caravan Palace. Look at the music video and you’ll understand!



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Imaginarium Designers: Bruno Faidutti, Florian Sirieix Artist: Felideus Bubastis Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2 - 5



Playing Time: 90 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £44.99 MSRP (US): $59.99



N recent years, the steampunk science fiction subgenre has leapt to the forefront of geek culture. Inspired by the works of authors like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, it aims to capture the Victorian spirit of industry and invention with stories of smoke-belching machines and gargantuan airships. While it’s made its way into novels, TV, movies and music, the genre’s biggest impact has arguably been on gaming. Countless digital and tabletop titles have embraced its brass-and-leather aesthetic. In fact, with so many steampunk games on the market, it’s tempting to think the trend might have overstayed its welcome. Imaginarium does some intriguing things with the theme, though. It casts players as workers in a factory producing dreams and nightmares, and from the moment you set eyes on its box, with its dreamlike image of a mechanically augmented elephant, it’s clear that it takes its own distinct approach to the established formula of gears, cogs and goggles. Artist Felideus Bubastis mixes traditional illustration with some incredibly bizarre elements to create a look that falls somewhere between a Tim Burton film and the weird animated segments from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. From its assortment of strange and wonderful machines to its animal characters that look like overly enthusiastic experiments in taxidermy, the game fearlessly straddles the line between charming and grotesque. Good looks don’t mean much unless they’re accompanied by compelling gameplay, though, and Imaginarium has plenty to get your teeth into. Over the course of the game you’ll repair and upgrade



a collection of different machines, using them to generate resources like wood, copper and crystals. But what’s really interesting is your ability to combine multiple devices to enhance their effects. It lends the game a Willy Wonka sense of mad invention as you jam various elements together to see what might happen. Your ultimate goal is to fulfil objectives shown on a set of randomly drawn tiles. You might find yourself collecting sets of matching machines or amassing different resources. You’ll have to carefully consider the tools available, and the most efficient ways to use them. It’s a gradual process of tweaking, tinkering and incremental improvement, and over time you’ll build a powerful point-scoring engine. But it’s also quite an introspective process, and it makes it easy to forget that you’re simultaneously engaged in a ruthlessly competitive high-stakes race. Whoever completes each of the game’s objectives first gains extra points, and you’ll hunt for ways to give yourself the slightest edge over your rivals, hoarding resources and recruiting assistants who grant new abilities and extra actions on your turn. You’ll also have the option of getting confrontational, stealing opponents’ supplies, damaging their devices or otherwise interfering with their plans, and while this isn’t a game with a heavy focus on player-bashing, aggressive tactics definitely have their place. Look too closely and you’ll notice that under the hood, Imaginarium is mechanically pretty abstract. You’re essentially building complex systems to turn cubes into other types of cubes. But its astounding presentation makes up for any systematic feeling. If you crave a game that’s as surreal as it is cerebral, this could be your dream come true.



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Pictured above: Imaginarium combines a compulsive engine-building core with weird, dream-like visuals. Publisher: Bombyx



Visually, it’s an incredibly beautiful game. Did you have an idea about its presentation when you started working on the design? Bruno Cathala: Florian had the idea of the dream factory from the beginning of the project. Then Studio Bombyx decided to publish the game, and these strange, scary, oneiric images were their idea. To be honest, when I received the first illustration, I wasn’t sure how it could fit with our game. So I looked online for other illustrations close to the one the publisher sent us, and I re-built a complete prototype with them. The result was incredible. It gave our game something unique. You can love it or hate it, but you can’t be indifferent about it. FS: I wanted this game to be special, and for that I needed the machines to be special too. That’s why I asked one of my dearest friends, Ophelie, to imagine the names of the machines. Bombyx and Felideus did fantastic work bringing them to life their own way, which I wouldn’t have thought of but is definitely awesome.



Bruno Cathala is the designer or co-designer of games including Five Tribes, Yamataï, Cyclades and the award-winning family hit Kingdomino. He lives in the French Alps and enjoys fly fishing, cycling and playing the guitar and ukulele. Florian Sirieix is a lifelong board gamer who discovered Magic: The Gathering and roleplaying games in high school. He enjoys music festivals, sport and travel, and works at a school for children with special educational needs. He lives near Montpellier in the south of France.



Many games explore steampunk themes, but Imaginarium puts a distinct spin on the genre.



The ability to combine different machines to make new effects is one of the most interesting aspects of the game. Where did that idea come from? BC: It was clear to me that the game had to be focused on these elements, because they were quite fresh, and because they were completely connected to the theme. The actions of disassembling and combining machines could lead the players to feel like ingenious handymen!



Players become workers in a dream factory, repairing and combining various machines. It’s a theme conveyed brilliantly through the game’s surreal and imaginative artwork.



There’s a constant sense of progress to the game as you recruit assistants and add new machines. How did you try to give players that feeling of becoming steadily more powerful? BC: In my opinion it’s really important for game designers to create a progression, something which allows people to stay engaged with the game, not just to get bored doing the same things over and over again. And when you have such a progression, even when you lose, you can be proud of what you have built. It also gives you an incentive to play again and to try to do better. So that’s exactly what we tried to do with Imaginarium. FS: I’ll always remember a test session in Paris where a couple played the game together. He carefully calculated every move he made, she didn’t. When the man won, his wife said: “Oh I lost. I don’t care, I had a lot of fun with the machines. Let’s play again.” She really enjoyed improving her workshop, combining new machines and recruiting assistants because they were pretty, not because they were efficient. I was amazed. It meant all kinds of players could enjoy the game, from the engineer to the dreamer.



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Inka and Markus Brand on Rajas of the Ganges BGB: What first attracted you to the Mughal period as a setting for a game? Did you do a lot of research about the period as part of the design process? And what elements from the real-world Mughal empire were you keen to represent in the game? Inka and Markus Brand: To be honest, that wasn’t our idea. Our illustrator Dennis Lohausen suggested this theme. When we first made a prototype of the game, we set it in the middle ages. But we loved this theme immediately. Our editor Britta Stockmann did a lot of research and implemented the theme in the game. Rajas of the Ganges has a multitude of ways to score points. Was it difficult to ensure that they were well-balanced and that none were substantially more powerful than the others? Balancing the scoring system was a lot of work. We changed it about a hundred times. This was very difficult because there were many factors to consider. We had to guarantee that there were always choices for the players to make. In the end we did a lot of playtesting to find the perfect balance.



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Rajas of the Ganges Designers: Inka Brandt, Marcus Brandt Artist: Dennis Lohausen Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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OUNDED in the 16th century, the Mughal Empire was a cultural powerhouse which grew to encompass almost the entire Indian subcontinent. Its legacy includes the iconic Taj Mahal, the magnificent domed mausoleum which remains an instantly recognisable symbol of India to this day. Rajas of the Ganges casts players as nobles during this tumultuous period, jostling for status in the empire’s hierarchy, and it combines a host of different mechanical elements, all of which come together like an intricate piece of gaming clockwork. You’ll start the game with a set of wooden tokens representing loyal servants, dispatching them to different parts of the board to add new lands to your domain, sell your goods at marketplaces or visit the palace of the Great Mughal to engage in some political wrangling. The game also comes with a collection of multi-coloured dice, and before you play you’ll roll a handful to create a pool which you’ll use to pay for your workers’ actions. Dice of different colours and numbers let you do different things, like visiting quarries, ports and markets, and a big part of the game’s challenge lies in working out how to get the maximum possible benefit from the dice at your disposal. You’ll also have a personal player board representing the lands under your control. Over the course of the game you’ll cover it with tiles as you develop your province, gaining resources like tea, silk and spices, or building prestigious palaces and temples. Tiles come with different benefits, but also restrictions. Each shows a different



Time: 45 - 75 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £46.99 MSRP (US): $49.99 arrangement of paths and junctions, and you’ll need to place them in connected configurations, avoiding blocking off roads as you go. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the game, though, is its scoring system. As you play, you’ll accumulate two different kinds of points: wealth and fame. You’ll keep track of these using a pair of scoring tracks around the outside of the board. But they run in opposite directions, and rather than simply trying to amass as many points as possible, you’ll try to claim victory by being the first to have your scoring markers meet somewhere in the middle. It turns the game into a thrilling race, and its pace ramps up dramatically as you produce more goods, erect more buildings and expand your province. You’ll constantly hunt for clever combinations of moves that can give you an edge over your opponents, and when it works, it feels incredibly rewarding. The one weak point, though, is that the game often feels quite mechanical. It’s more like an ingenious machine than an evocative representation of its setting. You’ll poke buttons, pull levers and turn knobs to set up a perfect configuration that can propel you to victory. But beyond its artwork nothing about it feels intrinsically Indian. It’s fantastic brain-teasing fun though, and for all its intricacies, it never feels bogged down in clunky mechanical complications. Once you’ve mastered its multifaceted challenge you’ll also be able to take on its advanced mode, which gives you fewer dice to work with and adds a few new rules to bring added complexity to the mix.



Pictured above: Rajas of the Ganges transports players to India at the height of the Mughal empire. Publisher: HUCH!



The scoring system, with two different point tracks running in opposite directions around the edge of the board, is really interesting. How did you come up with that, and what does it represent thematically? How do you think it affects players’ tactics? We had this idea many years before, and used it in another game, but sadly nobody liked it. Four years ago we thought we could use this mechanism in a new game. We know many games in which you win if you have the most money or the most victory points. We wanted the players to decide for themselves about their strategy. In Rajas of the Ganges the players can focus on money, fame or a mix of both. But it always depends on how the game goes. Often it’s necessary to change your strategy during the game because of the results of dice rolls, province tiles or free spaces to place a worker.



Gaining dice and using them wisely is vital if you want to emerge victorious.



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As well as the action playing out on the main board, players lay tiles to develop their own personal domains.



There are a lot of interlocking systems in Rajas, but it still plays quite quickly and smoothly. How do you try to create that balance? Is it difficult to make a game with this kind of strategic depth without getting players lost in too much complexity?



Inka and Markus Brand are a husband-andwife design team. They met at a friend’s wedding in 1999 and had their first date — a game night — one week later. Their published games include Village, Word Slam, Murano and the legacy game The Rise of Queensdale. Their favourite games include The Legend of Andor, TIME Stories, Ticket to Ride, Time’s Up and Pillars of the Earth. They live in Gummersbach, Germany with their children Lukas and Emely.



The board looks very colourful and seems to be a little cluttered, so people think it must be a really heavy game. But the rules actually aren’t very complicated. Our illustrator did a great job, and you can always find the meaning of the rules in his illustrations on the board. Also, players’ turns are pretty quick: place a worker on a free space and do an action. The actions are very quick and straightforward, too. Of course, you can spend a lot of time thinking about your tactics during the game, but the rules are simple enough that you don’t always need to. During our playtesting we often saw people starting to play without an idea of how to win. But they discovered the game by playing it.



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Root Designer: Cole Wehrle Artist: Kyle Ferrin Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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ARGAMES have long struggled with how best to represent guerrilla warfare. From historical battles to science fiction and fantasy, there are plenty of games about massed ranks of soldiers facing each other across an open battlefield. But far fewer games have tackled the idea of irregular combat, where one side employs tactics of stealth, subversion and sabotage against a much stronger opponent. There’s a good reason for this. Recreating this kind of conflict in a game requires players to use different resources and strategies to chase very different objectives. It’s hugely asymmetrical, and it makes it difficult to ensure games remain fair, fun and balanced. Designer Volko Ruhnke’s counterinsurgency series, which explores topics including the Cuban revolution and the global war on terror, manages it for historical simulation, but it comes with a precipitous learning curve. Recent release Root aims to do a similar job for fantasy combat, and it does it with a fraction of the complexity and in about half the playing time. Also, it comes with a raccoon meeple. It seems absurd to compare real-world armed struggles to a game about cute woodland creatures, but Root is every inch a wargame. It sees a ruling class struggling against three rebellious armed groups for control of an expanse of forest, and it comes with a simple set of core rules covering turn structure, movement and combat. What makes things interesting, though, is that these are just a foun-



Time: 90 - 120 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £54.99 MSRP (US): $59.99 dation for a much more intricate and strategically challenging experience – one that arises from the game’s four factions, each of which comes with its own very distinct set of goals and abilities. The ruler of Root’s world is the Marquise de Cat. Her forces start out spread thinly across the map, and they aim to win by generating resources and constructing buildings, cementing their hold on the landscape. Opposing them are the bird-folk of the Eyrie, who invade the board en masse. They win by seizing and holding territory, but they’re bound by a brutally strict turn structure, playing cards to determine their actions and following them like the rigid commands of a computer program. Of course, the clash between birds and cats isn’t much fun for other forest-dwellers, and as the two sides do battle, they generate sympathy for the civilian folk of the Woodland Alliance, a guerilla faction which wins if it can manage to spread its support among citizens. And finally there’s the Vagabond, a lone rogue who earns points by completing quests and interacting with other characters rather than achieving military goals. Root’s asymmetry goes beyond simply handing players different powers to exploit, though. Commanding each faction is such a different experience that it almost feels like everyone at the table is playing a subtly different game, and the result is that you’ll have to think not just about your own tactics, but the various ways your opponents are able to interact with the board. It’s a lot to learn, but the game makes



Pictured above: Root may come with cute wooden animal tokens, but it’s an incredibly competitive asymmetrical wargame. Publisher: Leder Games



the process as smooth as possible with a two-turn walkthrough you can follow to get to grips with its core concepts. Even once you’ve got your head around the rules, though, it’s often hard to see how to build your strategy. The Marquise and the Eyrie are the most straightforward factions to control. They’re going to war, grabbing territory and building on it, jockeying for position to mount attacks without spreading themselves too thinly to maintain an effective defence. But it’s beyond this where things start to become intriguing. The Alliance has a difficult time spreading in the early game, but once ensconced they can be tough to shift. They have the terrifying ability to stage an uprising, wiping out other players’ pieces in an area, and it means you’ll want to get rid of them as quickly as possible. The result is that the militaristic factions are torn: someone will need to deal with this threat – but who, when and where? Finally the Vagabond feels almost like a roleplaying character, playing very differently from the other factions, but still having constant interaction with them. Other players can craft items over the course of the game to earn points, but it allows the roguish raccoon to swoop in and steal them. The Vagabond also gains points for helping friends and attacking foes, and it adds an element of diplomacy as players decide whether they want to ally themselves with such a tricksy character. Unlike many asymmetric games, Root’s faction structure means it works well with fewer than the full complement of four players. That’s because its engagement comes from multiple sources. At the most straightforward, it’s a strategic delight. Every faction faces a dynamic puzzle over how best to use resources and manoeuvre its way to victory. Then there are the complex potential interactions with other players, not just the back-and-forth struggle on the board, but the trash-talking, threats, persuasion and promises that flow freely around the table. Finally, and best of all, is the emergent narrative. Not only does each game tell a story, it models the worrying relationship between violence, governance and power. Operating on so many levels means that occasionally it can start to feel a touch disjointed. Working out your actions on your turn is a demanding, head-down affair as you juggle variables and consider your options. But at the same time, the game thrives on table talk and diplomacy, and while you’re engaging with these demands, it’s easy to miss the unfolding drama on the board. The result is an odd play experience, with periods of quiet downtime punctuated by sudden violent flurries of activity. These tensions lessen with experience as players start to grasp the rules and basic tactics, and what emerges is a fascinating, shifting series of conundrums which look totally different depending on your faction. Root is a game you should play over and over with the same group, watching each others’ tactics evolve as your understanding deepens. Perhaps the most impressive thing about it, though, is that it achieves goals that seem like they should be mutually impossible. It’s a violent conflict game, powered by elegant Euro-style mechanics; an adorable woodland romp hiding a rich socio-political model; an intricate conflict simulation you can comfortably learn and play in an evening. We’ve seen all these things before in other designs, but Root does them all – and does them well – in a single stunning box.



The game’s distinctive art style looks like something from a beautiful children’s picture book. But underneath its welcoming exterior lies a world of conflict and strategic struggle.



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Different factions interact with the board in different ways, to the extent that it can feel as though everyone around the table is playing a slightly different game.



Playing Root well requires understanding the rules governing your own faction, but also your opponents’. It means learning the game can require a serious commitment of time.



Cole Wehrle on Root BGB: Root has a very appealing theme of woodland animals, but under the hood it’s a ruthlessly competitive wargame. What was the idea behind combining a friendly looking theme with such aggressive mechanisms? Cole Wehrle: Ultimately, I think all games are about conflict. This can sound awfully cruel, but I think conflict is an absolutely elemental part of what games are and the kinds of stories they produce. One thing the renaissance of European-style game design in the early 2000s did was to create a thematic division between games with more or less player interaction. Games with direct interaction usually had themes tied to war. Those that had softer forms of interaction were usually about commerce. I think this division keeps players from exploring new types of games. Early in Root’s development, we all wanted to try to make a truly accessible wargame. It wasn’t enough to just make a “light” wargame about tank battles or D-Day. We wanted the game and its presentation to speak to people who had never considered trying a game with direct conflict. I think the game’s commercial success has demonstrated that these kinds of games are for everyone.



Cole Wehrle grew up in Indiana, and as a child he played games ranging from chess and Risk to more modern releases like Catan and Puerto Rico. He taught himself graphic design, and developed his interest in game-making while studying for a PhD at the University of Texas. When not playing or designing games, he spends most of his free time reading books and listening to music.



The various factions play in very different ways, to the extent that it almost feels as if everyone at the table is playing a different game on a shared board. What was the idea behind having such variety in the design? I’m not especially interested in asymmetric design, but when I started working at Leder Games, I knew that I wanted to work within the house style that Patrick Leder established with Vast: The Crystal Caverns. In Vast, each player takes a role with completely different capabilities. As a designer, I found this concept daunting, but half way through my first game of Vast, the payoff became crystal clear. Asymmetric player positions enable a dizzying array of interactions between the different players. Most games have some degree of asymmetry



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With its animal characters and colourful illustrations, Root looks markedly different from other games focusing on themes of conflict. Designer Cole Wehrle says the team behind the game intended to appeal to players who might never have considered trying similar games in the past.



that grows over the course of the game as players develop different positions. Vast begins on an uneven ground and the connections between the players grow more tangled as the game continues. With Root, I tried my best to take the elements of Vast that I found most compelling and tried to retain their charm while making certain concessions to make them more accessible. The shared rules around movement and combat grew out of that ethos. Do you think different factions appeal to different types of personalities? What do you think draws players towards the various forces? When I first started working on Root, Patrick insisted on including a faction that was a solo hero. I opposed the idea, feeling that the scale of the game would be thrown off by a wandering hero. But in game after game, I’ve found that the vagabond role resonates with a huge range of people that I would have never imagined being otherwise interested in a wargame. The different factions in Root offer a range of experiences for their players, and I think players will naturally gravitate towards one type of experience or another. At the same time, the fact that all of those experiences are in the same game means that players can easily experiment with different positions. What were some of the challenges with this kind of design approach? Was it difficult to ensure that the factions were well-balanced? Over the course of the game’s development everyone on the staff played the game constantly. In addition to keeping an eye on which faction was winning, my chief concern was making sure the game’s narrative range was dynamic and that it presented players with a wide range of interesting choices. Some factions emerged out of this process stronger than others, but that was OK. The Woodland Alliance is very powerful if they go unchecked, but they should be. Their late-game strength makes players suspicious of helping them early in the game, which is exactly the relationship that should exist between a governing power and a revolutionary organization.



Players need to know how their own faction works, but they also need to be aware of what their opponents might be able to do on their next turn. Did you ever worry that that might be too much information for people to process at one time, and did you take any steps in the design to help with that? You are right, new players are flooded with a lot of information during their first play, and, for some players, it can be enough to scare them from exploring the game further. My general sense during development was that the first play had to be compelling enough to get players to the second play. Once they got there, groups tended to really dig into the game. Here the victory point does double duty. First, it helps new players easily asses the board position. Second, and just as important, it provides players with a feedback system where they can be rewarded for incremental progress and judge their progress against others. This second point is a bit of a red herring. Experienced players soon learn the different power curves and the ways that 20 points can mean something very different to the various factions. But, new players can grab on to a simplistic understanding of the game and then adjust their internal model as they get better.



While most of the game’s factions employ massed ranks of warriors, the Vagabond works alone.



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In game after ‘game, I’ve found that the vagabond role resonates with a huge range of people that I would have never imagined being otherwise interested in a wargame.



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There’s an element of diplomacy to the game, even though it’s not mechanically written into the rules. Players agree on joint strategies to stop opponents securing their objectives, and it can lead to some fragile alliances and sneaky backstabbing. Is that something you were actively trying to promote in the game, and what do you think it adds to the experience?



The Woodland Alliance aims to overthrow the forest’s ruler by building a network of rebel agents, steadily spreading their influence across the board.



Interactive design is always, ultimately, about king-making. The trick is just to convince the other players at the table to make you king. I think when interactive design avoids this truth, games get flat and solitary. The better strategy is to embrace the political framework and make it as expressive as possible. I tend to think that games are better when designers trust their players to be clever and to give them a compelling set of tools with which to stage their drama. Players are always better actors when given a little space to work. Do you have any future plans for Root, or are you currently working on any other projects you’d like to talk about? Sure. We’ve got a bunch of new factions for Root that are being developed in studio at the moment. The team here is doing some excellent work, and it’s been fun to move into more of a managerial role over the direction of the game. I’m also working on a new game for Leder Games that is partly a legacy game and partly an aggressive takedown of the genre.



While Root’s cartoon artwork goes a long way to establish its feel and atmosphere, it goes hand-in-hand with mechanical elements that represent its woodland setting’s conflicts and political strife.



Daniele Tascini on Teotihuacan: City of Gods BGB: Like your 2012 game Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar, Teotihuacan revolves around an ancient Mesoamerican culture. What about these societies do you find interesting? Daniele Tascini: I’ve read a lot about Mayan and Mesoamerican civilisations as well as ancient Egypt. I’m amazed by ancient civilisations and their secrets. Other than that, I think a theme in a board game shouldn’t be a way to learn about specific topics, but only a way to make the game more entertaining. If it also makes players curious enough to look for more information, it’s a plus.



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Teotihuacan: City of Gods Designer: Daniele Tascini Artist: Odysseas Stamoglou Category: Complex Strategy Players: 1 - 4



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HE temple city of Teotihuacan is one of the most stunning monuments to ancient Mesoamerican culture. It’s famous for its twin pyramids dedicated to the sun and moon, and today it’s one of the most visited archaeological sites in Mexico. Teotihuacan: City of Gods is an unabashedly challenging game inspired by the city. The latest release from Italian designer Daniele Tascini, who previously explored a similar theme in 2012’s Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar, it puts players in the role of prominent citizens vying for wealth, power and prestige. As you play you’ll command servants, build houses, pay tribute to the gods and aim to leave an eternal legacy by helping to construct the great Temple of the Sun. It’s a premise packed with historical grandeur. But unfold Teotihuacan’s board and you’re confronted by a frankly terrifying collection of boxes, tracks, grids, icons and symbols. It seems impossibly complicated – enough to strike fear into the hearts of many gamers. But work your way through its instructions (or look up one of the how-toplay videos created by fans on YouTube), and you’ll find that while there are lots of intricate bits to get your head around, the game soon clicks together. When it does, it’s an unrestrainedly brain-bending joy. On your turn you’ll move workers, represented by coloured dice, around the outside edge of the board. Visiting different locations lets them perform actions like harvesting wood, quarrying stone or constructing buildings. It’s a thoughtful exercise in planning, but it also comes with a handful of twists.



Time: 90 - 120 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £44.99 MSRP (US): $49.95 Each time you use one of your worker dice, you’ll rotate it so that it shows its next-highest face. Higher-numbered dice can take more powerful actions, and it means that your workforce becomes more experienced with each passing round. But while your servants become steadily more useful, they die once they reach their sixth side, replaced by a new recruit starting from the lowest level. It means you have a limited time to exploit their expertise, and you’ll need to think about the most effective ways to use each one before you lose them. Then there’s the fact that you’ll need to pay resources to visit locations with other workers already present. It means that there’s a strong incentive to avoid clashing with your opponents, instead focusing on the things they aren’t doing. But it also makes for some occasional heated races to grab particularly useful actions, adding a splash of tension to all the careful optimisation and efficiency. There are multiple ways to score points and a host of ways to gain new powers and advantages over your opponents. But the most striking thing about Teotihuacan is its impressive centrepiece. The game comes with a stash of thick, mah-jong style tiles which you and your opponents will use to build a pyramid that swells gradually over the board. It hands bonuses to players who contribute to its construction, and placing tiles in different configurations earns different rewards. It adds some aesthetic and tactile flair to the engrossing analytical core, and the result is a deep, rich, complex game that absolutely rewards the time and mental effort it demands from its players.



Pictured above: Teotihuacan is the latest Mesoamerican-themed game from the designer of Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar. Publisher: NSKN Games



The fact that worker dice become more powerful before dying and starting again at the lowest level was interesting, and also the fact that combining several dice to take one action results in bigger rewards. How did you come up with those ideas, and what kinds of choices do you think they present to players? Well, any mechanism comes from a combination of something already seen and some new ideas. I’m exploring several ways to use dice other than just roll them and suffer their results. There will be two or three more games of mine coming out in the near future that use dice in very different ways. Teotihuacan gives several choices to the player, especially the main one, each time you move a die on a spot you have to choose whether to pay to take the action or skip the action to get cocoa. Tzolk’in used a set of turning gears as part of its setup. Teotihuacan comes with a pyramid for players to construct as they play. What do you think these kinds of physical elements add to a game? I mainly do “German” kinds of games, and I always start designing a game from its core mechanism. So the most important thing for the game to be interesting and enjoyable is the set of mechanisms and dynamics they create. But having tactile and beautiful elements helps the game experience a lot, and I always try to introduce some cool physical element. The important thing is that it mustn’t be only a gimmick with no use in the game.



Players contribute to the construction of the Pyramid of the Sun, earning rewards for the tiles they place. It also provides an impressive centrepiece on the board.



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Your dice represent workers, and they increase in value over time representing their increasing level of skill and expertise. But while they grow incrementally more powerful they eventually die, leaving you to start from scratch with a new servant.



The game comes with a dedicated single-player mode. That’s something that more and more games seem to be including nowadays. Do you think solo play is becoming more popular? It’s not something that I like. I think playing a board game alone makes no sense. It’s the opposite purpose of this kind of entertainment; why wouldn’t you just play online games instead? But yes, it is becoming more popular, and



Daniele Tascini has been interested in games and sports since his early childhood. In between sessions of Risk and Monopoly he made up his own games featuring battles between toy soldiers and cardboard cutout robots. His design credits include Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar, Council of 4 and The Voyages of Marco Polo. He holds a black belt in judo and lives in a small town on Italy’s Adriatic Coast.



several publishers feel the need to put solo modes into games. That’s the reason why David [Turczi, the designer of Teotihuacan’s one-player mode] was brought in to develop it. I think I would never design a solo mode for a game myself. Are you currently working on any projects you’d like to talk about? I’m working on several projects, actually. One called Trismegistus, based on the ancient occult belief in alchemy. The solo mode for Teotihuacan gave me the chance to meet David Turczi, who is a brilliant designer as well as a nice person, so we decided to make a game together that we are developing very quickly. It’s going to be a surprise for 2020.



Juma Al-JouJou on Clans of Caledonia Juma Al-JouJou was born near Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. At the age of five he moved to Bavaria in Germany, and he began playing high-level competitive chess at a young age. He also developed a love of board games including El Grande, Torres and Catan. He studied philosophy and economics and worked as a business consultant before focusing on game design and publishing.



BGB: What first interested you in this period of Scottish history, and why did you think it would be a good subject to explore in a game? Juma Al-JouJou: I visited Scotland for an exchange program at my music school when I was a teenager, and I really liked the experience. Years later, when I decided to add asymmetric player powers to the game, I was trying to think of a theme would fit that, and clans in Scotland seemed perfect.



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Clans of Caledonia Designer: Juma al-JouJou Artist: Klemenz Franz Category: Complex Strategy Players: 1 - 4



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N the mid-19th century a plague of insects destroyed European vineyards, drastically cutting production of wine and brandy. With supplies of their customary tipples running dry, customers across the continent looked for an alternative, leading to a surge in demand for Scotch whisky. New distilleries were founded across the country and came alongside a wider explosion in the Scottish economy as agriculture gave way to industries such as mining and shipbuilding. Clans of Caledonia is a game of economic strategy set in this turbulent period. It sees players become the leaders of rival clans attempting to adjust to the upheaval, raising livestock, manufacturing goods and fulfilling lucrative overseas export contracts. It’s a far cry from most games’ treatment of Scottish history, which borrows more from Braveheart and Highlander than from actual events. It’s also a complex and exacting economic struggle. But while getting your head around its multitude of mechanical moving parts takes a little time, it rewards your effort with some engrossing gameplay that’s calculated to appeal to players with an analytical bent. Before the game begins, you’ll choose a clan tile to determine your faction. Each comes with its own special ability, inspired by the real-life history of some of Scotland’s most prominent clans. The Buchanans are wealthy tobacco merchants and can conduct extra international trade deals. The Campbells, renowned builders, get a discount when constructing factories. The MacKenzies are known for whisky, which commands a higher price than their competitors’.



Time: 30 - 120 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £63.99 MSRP (US): $69.99 Using your clan’s advantages wisely is an important step towards victory, but it’s just one part of a much bigger picture. From your starting location you’ll aim to spread out across the map, purchasing new land to build pastures, mines, dairies and distilleries. Along the way you’ll develop your clan’s shipping capabilities, stretching your domains across lochs and rivers. You and your opponents will harvest raw materials like milk and grain and process them into valuable cheese and whisky to be shipped off to buyers around the world. You’ll also be able to sell your goods locally to generate some quick cash, though, and the beating heart of Clans of Caledonia is its dynamic, living marketplace, with prices that fluctuate to reflect the laws of supply and demand. Buy particular types of goods, and their value will rise, making them more expensive for your opponents. Sell a glut of produce into the market, and its price will slide. It opens up all kinds of opportunities for shrewd investments and cynical manipulation. Direct competition over land and resources is rare, but you’ll be able to derail your rivals in much more satisfying ways, crashing the prices of items they’ve spent time and resources to accumulate. It creates a sense of merciless capitalism with the ever-present risk of an opponent snatching the rug from under your feet. Unfortunately it’s let down by some lacklustre art, with the clichéd box illustration in particular doing little to convey the nuanced and demanding game that lies within. But if you can resist judging it by its cover, Clans of Caledonia comes with some deliciously tough decisions to get lost in.



Pictured above: Clans of Caledonia is a heavy economic strategy game about Scotland’s transition from agriculture to industry. Publisher: Karma Games



I guess many gamers didn’t know they wanted to play a game on their own 20 years ago because back then there were hardly any games which could be played solo.



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I wanted the factions to be as thematic as possible. That’s why I actually first read a lot about the history of the most famous clans to help find special abilities that fit. For instance, the chief of the MacDonald clan held the title Lord of the Isles, so in the game they can use their workers as fishermen.



The game is very open-ended in terms of its strategies. There are lots of different ways to earn points. What kinds of options were you trying to present to players? Well, I like a good mix of strategy and tactics. You need to have a strategy, but the interaction with other players, on the map, through contracts and through volatile market prices forces you to adapt and sometimes change plans. Other players don’t mess with your plans on every turn, so often you can execute your strategy and the turns go fast. And sometimes another player interferes with your plans and you need to spend a minute to come up with a plan B. The market, with the fluctuating prices for different types of goods, is particularly interesting. What do you think it adds to the game, and how does it complicate some of the decisions players have to make? The market adds a good deal of interaction with other players and a lot of strategic and tactical depth. The game features a simple production chain; basic goods can be processed to become more valuable goods that can be exported. Due to the market, you can buy the basic goods cheaply to supply your processing factories, or you can just buy the processed goods directly if they’re cheap. When the price of processed goods is low, you prefer to export these goods, and if the price of processed goods is high, you prefer to sell those goods. And these decisions also affect other players which



Clans earn victory points by harvesting raw materials and converting them into valuable goods for export.



results in great depth even though these systems are not complicated. Did any other games inspire your work on Clans of Caledonia? Many other games inspired me, most importantly Terra Mystica, Navegador and Marco Polo. How important was it to you that the game should work with one player? It seems like more and more designers are incorporating solo modes into their games. Why do you think that’s becoming more of a trend in the hobby? Well, I was aware that the solo community was growing, so I wanted to design a solo mode. I guess many gamers didn’t know they wanted to play a game on their own 20 years ago because back then there were hardly any games which could be played solo. When more and more good solo variants are offered, though, more people discover that they enjoy it.



Players can use their acquired lands as farms, or to build bakeries, dairies and distilleries. The game offers multiple paths to victory, but finding the most efficient ones is rarely straightforward.



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Tristan Hall on 1066: Tears to Many Mothers BGB: Where did the idea for 1066: Tears to Many Mothers first come from? What made you want to explore this period in a game? Tristan Hall: I was determined to prove I’m not a one-trick pony, so I wanted make a completely different design from my first game, Gloom of Kilforth. The Battle of Hastings has always fascinated me. The events leading up to the battle were momentous, and the outcome impacted English history for hundreds of years afterwards. Both sides were so perfectly matched that it could have gone either way at any given moment. The tragic story of King Harold, one of England’s most powerful kings living out one of the shortest reigns and falling in brutal battle is utterly compelling too, and capturing that narrative in a card game was too tempting to resist. I also considered how cool it would be if instead of memorising the statistics of a Pikachu or a Shivan Dragon when playing card games, players maybe took away a little bit of history with them after playing too. So every card in the game is based on a person, story, or event from the time, even down to pulling character names from the Domesday Book.



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1066: Tears to Many Mothers Designer: Tristan Hall Artist: Ania Kryczkowska Category: Complex Strategy Players: 1 - 2



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HERE are few more important years in British history than 1066, when the forces of the Anglo-Saxon King Harold clashed with the invading army of William, Duke of Normandy at the Battle of Hastings. The triumph of the Norman Conquest is one of the most dramatic turning points in the nation’s story. But for all its significance, over the years it’s inspired largely lacklustre games. 1066: Tears to Many Mothers is a welcome exception. Where many historical wargames see players shuffling counters around hex-grid boards, this polished and tactically rich card game dares to be different. It puts players in the shoes of either Harold or William, attempting to rewrite the events of the pivotal period. Rather than dropping players straight into battle, 1066 starts its action in the run-up to the clash. It hands each player a deck of cards representing the events prior to Hastings, providing obstacles for them to overcome before the face-off. Harold, for instance, defeated Viking invaders at the Battle of Stamford Bridge before his ill-fated meeting with William. In the game, he has to navigate that encounter, with the outcome affecting his chances in the final fight. The game revolves around a pair of three-by-three space grids representing the Anglo-Saxon and Norman armies. You’ll deploy cards from your hand to fill up your grid, with different units providing different effects and abilities on the battlefield. Spearmen specialise in taking on enemy cavalry, archers pick off troops at a distance, fearsome berserkers indiscriminately slaughter foes as soon as they hit



Time: 30 - 60 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £30.99 MSRP (US): $44.99 the table, and a collection of leaders let players draw extra cards, manoeuvre their troops and boost their forces’ fighting prowess. Your army comes together gradually, with your ranks swelling with each passing round. It means 1066 manages the extraordinary feat of running three parallel timelines. It represents the run-up to the battle, recruiting your army, and the early skirmishes all at the same time. By throwing so many historical characters and occurrences into the mix it weaves a rich tapestry of possible events. It has life and colour where previous games exploring the period offered drab statistics. Such success would mean little if it weren’t underpinned by gameplay, and Tears to Many Mothers delivers on this front, too. To pay for the cards you want to deploy, you’ll need to discard others from your hand. Every turn is a nasty compromise between playing the cards you need immediately and hoarding those you might rely on later in the game. Once the preliminary events are out of the way, you’ll begin the fight at Hastings itself, totalling your troops’ might and zeal in each column and comparing them to those on your opponent’s side. Even here clever cardplay remains critical, and it makes for some breathtakingly taut fights to the finish. Seasoned gamers might recognise some mechanisms from older releases like 2000’s Hera and Zeus. But like all the best designs, Tears to Many Mothers builds on its predecessors to make something better. The artisans who stitched the Bayeux Tapestry would be proud.



Pictured above: 1066, Tears to Many Mothers applies the kind of dramatic presentation normally found in fantasy games to real historical events. Publisher: Hall or Nothing Games



The game focuses not just on the Battle of Hastings itself, but also the period leading up to the clash. What made you want to take that approach? What was the historical story you were trying to tell? The tale of 1066 is such a huge story to tell, and all the elements and events that lead up to the battle are as compelling to me as the battle itself. For example, the



Award-winning game designer and video producer Tristan Hall is based in Manchester, UK, and has been making thematic games since his childhood. In 2015 he released the narrative fantasy adventure game Gloom of Kilforth, which has sold over 10,000 copies worldwide. He also co-hosts the gaming podcast #BoardChitless, devoted to discussions about gaming and interviews with the biggest names in the industry.



Saxon objective cards briefly summarise the Battles of Fulford, and also of Stamford Bridge where Harold’s Saxons defeated the Vikings forever! Those events are so epic that they’re worthy of their own game too. I love narrative in games, so being able to



I wanted a game ‘that looked as cool as Magic: The Gathering, but was based on historical facts, people and events.



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tell these broader stories as well was hugely important to me. Many historical wargames have quite lacklustre art and presentation, but 1066 has very polished production. How important was the look of the game for you?



Above: The gritty art style of 1066, Tears to Many Mothers is reminiscent of fantasy series like Game of Thrones, but its focus is squarely on historical events. Right: Troops on both sides affect the battle in different ways, with generals deploying them in positions where they’ll be most effective.



For me the art is always hugely important for the atmosphere of a game. For 1066 I was conscious that we were delivering a history game, and whilst I love medieval history, the theme might be a little dry for some. I wanted a game that looked as cool as Magic: The Gathering, but was based on historical facts, people and events, and that would be sexy enough that people on the fence might want to give it a go too. You’ve mentioned plans for similar games exploring other conflicts. Can you tell us anything about other historical settings you’re interested in? Having buried my nose in history books for the past couple of months I’m in the thick of the design process for 1565, St Elmo’s Pay, which uses the same mechanics as 1066: Tears to Many Mothers to recreate the Siege of Malta. Suleiman the Magnificent’s 30,000 strong armada descends on the 500 beleaguered Knights of St John and the defending people of Malta, with the express purpose of wiping them from existence, and changing the course of European history forever. As with 1066, every beautiful card in the game is inspired by a real person or event. We’ll be Kickstarting it in the summer of 2019.



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Martin Wallace on AuZtralia Martin Wallace is a UK-born game designer currently living in Brisbane, Australia. A former history teacher, he is the creator of the revered economic strategy game Brass, deckbuilding war game A Few Acres of Snow and A Study in Emerald, the official board game adaptation of author Neil Gaiman’s short story combining the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu mythos. When he’s not designing or playing games, he enjoys travel and hiking.



The game upends author H.P. Lovecraft’s xenophobia with a rich and diverse cast of characters.



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AuZtralia Designer: Martin Wallace Artist: James Colmer Category: Complex Strategy Players: 1 - 4



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T’S hard to think of a fictional setting as exhaustively explored in geekdom as the cosmic-horror universe of H.P. Lovecraft. Countless games, movies and concept albums have borrowed from his tales of alien gods and hideous creatures, and in 2003 the author Neil Gaiman, best known for the comics series The Sandman and the novel American Gods, penned a short story combining the monsters of the Cthulhu mythos with the gaslit world of Sherlock Holmes. A Study in Emerald painted a world divided between ancient tyrannical beings and fearless groups of rebels fighting to liberate humanity from their clutches. It inspired an official board game adaptation by Brass designer Martin Wallace, and now he’s returned to a similarly horrific theme, transplanting Lovecraft’s hordes of squiggly beasties from Victorian London to Australia in the early 20th century. AuZtralia may not be officially connected to Gaiman’s short story, but in every other respect it feels like a direct sequel. The nations of the world have united against their common enemy, driving them back into the depths of the outback. Players become generals planning the final campaign to exterminate the eldritch threat, commanding infantry units, tanks and airships to reclaim the earth for humankind. But while the game has conflict at its core, it’s much more than just a one-dimensional wargame. As well as defeating your common enemy, you and your opponents will battle to build mines, farms and rail networks, reviving the wartorn Australian landscape and forging a thriving nation.



Time: 90 - 120 minutes Ages: 13+ RRP (UK): £67.99 MSRP (US): $69.95 On the surface, it seems like a crazy idea. It combines card-based combat and railway route-building, and it’s hard to decide whether it’s a wargame with trains or a railway game with heavy artillery. As you play, the Old Ones slumbering in the interior of the continent will gradually awake and start advancing towards your positions, tearing up your carefully-laid tracks and destroying your farms as they go. It feels a little like playing a tower defence video game, and you’ll need to think carefully about where the creatures are likely to move, and how you can mobilise your forces to stop them. It also introduces a dilemma for players. You share the common goal of eradicating your enemies, but you’ll also each want to focus on developing your own rail lines and industries. It means that while someone will always have to deal with the hordes of unspeakable things crawling across the map, it doesn’t necessarily have to be you. Committing to a fight means risking the troops you’ve spent precious time recruiting and training, and if a vicious shoggoth menaces a rival but doesn’t pose an immediate threat to you, perhaps you could be forgiven for waiting just one more turn before rushing to their aid. That’s risky, though, because while the players will all aim to accumulate points, the game’s AI antagonists also have a score to keep track of. The more havoc they wreak, the better they’ll do, and it leaves the real possibility that the game might win itself. It’s a deeply weird, perhaps even existentially unsettling concept. And when you consider its source material, it’s probably pretty appropriate.



Pictured above: AuZtralia combines railway route-building, farming, mining and hideous alien gods from beyond the limits of sanity. Publisher: SchilMil Games



BGB: AuZtralia is a spiritual successor to A Study in Emerald, your game based on the Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu short story by Neil Gaiman. What made you want to revisit the theme? Martin Wallace: I first visited Australia in 2009. My wife, Julia, fell in love with the place, hence why we eventually moved here. I like to pick up history books to learn a little bit about whatever place I’m in, and the original idea was to design a game about the real history of Australia. However, it doesn’t require much knowledge of the country’s past to realise that the issue of the indigenous people would present a major challenge. After releasing A Study in Emerald I realised that setting the game in an alternate universe would allow me to skirt the issues of land appropriation and massacres that were carried out in reality. In this sense AuZtralia takes the same approach as A Study in Emerald in using monsters as enemies rather than real persons or social groups. There’s a real mix of mechanical elements in the game. What were the challenges in making the various bits work together smoothly? The hardest part of the design was coming up with a system to control the Lovecraftian



creatures. This started off being pretty complicated until I came up with the idea of having both their and the humans’ abilities modelled within a deck of cards used for movement and combat. This is an example of what I like to call “hiding stuff under the hood.” It means that players don’t have to be consciously aware of rules, they just fall out naturally from the way the game progresses.



You don’t always ‘know the full shape of a game when you start to put it together. Having the monsters act as a player was a start, so having them score points as well only seemed natural.



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One interesting aspect is that the monsters score points as well as the players, and it means that the game can “win itself.” What was your thinking behind that? I think this was an opportunity presented by the design which was too good to miss. You



don’t always know the full shape of a game when you start to put it together. Having the monsters act as a player was a start, so having them score points as well only seemed natural. The time track allows you to handle a non-player character in a very easy manner. H.P. Lovecraft was notoriously xenophobic, but AuZtralia takes representation very seriously, with artwork depicting strong female and indigenous Australian characters. Why was this important to you? I would like to think that I’m not a xenophobe, and like a lot of other people I get annoyed with the presentation of women in board games. With AuZtralia I knew I would want cards with powers, but I didn’t want them simply to be objects or machines. I think people relate better to characters than objects. Once I knew that I would have to invent a bunch of characters it gave me the opportunity to represent a range of different people from all sorts of backgrounds. Given the backstory it seemed logical that the world would be more united after defeating their common foe. This new era of cooperation is reflected in the varying nationalities and genders of the characters. I also wanted to make it very clear that the monsters were not replacing the indigenous peoples, that they were still part of the story. I felt it very important that they should be seen as equals to the new settlers rather than servants or people to be simply shoved to one side.



Building rail routes into the heart of the outback lets players transport their troops to confront monsters. Failing to halt enemies leaves them free to attack your farms, and it’s important to deal with impending threats before they become a deadly menace.



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Reiner Knizia on Yellow & Yangtze With more than 600 published designs to his credit, Reiner Knizia may be the most prolific creator in gaming. His work includes Through the Desert, Lord of the Rings, Lost Cities, Modern Art, Ra, Tigris & Euphrates and High Society – all considered classics of the hobby. Known for his abstract, elegant approach to design, he has established a reputation for mechanical minimalism, using simple rules to create engaging and challenging gameplay.



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Yellow & Yangtze Designer: Reiner Knizia Artist: Vincent Dutrait Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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N 1997, prolific German designer Reiner Knizia released Tigris & Euphrates, a tile-laying game that saw players become monarchs vying for control of ancient Mesopotamia. It won praise from fans and critics, and it remains one of its creator’s most revered games. Now, more than 20 years later, he’s produced a follow-up. Like Tigris & Euphrates, Yellow & Yangtze revolves around the rise of civilisations, and this time players find themselves transported from the Middle East to ancient China. But while it comes wrapped in epic historical packaging, it looks and feels very abstract. Players place coloured tiles representing soldiers, farmers and traders onto a map, connecting them to build kingdoms. Whenever two or more of these growing empires meet, it can spark a conflict, with victory going to the player with the most tiles in a particular colour. At first glance, it might seem a little dry and mechanical. But Knizia argues that theme is central to his games, and there are some key differences between Yellow & Yangtze and its older sibling that reflect the shift in setting. The original game conjures a real sense of clashing cultures, with massive conflicts that see kingdoms broken up and reams of tiles swept from the board as players run up against each other’s steadily expanding borders. In this latest offering, things feel a little less turbulent. Conflict is still an important element, but clashes see far fewer tiles removed, creating an air of greater stability. It means that Yellow & Yangtze is a little more subtle and forgiving than Tigris & Euphrates, where a badly timed burst of aggression



Time: 90 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £54.99 MSRP (US): $59.99 could be disastrous. Here, you can be more exploratory in your expansion, and when fights do break out, they create an opening for diplomacy. Players who aren’t involved in the scuffle have the chance to contribute some of their own troops as reinforcements, tilting the balance towards whichever side they want to emerge as the victor. It creates opportunities for shaky alliances and savage betrayal, and it’s not the only part of the game that embraces a bit of antagonism. Just like Tigris & Euphrates, you’ll be able to earn points by constructing buildings on groups of same-coloured tiles. Here, though, you’ll be able to steal them from their original owners, and pulling it off is a gleeful coup that ramps up the game’s sense of competition. There are other subtle rules improvements. Leader pieces are the cornerstones of your civilization; you can’t score points without them on the board. But while they’re out of action, or removed in combat, they generate a small passive bonus. And while you’ll still draw your hands of tiles from a randomly shuffled stack, there’s now a marketplace of open tiles you can buy instead. They’re tiny changes, but they open up a wealth of new strategies. Fans of Tigris & Euphrates rave about its exciting, unforgiving conflicts, and it is sad to see them gone. But what the game loses in raw aggression, it gains in accessibility and variety. It’s a fair trade, and it still offers strategy of the richest, most engaging kind. Knizia may not have improved his greatest work, but the changes he’s made are satisfying and wholly worthwhile.



Pictured above: Yellow & Yangtze transplants the core of the beloved Tigris & Euphrates to an ancient Chinese setting. Publisher: Grail Games



BGB: Many people think that Tigris & Euphrates is the best game you’ve designed. What made you want to work on a successor? Reiner Knizia: Yellow & Yangtze is not the successor to Tigris & Euphrates, it is a sister game, and I expect both to stand next to each other independently. Tigris & Euphrates plays in Mesopotamia during a period where kingdoms emerged and developed greatness, only to soon vanish again. This of course makes an ideal setting for a game. Similarly, the period of the warring states brought much change to China, providing an equally suitable setting. Of course, having the rivers Yellow & Yangtze as framing elements for the board was particularly appealing after Tigris & Euphrates.



the soldiers rather than whole civilisations. And even though we still have internal revolts and external wars, these develop quite differently and more interactively. As the basic topology in Yellow & Yangtze is hex-based, it is quite natural that the whole aspect of monument building feels quite different. If someone hasn’t played either game, do you think one of them is a better one to start with than the other?



My intention was to set Tigris & Euphrates and Yellow & Yangtze as brother and sister next to each other. They are of a different age, but otherwise each game stands by itself. I think it is best that I leave the comparison and evaluation of the games and their individual features to the players and the reviewers. I wish them much joy in exploring both games and finding their own favourite. And do you think the series could ever grow into a trilogy? Are there any historical civilisations you think would be suited to a third game? I have waited almost 20 years to create Yellow & Yangtze after Tigris & Euphrates. I can very well imagine, when the time is right in the future, to create a third sibling. However, this will only happen if I am absolutely convinced that the third game, hopefully also based on a region with two rivers, is fully independent, with fascinating new features and not a mere shadow of the two established games. Only time will tell.



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intention was to ‘setMyTigris & Euphrates and Yellow & Yangtze as brother and sister next to each other.



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What about this period in Chinese history made you think it would be a good setting for a follow-up? Were there any similar historical elements that you thought you could represent using a similar design? As a sister game to Tigris & Euphrates, I wanted Yellow & Yangtze to share some of the core elements: the scoring system where your weakest-achieving colour defines your score, and the concept that the leaders of any players can jointly rule the individual kingdoms. Of course, I also wanted similar elements to appear in the game, like monuments, intrigue or war, which leads the process of change in the game. Apart from this, my starting point was not starting with Tigris & Euphrates and to change its rules, but to develop a completely new set of play rules that is ideally suited for the new setting. In this way a fifth, wild colour became much more dominant in the game. Conflicts are much more fought between



Building connected areas of the same types of tiles lets players construct pagodas, which grant bonus points to their controllers.



You and your opponents exert your influence by placing wooden tiles on the map, representing different high-ranking figures.



Mark Herman on Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis 1860-1861 Mark Herman’s path to a career in game design began when he discovered a copy of the 1965 Avalon Hill wargame The Battle of the Bulge. His credits include 1983’s Gulf Strike, 1994’s We The People and its 2010 follow-up Washington’s War, and today he is regarded as one of the most influential figures in historical wargaming. Having previously worked in the US defence sector, he currently works as a full-time game designer.



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Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis 1860-1861 Designer: Mark Herman Artists: Knut Grünitz, Rodger B. MacGowan Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2



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N December 1860, South Carolina declared its secession from the United States, sparking a chain of events that would culminate in the American Civil War. In the following year, secessionist forces launched an attack on the stronghold of Fort Sumter near the city of Charleston. While no one was killed, it marked the beginning of a conflict that would see an estimated 620,000 soldiers die in battle. There’s a long list of games exploring this tumultuous period in American history. Some aim to recreate individual clashes like the Battle of Gettysburg. Others offer a grand-scale strategic view of the war. Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis adopts a different focus, putting players in charge of unionist and secessionist sides during the political wrangling leading to the outbreak of hostilities. And where some historical war games play out over an entire evening, this lightning-fast two-player showdown fits into a tight and tense half-hour. It’s an ambitious attempt to condense the experience of a much bigger game into a shorter time span, which might seem unwise or even impossible. But if you’d trust anyone to do it, it would be veteran wargame designer Mark Herman, creator of the slick American Revolution game We the People. Over three rounds you’ll fight for control of different aspects of the American cultural landscape, placing cubes on the board to represent your support in areas including the press, Washington political circles and the secessionist states themselves. On each turn you’ll draw a hand of cards representing different events and historical figures from the period. Each comes with a nu-



Time: 20 - 40 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £39 MSRP (US): $42 merical value and an in-game effect, and whenever you play a card you’ll choose to either use its ability, or place its number of cubes on the board. It’s a setup that will feel familiar to anyone who’s played the Cold War game Twilight Struggle, but it comes with some cunning bells and whistles to discover. Some spaces are more important than others, offering victory points or the chance to rearrange cubes elsewhere on the board. You’ll also choose a secret objective at the start of each turn – a space which nets you bonuses if you can seize control of it. And while your instinct might be to gain ground as quickly as possible, there are penalties if you push too quickly, escalating the conflict and causing the public to see your side as the aggressor. The result is simple yet compelling. If it sounds a bit abstract, it’s because it is. But Fort Sumter is a concrete, if distant, attempt at simulation. Every card represents an important person, event or element in the swelling crisis, and the chunky accompanying playbook explains how the various game mechanisms tie into the real-world history. You can ignore this if you want, and enjoy the game on its considerable mechanical merit. But that would be a shame, because it’s an accessible gateway to this still-divisive period. The game is unflinching in describing slavery as a “national sin” and it feels suitably creepy playing as the secessionists. It’s an important, effective way to educate people on the horror of how states went to war to uphold their choice to treat people as property.



Pictured above: While countless games have explored the American Civil War, Fort Sumter examines the political crisis leading up to it. Publisher: GMT Games



BGB: Fort Sumter compresses a lot of history into a very neat package. What were some of the challenges of tackling a complex and nuanced historical theme in such a tight and fast-playing game? Mark Herman: Fort Sumter is a derivative of my earlier design For The People using the same card-driven game engine. The hard part of doing a short game is you have to boil the theme down to its essence and amalgamate many tactical decisions into fewer directional choices. The pace of any game is related to the number of mechanics and decisions the players have to manipulate to implement their strategy. By reducing the historical situation into two straightforward decisions you enable a fast pace of play while maintaining a solid association with the events being depicted in the design. If this environment is coupled with meaningful game play you start to hit the sweet spot for a short, simple, but not simple-minded game. The game sees players trying to strike a balance between advancing their position and avoiding being too aggressive and getting too far ahead of their opponent. What was the idea behind that? I wrote a short historical analysis so folks who were not intimate with this subject could quickly understand the thematic environment I was trying to capture. Essentially the two sides have diametrically opposed objectives that cannot be reconciled. The contest is to manage a rapidly degrading crisis to gain political advantage in the coming conflict.



Players use cards to affect the state of the board, exerting influence over different aspects of American society while avoiding pushing the conflict too far towards open hostilities.



You manage the pace of the crisis through how fast you move through the escalation, tension, and final crisis zones. This mechanic also takes the majority of luck out of the game, as a player who has stronger cards than their opponent pays a penalty for escalating the crisis too quickly. Consequently in most games the two sides usually end up with a similar score as they go into the final crisis mechanic to end the game. The Civil War remains a divisive issue to this day, as shown by the reaction to the removal of Confederate memorials in some states. Why do you think people still attempt to rehabilitate the Confederacy? This is a tough and nuanced question that is resistant to a simple answer. In an era where nuance is lost on most people any answer that goes beyond the Confederacy was evil, just starts a screaming match. The simple point is slavery was America’s original sin that the war expunged. As a professional historian and game designer I want to understand the forces and context of an event and then try to portray it faithfully to the facts. The political and military history of this period has fascinated me since I was a child. That fascination does not extend to justifying the Confederacy, but trying to understand what it was and how the slave culture drove old Dixie down. It’s an American tragedy that still has relevance. And for people who might not have played historical wargames, what’s the appeal? Why should they give them a try?



Fort Sumter is the latest release from influential wargame designer Mark Herman.



As a professional ‘historian and game designer I want to understand the forces and context of an event and then try to portray it faithfully to the facts.



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When I design games I want to tell the story about a significant event. Most of my designs are focused on political-military history although back in the day I did do the John Carter of Mars game. If a person is interested in political military history then wargames should have appeal. If someone is more interested in other stories or experiences then there may be no appeal. There is no right or wrong choice, it’s all a matter of interest and taste.



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ies to hold out longer against besieging foes and rush to plug the gaps where your enemies breach your defences. Paradoxically, though, the barbarians who menace Rome are also her path to salvation. As the empire declines, you’ll gradually lose your ability to recruit new legions as your administration starts to fray and your ability to govern far-flung lands dissipates. To ensure a steady supply of troops, you’ll be forced to reach truce agreements with tribes, letting you convert their warriors to your side. Just as the Roman army relied increasingly on foreign auxiliaries, you’ll aim to turn a deadly threat into a valuable asset. The result is that the game is largely about how well you and your companions are able to adapt to a steadily worsening situation. As your challenge becomes more arduous, you’ll work to find new ways to confront it. But while this is Fall of Rome’s central innovation, it riffs on the established Pandemic setup in a handful of more subtle, but equally interesting ways.



As in previous Pandemic releases, each player takes on the role of a character with their own special ability. This time, though, they come with additional combat skills.



It’s impressive how its ‘designers have kept the familiar framework intact while offering a very different feel.



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Pandemic: Fall of Rome Designers: Matt Leacock, Paolo Mori Artist: Sabrina Miramon Category: Complex Strategy Players: 1 - 5



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OOPERATIVE apocalypse-averting game Pandemic is one of the best-selling titles in the analogue gaming industry, and it’s no surprise that its publishers have attempted to capitalise on its success with a succession of spin-offs and expansions. There’s the dice game Pandemic: The Cure, the campaign-based Pandemic Legacy series and the Lovecraftian Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu. But if you thought there couldn’t possibly be room for more co-op crisis management in your life, it looks like you were wrong. The Pandemic Survival series is a collection of limited-edition games released each year to coincide with Pandemic’s world championships, and each new title sees a guest designer put their own spin on the original game’s hit formula. The first, the brilliant Pandemic Iberia, transported players to the mid-19th century to confront malaria, typhus and cholera in a time before antibiotics or safe drinking water. The next, Pandemic: Rising Tide, shifted its focus away from diseases and challenged players to halt the flooding of the Netherlands by building a network of dikes, but it fell flat by comparison. The latest entry, Pandemic: Fall of Rome, is a welcome return to form. Developed in partnership with Paolo Mori, the creator of pirate-themed favourite Libertalia, it takes players back to the dying days of the Roman Empire. With Rome beset on all sides by barbarian hordes, you and your teammates will attempt to hold back the tide of decline, preventing what was once the world’s greatest power from crumbling into the dust of history.



Time: 60 - 90 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £46.99 MSRP (US): $49.99 As you’d expect from a Pandemic game, you’ll all take on the roles of different characters, each with their own special abilities. There’s the venerable Consul, who can raise legions in cities across the empire; the grizzled centurion, whose hardened discipline reduces your losses in battle; and the vestal virgin, who communes with the gods to bring blessings and boons on your efforts. In other respects, though, Fall of Rome feels very different to the games that have come before it. Instead of cubes representing diseases which spread from city to city, you’ll fight to clear the map of barbarians rampaging across the empire’s borders. Rather than spreading across a web of transport links, they attack along set paths, penetrating deeper into your territory as your defences weaken over time. To halt the tribes’ advance, you’ll recruit and deploy legions, moving them around the map to confront invaders. When they clash you’ll engage in dice-rolling combat, usually with casualties on both sides, and where the original Pandemic often felt like a rapidly evolving logistical puzzle, this latest interpretation has the air of a cooperative wargame. Where the viral strains in previous games spread erratically, forcing you to react to sudden changes in circumstance, Fall of Rome’s tribes feel much more like intelligent and determined antagonists. As they carve their way inexorably through your provinces and threaten the city of Rome itself, you’ll work together to choose the points at which your troops stand against them. You’ll build fortifications to allow cit-



Pictured above: Pandemic: Fall of Rome is the latest entry in the limited edition Pandemic Survival series. Publisher: Z-Man Games



Where previous games in the series let players deal with emerging threats simply by visiting cities and wiping disease cubes off of the board, here you’ll need to manage the military machinery of the empire, raising armies and marching them to the locations where they’re most needed. It creates thrilling moments where your troops race across the map to confront a surging barbarian incursion, and while Pandemic has always aimed to build an atmosphere of steadily mounting tension, here it’s punctuated by dramatic bursts of sudden violence. Your characters’ abilities, too, have some new twists to discover. Each role in the game comes with a set of associated actions, and using them well is key to boosting your chances of victory. There’s an admiral who can dart between port cities, transporting troops to vital battlefields. There’s a diplomat who excels at forging alliances with barbarian tribes. But each character also benefits from a special power triggered by lucky dice rolls in combat, removing enemies from the board and bolstering the ranks of your legions. These effects can swing what look like losing battles in your favour, and it gives the sense that, just occasionally, the gods smile on your endeavours. Then there are the game’s event cards, which grant one-off special powers and offer momentary respite from its ever-increasing difficulty. They’re a long-established element of the Pandemic franchise, but here they come with new options to experiment with. Each grants you the choice of a standard effect, letting you peek at face-down cards to spot impending invasions, move your allies’ player pawns around the map or take extra actions on your turn. But they also come with more powerful options, affecting the game in much more dramatic and useful ways. To use them, though, you’ll have to voluntarily increase the empire’s decline level, and it makes for some agonising choices about whether it’s worth deliberately endangering Rome in your quest to save it. It’s a fresh and inventive spin on a game that’s been endlessly revisited in recent years, and it’s impressive how its designers have kept the familiar framework intact while offering a very different feel. If you’re not already a fan of Pandemic, then Fall of Rome isn’t going to convert you. But if you’re a veteran player looking for a new and intriguing challenge, it’s easily worth a slot on your shelf.



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Allowing barbarians to sack the city of Rome spells instant defeat, but you’ll also need to arrest the decline of Roman culture to prevent the once-mighty empire fading into history.



The game’s board and cards look like the kinds of maps you’d expect to find in the Emperor’s palace, giving it a decidedly classical appearance.



Flaminia Brasini and Virginio Gigli on Coimbra BGB: The Portuguese “Age of Discovery” is a fascinating historical period. What made you want to design a game about it? And what about the city of Coimbra did you find so interesting? Flaminia and Virginio: You might be disappointed, but originally we didn’t think about setting the game in Coimbra. In 2008 we published Comuni, a game we liked very much and which we think has been a bit unlucky. After some years we started working on two big Eurogames that we named Signorie and Principati. The comuni were small Italian states, almost cities, in the 14th century. The signorie were larger states in the 15th century, and the principati developed in the 16th century. So our idea was to create a trilogy of games set in the Italian middle ages. But two Italian authors had already named one of their games Signorie and we had to change the name of ours to Lorenzo il Magnifico. The publisher changed the name of Principati to Coimbra, so we haven’t had our trilogy. But we have had all three games published and we are pleased with them all.



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Coimbra Designers: Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli Artist: Chris Quilliams Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2 - 4



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N the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese explorers founded colonies that stretched from Asia to the Americas, making themselves and their homeland incredibly wealthy in the process. The city of Coimbra was one of the main beneficiaries of this era of expansion, and now a dice-rolling game of nobles and merchants gives players the chance to become the heads of the city’s leading families, all battling to outdo one another in prestige, piety and profit – while simultaneously engaging in some blatant corruption. On each round, you and your opponents will roll a pool of dice in the centre of the table, then take turns to draft them, placing them in areas of the city occupied by some of Coimbra’s foremost citizens – prominent traders, leaders of local monasteries and captains of the city guard. You’ll aim to win their favour with generous “gifts,” using their power and influence to increase your family’s stature. Placing a higher-value die than your rivals in each region lets you have first pick of its available character cards. But the number on your die also determines the bribe you’ll need to pay to recruit them, and it means you’ll need to think carefully about the benefits each citizen can offer you, and whether it’s worth spending big to snap them up. As well as increasing your status, character cards come with special bonuses that are particularly powerful when used in combinations. A card which grants you gold, for example, is especially valuable if you also have one which converts gold into victory points. It means you’ll want to aggressively take certain cards to stop your opponents put-



Pictured above: Coimbra casts players as the heads of noble families in one of Portugal’s richest cities in the Age of Sail. Publisher: eggertspiele



How did you come up with the double-drafting system — first with dice, then with cards? What kinds of decisions do you think it creates for players? Our original idea was purely about dice drafting. We tried to create an easier game, but we weren’t satisfied, so we introduced the card drafting. You can tell we like this mechanism because we’ve used it in different ways in our games Comuni, Egizia, Grand Hotel Austria and Lorenzo il Magnifico. It seems that this combination of card and dice drafting creates a nice level of tension as players make their choices. You have a lot to think about: which card do you want? What do you consider a good price



Chris Quilliams’ playful artwork gives the game a fresh and appealing look.



for it? And can you afford to risk someone else taking it before you? The game’s art is brighter and more stylish than many “typical” Eurogames. How important do you think that is in a game like Coimbra? At present the artwork in board games is really improved in comparison to five or 10 years ago. I think the art of Coimbra is really original and beautiful, and we thank Chris Quilliams for his great work. We think good-looking games can be a real source of pleasure for players, and we welcome great artwork in games!



Time: 60 - 90 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £44.99 MSRP (US): $69.99 ting together their own winning configurations, and it’s sadistically satisfying to grab a character a rival desperately wants, leaving them stewing in fury. It also makes for moments of unbearable tension as you wait for your turn, praying that another player won’t take the supporters you’ve got your eye on. Coimbra has a selection of other moving parts. By increasing your standing with religious orders, you can move a pilgrim piece around a map as you visit holy sites to boost your score. At the end of each turn you’ll also be able to fund voyages of discovery to gain some extra points. However, much of this feels like empty faffing compared to the tactics and the terror of dice drafting. Imagine a perfect salad of mozzarella and tomato, garnished with unnecessary nuts and leaves. It’s still tasty and satisfying, but it’s frustrating to dig through the greenery to get at the tasty stuff. When you get there, though, it’s still good enough to remind you why you ordered it. It’s also worth noting that Coimbra makes no mention of the slavery and exploitation that went hand-in-hand with Portugal’s “age of discovery.” But the combination of aggressive jostling in its drafting phase and more considered long-term planning tickles two very different parts of your brain, and if you’re looking for a Euro-style strategy experience that still finds time for some seriously mean competition, it’s definitely worth a shot.



Flaminia Brasini and Virginio Gigli have lived together for 18 years. In 2001 they founded the Acchittocca game studio alongside fellow designers Stefano Luperto and Antonio Tinto. Flaminia works with games in her main job, working with an organisation creating interactive educational experiences. Virginio worked for 28 years at the city of Rome’s public transport authority, but recently left to concentrate on full-time game design. Virginio enjoys playing and coaching football, and Flaminia’s interests include books, theatre and walking in Rome.



Coimbra’s dual drafting system sees players scrabbling to obtain dice, which they then use to acquire cards representing prominent citizens who can be bribed to provide favours. It generates some difficult and fascinating decisions.



Do you have any strategy hints to help players win? We have tried to create a very variable game, so the best advice is to “read” the board before starting to play: what I can do on the map? What travel cards are present? What kind of characters give the most points? You’ll probably have to decide on a strategy very quickly, but it may be useful to change it if someone is doing the same things you want to do. Are you currently working on any projects that you would like to tell readers about? We are currently working on several games. Some of them are at the beginning of development, some others are going to be published. Two of our older games are also being republished as improved versions: Leonardo da Vinci and Egizia (Shifting Sands). We hope new people will play them, and also that some existing players will find the changes we have made interesting.



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Rising Sun Designer: Eric M. Lang Artist: Adrian Smith Category: Complex Strategy Players: 3 - 5



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N 2015, designer Eric Lang released Blood Rage, a Viking-themed game about the final battles before the Norse apocalypse of Ragnarok. It combined aggressive, tactical gameplay with evocative art and beautifully sculpted plastic miniatures, winning it a rave response from fans. Now its creators have returned with follow-up Rising Sun, switching the frostbitten lands of Scandinavia for the wartorn realm of feudal Japan. Like its predecessor, Rising Sun is a sumptuous visual feast. Its board is a lavishly illustrated map reminiscent of Edo-period classical art. Its box comes crammed with a collection of plastic figures – some of the most exquisitely sculpted in all of board gaming – representing priests, troops, feudal lords and hulking mythological monsters. But while it shares Blood Rage’s visual flair, this is much more of a spiritual successor than a straightforward sequel, and, once you sit down and start to play, it quickly becomes clear that it’s a very different proposition. You and your opponents all begin the game in control of a single region on the board. As you play, you’ll recruit troops, expand the borders of your fiefdoms, entreat the gods to bestow favours on your clan, and strive to conduct yourself with honour and dignity – most of the time, at least. It’s a lot to keep track of, and to pull it off you’ll choose from a selection of action tiles over the course of the game. Each comes with



Time: 90 - 120 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £89.99 MSRP (US): $99.99 a different effect, letting you swell the ranks of your armies, recruit Shinto priests, harvest resources from the lands under your control or otherwise advance your position. In an approach that’s similar to games like Puerto Rico and Race for the Galaxy, choosing an action also lets all of your opponents take a slightly weaker version of the same move, and the result is a rolling series of difficult dilemmas. You’ll look for opportunities to make plays that benefit you while providing as little assistance as possible to your opponents. It’s a tried and tested formula, but Rising Sun inserts an ingenious twist. At the beginning of each round is a negotiation phase, where you’ll be able to form a temporary alliance with one of your fellow players. Whenever your ally takes an action, you’ll be able to take exactly the same one rather than the less powerful version available to rival warlords. It provides a strong incentive to throw in your lot with opponents who want to pursue the same strategy as you, and what’s really impressive is the amount of diplomatic wrangling and political deal-making the game generates as part of the process. During negotiations you’ll be able to offer or demand all sorts of incentives and concessions, giving money to potential partners, agreeing to team up against a common enemy, or entering into shaky non-aggression pacts where you vow not to invade an opponent’s vulnerable territories in exchange for



Pictured above: Rising Sun casts players as rulers competing to control a mythical version of ancient Japan. Publisher: CMON



their support elsewhere on the board. It’s these sometimes heated discussions, just as much as its military manoeuvres and samurai artwork, that endow Rising Sun with its sense of immersion. As you barter and bicker with your rivals, it’s easy to imagine yourself as a wily leader, equally at home achieving your ends with honeyed words or with fire and steel. And while you’ll make a succession of promises to your opponents as you play, there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually keep them. The game offers plenty of opportunities for backstabbing and betrayal, although such ignominious acts will have an adverse effect on your honour ranking, incurring a variety of in-game consequences, as well as making your opponents far less likely to trust you in future bargains. Once diplomatic niceties are out of the way, you’ll get down to the business of fighting for territory, and once again the game weaves a sense of uncertainty rife with the potential for unpleasant surprises. Whenever you find yourself in a battle for control of a region, you and your opponents will allocate resources to different aspects of the fight on personal player boards hidden behind cardboard screens. You’ll divide your attention between multiple tactics, taking hostages from opposing sides, hiring mercenary ronin to boost your combat strength, or even committing seppuku, sacrificing your warriors when defeat seems inevitable (although it’s fair to ask whether including ritual suicide in a game is particularly tasteful or culturally sensitive).



Rising Sun is a ‘sumptuous visual feast. Its board is a lavishly illustrated map reminiscent of Edo-period classical art.



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You won’t know which approach your opponents have opted for until you all lift your screens to reveal exactly how you’ve committed to the battle. But even if you emerge victorious, you’ll need to make reparation payments to your defeated foes, ensuring that setbacks are always temporary and that they’ll have a chance to come back for revenge on future rounds. On top of this foundation of intrigue and violence, there’s a multitude of other ele-



Worshipping kami is a useful way to gain special rewards, but the gods will only bestow their favour upon their most devout followers.



ments for you to consider. Before the game begins, you’ll draw a set of kami – gods whose aid you can call upon to gain tactical edges over your opponents. Each provides a different bonus to their most devout worshippers. Amaterasu, goddess of the sun, boosts players’ honour rankings, allowing them to atone for misdeeds committed during the game. Tsukuyomi, the moon god, rewards his followers with riches, handing them extra coins in exchange for their devotion. And Hachiman, the god of war, grants worshippers extra troops to tilt the tide of combat in their favour. There are seven kami in total, and you’ll use four of them in any given game, with different combinations of gods opening up new tactical opportunities for players who can spot and exploit them. You and your opponents will also be able to purchase cards which open up new advantages and point-scoring opportunities, as well as allowing you to recruit monsters from Japanese myth and legend to your cause. Each comes with its own set of special abilities, but they’re also the most impressive models in the game, and it’s undeniably satisfying simply to claim such cool looking toys as your own. It combines to create a rich, varied challenge that stays fresh with repeat plays, and its visual presence means that it feels like a genuine event every



time it hits your table. The only thing that leaves a slightly sour note is that many of the game’s most jaw-dropping miniatures were only made available to backers of its Kickstarter campaign. It’s a recurring theme with publisher CMON, which makes crowdfunding a central pillar of its business. But it means that however much fun you’re having, it’s hard to escape the feeling that you aren’t getting the whole experience.



Recruiting monsters from Japanese legend can provide powerful advantages over your opponents. And the models look pretty stunning.



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Andrew Fischer and Nathan I. Hajek on Fallout: The Board Game



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Fallout: The Board Game Designers: Andrew Fischer, Nathan I. Hajek Artists: Brian Schomburg, Evan Simonet, Ben Zweifel Category: Complex Strategy



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ABLETOP translations of video games are often a mixed bag. Capturing the essence of a PC or console hit in cardboard form is a tricky business, and games that attempt it often come with both high and low points. Fallout, an adaptation of the best-selling post-apocalyptic RPG series, is no exception. But while it stumbles in places, it also comes with plenty of clever ideas to discover. At heart it’s a traditional adventure game. Before you play you’ll choose a scenario and a character, then build a board out of random face-down hexes. Over the course of the game you’ll explore an environment devastated by nuclear war, fighting enemies, upgrading your equipment and completing a series of quests as you go. What’s interesting is how Fallout handles the familiar adventure formula. Like many games, it gives players the ability to upgrade their characters, gaining new skills and powers as they play. But where other releases use complex systems of stats, modifiers and bonuses to represent this kind of growth, Fallout uses the SPECIAL acronym from the video games, where each letter represents a different aspect of your character’s abilities. You’ll collect letter tokens making up the word, letting you reroll dice to improve your performance in battle. The game is full of similarly clever streamlining. Best of all is its quest system. You’ll start with a quest card in play, dictated by your scenario. Each has several methods of resolution, such as killing an enemy or visiting a certain location. Fulfil one of its conditions and you’ll earn a reward. But you’ll also be prompted to search the quest



Players: 1 - 4 Time: 120 - 180 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £54.99   MSRP (US): $59.95 deck for cards that provide new information and objectives. It means that each scenario kicks off a branching series of possible plotlines that veer off in unexpected directions. It’s rare that any two plays will turn out similarly, and it provides a wonderful narrative element. Completing many of the quests also empowers one of the two factions that form the backdrop to each scenario. The Capital Wasteland setup, for example, mimics the world of Fallout 3 with The Brotherhood of Steel and The Enclave vying for prominence. While this adds flavour, it’s also problematic. The more powerful a faction becomes, the more victory points it provides for players who support it. With groups of three or four opponents, players supporting the same faction end up boosting each other, to the detriment of everyone else. In fact, there are some good reasons to stick with playing solo or with two. Smart and smooth as Fallout can be, it’s still a long game, and longer with more people at the table. While there’s plenty of choice in deciding how you move, when you rest, and which enemies you fight, the capricious dice can often torpedo your best-laid plans. Fallout, then, is something fans of the video game franchise can savour, especially played solitaire. It’s packed with refreshing Nuka-Cola narrative that captures the feel of a nuclear wasteland in fairly easy rules. Those who find long games with a pronounced element of randomness positively radioactive should be much more cautious. But, even then, Fallout’s innovations may represent the beginnings of an exciting new mutation for the adventure game genre.



Pictured above: Fallout: The Board Game painstakingly recreates the visual style of the hit video game franchise. Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games



BGB: The Fallout series has a long history. What were some of the main elements you were trying to bring across in the board game adaptation? Andrew Fischer: When we first set out on development of Fallout: The Board Game, we made a list of core themes of the Fallout digital games that we wanted to make sure were felt in the tabletop adaptation: player freedom, meaningful choices that change the wasteland, a sense of exploration and danger, and the iconic Fallout dark humour. We kept these themes as our guiding light. No matter how much the game changed, we tried to make sure that they came across to players. Nathan I. Hajek: I feel that a big part of what we did was grab the experience as a whole and reinvent that into a board game. So much of it is there – it’s a bit crazy. I remember several weeks where I just kept iterating on being addicted. Not me being addicted: the mechanics of characters becoming addicted in the game. Was it necessary? Probably not. Would it have been missed? Would people have said: “Hey, too bad this didn’t make me addicted?” I think so. While that wasn’t the only thing I was working on for those weeks, it took a lot of time and work to make it work with all the other systems. And that’s just a small part of the overall game, but one of many pieces that make up the Fallout experience. That was a big part of what the game is, its hundreds of little nods to the greater Fallout experience. There’s a real sense of exploration to the game, with almost the entirety of the board concealed at the start. What kind of feeling do you think that creates for players? NH: It does two things for the game. First, obviously, it’s there for replayability. While there are areas of the map that are revealed,



With a long line of Fallout digital titles to draw upon, the game’s designers attempted to incorporate some of the series’ most important recurring themes in their tabletop adaptation.



for the most part it’s a new adventure every time you play, and the evolving map creates a unique narrative in each game. The other thing it does is evoke that experience of wandering around in the digital game. You peek around a hill, crest a vista or circle a walled compound, unsure of what waits for you on the other side. You get that same sigh of relief when a



settlement comes into sight and same dread when a Deathclaw appears. AF: Exploration was one of the core themes we wanted to evoke. Whether it’s emerging from the vault or venturing out of Arroyo for the first time, each Fallout game has that feeling of entering a vast, unknown wasteland filled with surprises. Keeping that feeling of surprise in a



Andrew Fischer is the senior manager of digital development at Fantasy Flight Games. He played NES and Amiga games from an early age and discovered the tabletop hobby when his friends’ dad introduced him to Dungeons & Dragons. He had worked on releases including the Star Wars and Warhammer roleplaying games, enjoys rock climbing and snowboarding, and works with the nonprofit organisation GLITCH supporting up-and-coming game creators. Nathan I. Hajek grew up in the southern suburbs of Chicago and designed his own board and card games from childhood. He took up professional game design in his late 20s, and has worked extensively on expansions for the dungeon-crawling adventure title Descent: Journeys in the Dark, as well as the game’s integrated smartphone app. Andrew Fischer



Nathan I. Hajek



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branching, we set out actually writing the flavour text of each individual card. NH: The story moments for the scenarios were some of my favourite things to work on, because we wrote a lot of them to run parallel to the stories in the digital games. While you see the same story beats and the same general progression, it’s your own story, not a retelling. So studying the original stories and coming up with fun ways for the new plot to criss-cross was great. I love the feeling that your character could look over at any point during the board game and wave at the digital character you played in the video game, both pursuing your own adventures and possibly mucking it up for each other.



The wasteland is full of dangerous enemies for players to confront.



traditional board game is difficult because all of the components are known to the players from the first time they open the box. By randomising the tiles and laying them out face-down in different configurations for each scenario, we ensure that each layout has some unique surprises in how the map is laid out.



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There’s a big narrative element to the game, and players can make some meaningful choices about how they progress through scenarios. What was the writing process behind that like, and what kinds of situations were you trying to drop players into?



AF: The writing process was really interesting. We wanted to create as many unique, branching variations as possible, and drop players into situations where they are not just considering the momentary impact of their actions, but considering what the narrative impact of their choice could do to the wasteland for the rest of that playthrough. For writing and planning all of that, we used a few different tools, but initially I found it easiest to plan out every card using Post-It notes across the wall of my office. We used this to quickly discuss and alter how all of the branching structures worked together. Once this skeleton was in place for all the



The game comes with a collection of character types for players to control.



You’ll keep track of your health and status with a player board in the series’ trademark 50s-future style.



Heaven & Ale You’ll be able to explore in a competitive multiplayer game, or wander the wasteland in solo mode.



The game supports single-player play. How important was it to you that it should work as a solo experience? That seems to be something that more and more designers are paying attention to. Do you think that’s a style of play that’s becoming more popular? AF: Until recently, the Fallout digital games have all been single-player experiences, so we really wanted to make sure that the game was playable and fun single-player. However, our priority was always on the multiplayer experience. We made decisions to make sure the gameplay with two to four was as interesting as it could be, and then designed variants to certain parts of the rules to keep the game tense and interesting, even for a solo player. Solitaire games have always been a part of the board game industry, but I think we’re seeing a lot more of the bigger, heavier games adding solo variants. Not only is it easier to make time by yourself to take a deep dive into these more involved experiences, but it also provides a nice way to learn the game and get experience with it before you go off and teach your friends how to play.



Designers: Michael Kiesling, Andreas Schmidt Artist: Christian Fiore Category: Complex Strategy



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F you’re a bit of a beer aficionado, you’ll know that some of the world’s most highly respected brews are produced by monks. That might seem a bit incongruous – a life of quiet religious observance doesn’t appear to sit all that comfortably alongside working in the booze business. But trace monastic brewing back to its historical roots and it turns out that it began as something of a public service. With alcohol killing off an assortment of nasty bugs, beer was often safer to drink than water, and the income from brewing helped abbeys to remain self-sufficient and perform charitable works. Heaven & Ale takes players back to medieval times, tasking them with growing crops, harvesting ingredients and employing their monks’ skills and expertise to produce more delicious beer than their rivals. In the process, it creates a brain-bending challenge that leaves you feeling as light-headed as a couple of strong dark ales. On your turn you’ll move a worker token around a shared board, taking different actions depending on the space you land on. Most let you recruit new monks or buy tiles representing hops, yeast and water to use in the brewing process. But you’ll be able to use your newly acquired items in an assortment of different ways, and it’s here that things start to get interesting. As well as the main board in the centre of the table, each player has a personal board representing the grounds around their monastery. As you acquire tiles, you’ll place them in either the light or the dark side of your garden. Placing them on the sunny side grants you resources,



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Players: 2 - 4 Time: 60 - 90 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £39.99   MSRP (US): $46.99 while placing them on the garden’s shaded side earns you money. It creates an immediate dilemma, because while you’ll want to generate income in the early game, you’ll earn more cash if you wait until you have some tiles already on the board. To place tiles, you’ll need money. To make money, you’ll need to place tiles. And it’s at this point that your brain shuts down and your head explodes. Circular dependencies like this are one of the oldest tricks in gaming, but Heaven & Ale pushes it to a new extreme. Each of your monks and resources can only be used to score once during the game, so timing is critical. Then there are the shed spaces in your garden, which grant you bonuses if you manage to surround them with tiles. The exact rewards you receive depend on the combination of tiles you use, and it adds another link to the chain of mind-melting logic the game demands. The end result feels like the gaming equivalent of one of the famous pictures by M.C. Escher with corridors and staircases interlinked at all sorts of impossible angles. Everything loops and twists around everything else in a disorienting way that makes you want to go and lie down in a darkened room. You won’t, though, because trying to solve these problems is just too much fun. It’s an intricate combination of number-crunching and spatial puzzles, all built on top of a race to rack up points and snatch resources, and it combines to create a compulsive appeal that’s as satisfying as a perfect pint.



Pictured above: Heaven & Ale deposits players in a medieval monastery and tasks them with brewing beer. Publisher: eggertspiele



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Civilization: A New Dawn



Lowlands



Designer: James Kniffen Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2 - 4 Time: 60 - 45 minutes



Designers: Claudia Partenheimer, Ralf Partenheimer Artist: Andrea Boekhoff Category: Complex Strategy



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OR more than a quarter of a century, the Civilization video game franchise has let players lead their people to greatness through a blend of militarism, culture, trade and technology, and along the way it’s amassed millions of fans. Over the years it’s also inspired multiple analogue adaptations. Civilization: A New Dawn is the latest, and while it’s unmistakably rooted in the PC series, it’s not afraid to put its own spin on world domination. Starting with a single humble city, you’ll aim to expand your domain, and rather than sending settlers to swell your borders like in the video games, you’ll place markers on the board denoting areas under your control, spreading your reach across the map with each round. It’s not just about rampant expansionism, though. As you play you’ll also dispatch caravans to open trade routes with your opponents. You’ll conduct scientific research to unlock powerful new abilities. And you’ll try to snatch victory by being the first to complete a selection of objectives, from building astounding world wonders to controlling key spaces on the map or pushing the boundaries of technological progress. It might sound complicated, but at the heart of A New Dawn is a brilliantly simple system that skips the minutiae of governance and lets you focus on the bigger picture of running your empire. On your turn you’ll be able to take one of five different actions, advancing your position in fields including scientific, military and economic prowess, each represented by a card placed in a row in your personal player



Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £46.99 MSRP (US): $42.49 area. Whenever you use a card, it moves to the start of the row, budging the others forward. The further along the row a card moves, the more powerful its effect becomes when you eventually use it, letting you colonise, trade and fight more effectively. It means that timing your moves and thinking two or three turns ahead becomes crucial, but it strips away a lot of mechanical complexity, leaving you free to concentrate on your evolving strategy. If you’re hoping for a game that replicates the kind of marathon Civ sessions you’ve had on your PC, A New Dawn isn’t it. But the things computers are good at, like tracking variables and handling production queues, only make a tabletop experience feel clunky. A more valid criticism is that while you’ll compete against rival rulers, actual interaction between empires can be pretty rare. The game comes with non-player city states and barbarian tribes, and much of your trade and combat will be with them rather than your human opponents. Then there’s the fact that while you’ll control aspects on your civilisation’s development, there isn’t a huge degree of freedom to shape its ideology. You’ll progress from bronze-age subsistence farming to modern industrialism, but if you want to forge an anarcho-syndicalist commune or a theocratic dictatorship, those options just aren’t there. But A New Dawn does bold and imaginative things with one of the biggest franchises in gaming, and the result is an impressive and intriguing compromise between respect for its source material and a strategy experience that’s precision-engineered for the tabletop.



Pictured above: Civilization: A New Dawn aims to capture the spirit of the PC empire-building series, but makes some well-judged departures from its script. Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games



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GRICULTURE is a recurring theme in European-style games. The likes of Agricola, La Granja and Viticulture all see players cultivating crops and raising livestock. Now there’s a new chance to get your hands dirty in the form of Lowlands, a deep and demanding release which casts you and your opponents as sheep farmers in the Netherlands. And while running your farm is important, the game also sees you battle the elements as you attempt to fend off catastrophic flooding. You’ll start the game in possession of a pair of wooden sheep and a stretch of undeveloped farmland. From humble beginnings, you’ll aim to become the most prosperous farmer in the region, constructing buildings, maintaining pastures and increasing the size of your flock. To help you, you will have three labourers at your disposal, using them to perform a variety of tasks on each round. They can add new buildings to your farmstead, such as workshops and tool sheds, all of which grant you new abilities or new ways to score points. They can fence off areas of your land, creating new enclosures and letting you accommodate extra livestock. Or they can hunt for resources like wood and bricks, which you’ll need to erect new structures. The clever bit is that each of your farmhands comes with a number representing their skill. More capable workers perform tasks more effectively, and it means you’ll need to think carefully about which ones you entrust with particular activities. If you find yourself desperately short of bricks, you might want to send your best worker to look



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Players: 2 - 4 Time: 50 - 100 minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £64.99   MSRP (US): $69.99 for more. If you only need to build one or two stretches of fence, it makes sense to send a more junior helper to do the job. It’s a system that requires some real analysis and optimisation. Certain buildings function particularly well when you combine them, but you’ll need to ensure that you have the resources required to build them. And while you’re busy thinking about construction, you’ll also have to deal with the puzzle of how best to lay out your farm, deciding which parts of your player board to use for different purposes. It’s an engaging collection of problems to solve, but that’s something you can find in any decent Euro-style game. What makes Lowlands stand out, though, is its constant sense of impending disaster. With their farms built on the flood-prone shores of the North Sea, players have to remain alert to the threat of the encroaching tide. As you play you’ll collaboratively contribute to the construction of a dike holding back the raging waters. But the more materials and effort you expend on building the defences, the less you’ll have left to improve your own farm. Can you chip in the bare minimum, leaving your opponents to do the hard work? Or will that lead to catastrophe, with the sea rushing over your land and drowning your animals? It’s an ongoing tug-of-war between prudence and ambition, and being too greedy or too public-spirited can both severely harm your chances of victory. Getting the balance right takes experience and judgement, and Lowlands is a game that demands repeat plays to master. In a release this engrossing, that’s a prospect to relish.



Pictured above: In Lowlands, players collectively build a dike to hold back an ever-increasing threat from the North Sea. Publisher: Feuerland Spiele / Z-Man Games



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Endeavor: Age of Sail Designers: Carl de Visser, Jarratt Gray Artist: Josh Cappel Category: Complex Strategy Players: 2 - 5



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OLONIALISM is one of the most frequently revisited themes in gaming. Whether it’s settling the island of Catan, governing in Puerto Rico or trading in the Century series, board games have a decades-long obsession with laying claim to overseas territories. Almost without exception, however, games have ignored or downplayed the horrific consequences of colonial ideology: slavery, the theft of land and the brutal subjugation of indigenous peoples. It’s easy to see why. None of these topics makes for a particularly convivial atmosphere on game night. But the result is that gaming’s portrayal of the age of European empires is sanitised, and by handing players the roles of colonial governors, games implicitly invite them to identify and even sympathise with their real-world counterparts. Endeavor: Age of Sail doesn’t engage in the same degree of sugar-coating. An updated edition of 2009’s Endeavor, it follows in the footsteps of countless games before it by casting players as the heads of mercantile companies harvesting the riches of far-flung reaches of the globe. As you play, you’ll develop your home port by erecting buildings which grant you new abilities. You’ll dispatch expeditions to explore locations and open them up for exploitation. And you’ll fight to control regions, claiming cities for your expanding empire. For a game of such ambitious historical scope, it’s actually pretty streamlined. There are no complicated combat systems, no spreadsheet-like tables, no individual units with stats representing their military strength. But while its stripped-back approach is impressively



Time: 60 - 90 minutes Ages: 12+ RRP (UK): £69.99 MSRP (US): $70.00 elegant, it’s not the thing that’s most likely to grab your attention. That would be the slavery cards. Endeavor: Age of Sail presents players with the option of owning slaves. It’s a tactical shortcut – a way to boost your score while avoiding some of the restrictions the game places on your development. From a purely strategic point of view, it makes a lot of sense. But for many players, the instinctive revulsion at participating in the slave trade will be enough to turn them off before they’ve played a single turn, even if it’s a choice they would never pursue. Slave holding comes with risks, though. If any player manages to advance their empire to the highest level, they’ll set off an abolitionist movement which sees all players who hold slavery cards lose the benefits from them. They’ll also lose victory points at the end of the game for every slave card in their possession, meaning that owning slaves can establish an advantage, and be the cause of an eventual defeat. You could argue that by reducing slavery to an abstract mechanical element, Endeavor fails to recognise the individual human tragedy of every enslaved person. You could contend that handing bigger penalties to players who own the most slaves suggests degrees of guilt, leaving room for equivocation and deflection of blame. But while there are plenty of arguments to be had about how the game represents one of history’s greatest injustices, it makes the attempt. In that, it does immeasurably more than almost any other. If it causes some discomfort in the process, maybe that’s no bad thing.



Pictured above: Endeavor: Age of Sail doesn’t shy away from the thorniest issues of colonialism. Publisher: Burnt Island Games / Grand Gamers Guild



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The Board Game Book   Chapter 6



Storytelling Games



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Fog of Love sees players create characters, using cards to assemble collections of personality traits and attributes.



Fog of Love 202



Designer: Jacob Jaskov Artists: Mike Højgaard, Lotte M. Klixbüll Jaskov Category: Storytelling



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AKE a look at any game store shelf and you’ll find an array of dungeon-crawlers, sci-fi shooters and bloody battle games. If you’re looking to hack, slash, blast and bludgeon your way through waves of hapless foes, the tabletop hobby has you spoiled for choice. But all of this aggression raises an interesting question: why are there so many games about killing people, and so few about kissing them? Enter Fog of Love. Billed as “romantic comedy as a board game,” it steers clear of familiar tropes like zombies, orcs and dragons. Instead it takes its inspiration from films like Notting Hill and Sleepless in Seattle, with players attempting to navigate the ups and downs of a turbulent love affair. Before you begin you’ll each create a character, choosing from a random selection of cards to build the protagonists in your unfolding love story. You’ll give yourself a job and a collection of personality traits, and it makes for some unlikely pairings: a fun-loving parking attendant falling for a macho florist; a perfectionist police officer captivated by a permanently stoned musician; a flirtatious celebrity hooking up with a hairy, tattooed farmer. It means you’ll instantly start seeing the potential for interesting interactions and points of conflict. But these characteristics are more than just thematic set-dressing: they determine exactly what you want out of the relationship, and they’re integral to the way you play. If



By taking actions that fit with your character’s personality, you’ll be able to boost their happiness. But it can lead to clashes with your partner.



Players: 2 Playing time: 60 - 120 minutes Ages: 17+ RRP (UK): £47.99 MSRP (US): $49.97 you’re a nurturing type, you’ll favour cooperation and understanding. If you’re adventurous, you’ll seek out excitement and new experiences. If you’re ambitious, you’ll value hard work and organisation – perhaps even to the detriment of your love life. It makes for personality clashes that can be heated, hilarious or both. But what makes things really interesting is that these fundamental building blocks of your character remain a secret to your partner. Neither of you will have any idea about the other’s true motivations, and you’ll try to discern each other’s intentions as you play. Ultimately, you’ll both have to decide whether you’re lifelong soulmates, or better off going your separate ways. Throughout the game you’ll play scene cards, short snippets of text describing a situation and prompting you to react. Some are unremarkable: conversations about who’ll do the dishes or where you’d like to go on holiday. Others are much more dramatic: you come across suspicious texts on your partner’s phone, or discover a sex tape they made with an ex. How you respond to each scene – both individually and as a couple – will have a profound effect on the game. Acting in ways that reflect your personality will leave you feeling happier and more secure, but often your decisions can have a knock-on effect on your relationship. If you’ve picked the intense trait, then you might cause an awkward scene with an emotional outburst. If you’re playing a narrow-minded



Pictured above: Fog of Love bills itself as a romantic comedy in board game form, but it also seriously explores relationships. Publisher: Hush Hush Projects



As you play, you’ll track the effects of your experiences on your character, giving a feeling of emotional development.



character, then your judgemental nature might spark arguments. If you’re painfully shy then your social awkwardness might see you sidelined from your partner’s circle of friends. It means you’ll constantly face choices about whether to act in your own best interest, or to do what’s right for your relationship. Just like in real life, it’s not always a clear-cut decision, and the game creates a running treadmill of thorny dilemmas. Perhaps the most impressive thing about Fog of Love, though, is the way it encourages you to view these difficult choices from your character’s perspective. To get the most out of the game, you’ll have to adopt an approach that’s almost akin to method acting, immersing yourself completely in your in-game persona. It turns the whole experience into what’s effectively a two-player roleplaying game, and while in theory the process of reading and reacting to scenes could take seconds, you’ll pad things out with improvised dialogue, turning the game into an intimate, personal kind of performance. For some players, that’s likely to be off-putting. If the idea of this kind of improv drama doesn’t appeal to you, you’re unlikely to have a good time. The game is far more about emotional involvement than tactical choices, and even its idea of what constitutes “winning” or “losing” is hazily defined. You might stay happily together, but walking away from a relationship that’s turned sour is an equally valid outcome for your story. That lack of a clear goal might be frustrating for some, but if you’re drawn to games with a narrative-first approach, there’s a huge amount to like about Fog of Love. There’s its slick tutorial mode, which teaches you the game without forcing you to work through its rulebook. There’s its inclusive approach to same-sex relationships, with players free to choose the



gender of their characters. There’s its mature attitude to sex, which avoids falling into either prudishness or cheap titillation. And there’s the fact that even when the same scenes come up repeatedly across multiple game sessions, you’ll view them through the lens of a completely new personality every time, leading to stories with wildly different moods, events and endings. It’s a game that understands individual psychology, depicting characters’ personalities with nuance and subtlety. It brilliantly models the dynamics of a relationship: a delicate balance of vulnerability and trust. And it builds storytelling right into the heart of its design, with the level of drama and emotional investment ramping up steadily as you play. It claims to be a romantic comedy, but the laughs are entirely optional. Your stories can be poignant, playful, happy or heartbreaking depending on how you choose to play them, and it’s likely they’ll be a mix of all. It’s a powerful achievement: a bold, original, imaginative game that’s wonderfully easy to fall in love with.



Your stories can be poignant, playful, happy or heartbreaking depending on how you choose to play them, and it’s likely they’ll be a mix of all.



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Jacob Jaskov on Fog of Love



Jacob Jaskov is a Danish game designer whose first self-published release, Fog of Love, explores the ups and downs of romantic relationships. A lifelong gamer, he played tabletop roleplaying games from an early age and has been deeply involved



BGB: What made you want to make a game based on romantic comedy films? Jacob Jaskov: I wanted to make a game that could appeal to my wife, as I wanted to play games with her more. She’s turned off by most games, so I searched for a theme that might interest her. She loves romantic comedies, so I proposed making a game about them – about wooing a partner and making a relationship work. Luckily, she loved the idea and I went with it.



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What kind of research did you do to understand the feel of rom-coms? How did you try to incorporate elements of those films into the game? To make a game about something you need to understand its underlying structures and dynamics, otherwise the theme will only be pasted-on. So I read a lot about how the genre works: the conventions and tropes, the types of visible and invisible conflicts and how the stories typically evolve. As the game structure grew, my wife and I listed all the key romantic and dramatic scenes from movies and other media that we could find. We searched for fun and interesting material that could become scenes in the game. My wife had a lot to say about what kind of content would be enjoyable. I couldn’t have done this without her. Why do you think the themes of love and romance have so rarely been explored in gaming? Games have systems of interaction that don’t lend themselves well to dramas of the heart. Romance is not about competition, direct conflict or optimisation. So even if you want to make a game about love, it’s difficult using the traditional toolbox of game interactions. Besides this deeper structural challenge, it’s clear that most designers don’t even consider this genre, as it’s not part of traditional “geekdom.” That’s slowly changing, and board games are reaching out to new audiences. It has been happening in computer games for quite some time through titles like The Sims, and it’s bound to happen in our domain as well.



in the Danish RPG community. He worked for a number of years as an innovation consultant for businesses and government institutions before successfully crowdfunding Fog of Love and embarking on a full-time career in games design and development.



‘



I read a lot about how the genre works: the conventions and tropes, the types of visible and invisible conflicts and how the stories typically evolve.



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It’s possible to create some very interesting characters with different combinations of traits and features. Have you come across any that you found particularly memorable? I mostly remember the stories that evolve and the characters’ role in them. I still laugh inside when I think about my playtesters playing a sweet princess who ended up exploiting her psychologist partner. The psychologist did everything right, but couldn’t impress her royal parents or make her commit to him for real. It was a surprising story that was fun to watch. I also love the story I played of the successful and manipulative female manager who dated a dominant televangelist. After almost ruining their relationship, the televangelist converted her to become spiritual and then he became sincere rather than dominant. They were so close to failure but in the end they succeeded in living happily ever after. These are stories that are three years old, but still live with me. Players can “win” the game in lots of different ways, some of which include breaking their partner’s heart. Why did you want to include that as a possibility? I wanted the drama to be real. If there’s no risk, then the payoff for doing things right isn’t strong enough. The risk of heartbreak makes the stories much more fun and interesting. It means that the game is about creating



trust in a dramatic story and not just about coordinating predictably with your partner. The game is very LGBT-inclusive. Was it important to you to represent a diverse range of relationships? This was essential for me. The game is about love and love comes in many forms. It was important but also a bit difficult as this genre is quite conservative. Very few rom-coms represent LGBT couples. Sadly the genre conventions still impacted how we made the cover. It’s beautiful, but it’s also stereotypical. This is something I’m thinking a lot about and want to do something about in the future. The box should be more inclusive as well. In general, gaming has been very shy of entering this territory. Most games ignore love and especially ignore varieties of love. It’s a real shame, as this obviously means a lot to us as human beings. Several recent games are changing this, but it’s still a minority. Even though the focus is squarely on the story, there’s also a tactical element. Players can try to sway the plot in directions that further their goals and benefit their character. What kinds of decisions were you trying to throw in their path? There are two levels of decisions. On the micro-level I wanted to mimic the economy of a relationship, where there is give and take. You always need to consider whether you help yourself or your partner – or whether you can do something that helps both. On the deeper level I wanted to emulate more existential choices: Where do I want this relationship to go? Do I trust my partner? Do I change to accommodate them? The two levels of decision making, and the subtle economy help make the story feel real. The choices you make have consequences in the game. Do you think people play the game differently with their spouses or partners than when they play it with their friends? If so, why do you think that is? In my numerous playtests there wasn’t much difference. The most important thing



You’ll track your character’s attachment to the relationship: sharing meaningful events can bring you closer, but disagreements can push you apart.



Players face a series of decisions, and agreeing with your partner often leads to more harmonious outcomes.



is the willingness to loosen up and engage in a roller coaster story. Some find this easier to do with friends, some feel more at ease with their partners, and for most it didn’t make much difference. Sex is obviously an element of the game. It’s not graphic or explicit, but you don’t shy away from discussing it. Was that a difficult balance to get right? Did you worry that it might be off-putting for some players? Ha! No other genre of storytelling is so asexual as board games. So yes, I worried a lot about this initially. Then I found that nobody reacted negatively, not a single playtester! I even had adults play the game with people in their teens. I had imagined this would be awkward, but they took it lightly. Most people are much more mature than we give them credit for. Other media handle sex much more naturally – just think about some young adult novels.



Players can choose their character’s gender, and the game’s event cards include scenes with particular resonance in same-sex relationships.



The game’s minimalist graphic design leaves plenty of room for players’ imaginations to fill in the details of their unfolding romance.



There’s a big element of expression and inhabiting your character. What advice would you give to someone who finds that kind of performance aspect intimidating? Just take it in small steps. The game works even if you just tell the story through the cards you play. The game is gentle in how it nudges players to come up with small creative comments and contributions here and there. So there’s no need to worry if you feel uncomfortable with roleplaying. You don’t need to do much. Slowly most players learn to engage in the roleplaying and find it adds to the fun. There have been quite a few games recently which put storytelling at the core of their design. Do you think this could be the start of a trend in the hobby? Yes! Stories are important for how we orient ourselves in the world. They help us make



meaning and create strong experiences. Since games are about experience, it’s obvious that story-rich games will have an important role to play You have some expansions planned with new scenarios for the game. What can players expect to see in the future? The first expansion is about a blind date gone wrong. It changes a lot of the dynamics that players expect. It’s great for players who want to make the game more difficult and dramatic. The next expansion is about your inlaws, where you need to decide whether you accommodate your awful parents, or whether you stick together as a couple. It’s challenging and adds even more depth to the stories played. It’s also hilarious. Luckily there is room for a ton of great romance and love stories. I want to include as many good ones as I can.



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Nikki Valens on Legacy of Dragonholt Nikki Valens is the designer of games including Eldritch Horror, Mansions of Madness Second Edition, Legacy of Dragonholt and Arkham Horror Third Edition. She is an advocate for inclusivity in gaming who believes that games should bring joy and love into the world and unite all those who play them. Growing up in Minnesota, Nikki passed the long cold winters by playing board games and card games with family and friends. Her love of social gaming grew into a successful career as a designer. Aside from cooperative, roleplaying, and trick-taking games, Nikki has a passion for reading, animals, and terrible puns.



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Designer: Nikki Valens Artist: Anna Christenson Category: Storytelling Players: 1 - 6



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OR decades, board games have attempted to emulate the experience of tabletop roleplaying. Fantasy adventures like Descent and Heroquest have long tried to capture the essence of a night spent rolling polyhedral dice and battling monstrous foes. But while many RPG-inspired games are perfectly decent ways to kill a couple of hours, they tend to be more concerned with combat and treasure than with character development and emotional impact. Legacy of Dragonholt does things differently. Set in the realm of Terrinoth – the same sword-and-sorcery setting as games like Descent and Runewars – it casts players as adventurers working to foil a nefarious plot against a noble family. And while it packs plenty of action and adrenaline, it also finds time for brilliant world-building, captivating dramatic hooks and a cast of engaging characters. Before you play, you’ll create a hero with a name, a short biography and a set of skills to aid you in your quest. From there, you’ll play through an episodic story contained in a set of interactive game books similar to Fighting Fantasy or Choose Your Own Adventure novels. Over multiple sessions you’ll encounter enemies, explore a bustling village and investigate the shadowy conspiracy targeting its rulers. What really stands out about Legacy of Dragonholt, though, is how it creates a living, breathing world for players to explore. Its hundreds of pages of text are pacy, punchy and engaging. Its locations have palpably different atmospheres, from tranquil woods to rowdy taverns. And its characters are rounded, distinctive and believable.



BGB: How did you come up with the idea for Legacy of Dragonholt? What made you want to design a game with such a pronounced narrative focus? Nikki Valens: Legacy of Dragonholt came from my desire for storytelling. I’ve been emotionally invested in roleplaying games for many years. I love telling stories with my friends, I love roleplaying, and I love GMing for roleplaying games. In a way, Legacy of Dragonholt is me running a roleplaying campaign for anyone who picks it up and plays it. It’s a way for players to get a storytelling experience, without needing to learn a roleplaying system or find a GM to run things for them. There are many games with narrative elements, but I wanted to create something where the narrative itself was the sole focus.



Playing time: 60+ minutes Ages: 14+ RRP (UK): £54.99 MSRP (US): $59.95 It leaves the impression that Dragonholt village is more than just a handy backdrop for your heroes to be heroic in. It’s a web of relationships: star-crossed love, simmering resentment, burning ambition, and it makes for a far more interesting time than any of the generic “I-swing-my-sword” dungeon-crawlers on the market. What it isn’t, though, is a replacement for traditional RPGs. It may look like a kind of D&D campaign in a box, with its story books taking the place of a human game master, but if you come into Dragonholt with that expectation, you’ll be disappointed. In truth, it feels more like old adventure video games like Broken Sword or Monkey Island. And while it comes with plenty of villains and dangers, it makes no attempt to emulate the dice-chucking combat of any of the roleplaying games that have inspired it. Instead, it revolves almost entirely around the choices you make as you move through its branching storyline. If you’re drawn to the tactical, pseudo-wargame side of games like D&D and Pathfinder, there isn’t much here to scratch that itch. It also shines brightest in an intimate setting. With higher player counts, the opportunities for each player to make important decisions become thinly spread. Two heroes seems to be its sweet spot. But this is a bold and innovative game with the can’t-put-it-down appeal of a captivating adventure novel. It also treats its female and LGBT characters with total respect – something that can’t always be said of gaming, or of the fantasy genre in general. It’s a real achievement, and hopefully the first of many similar story-driven releases.



Pictured above: Legacy of Dragonholt uses a Choose Your Own Adventure-style narrative, with a captivating tangle of sub-plots and side-quests. Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games



One impressive thing about the game is the way it builds its world and its cast of non-player characters. How did you try to create a responsive environment for players to explore? In storytelling and roleplaying, it’s easy for the author to write the non-player characters as side characters to the player’s main story. Instead, I just treated each of the characters in Dragonholt as the protagonist of their own story. Their stories might not be about grand adventure and fighting hordes of goblins like yours, but they all have their own lives and cares and worries. Each of the characters has a daily schedule, and special events, and locations and other characters that are important to them, and when you see those characters in your story, you’re just catching glimpses of their lives.



Each of the game’s episodic missions comes in a separate book, which acts like a human game master in a roleplaying session. They combine to create a world full of perilous situations and interesting characters.



As you explore the game’s setting you’ll encounter a cast of allies and enemies, gain an assortment of magical items and uncover a sinister plot against a noble family.



With a living environment to explore and a cast of characters to encounter, Legacy of Dragonholt often feels like a traditional roleplaying game campaign.



The game does a really good job of presenting strong female and LGBT characters. How important was this for you? I’m queer and non-binary. I’ve grown used to not seeing people like me in games. So when those characters do show up, it’s incredibly eye-opening and moving. Without that representation it’s sometimes easy to forget that there are other people in this world who are like me, who feel what I feel. Representation in games shows marginalised groups that the creators acknowledge us as players. It shows us that we are seen in the sea of cishet white men who play these games, many of whom would push us out of the hobby. Representation has certainly improved over the last few years, but this hobby and this industry still has a long way to go before it will feel truly inclusive. Even Legacy of Dragonholt could have done better, done more. Are there any other story-focussed games you enjoy? And if so, what do you like about them? I enjoy many roleplaying systems since they allow me to tell stories with my friends, though many systems are overly rulesheavy, in my opinion. As for board games, Fog of Love allows for very deep personal stories to be told. I like how it encourages players to roleplay and tell their own stories but within a structure and a set of pop culture tropes that make it highly accessible to players who are less familiar with interactive storytelling. It also boldly strides into the romance genre in a way that other games seem to be afraid to try. As someone who prefers stories of love over violence, it’s great to see a designer willing to break the mould.



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A.J. Porfirio on Graphic Novel Adventures A.J. Porfirio is originally from Houston, Texas. He first got into gaming as a child when his mother gave him a copy of the fantasy roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. He played Talisman, HeroQuest and Magic: The Gathering before eventually discovering the zombie board game Last Night on Earth. It inspired him to try his hand at game design, and he founded publisher Van Ryder Games, whose releases include the tense single-player game Hostage Negotiator. Today he lives in Nashville, Tennessee.



BGB: How did you first become aware of graphic novel game books? What was your first impression of them, and why did you think they would appeal to an English-speaking audience? A.J. Porfirio: I traverse solo gaming community groups and forums pretty regularly, and one day I came across a cool looking game book called Captive that looked like the popular books from my childhood, except this one was a comic! My mind was blown, I was so intrigued. So I thought I’d reach out and see if we could get the licence to bring it to America. Only then did I find out how many more of these books the French publisher Makaka Editions had created.



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Designers: Various Artists: Various Category: Storytelling Players: 1



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F you’re a game geek over 30, you may have grown up playing interactive game books like the Fighting Fantasy and Choose Your Own Adventure series. The thrilling, analogue adventures gave players control of protagonists, challenging them to overcome dangers and work their way towards a plethora of possible endings. The books were big business, selling tens of millions of copies around the world. But while they remain popular to this day in English-speaking markets, there’s a similar French tradition which brings an interactive approach to comic book storytelling. Where Choose Your Own Adventure titles wove their branching narratives from numbered paragraphs of text, these graphic novels tell their stories using pictures. Now publisher Van Ryder Games has released a boxed set of five translated books by an array of French creators, and they contain an impressive blend of artwork, plot and puzzles. To play through the books you read through sequential panels just like an issue of Batman until eventually reaching a point where you need to make a decision – a fork in a path, or a corridor lined with doors. You’ll make your choices by turning to numbered panels spread through the book. The result is an unfolding story that responds to your actions as you play. Some choices lead you closer to your goals, others can result in harm or even death for your character. What’s really intriguing, though, is the variety of themes, moods and gameplay approaches across the different titles. Loup Garou is a straightforward medieval werewolf adventure with RPG-style



Playing time: 60 - 90 minutes Ages: 10+ to 16+ RRP (UK): TBC MSRP (US): $22.99 dice-chucking combat. If it’s your first experience of the format, you’d be forgiven for feeling underwhelmed. Captive is much more interesting. It revolves around a father attempting to rescue his daughter from kidnappers. But what seems like a by-the-numbers ransom story reveals itself to be a disturbing tale of supernatural terror, with visuals that evoke video games like Resident Evil and the 1963 horror film The Haunting. Its twisted perspectives and hidden details create a pervasive sense of dread as you explore its dark, dilapidated mansion. Then there’s Sherlock Holmes: Four Investigations which uses a cutesy art style to present a series of linked mysteries, challenging players to home in on small details, deduce facts from items of evidence, spot inconsistencies in suspects’ stories and avoid falling for some judiciously placed red herrings. Tears of a Goddess is an action-packed tale inspired by martial arts films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And Your Town is an intriguing blend of spaghetti western and urban planning sim, with players riding dusty trails, getting into gunfights and developing a town in the Old West – an ambitious mix of True Grit and SimCity. It’s a promising collection, although its one recurring flaw is a tendency to offer choices with no information to help you know which actions will help or hinder your efforts. It feels jarring and arbitrary to enter a room and immediately find yourself attacked by an enemy. There’s plenty here to keep you engaged, though, and it’s going to be interesting to see what future releases in the series have in store.



Pictured above: The Graphic Novel Adventures series takes players through branching plots in the style of adventure game books. Publisher: Makaka Editions / Van Ryder Games



The books you’ve released so far are very different from one another, not just in terms of plot and art style, but in the ways they mix narrative and mechanical aspects. What are some of your favourite elements of the books, and how do you think the experience of reading them differs



from the kinds of adventure game books people might be more familiar with? I love that it is a visual experience. Seeing the adventure unfold is so much better to me then reading text alone. And it opens up a wide range of things you can do like hide numbers in the frames, have objects the player can see and pick up if they want, have puzzles and so on. Those are things you just can’t do with text-based game books.



done before, at least not like these books did it. The feedback we have gotten on the books has been great and people are really enjoying the adventures they are having with them.



The first set of books had a very successful Kickstarter campaign. What about them do you think appealed to people so strongly? And what kind of feedback have you had now that they’re in readers’ hands? Well the concept is just enthralling and new, but also familiar. People know what a Choose Your Own Adventure book is, they know of other popular game book lines like Lone Wolf and Sorcery. But the implementation of comic arts to the genre was just not something that had really been



What are your future plans for the Graphic Novel Adventures line? Will you just be releasing English translations of existing titles, or are you looking to publish entirely new books as well? At the time of writing we are actually planning our next Kickstarter for Season 2 of the Graphic Novel Adventures books. We’ll introduce five new titles to our audience. We are certainly committed to the line and although we haven’t produced our own book yet, it is something we are interested in pursuing.



The first Graphic Novel Adventures set contains five English translations of French game books.



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The first five English-language translations of the Graphic Novel Adventures series present a mix of adventure, western, mystery and horror stories. And as well as representing a wide range of genres, they come with an impressively diverse collection of different gameplay elements.



Jerry Hawthorne on Stuffed Fables



Players become a heroic band of toys, sworn to protect a sleeping girl from a villain who stalks her nightmares.



BGB: Stuffed Fables’ plot is a long way from common gaming themes like sci-fi and fantasy. How did you come up with it? Jerry Hawthorne: I wanted to design a cooperative family adventure game which was easy to learn. My original idea came about after watching the Pixar movie Inside Out. I thought the way it dealt with different emotions would be interesting to represent in a game, but I wanted to create an original story. I decided on stuffed animals as the protagonists because they’re easy for anyone to relate to. Each animal in the game reflects a different facet of a little girl’s personality, and each of them is good at dealing with different kinds of situations.



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Designer: Jerry Hawthorne Artists: Kristen Pauline, Regis Demy Category: Storytelling Players: 2 – 4



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NCE upon a time, there was a board game called Mice & Mystics. A family-friendly fantasy title, it cast players as a group of adventurers magically transformed into mice. Over a series of perilous missions, they faced dangers including venomous spiders, ruthless rats and a ravenous, sharp-clawed cat. The game garnered a loyal fan base. Now its designer is back with a spiritual sequel: Stuffed Fables. Where Mice & Mystics revolved around courageous rodents, this latest release sees you and your friends play as animated cuddly toys. It might sound like kids’ stuff, but even cynical grown-ups will find it hard not to fall in love with Lumpy: a nervous plushie elephant armed with a meat tenderiser. You and your fellow playthings will fight to protect a little girl from Crepitus, the Nightmare King – a terrifying villain who haunts the dreams of sleeping children. It brings a dark overtone to the game, and on first inspection it seems as if it might be a little too mature for its target audience. Then there are the rules: not hugely complicated, but too complex for the suggested age of eight plus. But the penny drops when you get to the end of the first adventure and find a moral discussion point for the players. This isn’t a kids’ game, it’s a family game in the literal sense of the phrase: a game best enjoyed between grown-ups and their children. If that limits its appeal, it’s a shame, because Stuffed Fables has some very clever innovations to show off. Its centrepiece is a printed



Time: 20 – 30 minutes Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £64.99 MSRP (US): $69.95 storybook, where each pair of pages represents one scenario in its ongoing campaign. Each features a map – the actual board – on one page and a bunch of text on the other, some to be read aloud to set the scene, the rest describing events that unfold when players trigger them by taking certain in-game actions. It provides colossal variety. So much so that, like a choose your own adventure book, there are several paths through each story. You can play twice and have a totally different experience each time. The game runs on a dice-drafting mechanism, where dice of different colours allow you to attempt different actions. It’s accessible for younger players and offers just enough purchase to retain the interest of more experienced hobbyists. Sometimes, though, the pages throw the players a curveball. The rules change and the dice are used in different ways. It’s impressively creative and injects extra variety, but it also means you’ll have to ingest and explain these rules on the fly. There’s a risk of either getting them wrong, or deflating the atmosphere like a sad balloon as you try to work out exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. Stuffed Fables is a charming game, though, and it should go down a storm among gamers with families. For everyone else, it feels a bit like a semi-successful design experiment crammed with half-brilliant ideas. It’s probably a safe bet that we’ll be seeing a lot of them resurfacing, refined, in future releases.



Pictured above: Stuffed Fables uses a story book as its board, taking players through a series of linked scenarios. Publisher: Plaid Hat Games



There are some quite dark elements in the game. Was it hard to create a sense of threat without making it too scary for younger kids? Yes, it was very difficult. When making a product intended to be shared with kids, you have a certain responsibility. I take that very seriously. But kids also enjoy the thrill and tension that spooky things create. I call the tone of Stuffed Fables “creepy cute”. I think Harry Potter does a good job of getting the balance right. I also remember reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I was a kid, and I found it really exhilarating. Do you think there’s an untapped audience for more family-oriented games? And what are some of the benefits of parents playing games with their kids? Grown-up gamers are the engine that fuels our industry, but I feel there are a lot of



The game’s plastic miniatures look like something from a hit Pixar movie – although some are a little scary for younger children.



I think Harry Potter ‘does a good job of getting the balance right. I also remember reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I was a kid, and I found it really exhilarating.



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gamers with children who are just begging for games designed to bring everybody to the table. Games can teach things like numbers and reading, but story games are unique in that they can teach kids morals as well. The story’s subject and the events that transpire in the game can spark some interesting discussions, and you can learn a lot about people through gaming. I think any age-appropriate game has the ability to forge family bonds. I remember learning to play chess against my dad. My brothers and I played Star Fleet Battles. Later, we got sucked into Dungeons & Dragons. Our family played a lot of canasta, and I still remember the falsely competitive culture we created around that game with trash talk and secret team strategies. We cheated openly and pretended to hide it, and the laughter would have our bellies aching by the end of the night. It’s the gathering of loved ones and friends that make the



Jerry Hawthorne is a professional game designer for Plaid Hat Games. His career in the gaming industry began after he contributed to a fan site for the fantasy battle game Heroscape, eventually leading him to work for the game’s publisher, Hasbro. He is the designer of the family adventure game Mice and Mystics as well as Tail Feathers, a miniature battle game set in a world of anthropomorphic animals.



experience. Games are just the excuse to make that happen. Are there any other games that you think do storytelling well? My favourite games are story-driven. The ones that come to my mind are games like Mansions of Madness, Above and Below, Near and Far, or Legacy of Dragonholt. Having the players control the heroes’ actions and decisions is pretty profound if you think about it. You have to allow for players’ choices to affect the story either profoundly or in small ways. You can deliver a message more thoroughly through direct engagement, or illustrate a point by allowing the players to see the outcomes of their choices, both positive and negative.



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As you play you’ll encounter a succession of new scenarios, dangers and enemies to overcome.



Jason D. Kingsley and Randy Hoyt on Spy Club Jason D. Kingsley is a freelancer graphic designer and lifelong board game enthusiast. His favourite games include Terra Mystica, The Voyages of Marco Polo and Roll for the Galaxy. He lives with his wife and four children near Houston, Texas. Randy Hoyt is the owner of Foxtrot Games, publisher of Lanterns: The Harvest Festival, The Fox in the Forest, Spy Club and others. He lives with his wife and two sons in Dallas, Texas. His all-time most-played games include Pandemic, Coloretto, Yahtzee and Hungry Hungry Hippos.



BGB: Where did the idea for Spy Club come from? Was it inspired by any particular kids’ detective movies or books? Jason D Kingsley: I’ve always loved reading mysteries – I still remember finding old copies of The Hardy Boys on my school’s bookshelves as a kid. And about the time I started working on the game, my son was deep into Encyclopedia Brown and A-Z Mysteries. Scooby Doo, Harriet the Spy, Sherlock Holmes – so many of us have wonderful memories filled with detectives and peril and shady suspects and clues. Early on in the design process, I knew I wanted a rich backdrop with wide appeal, so the decision to explore a mystery theme came really naturally.



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Designers: Randy Hoyt, Jason D. Kingsley Players: 2 - 4 Category: Storytelling Time: 45 minutes



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OMETIMES appearances can be deceptive, and Spy Club is a case in point. A game of schoolyard Sherlocks and pint-sized Poirots, it revolves around a group of kid detectives as they unravel mysteries in their seemingly ordinary neighbourhood. From the art on its box, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for a cutesy children’s co-op about finding someone’s missing lunch money. Try it, though, and you’ll find that it’s a surprisingly tough game with detailed and varied narrative elements. At its core is a simple yet fiendish idea. You’ll work through a series of cases, with each player receiving a hand of colour-coded clue cards representing different aspects of a mystery: things like suspects, locations and motives. You’ll collaborate with your fellow players to crack elements of the case by playing sets of matching cards into a row in the centre of the table. It’s tricky, however. On each of your turns you’ll only be able to take three actions, shifting your focus between different clues, pounding the streets in search of new information and chasing up lines of inquiry as you piece together a string of events. You’ll also be able to confer with your teammates, strategically swapping cards between your hands in an effort to accumulate the ones you need. What really makes things tough is that the clue cards are all double-sided, and most have different colours on each face. At first you’ll have no idea what’s on the reverse side, and while you can flip them over to reveal them, it’ll cost one of your precious actions. It means



The game’s protagonists are all kids, but it’s challenging for grown-ups as well as for younger players. Was it hard getting the difficulty level right for a both audiences?



Randy Hoyt: Getting the difficulty right was definitely a challenge. We got really good at playing the game, which meant we couldn’t objectively measure how hard it was. I was constantly worried that we had made it too easy! But we continually tested it with new players and tuned the numbers so that first-time players would consistently solve three to four aspects of the five required. With the lighter theme, some players expect that Spy Club will be easier than it is. But it was important to us that players could get better the more they played. You leave some of the details of cases up to players to determine. What made you want to take that approach rather than having more defined, linear storylines? JDK: You could say that the storytelling aspect emerged organically. The objective of the game was simple from the start: work together to set aside five matching



Ages: 8+ RRP (UK): £41.99 MSRP (US): $45.00 you’ll need a tack-sharp memory to keep track of hidden colours in your hand as clues emerge and cards pass from one player to another. To top it all off, you’ll also have to deal with a meddling antagonist trying to derail your investigation. The game comes with a token representing your elusive suspect, and on each turn they’ll move around the table doing nefarious things to you and your partners, causing cards to flip or forcing you to discard clues. There are many ways to lose in Spy Club, and the chances are you’ll meet most of them early on. Its simple foundations hide clever mechanical intersections, and while it’s a tough game to beat, it’s addictive and fascinating to try. It also comes with an engaging campaign mode, which introduces a new deck of cards containing a host of different scenes and events, letting you link a series of games together to form an ongoing, evolving narrative. And while it uses an episodic format, it avoids the one-anddone approach of story-driven games like Pandemic Legacy, where completing the game’s scenarios means you won’t be able to go back and start again. With nearly 200 story cards, no two campaigns will be the same, and the game deliberately leaves some details of the plot loosely defined, leaving players to stretch their creative muscles and fill in the blanks. It’s a compelling blend of plot and cooperative challenge, but even if you don’t plan on diving into its Nancy-Drew-style narrative, Spy Club is worth picking up for its great gameplay alone.



Pictured above: Spy Club may feature kid protagonists, but its cooperative challenge is tough enough to appeal to adults. Publisher: Foxtrot Games / Renegade Games



The game uses cards to represent aspects of cases including locations, motives and suspects.



Clue cards are double-sided, forcing players to spend a precious action to see both sides.



The game’s young sleuths follow in the tradition of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.



Spy Club offers the chance to crack individual cases, or to link games together in a multi-session campaign.



cards, and do that for all five colours. After I was satisfied with that basic structure, I tested converting the colours of the main deck into thematic categories: blue cards became crimes, red cards became motives, and so on. But more than that, some blue cards turned into specific crimes like “theft” or “bullying” and certain red cards changed into things like “money” or “revenge.” All of a sudden, I found myself with a game that offered the key features of a story. Each time you solve an aspect, you get one more piece of that story, and the case begins to come into focus. It’s really up to you to decide how much you want to engage with those as story prompts. But from early on, it was exciting to see people’s imaginations turn on, and I think there will always be a special spark when a group creates something that’s uniquely theirs. How did you develop the campaign mode? And why was it important to you to have a level of replayability that isn’t found in “legacy” style campaigns? RH: Our main goal was that people could continue to play the game and introduce it to new players even after they had finished their first campaign. To accomplish this, we designed a campaign system for Spy Club where new rules and story elements could be unlocked in an unscripted, non-linear way and could always be reset. Designing this system was a lot of work, but a ton of fun! We had a team of developers who worked with us closely for months. Each module was its own design project with its own unique story. It was the biggest collaborative game design project I’ve been a part of, and I made some lifelong friends through it.



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The Board Game Book   Chapter 7



Roleplaying Games



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Dragon Heist and calls back to roleplaying’s 1980s heydays when all most players wanted to do was explore death-traps and accumulate bulging sacks of loot. The campaign is almost entirely set in one enormous dungeon. Over the course of several months the adventurers make their way deeper and deeper into the halls of a vast complex known as Undermountain, battling monsters and eventually thwarting the plans of the titular mad mage. Like Dragon Heist, it brings something new to the world of D&D 5E – a genuinely old-school romp that pulls away from long-form storytelling and lets players simply focus on the moment. That isn’t to say that there’s no plot, of course, but rather that it’s easy to get caught up in an encounter with a fire elemental trapped within an ancient dwarven sauna, or a trap that teleports the party into random rooms throughout the dungeon. It remains to be seen whether the mega-dungeon still feels fresh as the months roll by, but even if you decide not to run the entire thing straight through it’s easy enough to rip out individual layers and work them into other campaigns. The final book to land in 2018 was the Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, the very first setting book to take D&D 5E to a new world entirely.



Mordenkainen’s ‘Tome of Foes goes



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OR more than 40 years Dungeons & Dragons has helped to define roleplaying games, and over the decades the game has been released in a succession of new and updated versions. But while players endlessly debate the merits of their favourite editions, its latest incarnation has been an incredible success, both in terms of quality and impact on the public consciousness. One of the reasons for this is publisher Wizards of the Coast’s determination to stick to a philosophy that slow and steady wins the race. Rather than pump out a new product every few weeks, throughout 2018 they released roughly one hardback book every three months, with each one feeling like a significant event to fans. Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes was the first to hit shelves and is probably the most universally useful of the lot. It falls somewhere between bestiary and guidebook, and it hands dungeon masters some devious new toys to drop on an unsuspecting party. Approximately the first half of the book is dedicated to long sections of lore that dive into everything from the pantheon of Gnomish gods to Halfling social structures. While that might sound a bit dry and academic, every page provides a spark of inspiration for a new adventure or non-player character to work into a campaign. The book goes into particularly lavish detail describing the Blood War – an ancient conflict between demons and devils to decide which flavour of evil would claim dominion over the world, and its focus on cosmic forces and titanic stakes sets the tone for the monster stat blocks rounding out the rest of the book. The designers seem to feel that their earlier releases had all the bases covered when it came to more conventional antagonists, so here they’ve let their imaginations run wild. The Tome of Foes is packed to the brim with enemies built for high-level, high-power adventures,



and even the weaker creatures have some weird and wonderful powers to unleash on unsuspecting players. Many, like the Oblex, a memory-eating ooze that produces slimy clones of its victims, are great examples of monsters you could build entire adventures around. Speaking of adventures, the year’s next big release was Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, a campaign which came with promises of danger and excitement within the walls of one of D&D’s most famous cities. It set itself apart from the rest of D&D 5th Edition’s library with its relatively short length and focus on urban adventure. Rather than questing through enchanted forests and forgotten tombs, the party spends its time chasing down leads in disreputable taverns and battling thieves in murky sewers. That may seem like a minor distinction, but it produces a very different feel to the gameplay. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the fact that Waterdeep has an efficient, skilled and surprisingly corruption-free police force that will come down hard on any adventurers that casually beat up suspects and steal from innocent bystanders. The fact that behaving like a murderous idiot can have consequences shouldn’t really be a revelation, but it helps to enforce the feeling that the city itself is a major character in the action. However, while Dragon Heist has some great content to work with there are a few lingering issues that hold it back. The book provides four major villains to choose as main antagonists, and while it’s a neat idea, it does mean that large swathes of the content are of little use unless you run the campaign multiple times. At the same time, certain key plot points rely on the players asking the right questions or looking in the right spots, and if they miss a clue then the DM needs to awkwardly force things back into place. Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage acts as a rough sequel to



Pictured above: Dungeons & Dragons’ fifth edition has a growing selection of sourcebooks and exciting adventure campaigns. Publisher: Wizards of the Coast, Image: Wizards of the Coast



into particularly lavish detail describing the Blood War – an ancient conflict between demons and devils to decide which flavour of evil would claim dominion over the world.



Now in its fifth edition, Dungeons & Dragons has cemented its position as the world’s most popular roleplaying game with a steady stream of new content for players. Image: Wizards of the Coast



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Or, to be more accurate, a new plane entirely, as while Ravnica may be new ground for D&D, it’s been a core feature of the Magic: The Gathering cosmology for decades. It’s a world stuffed to the gills with weird magic, where a single sprawling city covers the entire planet and 10 powerful guilds battle for control. Interestingly, it’s also a world where a lot of the expectations for D&D don’t quite fit in. You’re unlikely to be able to use your dwarven cleric in Ravnica, for example, because dwarves don’t exist there. Nor do gnomes, halflings or several other races common to most settings. In their place, players are given a raft of new options that range from the blue-skinned vedalken to the elephantine loxodon. It means that playing on Ravnica feels very different from most campaigns. The guilds make their presence known at every moment, and while this can sometimes make it hard to work out a reason why two characters from opposing factions can be in the same party, the book has plenty of suggestions for smoothing over the cracks. It’s a fascinating crossover product that provides a great excuse for D&D players to investigate Magic, or vice versa, and even if that seems to be a pretty obvious marketing decision, it’s hard to argue with success.



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Recent D&D releases have offered gritty urban adventures, horrendous new monsters and a crossover with iconic card game Magic: The Gathering. Image: Wizards of the Coast



Mike Mearls – Creative Franchise Director, Wizards of the Coast – on Dungeons and Dragons BGB: For folks who are familiar with previous versions of Dungeons & Dragons, what are some of the big changes they might notice coming to the 5th edition? Mike Mearls: With 5th Edition, we wanted to focus on two design goals. To start with, we felt like there was a lot of untapped interest in tabletop roleplaying. Board games with RPG elements have done well, and RPGs have been a strong genre in video gaming. With that in mind, we wanted to work on a game that was easier to learn and easier to manage at the table. We tried to prune the rules back as much as possible. At the same time, we wanted to preserve the cultural elements of D&D that make it unique. 5th Edition had to be a game that long-time D&D players recognised – otherwise, what’s the point in calling it D&D? For someone coming from an earlier edition, what we want you to see is the worlds, monsters and adventures you remember, with rules that avoid the tables of modifiers and fiddly corner cases that could bring the game to a halt.



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items, and battling monsters might lose some appeal for veterans, but they do a lot to keep new players engaged. That familiarity also allows us to focus on marketing our new stories to players. We don’t have to worry about explaining what D&D is to them. We can instead pitch people on the idea of venturing into an undead haunted jungle, exploring a gothic castle ruled by a cruel vampire, and so on. Having strong stories helps connect with new players on a more intuitive level.



There’s recently been an explosion of people producing online D&D content including podcasts and video series. How does that open up new audiences for the game? And The latest edition of D&D aims to balance streamlined and accessible rules with the feel and flavour that is this kind of online long-time fans have come to expect. Image: Wizards of the Coast. content shaping its development? It’s been fantastic for introducing new players. Tabletop RPGs are difficult to explain, but easy to teach. By that I mean it’s very hard to D&D means a lot to its players. Is it difficult to balance describe how to play, but if I can get someone to sit down and play, the need to bring new ideas to the game with meeting the the game is easy to grasp. Streams and podcasts help bridge that gap expectations of long-time fans? by showing how to play, rather than telling. It’s definitely a struggle. A lot of fans coming back to the game have More importantly, online content serves as a great model for how fond memories of the multitude of monsters, comprehensive books to be a great Dungeon Master. It’s fantastic to see enthusiastic, detailing D&D worlds, and long lists of options for characters. engaged DMs demonstrating how to run the game. It helps DMs Those are great for long-time players, but can drive away new ones. sharpen their skills and understand how to manage a game at the At the same time, that gives us a long list of classic content that table. players want to see return. In terms of development, it shapes it in that it reinforces the idea We handle this in part by taking a long-term view of the game. that we need to continue to focus on storytelling and adventures to In my mind, the first five years of the new edition are all about rekeep D&D approachable. It’s much easier to experience and enjoy a establishing the foundation of D&D’s lore and story. As we move campaign or adventure via streaming than, say, a new character class forward, we can start to open up the throttle and add more new or spell. We still want to do that new content, but we understand that elements to the game. it caters to existing fans rather than new ones. That said, when possible we sneak new concepts into the game. It’s exciting to see classic games like RuneQuest come back with Players and DMs have always produced their own content fresh new editions, while games like Bluebeard’s Bride push the for D&D, either to use in their own games or to share with envelope in design and presentation. We can’t just simply copy other players. But over the years, Wizards of the Coast has what they do, but we definitely pay attention and draw inspiration in really embraced that effort and given them opportunities presenting more options to the game. to build on what the game provides through things like the Open Game Licence and the DM’s Guild. What’s the benefit There are countless roleplaying games on the market to you as a publisher of having people producing this kind nowadays. Why do you think D&D has remained most of material, and are there any pieces of fan-produced popular? content you’ve been particularly impressed by? I think D&D has an advantage in that so many video games Probably the two biggest benefits for D&D are the sense of play with the tropes and concepts it developed decades ago. That community and collaboration, along with an increased mastery of gives D&D some foundational language that new players already the skills needed to create content that these programmes create. understand. I also think that elements like levels, finding magic D&D is very much a platform for creators, and it’s a key element



that makes tabletop RPGs distinct from video games. On a personal level, it means there’s content out there that I can buy and enjoy. I like being surprised and keeping my sense that I’m also a fan of the game. I love seeing games like Esper Genesis transform the 5th Edition rules to support science fiction, or the expansions to



We wanted to ‘work on a game that was easier to learn and easier to manage at the table. We tried to prune the rules back as much as possible.



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D&D releases like Encounters in Sharn. I love that when Keith Baker launched his 5th Edition take on Eberron, we have a community of creators who have already unleashed plenty of adventures and rules expansion to support it. It’s interesting to see the worlds of D&D and Magic: The Gathering coming together. Why did you want to give players the option of “crossing the streams?” And what were some of the challenges of representing Magic’s multiverse under D&D’s rules? I have to admit that I have a personal interest in bringing D&D and Magic together. I was a rabid Magic player until working on D&D fulltime meant I no longer had time to play as much Magic as I wanted. RPGs are fantastic tools for exploring worlds, and Magic has a host of exciting settings. Presenting Ravnica for RPG play was an easy decision. It really came down to finally being in a position where the D&D and Magic teams could collaborate on world building. It was important that we had Magic writers involved in the process to make sure we were true to the world of Magic. The biggest challenge lies in deciding where to draw the line between D&D and Magic mechanics. We decided to treat this as a D&D conversion of an established setting. Rather than invent a new magic system, we found ways to represent the universe of Magic within the core D&D rules. That’s the biggest challenge, and I’d like to find more ways to bring the distinct flavour of Magic’s colours to tabletop RPG play. D&D offers players the ability to go anywhere and do anything in its universe of monsters and magic. But sometimes things just seem to end up in a bar fight. Image: Wizards of the Coast.



Dungeons & Dragons’ fifth edition puts its promise of peril and adventure front and centre, with exciting fantasy illustrations on the covers of its core rulebooks and supplements. Image: Wizards of the Coast.



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tive, providing ways for rogues to steal dreams and let fighters channel shadows into their weapons. Perhaps the biggest issue with the rest of Planar Adventures is that an awful lot of the themes it brings up have already been touched on in earlier books. The lore is solid, and the art is particularly impressive, but all the mighty angels and raw planar powers it talks about come with little notes directing readers to look for stats elsewhere, leaving the bestiary section feeling anaemic. Both of the other 2018 releases came in the form of adventure paths – long-form campaigns broken down into a half-dozen smaller volumes. The first was War for the Crown, whose focus on political machinations and intrigue over straightforward dungeon-delving made it a great way for experienced groups to bring something fresh to the table. The campaign revolves around the battle for control of



Among the most notable ‘recent releases for the game is Planar Adventures, a blend of rules and story ideas for parties looking to roam beyond the confines of the usual humdrum reality and into planes of existence inhabited by fey gods and elemental titans.



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HE story of fantasy adventure game Pathfinder is inextricably linked to the venerable grandfather of the roleplaying hobby, Dungeons & Dragons. When D&D’s publishers revealed plans to move on from the game’s 3.5 ruleset some fans complained that its new direction departed too radically from the experience they knew and loved. The reaction prompted independent publisher Paizo, previously a producer of D&D-compatible adventures and expansion modules, to step into the breach, developing their own game based on the tried-and-tested systems that Dungeons & Dragons had left behind. That game was Pathfinder. Released in 2008, it deposited players in its own world of peril and excitement. Along the way it expanded on some aspects of D&D’s blueprint and streamlined others, and its creators guided its development with a massive public playtesting programme, analysing feedback from tens of thousands of players. The result was a resounding success, and for a while, Pathfinder even outsold Dungeons & Dragons in game stores. Where D&D aimed to create a more accessible experience by stripping away some of its complexity, the new upstart revelled in it, lavishing fans with detailed game mechanisms,



The Return of the Runelords campaign emphasises pulpfantasy stylings and heroic adventure, putting a dramatic end cap on Pathfinder’s first edition. Image: Paizo Inc.



sourcebooks packed with character creation options, and long-running adventures that combined to form epic fantasy campaigns. The game has thrived ever since, and in 2018 its publisher announced that a second edition was in the works. But while this big development hovers over its future, the



Pathfinder comes with all the trappings of classic fantasy roleplaying, with players portraying humans, elves, halflings, warriors, wizards and bards in the course of their adventures.



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swashbuckling RPG hasn’t let up on its commitment to a steady stream of new content for its current incarnation, and its publisher seems determined to see the first edition off with a bang. Among the most notable recent releases for the game is Planar Adventures, a blend of rules and story ideas for parties looking to roam beyond the confines of the usual humdrum reality and into planes of existence inhabited by fey gods and elemental titans. Like most other Pathfinder sourcebooks it has a little bit of something for everybody. Players receive a handful of new thematic class options, such as a wonderful rogue archetype based around stealing characters’ thoughts and emotions, as well as a lengthy list of spells and magic items. Meanwhile, GMs are treated to a huge pile of lore to build campaigns around and a selection of new monsters, with highlights including a Leviathan that can swim between dimensions, and the mind-breaking Moon Hag, which skulks in tombs and drives victims insane with dire curses and doom-laden prophecies. Strangely, for a book that seems aimed at setting up campaigns, the player-focussed side is probably the most solid. The new class options aren’t going to break games wide open, but they are wonderfully crea-



Pictured above: Pathfinder’s first edition may be coming to the end of its life cycle, but its publisher is seeing it off in style. Publisher Paizo Inc.



the oppressively bureaucratic Taldor Empire, with the adventurers joining the fray as supporters of a comparatively liberal princess. It’s well-constructed and provides a refreshing break from the typical Pathfinder experience of dungeon-crawling and monster-slaying, but managing the many NPCs running about the place, keeping track of shifting allegiances and ensuring that the party are heading in roughly the right direction can put a lot of pressure on even the most experienced of GMs. The final adventure path of the year, and quite possibly of the entire edition, is Return of the Runelords. Where War for the Crown stood out by shifting expectations of what a Pathfinder campaign can be, this final flourish of an adventure instead feels as though it was designed to double down on the high-stakes heroics. It’s a tale of nighon immortal wizards returning from the void with plans to conquer the world, where destiny thrusts the party into the limelight and the fate of reality itself hangs in the balance – classic pulp-fantasy fodder all round, but executed with boundless enthusiasm. It builds towards a spectacular finale that sucks in more than a decade of Pathfinder lore, touching on Lovecraftian horrors and mighty heroes. In the process it also introduces adventurers to the dangers that come with time travel. Newer players could easily feel put off by the nods and winks to earlier adventures, but that doesn’t stop Return of the Runelords from being a sprawling epic that wraps up the first edition with an appropriately outsized arcane explosion. It’s going to be fascinating to see where the game goes from here, both in terms of the next version’s updated mechanical core, and the tales it continues to weave for its dedicated community of players.



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Above: Planar Adventures comes with rules and setting details allowing players to explore perilous parallel dimensions, and it introduces some terrifying new enemies to confront. Image: Paizo Inc. Right: The War for the Crown adventure path enveloped players in political intrigue in the kingdom of Taldor. Image: Paizo Inc.



Tomas Härenstam – Free League Publishing – on Forbidden Lands BGB: Forbidden Lands has a real open-ended sense of possibility, with players given a lot of freedom to explore. Why was this element of discovery important to you? Tomas Härenstam: This type of play goes back to how I used to play RPGs way back in the 80s – free roaming across the land, without a predetermined script. In Forbidden Lands we wanted to build a game with modern game mechanics that actively supports that type of gameplay while still providing a rich world and history to discover.



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O play your first session of Forbidden Lands is to realise the terrible joys of freedom. A dark and adventurous homage to classic fantasy roleplaying, it hands you a suit of dented armour and a rusted sword and drops you into a perilous world where the shining cities are abandoned, the wise kings are long dead and the only path to greatness is the one you forge yourself. The titular Forbidden Lands form a realm only recently freed from a demonic fog that killed anyone caught outside their homes after nightfall. With the Blood Mist gone, adventurers are finally free to explore long-abandoned castles, haunted villages and wonders lost to history. It’s a bleak and desolate environment, but it also comes with a tremendous sense of possibility. Where other RPGs often focus on structured campaigns and linear story arcs, here the main goal is for characters to grow and develop, improving everything from their skills and abilities to the prestige of their stronghold. It means that there’s no single clear path for your characters’ story to progress along, and while that might seem disconcerting to anyone accustomed to more concretely defined narratives, the combination of a mysterious setting and free reign to explore as you please is positively exhilarating. Forbidden Lands is a game suited to long-form campaigning, and one that manages to capture the feel of an old-school dungeon-crawling RPG. But it does it all in a way that feels like a retro tribute rather than a full-blown throwback. The rules are chunky but not obtuse, combining the flavour of 80s roleplaying with a distinctly modern eye for elegance, and while there are plenty of other games that revel



in traditional sword-and-sorcery adventure, this take on the concept presents a smoother learning curve than almost any of them. Much of this is down to its core rules, which are the same as those used in publisher Free League’s prior games including Tales from the Loop and Mutant: Year Zero. They’re simple to understand, with stats and skills feeding into a pool of dice for the players to roll. More successes mean better results for the task at hand, whether that means slashing at a reanimated skeleton or prising out a priceless jewel lodged in its eye socket. There are a few quirks to the system that make it stand out, though. The biggest of these is the resource adventurers use to fuel their magic spells and special abilities – willpower. The most practical way to generate some is for characters to push themselves to the limit by re-rolling failed checks throughout the course of an adventure, which damages them physically and mentally, but boosts their inner resolve. It’s a strange approach, and one that can sometimes lead to nonsensical situations where sorcerers smash themselves headlong into every minor task in a bid to recharge their powers in relative safety. However, once you get a couple of sessions under your belt it works surprisingly well, creating a tension between the desire to push characters and use flashy powers and the need to stay safe in a world where death is an everyday occurrence. Forbidden Lands is a fascinating game. It’s tone is dark and brooding, but its dungeon-crawling and loot-snagging are an endlessly fun evolution of some of roleplaying’s deepest-rooted fantasy foundations.



Pictured above: Forbidden Lands sees players explore a dangerous landscape only recently freed from a deadly supernatural menace. Publisher: Free League



Where did the idea for the game’s setting come from? Did you find inspiration in any books, movies or other sources? We discussed this game for a long time before we actually started the design work. We knew we wanted a gritty low fantasy setting, but with a twist toward sword and sorcery and retro feel. The major inspiration was Nils Gulliksson’s classic Swedish RPG art from the 1980s, which we also use in the game along with new art. Another inspiration was [British fantasy author] Joe Abercrombie’s books. Also, the need to set boundaries for the sandbox environment led very naturally to the idea of a cursed, isolated land, ruled by a demon king. From these basic ideas, our setting writer Erik Granström, an acclaimed Swedish fantasy author, developed a rich setting with a really unique twist to the classic Tolkienesque races and creatures.



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We discussed this game for a long time before we actually started the design work. We knew we wanted a gritty low fantasy setting, but with a twist toward sword and sorcery and retro feel. The major inspiration was Nils Gulliksson’s classic Swedish RPG art from the 1980s.



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Many games try to evoke the feeling of classic dungeon-crawling RPGs. Why do you think the core idea of a party of adventurers battling monsters and accumulating treasure still appeals so strongly to players after so many years? I think the combination of a low-tech setting combined with the fantastical elements works really well in a game context, keeping the world approachable but still magical and inspiring. But I’m sure it would be possible to write entire theses on this!



The character creation process includes coming up with dark personal secrets and building a web of relationships with other members of the party. How do you think that affects the game’s atmosphere? We think that creating personal and memorable characters will increase the feeling of risk and tension at the table. If you really care about your character and the other PCs, any situation where their life is on the line will be much more exciting. At the same time, we want character creation to be quite fast, as characters will die and it needs to be quick and easy to create new characters to join the story. One of the most interesting elements of Forbidden Lands is the ability for the players to build and maintain their own stronghold. How did you develop that idea, and what do you think it adds to the game? It’s our solution to the age-old problem of player characters becoming very rich, and thus in effect having no good reason to actually continue adventuring. In Forbidden Lands, the characters can spend their gold on building and developing a place to call home. Of course, such a stronghold will attract attention, and new adventures will come knocking on the characters’ doors. Can you tell us anything about future plans for the game? What can players look forward to on their adventures? We’re planning a range of expansions for Forbidden Lands. Several smaller ones, but also major expansions that will add a completely new map to explore. The first of these will expand the game setting to the north, a frozen land with fallen kingdoms hidden under the ice.



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The game features black and white illustrations by artist Nils Gullikson, capturing the stark, oldschool aesthetic of 1980s RPGs.



Forbidden Lands combines deep reverence for classic roleplaying games with a strong element of modern story-first sensibility.



Alex Roberts on Star Crossed Alex Roberts is a game designer best known for her interview podcast Backstory on the One Shot Network. Star Crossed is her first solo project, and she has contributed to games such as Dialect, Misspent Youth: Sell Out With Me, and the #Feminism nanogame collection. As well as her own design work, she freelances for companies like Pelgrane Press and Bully Pulpit Games, and helps organise live-action and tabletop gaming events. She’d love to hear from you at helloalexroberts.com



BGB: Most mainstream roleplaying games don’t really deal with themes of romance and attraction. What made you want to explore them in Star Crossed? Alex Roberts: What’s funny is that people always want romantic themes in their roleplaying games; they just aren’t always mechanically supported. I know so many people who’ve had grand romances played out in systems where the only rules are for combat! You could make chess a love story if you really wanted to. But why not make a game specifically engineered to invite and reward that kind of play, where the only moving parts correspond to attraction, desire, and hesitation?



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N the crowded RPG market it’s easy to misuse the word “unique.” But Star Crossed, a two-player game of doomed romance, is one of the few recent releases that truly deserves the description. It eschews typical roleplaying themes of action and adventure in favour of intensely personal love stories, and it ditches dice in favour of a pile of Jenga-style wooden blocks. The result is something truly beautiful. The game drops players into the shoes (or claws, or tentacles) of a pair of characters that can take any form imaginable, with the only restriction being that they need to be powerfully attracted to each other, but, for whatever reason, unable act on their feelings. They might be soldiers on opposite sides of a civil war, a blasphemous heavy metal musician and a deeply conservative televangelist, or a high-born noblewoman in love with a servant, separated by rigid walls of class and privilege. Over the course of a game, they’re drawn together by fate and by choice, with steadily increasing attraction and risky moments of intimacy pushing the story forward. It might sound like a pure storytelling exercise, but Star Crossed incorporates some compelling mechanical elements which add to its powerful sense of mounting tension. Between the players stands a tower of wooden bricks, and as their characters reveal intimate stories, accidentally brush hands and generally engage in classic romantic tropes, they remove blocks from the pile and stack them on top. When the tower falls, the barriers come down and the characters act on their feelings, regardless of the consequences. But if it manages to stay upright through the entire game, they choose to never reveal their emotions. The more blocks you manage to pull before an eventual



collapse, the more positive the outcome of your story will be. This single piece of mechanical gameplay is incredibly effective at creating great romances, simply by recognising that most love stories are only really entertaining until the point where the leads get together. On top of this, the sight of the wobbling wooden tower builds real-world tension in a way that wonderfully mirrors that within the game. Every time you touch it, you feel that you’re handling something delicate and fragile, and it becomes ever-more precarious as the narrative stakes get higher. Perhaps the greatest thing about Star Crossed, though, is just how incredibly flexible it can be. The rules can fit almost any situation imaginable, so the pairings can be as bizarre or as mundane as you want. One session may chart out the dangerous entanglement of a sentient slice of bread and an AI-powered toaster, while the next takes things to the stuffy cubicles of an accountancy firm where passion threatens to cross social and cultural boundaries. It’s worth recognising that while Star Crossed is unabashedly romantic, it does usually require a few boundaries. It can conjure up some very strong emotions, and its rulebook makes it very clear that nobody should end up feeling uncomfortable while they play. But while this level of immersion and intensity can take some tact and sensitivity to navigate, it’s also the beating heart of Star Crossed’s appeal. It makes it incredibly easy to become completely emotionally invested in your character, and in your partner’s, and if you have any interest in narrative roleplaying, you’ll have a hard time finding anything that compares.



Pictured above: Star Crossed is an intense and intimate two-player roleplaying game of romance and passion. Image: Bully Pulpit



The tower of blocks mechanism has previously been used in the horror game Dread. Why did you think it was a good fit for a game with such a different theme? I wanted to make Star Crossed immediately after my first session of Dread, though the idea wouldn’t take shape for years. For me, the themes are hardly different at all: the excitement of horror and the excitement of romance are both essentially a mixture of wanting and not-wanting. When you’re watching a monster movie, you’re scared for the monster to come out – but wouldn’t you be disappointed if it never did? And romance would hardly be exciting if there



was nothing keeping the characters apart. The tower directly supports that ambivalent desire; you want it to fall, but always: not yet!



excitement ‘ofThehorror and the excitement of romance are both essentially a mixture of wanting and not-wanting.



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There’s a huge degree of flexibility in the characters people can portray. What are some of the most interesting pairings you’ve seen players come up with? My all-time favourite must be the alien brain parasite who infected a human. Consensually, of course. She was a scout from her home world, one of many trying to find a new species for her people to bond with, as their traditional host species was dying of a plague. She was just supposed to be on a short fact-finding mission, and when they fell in love it was such a beautiful, baffling surprise to both of them.



The game makes a point of acknowledging that things can get quite emotional during play and that players should be able to back away from anything that makes them uncomfortable. How important do you think that is in roleplaying generally? It’s the first, most inarguable rule. I’m proud to include a consensual design philosophy in my games, because it reflects my values. At the same time, it’s interesting that only when we talk about love and intimacy does this question of “comfort” come up. For example, I’m deeply uncomfortable with graphic descriptions of violence. That counts me out of many, many tabletop roleplaying games. Systems built around urban or medieval fantasy, heroic adventuring, noir crime stories – these rarely give players tools to adapt and modify content to suit their comfort. I think we should be looking out for each other whether we’re playing out a steamy liaison or a random combat encounter. Are you working on anything else at the moment that you’d like to tell readers about? I have a game coming out soon called For the Queen, also about love but in a very different way. You play the retinue of a Queen who has set off on a mysterious journey, supposedly to broker an alliance with a distant power. The whole thing is played via a deck of cards, each of which has a single question on it. Everyone sits in a circle and answers questions in turn, which fleshes out the world, the purpose of the journey, and why each character is there. The Queen is a complicated figure, and it’s interesting to see how different players react to someone their character deeply loves as her flaws and trespasses are slowly revealed.



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Star Crossed pairs up characters who are strongly attracted to one another, but have a compelling reason why they shouldn’t act on their emotions. Image: Bully Pulpit



The game gives players tremendous creative freedom, leading to some inventive characters and situations. Image: Bully Pulpit



Nathan Dowdell, lead designer, on Star Trek Adventures BGB: Star Trek has been explored pretty extensively in the roleplaying hobby over several decades. What do you think sets Star Trek Adventures apart from previous licensed games? Nathan Dowdell: The main difference is how we’ve chosen to approach the franchise. The previous games emphasised a degree of “simulation” in how they presented the universe of Star Trek and the characters within: lots of technical detail, lots of specifics, and so forth. Star Trek Adventures diverges from that by approaching Star Trek as stories, with a cast of characters aboard a distinctive and iconic ship, tales of overcoming adversity through courage, ingenuity, compassion, and teamwork, and so forth. Star Trek Adventures is intended specifically to allow people to recreate the style of the Star Trek they’ve seen on TV for decades, with rules that are more about creating Star Trek stories than they are about living the day-today life of a person in that universe.



Star Trek Adventures T 226



ABLETOP roleplaying and Star Trek are both cornerstones of geek culture, so it’s only appropriate that over the decades the adventures of Starfleet have been chronicled not just on television screens, but through a succession of roleplaying games that have allowed players to immerse themselves in the series’ volatile universe. The first Star Trek RPG was released in 1978, and since then a host of games have offered their own distinct takes on the iconic franchise. Star Trek Adventures, from British publisher Modiphius, is the latest, and it goes to some extraordinary lengths to capture the feel and flavour of the final frontier. Its writing team includes authors of official Star Trek novels. Its ship layouts have been lovingly recreated with the help of the series’ technical consultants. Its artwork is full of sleek starships and alien adversaries. Even its typography is designed to look like the command interface on the bridge of the USS Enterprise. Since its release in 2017, Modiphius has put out three substantial sourcebooks for Star Trek Adventures that flesh out the game’s setting without feeling like they’ve even scratched the surface of its source material. The first is the Command Division Sourcebook, which spends a few hundred pages dealing with the Starfleet officers tasked with dispensing orders from their comfy swivel-chairs. Where many RPGs would use a book aimed at a particular character class or role as a chance to pump out new player options and shiny gear, the supplement spends most of its time providing GMs with tools to build storylines around ships’ captains and other leaders. These range from guidelines for running a court martial to rules for playing out sweeping fleet battles with the players in command. The Operations Division Sourcebook, released a few months later,



shifts the focus onto the crew members most likely to get their hands dirty – engineering and security. The engineering side of the book is packed with ideas for replicating the weird and wonderful problems that seem to strike on every episode of the TV series, with a chart for generating show-appropriate technobabble, as well as a chapter filled with new gear and equipment. When it gets to security personnel, though, things take a turn for the unexpected. As well as conventional military forces, the book covers characters drawn from Starfleet’s black-ops division. It provides plenty of ideas that could easily be used to create espionage-packed adventures that feel very different from the conventional planet-of-the-week approach. Where these two divisional sourcebooks focus on just a handful of roles in a single organisation, the Beta Quadrant Sourcebook instead tries to take in a quarter of the entire galaxy. Again, rather than trying to dump a whole load of rules or creatures into the game, the bulk of the book is devoted to explaining the history and politics of the Beta Quadrant – a vast slice of space that’s home to many of Star Trek’s best-known races including the warlike Klingons, stoic Vulcans and devious Romulans. On top of this history lesson the biggest draw is probably a long list of new species to play as, though once you get past the Klingons most of the aliens on offer are a little obscure. Similarly, the section on new ships is a little thin, as most of the cultures scattered throughout the region already received heavy coverage in the core rulebook. It’s a well-written slab of lore, though, and while you probably won’t break it out at the table every week, you may well find yourself dipping into it once game night is over, losing yourself in the galaxy of adventures it inspires.



Pictured above: Star Trek Adventures gives players the chance to step into the iconic science fiction series’ galaxy of wonder and danger. Publisher: Modiphius, Image: Modiphius



We brought ‘aboard people with



Where previous Star Trek games have often focused on replicating the series’ ships, weapons and technology, Star Trek Adventures’ lead designer says it emphasises drama and compelling storytelling. Image: Modiphius



a deep knowledge of, and passion for, the shows and movies ...



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You’ve released sourcebooks that expand on some of the player roles in the game in detail. What were some of the aspects of life as part of Starfleet that you were most eager to explore? Personally speaking, it was less about specifics and more about the overall experience. The freely-available resources, the advanced technology, the altruistic motives, the mission of peace, and being in charge of a big powerful starship create a dynamic that isn’t common in many traditional RPGs, and allowing players to delve into that is interesting as a writer and as a gamemaster. There are stories you can tell in a game of Star Trek Adventures that don’t come easily to other games. The sourcebooks let us delve more deeply into the hows, whys, and other helpful details, and give players an extra set of toys and ideas to play with. You’ve involved some people in the creative process who are very close to the original source material, including authors of Star Trek books. What was the process like of trying to ensure that the game was as faithful to the franchise as possible?



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The game’s starter set offers new players everything they need to begin playing, while its core rulebook and supplements offer far more detail on life as a member of Starfleet. Image: Modiphius



Naturally, everything we do needs to be approved by CBS before we can publish, but we don’t just leave it to them to judge whether something is faithful to the franchise or not. We brought aboard people



with a deep knowledge of, and passion for, the shows and movies, who we could trust to want to make something as faithful as possible to the style and spirit of the franchise. In my own case, I’m a long-time



fan of the shows, having grown up with them, and it felt wrong to put anything but my best efforts into the game – and I made it a point to re-watch everything when work began. I imagine the same is true for all of my colleagues and collaborators on the game. And the advantage of working with people who’ve worked on Star Trek before is that they know what the approvals process is like, the kinds of things that CBS care about, what their style guides look like, and all those useful little things, which means we can work in a way that makes approvals as smooth as possible.



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Modiphius has developed a “living campaign” where players’ individual game sessions can affect the outcome of major events in the wider setting. What are some of the ways that groups of players can shape the overarching plot, and what do you think it adds to the overall experience of the game? Obviously, with so many different ways to play through an adventure, we can’t change things based on individual experiences. Instead, we collect results and feedback through surveys and correspondence with players and GMs, and figure out a creative direction for later chapters, which guides our writers when they develop later adventures. As the Living Campaign is episodic by design, one adventure doesn’t necessarily impact the next one, as the heroes’ ship flies off to some new mission. But there’s an underlying thread shaped by that feedback running through the campaign, so characters or details or events will reappear two or three adventures down the line, much as they might do in the shows. As to what it adds to the game, if nothing else, it’s an extra set of adventures to play through or plunder for ideas, written by talented, enthusiastic people, and having more adventures is always a good thing. On top of that, recurring plot lines and an evolving new corner of a familiar and beloved setting is an enticing concept, and there’s nothing quite like being able to influence the things we love. Star Trek has always had some very devoted fans, but recently it’s seen new big-screen adaptations and the launch of the latest TV incarnation, Star Trek: Discovery. Why do you think it continues to appeal to so many people such a long time after it first debuted on television? Star Trek inspired people from all walks of life from the very beginning. It has left an indelible mark on the cultural landscape – even people who don’t know Star Trek know of it, and know some of the surface level details: starships, transporters,



inspired people from all walks of life from ‘theStarveryTrekbeginning. It has left an indelible mark on the cultural landscape. ’



The game is full of species, factions and characters from various incarnations of the Star Trek franchise, letting GMs base games around well-known figures, or ones created by them and their players. Image: Modiphius



communicators, Klingons, Kirk and Spock, and the like. It inspires generations of people in all sorts of fields, and so much of the technology we take for granted today has been shaped by the strange new worlds shown on TV and in movies. The world we live in wouldn’t look the same without Star Trek. But there’s more to it than that, I think. Star Trek speaks to the better part of people. It presents the idea that we can grow past all the troubles and divisions that plague



the world. And, well, we haven’t figured out how to get past those problems yet, so it feels reassuring to grab onto the hope that we still can, and to escape into a universe where compassion and reason have won out over bigotry and ignorance. Star Trek asks us to dream of a better world, and like all good sci-fi, it gives us a lens through which to confront the obstacles we still face, while also being a thrilling adventure and an evocative universe to explore in its own right.



If you like to include miniatures in your games, there’s a dedicated range featuring humans, Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans and other species from the show — including its best-known Starfleet officers. Image: Modiphius



Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay T



HE iconic Warhammer world has always been built on a weird and wonderful blend of outlandish power fantasy and tar-black grit. It’s a setting where lone heroes stand against towering demons, but mighty armies fall in minutes; where princes can be noble beyond reason or cavort with hideous monsters; and where wizards can conjure unimaginably powerful spells, but have a nasty tendency to explode before they can finish them. Somehow, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay manages to capture this mix of mirth and madness, creating an experience that will have players roaring with triumph one moment and shocked into dread silence the next. This is the fourth version of the classic rules set, whose legacy stretches back more than 30 years. Its tone and design stick closely to 2004’s second edition, and though this means that the game comes with a fairly old-school feel, almost everything about it has been tweaked and polished to reflect modern trends for more streamlined adventuring, from pruning its lengthy skill list to cutting complexity from its combat system. What remains unchanged, though, is the game’s core premise. Players step into the gore-spattered boots of a band of heroes battling monsters and madness through the forests and cities of Warhammer’s Old World. And while the idea of some humans, dwarves and elves wandering around slaying monsters and accumulating XP may sound incredibly generic, the game comes with an unmistakably grim, dark, almost nihilistic bent that becomes apparent almost as soon as you start playing. This callous streak is most evident in battle, and every fight you engage in comes with a genuine risk of death or dismemberment. A handful of unlucky dice rolls can leave you staring down the shaft of a loaded crossbow, with only a couple of valuable Fate points –



everything about it ‘has... almost been tweaked and polished to reflect modern trends for more streamlined adventuring.



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handed out as rewards for finishing adventures – to save you from an unwanted facial piercing. At the same time, however, there’s a neat momentum system which rewards clever or courageous heroes with increasingly powerful bonuses as they take the fight to their foes. It means that after a few rounds of success, a warrior can be nigh-on unstoppable, allowing you to exchange witty quips with your comrades as you mow through a room full of hapless goblins, steeling yourself for the truly powerful enemy waiting just beyond. Apart from the rules and systems of the game itself, the twisted dynamics of the Old World can also come into play in dozens of dramatic ways. Any magic swords you come across are likely to be inhabited by an evil intelligence of their own. Spellcasters need to be wary of showing off their powers in case a mob of puritanical zealots decides to burn them alive. And the giant rats you clear out from the village tavern’s beer cellar may well be loaded down with arcane mini-guns. If it all sounds like it might be a complete mess, that’s because it is. But it’s the kind of mess that most Warhammer fans have always dreamed of exploring. Whether it will truly appeal to those who aren’t already fans of this iconic fantasy world is hard to tell, but if you have at least one person on hand to wax lyrical over why the Slayer Cult is so badass, it’s definitely worth trying.



Pictured above: Games Workshop’s iconic Warhammer Fantasy Battle game may be no more, but its world lives on in this grim RPG. Publisher: Cubicle 7



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Spire combines fantasy elements with dystopian science fiction. Its stories unfold in a gigantic city ruled by high elves, where dark elves are a downtrodden underclass. Images: Rowan, Rook & Decard



The politically charged Sigmata casts players as super-powered rebels working to overthrow an oppressive fascist regime in an alternate 1980s America. Images: Land of Nop



Indie RPG Round-Up T 230



Kids on Bikes aims to capture Steven Spielberg-style science fiction stories with child protagonists. Image: Renegade Game Studios / Hunters Books



HE smaller side of the roleplaying game industry is in the middle of a creative boom, with dozens of indie titles being released both as physical books and as digital downloads. With so many interesting and innovative games to choose from, it would be impossible to cover them all, so we’ve picked out three of the best. l The first is Kids on Bikes, which taps into the rich vein of Steven Spielberg-style stories about weird happenings in small towns, where the only people who seem to recognise the dangers are a bunch of, well, kids on bikes. Depending on how things play out the tone can shift from light-hearted fun to chilling horror, but that largely depends on the players’ in-game choices. The entire game shies away from the traditional GM-as-storyteller arrangement and places emphasis on every person at the table contributing to the world and the gameplay. It’s a slim volume that clocks in at just over 70 pages, but there are a lot of possibilities packed into its slen-



der frame. The lack of an index or even contents page is a little irritating, though, especially as some of the rules aren’t particularly clear on your first read-through. l Where Kids on Bikes is about looking at our own world with a supernatural twist, Spire explores the mundane cruelties of reality by launching itself unashamedly into the fantastical. It throws players into a magical metropolis where capricious high elves rule; downtrodden dark elves toil in the shadows; and where weird technology and even weirder gods rub shoulders amidst chattering markets and glittering casinos. Naturally, players take on the role of revolutionaries fighting back against the establishment. Over the course of a campaign the party may take down officials, distribute arms to the poor and uncover dark secrets, but there’s always a grim undercurrent running through any narrative. You and your band are heroes, yes, but you’re also criminals and terrorists, and just one word from a friend or family member could condemn you all to the gallows.



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Beyond the narrative design and beautiful art, Spire also sets itself apart through its ambition. It’s not a game that’s content with hand-waving away the difference between different pieces of kit and curating a limited list of abilities – it’s stuffed with character options and gear, and the result is mechanically deep as well as thematically rich. l Continuing what seems to be a theme of political subversion and retro aesthetics is Sigmata: This Signal Kills Fascists. If the



name wasn’t enough of a hint, it’s a nakedly political creation set in a twisted mirror image of a 1980s USA dominated by fascism, where super-powered freedom fighters battle against state-sponsored tyranny. It’s an impressive, if somewhat bleak, bit of storytelling, but Sigmata is also pretty ambitious when it comes to its ruleset. Conflicts, whether they involve evading a police patrol or emptying magazines of ammo at stormtroopers, play out in a narrative-first



approach with comparatively little dice-rolling, while choices made throughout a campaign have knock-on effects on who supports and bankrolls the revolution. If all you want from your game nights is escapist fun, you’ll probably be confining Sigmata to an eternal spot on your bookshelf. But if you do drag it down to the tabletop and get a game going, it offers up a blend of politics, roleplaying and retro 80s cool that you simply won’t find anywhere else.



The Board Game Book   Chapter 8



Miniature Wargames



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UK-based publisher Games Workshop produces exquisitely detailed plastic miniatures for fans to assemble, paint and command on the battlefield. Some of their most impressive recent releases include imposing war machines that tower above players’ infantry troops. Image: Games Workshop



Warhammer 40,000 I



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F there’s any single hallmark of the iconic far-future battle game Warhammer 40,000, it’s its sheer spectacle. Huge, hulking robots tower over rubble-strewn battlefields. Genetically-engineered demigods command squads of armoured super-soldiers. Warriors in mechanised battle suits leap over immaculately sculpted buildings. It’s a cinematic visual feast, with anything from a few dozen to over 100 painstakingly painted models spread across a tabletop battleground. The game transports players to a universe full of hostile alien races, handing them command of legions of miniature plastic troops. There are the Space Marines, humanity’s ultimate elite forces, driven by a blend of superstition, mysticism, and dogma. There’s the technologically advanced Tau empire, which pounds enemies into submission with cataclysmic long-ranged attacks. There are the enigmatic Eldar: sophisticated warriors who outmanoeuvre foes with lightning speed; the savage Orks: green-skinned marauders who pillage everything in their path; the hideous Tyranids: an implacable alien menace spreading like a plague between worlds; the Necrons: a race of undying machines consumed by hatred for all life. And then there are the forces of Chaos – warped beings sworn to the service of a pantheon of malevolent gods. It’s an unremittingly dark setting, and each of the factions that inhabit it comes with its own signature style of gameplay. 40K strives to marry the storyline feel and character of its warring races with its mechanical game design, and the result is that leading your troops feels truly immersive, with different factions demanding very different qualities from their players. Depending on the troops under your control, you might need to prioritise aggression, evasion, defensiveness or unpredictability, and your choice of army can have as much to do with your own personality as any in-game considerations.



It’s a potent and compelling combination of strategic challenge and grim sci-fi storytelling, and with the game now on its eighth edition, it’s seen some major changes in the three decades since it was first released, evolving steadily towards elegance and accessibility. As in previous editions, each of your turns is broken up into different phases where you’ll manoeuvre your troops, fire on your enemies and close in to engage in hand-to-hand combat. But where in the past the game required players to consult complex tables of figures and statistics, these days it reduces most of its actions to a series of straightforward dice rolls. And where older versions of the game used collections of plastic templates to represent the effects of different weapons, such as the blast area of a grenade or the teardrop-shaped jet of a flamethrower, nowadays these kinds of attacks are also handled using dice, eliminating the need for piles of add-ons and accessories to clutter up your table. It substantially reduces the amount of bookkeeping and mental overhead involved in the game, letting players focus on the drama and carnage unfolding on the table. And once a battle gets underway, it’s easy to get caught up in the chaos. Part of this appeal comes from the selection of different missions available to play. Before the action begins, you and your opponent will choose from a collection of scenarios that dictate how you deploy your armies and what you’re trying to achieve in the course of the game. Some are simple meatgrinders, where you’ll aim to kill as many opposing troops as you can. But others introduce more narrative elements, challenging players to complete different objectives or to seize and hold locations on the battlefield. On top of this, there’s 40K’s turn structure, which sees one player moving and attacking with all of the troops under their control before handing their opponent the opportunity to activate theirs. It means



Pictured above: Warhammer 40,000 has seen numerous editions over the decades, but its grim, war-torn universe remains a constant. Publisher: Games Workshop, Image: Games Workshop



that you’ll see-saw between two very different sensations. As the active player you’ll rain destruction on your enemies, feeling like an angry war god. But when your opponent gets a chance to strike back, you become passive, watching as their forces roll towards you like an oncoming train. Your own turns become a succession of emotional highs. Your opponents’ become nail-bitingly tense as you watch your units take casualties, while scheming about the counterattack you’ll unleash in the following round. This “I-go-you-go” approach has been a part of 40K for decades, and when it works at its best it turns games into thrilling rollercoaster rides of triumph and disaster. But it does come with one big downside; it leaves you without much to do when it isn’t your turn. The eighth edition takes steps to remedy this, particularly when the fighting gets up-close and personal. Charge into hand-to-hand combat, and your troops will get the opportunity to strike first, cutting down enemies before they can defend themselves. But when close-quarters fighting stretches over multiple turns, you and your opponents will alternate choosing units to activate, adding a dash of tactical decision-making even when you aren’t the active player. It all adds up to the slickest, most exciting, easiest-to-learn version of Warhammer 40,000 to date. But polished as its gameplay is, it’s only one half of what makes it such an appealing proposition to its hordes of players. The game’s UK-based publisher, Games Workshop, produces the world’s most beautiful tabletop miniatures. They’re stunning small-scale sculptures full of character and crisp detail, and the process of collecting and painting them takes time, skill and patience. The consequence, though, is that it’s not a cheap game to get into. A starter set containing the core rulebook and enough troops to fight small-scale skirmishes will set you back £95, or US$160. By the time you’ve built your own collection of troops, vehicles and commanders, it’s enough to leave a sizable hole in your savings. But that hasn’t stopped the game amassing a global community of loyal players, from hardcore tournament grinders to friends bashing out casual games over beers around their kitchen table. And ultimately its appeal is that it’s extraordinarily fun. Imagine a giant, stompy robot taking a skyscraper-sized sword to the face of a towering demon, while at their feet two armies run headlong towards each other in a thunder of bullets and screaming chainsaw-axes. Now imagine a vast science fiction universe packed with the potential for this endless, desperate, bloody conflict. It’s just cool. Just as players paint their miniatures, Warhammer 40,000 paints pictures in the minds of its fans. Through the stories it tells, its exquisitely crafted models and the epic struggles that unfold on its battlefields, it’s become a cornerstone of the gaming industry. And that doesn’t look set to change any time soon.



Space Marines are humanity’s ultimate elite forces. Image: Games Workshop



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Clashes can feature a few troops, or hundreds on each side. Image: Games Workshop



Warhammer: Age of Sigmar I



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T’S more than 35 years since UK publisher Games Workshop released the game that was destined to define miniature wargaming in the public consciousness. In 1983, Warhammer Fantasy Battle handed players control of massed ranks of elves, orcs, dwarves and humans and pitted them against one another in intense and deadly combat. Players carefully manoeuvred their troops around tabletop battlefields, loosing volleys of arrows, surging forward with spearmen and cavalry, and tearing enemies apart with rampaging trolls, dragons and ogres. In the decades since, the game has gone through a succession of new editions and inspired spin-offs including its sci-fi themed sibling Warhammer 40,000 and the grimand-gritty skirmish game Mordheim. It’s been incrementally tweaked and reconfigured to remove rough edges and smooth and simplify its gameplay. But in recent years it’s seen the biggest and most dramatic shake-up in its history – one that began with the end of the world. In 2015, Games Workshop released Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, and in the process the company reconstructed its fictional backdrop and rewrote its rules from the ground



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Fundamentally, though, perhaps the most impressive thing about the game is the way it prioritises simple enjoyment and the creation of compelling narrative above rigid adherence to complicated rules.



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up. In a carefully choreographed move to transition players to a new narrative setting, the publisher orchestrated an elaborate endtimes event. Players took to the tabletop to play out the final epic battles of the game’s



iconic Old World, with eight mortal realms besieged by the demons, beasts and cultists of the twisted Chaos gods. Only the intervention of Sigmar, the game’s mythical godking, halted the forces of darkness, and while the Warhammer world may be no more, the conflict that consumed it continues unabated. As befits such a cataclysmic upheaval, Age of Sigmar takes a very different approach from the editions of Warhammer that preceded it. For one thing, there’s its selection of different factions. Where Warhammer previously allowed players to field armies comprised of various fantasy races, now its battles play out between four grand alliances. The forces of Order are the game’s good guys, while opposing them are the agents of Chaos, Death and Destruction. It’s still unapologetically high-fantasy fare, with elves, humans, orcs, dwarves, goblins, lizardmen, misshapen beasts, terrifying demons and undead horrors all inhabiting the new setting. But by organising them into broad coalitions rather than strictly delineated armies, the game gives players greater flexibility in mixing and matching different types of troops, and you can expect new factions to be introduced as the game continues to grow and evolve.



Pictured above: Age of Sigmar is the successor to the iconic Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Publisher: Games Workshop, Image: Games Workshop



Age of Sigmar’s other stand-out characteristic is the dramatic and theatrical atmosphere it creates when it hits the table. A big part of this is down to its range of exquisite fantasy models. There are fire-breathing demons mounted on floating chariots; a gravity-defying elf whose cape doubles as a waterfall; magic spells made manifest on the table as giant flaming skulls. They’re beautifully sculpted and moulded, with levels of detail unmatched by any other miniature maker. Finally, there’s the new rules set itself, which strips away much of the complexity associated with previous Warhammer editions. Where Warhammer Fantasy revolved largely around regiments of troops which moved and fought in carefully arranged block formations, Age of Sigmar bunches models into loosely-grouped units, similarly to Warhammer 40,000. It also uses the same hybrid turn sequence as 40K, with some minor tweaks to represent wizards casting spells rather than the sci-fi psychic abilities of its far-future sibling. But while in many respects the games are mechanically almost identical, what differentiates them from one another is the distinctiveness of their armies. Take, for example, the Idoneth Deepkin, the brand new sea-elf faction released in 2018. In the game’s lore they summon a magical ocean around them, allowing them to bring the biggest and deadliest beasts of the sea, including sharks, seahorses, and gigantic turtles into battle. Mechanically, Age of Sigmar represents this ocean with army-wide special rules that change every turn, called the Tides of Death. Low Tide allows units to take cover, gaining protection from enemy attacks. Flood Tide lets troops move faster across the table, surging forward to strike at their foes. It means that commanding a Deepkin army presents its own distinct tactical challenge: how best to exploit the ebb and flow of different special abilities. From a gameplay point of view, it’s an interesting conundrum to get your head around. From a flavour standpoint, it’s a great mechanical representation of the new faction’s feel and character. In many ways, Age of Sigmar is a more accessible miniature wargaming experience than its predecessor, or than Warhammer 40,000. Its new setting is more appropriate for younger gamers, and it’s also easier to learn, with simpler stats and dice-rolling systems than previous editions. Despite being relatively new, it’s established a widespread community, and while killing off the existing Warhammer world was a bold move which antagonised many players, Games Workshop has built its successor into a thriving product in its own right. 2018 saw Age of Sigmar fully mature from a conceptual four-page rule set into a fully realised and fleshed-out game backed by a stunning miniature range. If you want to get in on the carnage, two-player starter sets range from £50/US$75 to £95/US$120. There are also boxed sets of miniatures for different factions to kick-start your collection. A full-sized army will still be a significant investment, but with Age of Sigmar’s focus on narrative scenarios, the game still captures the cinematic experience when playing with smaller forces. Fundamentally, though, perhaps the most impressive thing about the game is the way it prioritises simple enjoyment and the creation of compelling narrative above rigid adherence to complicated rules. Whenever there’s a disagreement about how to play, you’re encouraged to discuss it with your opponent to find a solution that makes the most sense – or is the most fun. While by its nature it’s high on confrontation, any given contest is a collaboration to create an immersive story of a battle that players can lose themselves in. The kind of magic players create together on the battlefield is alluring and addictive, and it’s why, despite having to fill the gargantuan shoes of Warhammer Fantasy, Age of Sigmar looks set to have a long and exciting future ahead of it.



The Stormcast Eternals are the ultimate champions of the god-king Sigmar. Image: Games Workshop



The followers of Chaos remain the game’s most fearsome antagonists, devoted to corruption and slaughter. Image: Games Workshop



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The game’s fictional backdrop and evocative artwork are key elements of its appeal. Image: Games Workshop



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Warhammer Underworlds



Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game



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OR decades, Warhammer has been a byword for epic battles between massed ranks of fantasy warriors. In its long line of editions, it’s seen regiments of humans and monsters clash in confrontations that might involve hundreds of models on each side. Things took a decidedly different direction in its latest incarnation, Age of Sigmar, which shifted its focus to smaller bands of elite fighters. Now publisher Games Workshop has taken the streamlining process one step further with a game that condenses Warhammer’s trademark blend of valour and violence into a compelling half-hour of playing time. Warhammer Underworlds comes in a much more compact package than its older sibling. Rather than commanding legions of troops, players take charge of a handful of fighters, often fielding just three or four combatants on each side. It also dispenses with the expansive tabletop battlefields long-time Warhammer players are familiar with. Instead, its struggles play out on small hex-grid boards, with different designs representing different environments and locations. It’s a highly condensed take on squadbased combat, and this shrunk-down prem-



ise doesn’t just apply to its physical components. Underworlds also comes with an elegant and fast-flowing set of rules, and while at its heart it feels very much like a miniature wargame, it borrows heavily from elements more commonly found in board and card games. Before a contest begins, each player chooses a warband to command, choosing from human Stormcast soldiers, malevolent Chaos cultists and a collection of orcs and undead monsters. Throughout the game you’ll manoeuvre your forces around the battlefield, charging into dice-based combat and aiming to leave the board littered with your enemies’ corpses. But the game’s real depth lies in its clever cardplay system. As well as your collection of minis, you’ll assemble two decks of cards before you play. One contains a set of special powers, abilities and upgrades that make your fighters more effective in battle, letting them become tougher, stronger and more agile in all sorts of interesting ways. The other is a set of objective cards, which reward you with victory points for achieving specific goals. You might aim to take out a particular enemy character, or seize control of target areas of the board.



Pictured above: Warhammer Underworlds is a lightning-fast distillation of miniatures-based combat. Image: Games Workshop



This double-deck setup introduces a wealth of tactical possibilities before you’ve even played a turn, and Underworlds lets you and your opponent choose your own objectives, then create a set of tools to help you achieve them. When the game begins, your opposing plans run headlong into one another in a frenzy of axes, spears and swords, forcing you to adapt and find ways to further your own schemes while halting your rival’s as best you can. It’s a captivating struggle with all the blood-pumping action of a movie fight scene, and it’s amplified by Underworlds’ brevity. Each player only takes 12 actions in the course the entire game. It means there’s no hesitant shuffling around in the early turns, no cautious feeling-out process. The violence starts suddenly and escalates quickly, and every turn feels vitally consequential. The first Underworlds set, Shadespire, was released in 2017. The second, Nightvault, added new factions to command and arenas to battle over. It’s going to be fascinating to see where future instalments take the game, and with its small forces making it the cheapest Games Workshop product to get into, it’s a fun, fast and accessible way to discover the joys of miniature combat.



VER the decades, the Star Wars saga has delivered some unforgettable moments of action and excitement, from the clash of sparking lightsabers to the pounding crunch of colossal war-walkers. But arguably nothing in the tale of a galaxy far, far away is as thrilling as the films’ heart-pounding clashes between forces of agile and deadly fighter spacecraft. These deep-space dogfights are some of the series’ most emblematic scenes, and generations of fans have grown up with the pew-pew sound of ship-mounted blasters imprinted on their minds. That’s undoubtedly part of the reason that the Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game has been such a runaway success. A tactical game of zero-G fighter battles, it sits players at the controls of some of the franchise’s most iconic ships and throws them into furious combat. But it also comes with beautifully detailed pre-painted miniatures and a rules set that’s perfectly calibrated for adrenaline-fueled action. At the heart of X-Wing’s challenge is its movement system. It sees players manoeuvre their ships using a set of cardboard templates: short, straight ones representing slow and steady movement; longer ones repre-



senting bursts of breakneck speed; gently curving ones, letting players carve graceful arcs through space; or sharp twists that allow for sudden and unpredictable pivots. Players secretly decide how each of their ships will move at the start of every round, setting their choices on cardboard dials. Once both players have issued their orders, they reveal and resolve them. It makes for a deep game where you’ll aim to anticipate your opponent’s moves, working out where their ships are likely to be and attempting to trap them in the firing arc of your lasers. It perfectly conjures the feeling of split-second decisions and lightning-fast reflexes, and once the action gets underway, it can be positively thrilling. It’s why the game has brought legions of players to the table since its release in 2012, and along the way it’s grown a thriving competitive scene, with tournaments held in countries around the world. But in 2018 its publishers released a second edition intended to address some problems that had arisen in top-level competitions. Players had found that certain combinations of ships and pilots consistently performed better than others. And while many developed tactics revolving around the se-



Pictured above: The X-Wing Miniatures Game recreates the Star Wars films’ heart-pumping dogfights. Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games



ries’ lesser-known characters, iconic figures like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Darth Vader weren’t present in competitive play. The new edition aims to address this imbalance. It comes with a companion app which lets its publisher release immediate fixes to deal with over- or under-powered elements in the game. There’s also a new Force mechanism representing the mystical energy from the film franchise – a simple subsystem that lets players flip the faces of dice in combat. One disappointment is that the game’s only victory condition is the total destruction of your enemy’s forces, and it’s a shame that there aren’t more objective-based or narrative-driven scenarios. But X-Wing’s latest incarnation is strategically rewarding, compellingly tense and steeped in the lore of the Star Wars universe. It translates cinematic space battles into a tabletop experience packed with excitement and anticipation. As the Star Wars universe continues to grow with the release of new films, X-Wing is also set to expand, adding more ships, characters and upgrades to complement each new big-screen offering. It means that you can expect to enjoy shoving gorgeous toy spaceships around your table for a long time to come.



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A Song of Ice and Fire: S



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INCE it first hit television in 2011, the fantasy series Game of Thrones has become a cultural phenomenon, and its mix of intrigue, magic and violence has introduced viewers around the world to the setting created by author George R. R. Martin in his A Song of Ice and Fire novels. But while the TV series may have found mainstream success, gamers have been immersing themselves in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros for far longer. US publisher Fantasy Flight Games has produced a clutch of tabletop releases based on Martin’s work, and now rival CMON has its own sights set on the Iron Throne. A Song of Ice and Fire: The Miniatures Game aims to recreate the brutal battles from the books, with ranks of infantry and cavalry clashing in bloody combat. It sees players build forces of archers, spearmen and knights before marching them into war, aiming to defeat their enemies with courage, cunning and ruthless aggression. One thing that immediately stands out about the game is how much importance it places on unit formations. Unlike games such as Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, which allow considerable leeway in how players arrange their troops, A Song of Ice and Fire



sees generals slotting their soldiers into rectangular trays. It’s an approach that will be familiar to veterans of the iconic Warhammer Fantasy Battle, and it means advancing or wheeling to change direction becomes an exercise in careful coordination. For some, this careful positioning might seem pedantic. But it means that, as in real battles, attacks against a formation’s flank or rear are far more devastating than an attack against its front, where shields provide protection. You’ll look to bog your opponents’ troops down in a grinding melee before blindsiding them with a lightning-like assault to their exposed sides. Appropriately enough for the game’s grim setting, combat is savage. Casualties quickly mount up. There’s a constant risk that soldiers who see comrades fall will break ranks and flee. Most clashes between regiments end fairly quickly as one side is routed or destroyed. It makes for a dynamic game with



enough for ‘theAppropriately game’s grim setting, combat is savage. ’



The Miniatures Game



units constantly in motion across the table. But while the action on the battlefield is undoubtedly dramatic, there’s a deeper and more subtle element to the game’s strategy. It comes with a separate board where players can deploy non-combat units – characters like Caetlyn Stark and Cersei Lannister who can affect the outcome in all sorts of interesting ways, pulling political strings, engaging in blackmail and bargaining, and using their powers of diplomacy to provide critical boosts to your troops. The game’s starter set comes with models representing the Stark and Lannister houses, and each has its own signature style of play. The lords of Casterly Rock can afford the best in weapons and armour, while the rugged warriors of the north are less susceptible to cowardice and mutiny. Add-on packs allow you to build bigger armies, and to command factions including the savage Wildlings and the guardians of the Night’s Watch. In the end, time will tell whether A Song of Ice and Fire: The Miniatures Game can wield the magic of dragons, white walkers, and Valyrian steel into long-lasting success. But with plenty of source material left for its creators to draw upon, there are tantalising prospects for players to look forward to.



Pictured above: The game’s core set comes with sets of Stark and Lannister forces, but players can buy additional units to bring to the fray. Image: Teri Litorco



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The Board Game Book    Chapter 9



Board Game Apps



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Board Game Apps While tabletop games are inherently analogue, many of the most popular titles have also been released as apps for smartphones and tablets. With a growing number of hit games receiving digital makeovers, we’ve rounded up some of the best board game apps, all available for both Android and iOS.



BattleLore: Command Designer: Richard Borg Android: £6.49 $6.99  iOS: £6.99 $6.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: Yes



Carcassonne



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ESIGNER Richard Borg is the creator of the Command & Colors system of wargames rules – an adaptable, card-driven engine that’s been used to recreate battles from the classical era to the First and Second World Wars. But while it’s mainly been employed to represent historical conflicts, it also made an appearance in the now-defunct miniature battle game BattleLore, which swapped swords and artillery for mages and manticores, pitting heroic defenders against monstrous enemies in publisher Fantasy Flight’s fictional realm of Terrinoth. BattleLore may have died out on the tabletop but it’s still available on phones and tablets, where it offers one of the most complete strategy experiences you’ll find on a mobile device. On each round you’ll play cards to



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ILE-LAYING game Carcassonne is considered one of the tabletop hobby’s most important “gateway games” – an ideal option for new players dipping their toes into board gaming for the first time. It casts players as nobles in a fortified French city. As you play, you’ll place tiles showing different configurations of walls, roads, buildings and open countryside, collaborating with your opponents to gradually build a sprawling environment. Along the way you’ll deploy workers



activate units on different parts of the battlefield, and a key part of your strategy is maintaining disciplined formations that let your troops fight with deadly efficiency.



Designer: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede  Android: £3.69 $4.99  iOS: £9.99 $9.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: Yes to serve as monks, farmers and knights, harvesting victory points and aiming to seize scoring opportunities before your rivals. This digital implementation faithfully recreates the experience. It lets you play against a variety of AI opponents, all with different play styles and tactical approaches. It also supports pass-and-play games with up to six human players, as well as an online option. And it comes with a handful of useful touches which make it smoother to play than



the analogue original. The app highlights available spaces for players to place tiles, removing the need to hunt for valid locations. And it also addresses one common complaint about Carcassonne – the fact that players with good memories can gain an advantage by working out which tiles remain to be drawn. Here, there’s an always-available list of remaining tiles, removing the need for blackjack-style tile counting and ensuring everyone competes on a level playing field.



It’s absorbing enough to make you regret that its tabletop incarnation seems to have sunk without a trace. Hopefully a new edition will surface somewhere along the line.



Splendor



Designer: Marc André Android: £3.69 $4.99  iOS: £4.99 $4.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: Yes



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ENAISSANCE jewel-trading game Splendor is one of the most elegant, mechanically minimalist releases to hit store shelves in recent years, so it’s only to be expected that it should have received a polished smartphone port. The game sees players attempting to become Europe’s wealthiest and most prestigious gemstone merchants, carefully amassing a collection of shining diamonds, rubies, emeralds and sapphires while attracting rich and powerful customers to come and marvel at their goods. On each turn you’ll face a simple choice. You can pick up a handful of tokens representing different jewels, or cash them in to buy upgrades to your international trading network including mines, shipping routes and showrooms. While it might sound complicated, it works with a wonderfully simple set of rules, and it won’t take long before



Ticket to Ride



Designer: Alan R. Moon   Android: £3.69  $4.99    iOS: £4.99  $4.99    Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: Yes



S you’re making savvy trades and racking up victory points with impressive speed. The app comes with the option of purchasing expansions, which add new elements to



its core gameplay. But a huge part of what makes Splendor so compelling is its refined design, and there’s no real need to add more to its pure and polished digital offering.



INCE its release in 2004, railway game Ticket to Ride has sold tens of millions of copies, making it one of the most successful board games of the modern era. A streamlined route-building contest, it sees players build hands of cards, using matching sets to claim stretches of track and complete routes between cities scattered across a map of the USA. Players’ turns stay quick and simple throughout the game, but its board becomes



increasingly cramped and crowded as rivals block each other’s paths and look for ways around the roadblocks thrown up by their opponents. The game has long been available in digital editions. In fact, its designer and publisher credit a big part of its success to players discovering it through online versions and going on to pick up physical copies. And it’s easy to see why Ticket to Ride is so well-suit-



ed to electronic adaptation. While its premise may hint at grand adventures in the age of steam, its speed and simplicity mean it’s possible to bash out a game on your phone during your coffee break. The app also comes with options to purchase some of the game’s expansions, and if you want to explore new territories, we highly recommend the deeper and only slightly more complex Pennsylvania edition.



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Hey, That’s My Fish! Designers: Günter Cornett, Alvydas Jakeliunas   Android: £0.89 $0.99  iOS: £0.99 $0.99 Online play: No   In-app purchases: No



Abalone



IRST released in 1987, this abstract two-player game isn’t what you could call a hot new release. But while it might not be part of the wave of new games that have swept to prominence in the last decade, it’s a clean, tight design that combines the mechanical minimalism of draughts with plenty of scope for clever strategies, and it’s remained popular with players ever since it first graced their tables.



The game revolves around a board full of pitted spaces designed to hold a collection of black and white marbles. On your turn you’ll move some of your own colour, either individually or in groups. Larger groups can push smaller ones out of their path, and any that tip over the edge of the board are removed from the game. If you can eliminate six of your rival’s pieces, you’ll claim victory. Essentially it’s a thoughtful and elegant



shoving match, somewhere between the refined simplicity of Go and a mosh pit at a Slayer concert. You’ll aim to barge your opponent’s marbles out of the way without leaving your own in vulnerable, isolated positions, judiciously sacrificing some of your own pieces to set up aggressive surges that play out over multiple turns. It’s much deeper than its appearance might lead you to believe.



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IMPLE but savagely competitive, this game sees players control groups of penguins hunting for fish on a floating iceberg. The trouble is, the ice under their feet is shrinking. Whenever a penguin leaves a space on the board, it crumbles away into the ocean, with the birds eventually finding themselves stranded and unable to move. With carefully planned plays, you can corner opponents on isolated patches, ruthlessly eliminating their penguins from the fight. It’s quick and accessible, and its only real flaw on the tabletop is that setting up its hex-



agonal tiles can take longer than actually playing the game. That’s not a problem with the app version, though. Starting a new contest is as simple as tapping your screen. Like the physical game, it benefits from a playful visual style, with cartoon penguins skittering around on the ice. And the digital release also comes with a collection of different board configurations, unlocked by achieving various goals as you play. It adds a light sense of progression to keep players coming back for more, and it provides a perfect distraction for kids on long car journeys.



Star Realms Designers: Rob Dougherty, Darwin Kastle   Android: Free   iOS: Free Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: Yes



Camel Up



Designer: Steffen Bogen  Android: £2.09 $2.49  iOS: £2.99 $2.99    Online play: No   In-app purchases: No



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Designer: Mike Selinker   Android: Free    iOS: Free    Online play: No   In-app purchases: Yes



Designers: Michel Lalet, Laurent Levi   Android: £2.59  $3.49    iOS: £3.99  $3.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: No



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Pathfinder Adventures



HE winner of the 2014 Spiel des Jahres prize, this family-friendly betting game sees players wager on the outcome of an exciting camel race. And while the animals’ movement is dictated by the whims of cruel and capricious dice, there are some sneaky ways for players to tilt the outcome in their favour. As you play you’ll place oasis and mirage tokens on the track, helping or hindering



camels which land on them. Oases slide camels forward while mirages force them back, and placing them wisely can earn you critical victory points. You’ll also be rewarded for backing winners early in the race. But while placing bets in the first few rounds nets you a greater payoff if you choose correctly, it’s much less certain who the victor will eventually be, making choosing when to wager all about gauging risks and rewards.



To make things even less predictable, camels can climb on one another’s backs and carry each other along stretches of the track. It’s fast-paced, madcap fun. But the only thing that leaves a sour note is the game’s lack of an interactive tutorial. Even its rules explanation lacks vital details on how to play, meaning that if you haven’t played the original tabletop version, you’re likely to find yourself stuck pretty quickly.



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ESIGNED by two Magic: The Gathering hall-of-fame players, Star Realms is a science fiction card game that combines Dominion-style deckbuilding with Magic’s head-to-head combat. Players become the commanders of far-future civilisations. Starting with a handful of low-powered cards, you’ll aim to acquire new space ships and orbital bases. Over multiple turns you’ll hone and perfect your deck, trying to build combinations of cards which work well together while pruning weaker ones, gradually



assembling a fearsome intergalactic navy. The base game comes with an array of tactical options, letting you specialise in hard-hitting attacks, powerful defences or a resilient approach that aims to weather your rival’s aggression before winning in the late game. Different ships allow you to draw key cards or force your opponent to discard theirs. It’s fast-playing and dangerously addictive. And the app offers a collection of expansions, unlocking new gameplay possibilities, as well as a competitive online league.



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HIS fantasy quest game is a digital recreation of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, itself an adaptation of the Pathfinder RPG. If that’s not already confusing enough, Pathfinder is mechanically descended from Dungeons & Dragons. It’s a game with a convoluted family tree. Download it, though, and you’ll find a world full of bandits, monsters and undead creatures to battle your way through. Before delving into its campaign, you’ll assemble a party of adventurers featuring fighters, rogues and clerics. Then, with your heroes in place, you’ll progress through a series of locations attempting to take down a cast of baddies. The game’s card-and-dice based combat system is actually fairly complex, especially for a smartphone game. You’ll aim to use your party’s skills to their best effect, equipping characters with weapons, armour and magical boons to face specific threats – a process that feels a bit like preparing for battles in console RPGs like Final Fantasy. It can be a bit of a complicated process, and it comes with quite a lengthy tutorial to master before you can dive in and play. But if you’re a fan of crunchy optimisation and plots that play out over multi-mission campaigns, you’re likely to find plenty in Pathfinder Adventures that appeals to you.



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Onirim



Twilight Struggle



Onitama



Doppelt So Clever*



Designer: Shadi Torbey   Android: Free    iOS: Free    Online play: No   In-app purchases: Yes



Designers: Ananda Gupta, Jason Matthews   Android: £4.99  $6.99    iOS: (iPad only) £6.99  $6.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: Yes



Designer: Shimpei Sato  Android: Free    iOS: Free    Online play: Yes  In-app purchases: Yes



Designer: Wolfgang Warsch   Android: £2.69  £2.99    iOS: £2.99  $2.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: No



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TWO-PLAYER game of clashing superpowers, Twilight Struggle recreates the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union. Players control the antagonists, and rather than attempting to dominate one another militarily they play a subtle game of strategy and influence, attempting to exert control over countries caught between the two global behemoths. The game uses cards representing some of the key events of the period, from the formation of Nato and the Warsaw Pact to the Cuban missile crisis and more. Each card’s



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HIS solo card game deposits players in a land of dreams, challenging them to find mystical doors and escape the sleeping realm before they’re consumed by nightmare spirits. It’s an intense sounding theme. But at heart, Onirim is an abstract single-player puzzle about collecting sets of matching-coloured cards while attempting to dodge a succession of threats. You’ll start the game with a hand of cards, each of which comes with a colour and a symbol – sun, moon or key. On each round you’ll aim to play one face-up to form a steadily lengthening row. Any time you play three of the same colour next to one another, you’ll discover one of the doors you’re hunting for, bringing you a step closer to waking up. The tricky bit is that you won’t be able to play consecutive cards that share the same symbol, meaning you’ll need to carefully manage your hand in order to escape to reality. By discarding certain cards, you’ll be able to peek through the deck, changing the order of the upcoming cards. You’ll also try to avoid nightmare cards, which bring you closer to losing the game. In its physical format, it involves quite a bit of faffing and shuffling. But as a smartphone app, it provides a much smoother, more free-flowing experience.



Ganz Schön Clever Designer: Wolfgang Warsch   Android: £2.69  $2.99    iOS: £2.99  $2.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: No



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OLL-AND-WRITE games are one of the hottest trends in the tabletop hobby, with a host of designers taking different approaches to dice-based puzzles. Ganz Schön Clever, by German designer Wolfgang Warsch, is one of the most talked-about, and it’s been particularly popular as a quick and challenging smartphone brain-teaser. The game comes with an online mode which replicates the experience of playing around a table. You and your opponents take turns to roll a collection of dice, using



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effects are modelled after the events that inspired them. It means both players will attempt to ride the tide of history, nudging it in their favour by any means possible. That can mean staging foreign coups, devoting resources to the space race, and playing games of nuclear brinkmanship. Twilight Struggle has been hailed one of the most influential wargames ever. Its theme may not appeal to everyone, and its gameplay takes longer to get your head around than most pick-up-and-play smartphone apps, but it has secured a special place in gaming history.



the results to mark off colour-coded areas of your scoring sheets. You’ll use different dice in different ways, aiming to put together high-scoring sequences. But any dice you discard can benefit your opponents. The digital version has an advantage in its ability to handle the game’s sometimes confusing score-keeping. It speeds things up considerably, leaving you to focus on your game plan rather than repeated bouts of mental arithmetic. And its solo mode is especially addictive.



ANZ Schön Clever translates roughly as “pretty clever,” so it seems fitting enough that its tougher, smarter sequel is named “Twice as Clever.” Like its sibling, it’s a roll-and-write game in which players throw coloured dice, then use the results to fill in sections of a scoring pad. And like the previous game, players can take advantage of dice discarded by their opponents. What’s different, though, are the ways in which players can use their chosen dice. In a number of ways Doppelt is tougher and more restrictive than its predecessor, requir-



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HIS chess-like two-player game casts players as the heads of rival martial arts schools. Over a series of rapid-fire turns, you’ll carefully move pawns representing your students around a tight, cramped board aiming to eliminate your opponent’s pieces, eventually winning the game by either capturing your rival’s master, or moving your own to your opponent’s dojo on the far side of the board. What sets Onitama apart from other abstract strategy games, however, is the way it dictates the moves available to you on each round. On your turn you’ll choose a card showing different ways in which you can manoeuvre your pieces. Some let you make small, probing forward advances. Others let you leap fearlessly on to your opponent’s side of the battlefield. Some allow skilful side-steps or diagonal lunges. You’ll use a random selection of movement cards for every game, and the combination you end up with goes a long way towards determining the tactics available to you. Whenever you use a movement card, though, you’ll pass it to your opponent. It means there’s a constant back-and-forth flow of cards, and planning ahead means thinking about how your rival is likely to use the cards you hand over to them. It’s an elegant, balanced touch, and it’s combined here with stylish visuals and slick animations.



*In the iOS App Store the game’s title is Twice as Clever



ing players to write down the results of their rolls in more complex arrangements to score points and set off bonus abilities. It takes a little more thought, and a little more understanding of probabilities. Games could end in embarrassingly low scores until you understand some of its nuances. While similar to Ganz, there are enough differences to mean that it doesn’t replace it; the two games sit quite comfortably alongside one another – one for quick bursts of puzzle-solving fun, the other for when you’re in the mood for something a little meatier.



Pandemic Designer: Matt Leacock   Android: £3.69 $4.99   iOS: £4.99 $4.99 Online play: No   In-app purchases: Yes



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ANDEMIC is the best-selling and most influential cooperative game in the tabletop industry. This digital version of the hit disease-busting challenge incorporates everything players will expect from the board game – a team of medics with different abilities, disease cubes that spread mercilessly across the map, and a mounting sense of pressure as you edge steadily closer to the end of all human life on Earth. Most co-op games effectively come with a solo play mode built-in, with a single player



simply taking the roles of multiple protagonists. Digital Pandemic embraces this approach, and you’ll be able to play alone or with friends using a single device. Graphically, it’s a faithful rendition of the physical game’s science-thriller aesthetic, with some nice animated touches. There are also optional expansions, available at extra cost. Ultimately, it recreates the tabletop experience without adding anything flashy. But with a long-standing fan favourite like Pandemic, there’s really no need to.



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Patchwork Designer: Uwe Rosenberg  Android: £2.59  $3.49    iOS: £3.99  $3.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: Yes



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HIS Tetris-like two-player puzzle sees players compete to sew beautiful patchwork quilts, and it comes with a charming visual style to match its serene theme. Its interface looks as though it’s been stitched together from scraps of fabric, and it combines with soothing music and relaxing gameplay to provide a fun, stress-busting app. On each of your turns you’ll aim to add a new piece of cloth to your design, choosing from a selection of different shapes that you’ll reorient and position in an attempt to cover your entire player board, leaving as lit-



Designers: Andreas Pelikan, Alexander Pfister   Android: £2.59  $3.49    iOS: £3.99  $3.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: No



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S a rule, small-screen adaptations of tabletop games favour family favourites and quick-and-simple puzzles rather than games with complicated turn structures and lots of variables for players to keep track of. Tile-laying game Isle of Skye is definitely one of the more advanced tabletop titles to make the transition. It sees players become the leaders of Scottish clans, developing their lands in an effort to rake in victory points. Each of its rounds sees players buying and selling terrain tiles, placing them



Designer: Donald X. Vaccarino   Android: £2.59 $2.99   iOS: £2.99  $2.99    Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: No



to build carefully connected kingdoms and trying to achieve a shifting set of point-scoring objectives – by building different types of regions, connecting locations by road and otherwise developing their domains. If you’re looking for five minutes of mindless escapism, you won’t find it here. This is a game that rewards planning and adaptability. As a result, it also comes with a fairly long tutorial, and it’s here you’ll run into its main weak point: its painful, embarrassing “Scottish” dialogue.



Jaipur Designer: Sébastien Pauchon   Android: £2.59  $3.49    iOS: £3.99  $3.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: No



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tle empty space as possible. But each piece comes with twin costs. To acquire them, you’ll need to pay buttons, the game’s currency. And to sew them into your growing masterpiece you’ll spend time – measured on a track shared with your opponent. The player with the most time remaining always gets to act first. It means you’ll often have to choose between adding a single high-scoring piece to your board or opt for several less useful ones. For all its gentle appearance, Patchwork can throw up some tricky decisions.



Isle of Skye



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Kingdom Builder



TIGHT and slickly designed two-player game featuring competing Indian merchants, Jaipur tasks players with buying and selling goods to become their city’s wealthiest trader. Its elegant cardplay sees you and your opponent battle to acquire jewels, silks and spices. You can sell them early, when their value is high, or wait longer, amass them in volume and sell in bulk for potentially greater profit. At the same time you need to keep a close eye on the goods your opponent is going after, and stop them acquiring an unbreakable monopoly.



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HIS elegant game of rival rulers sees players placing buildings on a hex-grid board, working to expand their domains and please their citizens. The trouble is, citizens come with a different set of demands on each play-through. There are fishermen, who want to be next to water; miners, who want to be close to mountains; explorers, who want their leaders to boldly reach across the map; and hermits, who reward you for building small, isolated communities rather than big, sprawling cities. It’s a simple setup that challenges you to balance the needs of your subjects. With a different set of citizens every time they play, players must adapt their strategies for each new game. Kingdom Builder also comes with a collection of special abilities for rulers to exploit, letting them move their buildings around the map or claim extra territory on certain types of regions on every turn. The result is pretty absorbing, and it saw the game awarded the 2012 Spiel des Jahres prize. This digital implementation may look a little dated, with graphics that don’t stand up to slicker, more recent releases. But functionally, it captures the essence of the tabletop original, letting you tend to your monarchical duties wherever you go.



Designer: Vangelis Bagiartakis   Android: £3.69 $4.99  iOS: £4.99 $4.99 Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: Yes



HIS sci-fi tile-laying game casts players as architects attempting to build prosperous space stations. You’ll draft tiles representing businesses, civic buildings and military outposts and build a sprawling orbital city. Different tiles interact with one another in interesting ways; you’ll need to carefully consider the ones you add to your own station, and those you pass on to your rivals. It’s a similar setup to city-builders like Capital, with different tiles offering you a multitude of ways to score victory points.



Designer: Vlaada Chvátil   Android: £4.49  $4.99    iOS: £4.99  $4.99    Online play: Yes   In-app purchases: Yes



This digital adaptation features the same characterful art style as the original tabletop game, and comes with the option of playing solo against an AI opponent, finding competitors online or engaging in pass-and-play trade wars with friends. It also boasts a campaign mode which takes players through a series of increasingly tough games in a quest to become the dominant trader in their region. This really feels like an optional addon, though, and Jaipur’s greatest appeal lies in its compelling original game design rather than any electronic bells and whistles.



Among the Stars



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Galaxy Trucker



But Among The Stars stands out in the way buildings affect one another. Some grant bonuses based on nearby tiles, some require power from nuclear reactors dotted around your station, and others have effects that depend on your opponents’ choices. The digital version comes with options for single-player games, pass-and-play contests and online matches against fellow humans. There’s also a campaign mode which introduces rules tweaks and different objectives over a series of linked games.



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N 2007, Czech designer Vlaada Chvátil released Galaxy Trucker, an irreverent game of deep-space delivery drivers competing for cash while attempting to avoid annihilation at the hands of rampaging pirates and deadly asteroid clusters. Its action played out over two stages. First, players assembled their ships from a rag-tag collection of components, revealing tiles from a face-down pile to discover engines, lasers, cargo holds and crew compartments. Then, after haphazardly jamming their various bits together, they played through hazardous missions, picking up cargo, looting derelict ships and hoping to make it to their final destination with their vessels still at least partially intact. It made for anarchic fun, but its first stage relied heavily on the physical process of hunting through a jumble of tiles, making it not the most obvious candidate for a smartphone and tablet version. Surprisingly, though, the team at publisher CGE haven’t just captured the chaotic appeal of the tabletop game; they’ve turned it into one of the most accomplished and engaging board game adaptations you’ll find on a handheld device. With some real visual polish, engaging gameplay and a quick and clear tutorial, it’s worth installing even if you aren’t a rabid fan of the analogue original.



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Gamers’ glossary Many hobbies have their own terminology, and tabletop gaming is no different. For newcomers, though, this kind of jargon can quickly get confusing. Here’s our quick guide to some of the terms you might come across in discussions about games. Abstract A game focused primarily on its mechanical aspects, with little or no narrative element. Examples include chess, draughts and Blokus. Some games, like the martial-arts-themed Onitama, are considered to have abstract gameplay in spite of the fact that they have slight thematic elements in their presentation. Action selection Action selection games generally allow players to take one of a set selection of actions on each turn. Often they also impose restrictions on the actions players are allowed to choose. For instance, they might forbid taking the same action on successive turns, or taking an action already chosen by an opponent earlier in the round. Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy and Skylands all employ action selection in their gameplay. Alpha gamer A player who attempts to dictate what other players do on their turn. Alpha gamers can be particularly disruptive to cooperative games, and several designers include measures to prevent or discourage this tendency. Ameritrash Originally a derisive term to describe American-style board games, the Ameritrash label has been reclaimed and embraced by players who enjoy US-style design. An exact definition is almost impossible to pin down, but the stereotypical American-style game features much more direct competition between players than its European-style counterparts. Ameritrash games also tend to adopt more aggressive themes such as war, zombie uprisings or alien invasions, and have a more pronounced element of random chance. Analysis Paralysis A tongue-in-cheek term for lengthy consideration of moves on a player’s turn. Games with a wide range of tactical options can be particularly prone to the phenomenon.



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App-driven game A board game with an integrated digital application designed for a smartphone or tablet device. Apps often serve as timers, provide mission or scenario details and store complicated information to



allow players to concentrate on their tactics. XCOM: The Board Game, Mansions of Madness: Second Edition and Descent: Journeys in the Dark Second Edition all employ apps as part of their setup. Area control Area control games reward players for taking possession of different regions, often by granting them victory points or allowing them to take certain types of actions. Different games have different means of claiming territory, such as through military combat, resource bidding or moving worker tokens between neighbouring areas. Games including El Grande, Blood Rage and Tigris & Euphrates all have elements of area control. Asymmetrical game A game which gives players different abilities, resources or rules to play by. Android: Netrunner, which casts one player as a hacker and the other as a corporation defending its servers, is a notable example, as is the fantasy wargame Root. Campaign A series of linked game sessions which tell an ongoing story over the course of multiple play-throughs. Examples include games like Gloomhaven, where characters make their way through a series of scenarios, gaining items and abilities or suffering injuries on their way. Campaigns have been an integral part of roleplaying games for years, and are now becoming increasingly common in board and card games. Collectible card game (CCG) Modelled after the game Magic: The Gathering, first released in 1991, collectible card games — also known as trading card games — see players purchasing packs of randomly-packaged cards. Over time, players build their collections and create custom decks with which to play matches, and it is common for games of this type to develop a second-hand market, where powerful and popular cards can sometimes trade hands for large sums of money. Other CCGs include the Pokémon Trading Card Game and the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game. Cooperative Cooperative games see players work together to overcome a



challenge, threat or obstacle set by the game itself. Typically, players each have a distinct power or ability making them uniquely suited to particular tasks. Examples include Pandemic, Lord of the Rings and Spirit Island. Crowdfunding The process of funding a game with support from players, usually by promising them a copy of the game in exchange for funding its production. The largest crowdfunding service is the website Kickstarter, where tabletop games account for more than a fifth of total funds raised. An alternative platform is Indiegogo. Deckbuilding First introduced in 2008 by the game Dominion, deckbuilding systems resemble the process of creating a custom deck of cards in a game like Magic: The Gathering. But rather than building their decks prior to a game, players create them as they play, purchasing cards from a communal marketplace and continually reshuffling their decks as they acquire more powerful cards and discard weaker ones. Star Realms, A Few Acres of Snow and Trains all contain deckbuilding elements. Dexterity game A game which tests players’ physical prowess, often by having them stack or balance components on top of one another. Jenga, Junk Art and Rhino Hero are popular examples. Drafting A process in which a limited pool of resources such as cards or dice are placed in a communal pool, with players taking turns to choose and take one at a time until none remain. Some games, like Sushi Go! or Tides of Time, use drafting as their core mechanism. Others use it alongside other elements as part of a larger and more complex setup. Dungeon crawler A game which revolves around a group of protagonists — often but not always working in partnership — working their way through caverns, corridors or similar locations fighting enemies and gaining rewards such as gold or victory points for defeating foes. Dungeon crawlers are often set in stereotypical fantasy worlds, but some games such as the most



recent adaptation of the firstperson-shooter Doom use similar mechanisms to explore other genres. Engine building Engine-building games typically present players with various ways to score points or complete other objectives, challenging them to combine them in more efficient and effective ways than their opponents. Examples include Imperial Settlers, in which players gain powers and resources by adding new buildings to their villages, and Gizmos, where players combine an assortment of machines to take incrementally stronger actions as the game goes on. Eurogame Games in the European design tradition. Typically these avoid direct confrontation between players, instead giving all opponents a common objective and challenging them to meet it more effectively than their rivals. Eurogames also tend to place less of an emphasis on randomness than their American-style counterparts. Common themes in Eurogames include farming, trading and citybuilding, and they are occasionally referred to as “German-style games” due to the influence of German designers on their development. Games including Agricola, Carcassonne and Catan are considered prominent examples of the style. Expansion An add-on product which introduces new elements to an existing game, such as new characters, scenarios or modes of play. Successful games can sometimes receive multiple expansions over a number of years. Filler game A short and simple game played before a longer, more complex one. The equivalent of a starter during a meal. Some fans and designers object to the term, arguing that it downplays the significance of shorter games. FLGS Friendly local game store. Often game retailers host game nights and tournaments in addition to simply selling games, and many serve as a social hub for local gaming communities. Four-X Stands for eXpand, eXplore,



eXploit and eXterminate: the key elements in many empire-building games. Four-X games often see players start with a small piece of territory, aiming to grow it over time as they discover new regions and gather resources while engaging in combat with opponents. Examples include science fiction game Eclipse and civilisationbuilder Clash of Cultures. Game weight A shorthand reference to a game’s complexity. Games are often described as lightweight (simple), middleweight (moderately complex) or heavyweight (highly complex). Gateway game A game with rewarding gameplay, but a low level of mechanical complexity which is well-suited to new or inexperienced players. Ticket to Ride, Catan and Splendor are a handful of examples. Hidden Information Elements of a game which are not visible to all players. For example, the contents of opponents’ hands during a card game. Hidden Traitor A subset of cooperative games, hidden traitor games see a group of players working towards a common goal, but secretly assign one or more of them the role of a traitor before the game begins. Traitors typically win the game if the group fails to meet its objectives, but must keep their identity hidden as they play. Battlestar Galactica and Shadows Over Camelot both feature hidden traitors. Living Card Game (LCG) The term “Living Card Game” was coined by US publisher Fantasy Flight Games to describe releases such as Android: Netrunner and A Game of Thrones: The Card Game. Like Magic: The Gathering, they allowed players to build custom decks from a large pool of cards. However, rather than distributing cards in randomised packs, LCGs allow players to buy pre-packaged sets, eliminating the need to trade or buy cards on the second hand market. Other games, such as Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn have a similar distribution model, but the term Living Card Game is exclusive to those produced by Fantasy Flight. Meeple A small wooden token in the approximate shape of a human being, often used to represent workers or citizens. While other games used wooden figures before it, the familiar curved meeple shape used in many games is thought to have originated with Carcassonne. Metagame A tactical or strategic element of a game which occurs outside of actual play, and the discussion of those



processes. For example, building decks in a collectible or living card game. Microgame A game using a very small number of physical components, such as Love Letter, which consists of 16 cards, or many of the releases from Japanese publisher Oink Games, which come in boxes players can slip into their pocket. Multiplayer solitaire A game featuring minimal interaction between players. Often employed as a criticism. One-against-many Also known as one-against-all games, these releases see a team of players working together against a single opponent. Often the solo player takes on the role of an antagonistic overlord and has powers which far exceed those of the individual team members. Fantasy dungeon-crawler Descent: Journeys in the Dark is one example. Party game A game suited for informal gatherings and large groups of players, typically with very simple rules, quick turns and elements of trivia, performance or communication. Codenames, Spyfall and Pictionary are among the best-known. Perfect Information A game in which all information is visible to all players. For example, chess or Patchwork. The opposite of hidden information. Player elimination A process by which a player can be removed from a game, such as running out of money in Monopoly or being identified by a guard in Love Letter. As a rule, modern games avoid player elimination on the basis that it is difficult to have fun with a game when you aren’t playing it. Programming game A game in which players decide on a set of actions, then implement them similarly to the commands in a computer program. Crazy Karts and Robo Rally both revolve around programming elements. Real-time Games in which players act simultaneously rather than taking turns. The app-enhanced digital/ board game hybrid XCOM is one example. Others include the cooperative dice game Escape: The Curse of the Temple and Captain SONAR, which pits two teams against one another as the crew of enemy submarines. Roleplaying game A game in which players assume the roles of characters in a story, speaking their words and describing their actions. Many RPGs feature a game master — a player who



describes the game’s world and adjudicates the rules. The first published roleplaying game was Dungeons & Dragons, which remains the most popular in the industry. Others include Pathfinder, Traveller and Monster Hearts. Roll-and-move The central mechanism in games such as Snakes & Ladders or Monopoly in which players roll dice and move a pawn a corresponding number of spaces on a track. As a general rule, roll-and-move games are not favoured by hobby gamers. Roll-and-write A game in which players roll dice, then write down the results on a scoring pad to complete objectives and score points. Ganz Schön Clever, Qwixx and Qwinto are among the most popular. Some games such as Welcome To Your Perfect Home use cards rather than dice. Rondel Rondel-based games are a subset of action selection games, where various actions are arranged around a circular track with players moving a token to indicate which one they wish to take. Players can typically move a limited number of spaces on each turn, restricting the actions available to them at any one time. Antike by Mac Gerdts is a rondelbased game. Rubber banding/catch-up mechanism An element of a game’s design intended to allow a player who is lagging behind to improve their position and continue to play competitively, such as allowing the player with the lowest score to claim extra resources or take the first turn on a round. Social deduction Also known as hidden identity games, these typically see each player assigned a secret role, with the group attempting to work out who each person is. Ultimate Werewolf is one of the best-known, and sees players divided into teams of werewolves and villagers, with each trying to eliminate the other. The Resistance is another example, and features rebels and pro-regime infiltrators attempting to mount or prevent a government overthrow. Solitaire A game designed to be played by a single player. Some, like Onirim and Hostage Negotiator, are purely designed for solo play. Others are multiplayer games with dedicated solo modes. Solved A game where one particular strategy or game plan has a clear advantage over all others, sometimes guaranteeing a win for players who adopt it. Story game A term used to describe a sub-set



of roleplaying games which prioritise narrative approaches over mechanical ones. Story games typically come with few or no statistics to represent character abilities. Often they divide responsibility for narrative direction among all of the players at the table rather than appointing one person as a game master. Examples include Fiasco, Downfall and Ten Candles. Tabletop Simulator A PC application which allows people to play tabletop games online. Unlike a dedicated app version of a particular board game, it does not enforce game rules. Instead it allows players to manipulate pieces freely, as they could at a real table. While only a small number of publishers have released official Tabletop Simulator versions of their games, a growing number of designers use it for playtesting purposes. Tabletopia Another digital tabletop game platform, with a higher number of official adaptations of published games. Wargame A game simulating armed conflict. Some wargames use boards to represent battlefields, while others use plastic or metal miniatures and are played on a table covered in model terrain. Games can range in scope from small skirmishes with a handful of troops on each side to larger-scale battles between hundreds of combatants. Some games even attempt to model entire campaigns or wars, and while many take place in historical settings, others come with science fiction or fantasy themes. Examples include Warhammer 40,000, the Command & Colors series and the World War II game Flames of War. Worker placement In worker placement games, players use tokens representing workers to visit areas of the board and perform a variety of different tasks. Often placing a worker in an area of the board prevents other players from occupying the same space. Stone Age, Lords of Waterdeep and Alien Frontiers all use worker placement as a core mechanism. 18XX A term used to refer to railwaybuilding games set in the 19th century, many of which have titles beginning with a year, such as 1846: The Race for the Midwest or 1822: The Railways of Great Britain. Games in this subgenre normally include elements of route building and stock trading as players simultaneously seek to develop their railways, and to invest in the most profitable lines. While they commonly share a naming convention, they are independent games released by a variety of publishers.



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Games index



1066, Tears to Many Mothers p178 is designed by Tristan Hall and published by Hall or Nothing Games. 5-Minute Dungeon p40 is designed by Connor Reid and published by KOSMOS, Spin Master Ltd. and Wiggles 3D Abalone p246 is designed by Michel Lalet and Laurent Levi. The Abalone app is distributed by Asmodee Digital. Acquire p24 is designed by Sid Sackson and published by Avalon Hill Games, a division of Hasbro. Alhambra p22 is designed by Dirk Henn and published by Queen Games. Altiplano p156 is designed by Reiner Stockhausen and published by dlp games. Among the Stars p251 is designed by Michel Lalet and Laurent Levi and published by Artipia Games. Android: Mainframe p26 is designed by Jordi Gené and Gregorio Morales and published by Fantasy Flight Games. The A Song of Ice and Fire Miniatures Game p240 was designed by Eric M. Lang and Michael Shinall and published by CMON. The A Song of Ice and Fire setting is © George R. R. Martin. AuZtralia p180 is designed by Martin Wallace and published by SchilMil Games. Azul p66 is designed by Michael Kiesling and published by Plan B Games. Battle for Rokugan p164 is designed by Molly Glover and Tom Jolly and published by Fantasy Flight Games. BattleLore p244 is designed by Richard Borg and published by Fantasy Flight Games. Blue Lagoon p58 is designed by Reiner Knizia and published by Blue Orange. Brass: Birmingham p140 is designed by Gavan Brown, Matt Tolman, Martin Wallace and published by Roxley Game Laboratories.



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Camel Up p246 is designed by Steffen Bogen and published by eggertspiele and Z-Man Games. Capital p102 is designed by Filip Miłuński



and published by Granna. Carcassonne p21, p245 is designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and published by Hans im Glück and Z-Man Games. Ca$h ‘n’ Gun$ p25 is designed by Ludovic Maublanc and published by Repos Production. Castell p158 is designed by Aaron Vanderbeek and published by Renegade Game Studios. Catan p21 is designed by Klaus Teuber and published by Catan Studio. Catan and its associated marks are ™ and © Catan GmbH. Century: Eastern Wonders p112 is designed by Emerson Matsuuchi and published by Plan B Games CIV: Carta Impera Victoria p62 is designed by Rémi Amy and published by Ludonaute. Civilization: A New Dawn p196 is designed by James Kniffen and published by Fantasy Flight Games. Civilization is a trademark of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Clans of Caledonia p176 is designed by Juma Al-JouJou and published by Karma Games. Codenames p21 is designed by Vlaada Chvátil and published by Czech Games Edition. Coimbra p188 is designed by Flaminia Brasini and Virginio Gigli and published by eggertspiele. Crystal Clans p108 is designed by Colby Dauch, J. Arthur Ellis and Andrea Mezzotero and published by Plaid Hat Games.



Fallout: The Board Game p192 is designed by Andrew Fischer and Nathan I. Hajek and published by Fantasy Flight Games. Fallout is © 2017 Bethesda Softworks LLC, a ZeniMax Media company. Fog of Love p202 is designed by Jacob Jaskov and published by Hush Hush Projects. Forbidden Lands p222 is published by Free League. Forbidden Sky p128 is designed by Matt Leacock and published by Gamewright. Fort Sumter: The Secession Crisis, 186061 p184 is designed by Mark Herman and published by GMT Games.



Decrypto p38 is designed by Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance and published by Le Scorpion Masqué. Deep Sea Adventure p26 is designed by Jun Sasaki and Goro Sasaki and published by Oink Games. Dice Hospital p100 is designed by Stan Kordonskiy and Mike Nudd and published by Alley Cat Games. Dixit p19 is designed by Jean-Louis Roubira and published by Libellud. Doppelt So Clever p249 is designed by Wolfgang Warsch and published by Schmidt



Gaia Project p148 is designed by Jens Drögemüller and Helge Ostertag and published by Feuerland Spiele and Z-Man Games. Galaxy Trucker p251 is designed by Vlaada Chvátil and published by Czech Games Edition. Ganz Schön Clever p135, p248 is designed by Wolfgang Warsch and published by Schmidt Spiele and Stronghold Games. Gizmos p78 is designed by Phil WalkerHarding and published by CMON. Gloomhaven p160 is designed by Isaac



Spiele and Stronghold Games. Downforce p56 is designed by Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, Wolfgang Kramer and published by Restoration Games. Dragon Castle p106 is designed by Hjalmar Hach, Luca Ricci and Lorenzo Silva and published by Horrible Games. Dungeons & Dragons p216 is published by Wizards of the Coast, a division of Hasbro. Endeavor: Age of Sail p198 is designed by Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray and published by Burnt Island Games and The Grand Gamers’ Guild. The Estates p134 is published by Klaus Zoch and published by Capstone Games. EXIT: The Game p104 is designed by Inka Brand and Markus Brand and published by KOSMOS.



Childres and published by Cephalofair Games. The Graphic Novel Adventure p208 series was designed, written and drawn by the creators at Makaka Editions. Van Ryder Games publishes English-language translations. Gunkimono p74 is designed by Jeffrey D. Allers and published by Renegade Game Studios. Hardback p72 is designed by Jeff Beck and Tim Fowers and published by Fowers Games. Heaven & Ale p195 is designed by Michael Kiesling and Andreas Schmidt and published by eggertspiele. Hey, That’s My Fish! p23, p247 is designed by Günter Cornett and Alvydas Jakeliunas and published by Fantasy Flight Games. Hive p25 is designed by John Yianni and published by Gen 42 Games. Hunt for the Ring p126 is designed by Marco Maggi, Gabriele Mari and Francesco Nepitello and published by Ares Games. The licensor in respect of merchandising rights to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is Middle-earth Enterprises, a division of The Saul Zaentz Company. Imaginarium p166 is designed by Bruno Cathala and Florian Sirieix and published by Bombyx. Isle of Skye p250 is designed by Andreas Pelikan and Alexander Pfister and published by Lookout Games. Jaipur p27, p251 is designed by Sébastien Pauchon and published by GameWorks SàRL. Junk Art p25 is designed by Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim and published by Pretzel Games. Karuba: The Card Game p89 is designed by Rudiger Dorn and published by HABA. Keyforge: Call of the Archons p94 is designed by Richard Garfield and published



by Fantasy Flight Games. Kids on Bikes p230 is designed by Jonathan Gilmour and Doug Levandowski and published by Hunters Books, Infectious Play and Renegade Game Studios. Kingdom Builder p19, p250 is designed by Donald X. Vaccario and published by Queen Games. Kingdomino p22 is designed by Bruno Cathala and published by Blue Orange. King of Tokyo p23 is designed by Richard Garfield and published by Iello. Kronia p26 is designed by Sérgio Halaban and André Zatz and published by CMON and Spaghetti Western Games. The Lady and the Tiger p64 is designed by José Manuel Alvarez, Kevin Carmichael, Peter C. Hayward, J.R. Honeycutt, Ken Maher, Philip Tootill and Allysha Tulk and published by Jellybean Games. Legacy of Dragonholt p206 is designed by Nikki Valens and published by Fantasy Flight Games. Love Letter p20 is designed by Seiji Kanai and published by Z-Man Games. Lowlands p197 is designed by Claudia Partenheimer and Ralf Partenheimer published by Feuerland Spiele and Z-Man Games. Luxor p85 is designed by Rudiger Dorn and published by Queen Games. Machi Koro p18 is designed by Masao Suganuma and published by IDW Games and Pandasaurus Games. Majesty: For the Realm p70 is designed by Marc André and published by Hans im Glück and Z-Man Games. Mars Open: Tabletop Golf p36 is designed by Dennis Hoyle and published by Bellwether Games. Meeple Circus p30 is designed by Cédric Millet and published by Matagot. Monolith Arena p132 is designed by Michał Oracz and published by Portal Games. My Little Scythe p42 is designed by Hoby Chou and Vienna Chou and published by Stonemaier Games. The Mind p48 is designed by Wolfgang



Warsch and published by NürnbergerSpielkarten-Verlag. Nyctophobia p90 is designed by Catherine Stippell and published by Pandasaurus Games. Onirim p248 is designed by Shadi Torbey and published by Z-Man Games. Onitama p249 is designed by Shimpei Sato and published by Arcane Wonders. Pandemic p20, p249 is designed by Matt Leacock and published by Z-Man Games. Pandemic: Fall of Rome p186 is designed by Matt Leacock and Paolo Mori and published by Z-Man Games. Pandemic Legacy Season 2 p116 is designed by Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock and published by Z-Man Games. Pantone: The Game p44 is designed by Scott Rogers and published by Cryptozoic Entertainment. Pantone is © Pantone LLC. Patchwork p250 is designed by Uwe Rosenberg and published by Lookout Games. Patchwork Express p50 is designed by Uwe Rosenberg and published by Lookout Games. Pathfinder p220 is published by Paizo Inc. Pathfinder Adventures p247 is designed by Mike Selinker and published by Paizo Inc. Penny Papers Adventure p80 is designed by Henri Kermarrec and published by Sit Down! Photosynthesis p133 is designed by Hjalmar Hach and published by Blue Orange. Planet p87 is designed by Urtis Šulinskas and published by Blue Orange. Quadropolis p24 is designed by François Gandon and published by Days of Wonder. Queendomino p120 is designed by Bruno Cathala and published by Blue Orange. Raids p82 is designed by Matthew Dunstan



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and Brett J. Gilbert and published by Iello. Railroad Rivals p124 is designed by Glenn Drover and published by Forbidden Games. Rajas of the Ganges p168 is designed by Inka Brand and Markus Brand and published by HUCH! Reef p86 is designed by Emerson Matsuuchi and published by Next Move Games. The Resistance p22 is designed by Don Eskridge and published by Indie Boards & Cards. Rhino Hero Super Battle p49 is designed by Scott Frisco and Steven Strumpf and published by HABA. Rising Sun p190 is designed by Eric M. Lang and published by CMON. Root p170 is designed by Cole Wehrle and published by Leder Games. Sagrada p131 is designed by Adrian Adamescu and Daryl Andrews and published by Floodgate Games. Sakura p68 is designed by Reiner Knizia and published by Osprey Games. Santorini p27 is designed by Gordon Hamilton and published by Roxley Game Laboratories. Sigmata: This Signal Kills Fascists p231 was designed by Tim Wilkinson Lewis and Chad Walker and published by Land of Nop. Skylands p122 is designed by Aya Taguchi and Shun Taguchi and published by Queen Games. Spire p231 is designed by Mary Hamilton, Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor and published by Rowan, Rook & Decard. Spirit Island p152 is designed by R. Eric Reuss and published by Fabled Nexus Games.



Splendor p19, p244 is designed by Marc André and published by Space Cowboys. Spy Club p212 is designed by Randy Hoyt, Jason D. Kingsley and published by Foxtrot Games and Renegade Game Studios. Star Crossed p224 is designed by Alex Roberts and published by Bully Pulpit. Star Realms p23, p247 is designed by Darwin Kastle and Rob Dougherty and published by White Wizard Games. Starship Samurai p114 is designed by Isaac Vega and published by Plaid Hat Games. Star Trek Adventures p226 is published by Modiphius. Star Trek and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc. Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game p239 is designed by Jason Little and published by Fantasy Flight Games. Star Wars is ™ and © Lucasfilm Ltd. Stuffed Fables p210 is designed by Jerry Hawthorn and published by Plaid Hat Games. Sushi Go! p24 is designed by Phil WalkerHarding and published by Gamewright. Takenoko p27 is designed by Antoine Bauza and published by Bombyx and Matagot. TAGS p46 is designed by Spartaco Albertarelli and published by HeidelBÄR Games. Teotihuacan: City of Gods p174 is designed by Daniele Tascini and published by NSKN Games. Ticket to Ride p18, p245 is designed by Alan R. Moon and published by Days of Wonder. Ticket to Ride: New York p54 is designed by Alan R. Moon and published by Days of Wonder.



Topiary p76 is designed by Danny Devine and published by Fever Games and Renegade Game Studios. Triplock p88 is designed by Adam Carlson and Josh J. Carlson and published by Chip Theory Games. Troll & Dragon p34 is designed by Alexandre Emerit and published by LOKI. Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition p144 is designed by Dane Beltrami, Corey Konieczka and Christian T. Petersen and published by Fantasy Flight Games. Twilight Struggle p248 is designed by Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews and published by GMT Games. Warhammer 40,000, p234 Warhammer: Age of Sigmar p236 and Warhammer Underworlds p238 are published by and © Games Workshop. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay p229 is published by Cubicle 7. Warhammer is © Games Workshop. Welcome To Your Perfect Home p60 is designed by Benoit Turpin and published by Blue Cocker Games. Whistle Stop p136 is designed by Scott Caputo and published by Bézier Games. Wildlands p98 is designed by Martin Wallace and published by Osprey Games. Word Slam p32 is designed by Inka Brand and Markus Brand and published by KOSMOS. Wordsy p20 is designed by Gil Hova and published by Formal Ferret Games. Yellow & Yangtze p182 is designed by Reiner Knizia and published by Grail Games.



We hope you have enjoyed Volume 1 of The Board Game Book. For information on future editions, follow us on Twitter @BoardGameBook and on the web at boardgame-book.com



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