Fear of the new (Topic Discussion)

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Sure. It's always great to play with the latest shinies and be at the cutting edge of what board games have to offer. It makes you feel trendy, in-the-know or it's just great to have bought something new. I love it myself. It's amazing when someone offers you a game for review that hasn't been released yet. You feel honoured. It's a special thing. It just makes you happy, and enjoying games has a lot to do with happiness for a lot of people. However, there is also the flipside. It can be stressful, and often very expensive, to always hunt for the latest game, the newest release. Your fear of missing out can turn into panic. That's when it's time to remind ourselves where our interest in the hobby started.

Dune (Saturday Review)

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Our heighliner was positioned safely in Arrakis' orbit. With a steady stream of Spice filling our coffers gradually, we had to be patient and observe from afar the goings-on down on the planet itself. It was clear that House Atreides was pivotal in the unfolding events and our scheme had to remain hidden until the right moment was reached. The cogs were set in motion and doubts had been planted in the Emperor's mind that would lead to their unavoidable conclusion. The Spice needs to flow on Dune by Gale Force Nine.

Home teaching (Topic Discussion)

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Growing up, I played a lot of tabletop games with my parents and brother. Yes, there was Monopoly of course, as well as other roll and move games such as Winnetou, but also tableau builders like Ogalala and a stock market game called Die Börse which required a little more strategic thinking. It was mostly my brother who would teach us these sort of games, and my parents would teach us trick-taking games like Skat and Doppelkopf.

Escape Room Puzzles (Saturday Review)

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After finishing my shift in the press room at the local newspaper, I had returned home. As I entered the apartment block's communal hallway and went over to collect my post, I saw that someone had changed the padlock on my letterbox. I knew that my own padlock had never been very secure, and I always expected someone to cut it with a bolt cutter to steal my post. However, I never thought anybody would go through the trouble of replacing my own lock with theirs, but clearly someone had done just that. Then I saw a sticky note written by my friend Henry. It seemed that I had to solve a little puzzle to work out the code of the new padlock, which, unbeknownst to me at the time, was going to lead me down a rabbit hole of puzzles of ever-increasing difficulty which would eventually help me uncover a major conspiracy in Escape Room Puzzles by Carlton Books.

Play styles (Topic Discussion)

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We all play games for different reasons, and we all approach them differently. In fact, we may play the same game differently on two different days, just because we're in a different mood. However, I'm not talking about playing a different strategy or choosing a different character or even just playing with a different player colour. I'm talking about something different altogether.

Wingspan: European Expansion (Saturday Review)

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You sit quietly in your hide, binoculars in hand, peering out over the lake, with the grassland on the other side and the woodlands in the background. You have already spotted a fair number of birds that frequent this nature reserve regularly, but suddenly you spot something new. You think you glimpsed a read head and black and white back. Slowly scanning the woodlands, you see it again, hanging onto the trunk of a dead tree. It's a white-backed woodpecker, which is a new visitor and comes with 80 other birds in Wingspan: European Expansion by Stonemaier Games.

Enjoyable design (Topic Discussion)

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Tabletop game designers want to create an enjoyable experience for people - whatever enjoyable means in this context. From that starting point, they create a game that is balanced, flows well and meets the desired complexity requirements, as well as meets other criteria. They may use the skillset of developers to refine everything, and if a publisher is involved, there will be additional criteria that have to be met. However, in this article, I want to focus on enjoyment, what it means and whose responsibility it is to make a game enjoyable.

Pandemic (Saturday Review)

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"...as more people are put into isolation in specifically built camps that are guarded by military personnel and run by medical experts and support staff brought in from around the country. The World Health Organization has so far identified five different viruses in this global epidemic. A number of scientific laboratories across the world are working around the clock in an attempt to discover a cure for them all, while teams on the ground travel to infection sites to gather samples and monitor outbreaks." You switch off the TV, because you have to return to your fieldwork and help your team find cures in Pandemic by Z-Man Games.

Setup pains (Topic Discussion)

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Chits, tokens, player boards, tiles, pieces, cards and all the other components we have come to know and love can sometimes be a bit of a problem: when you need to place dozens upon dozens of them into specific places on the game board or player mat and spend hours shuffling dozens of decks of cards before you can even think about starting the game. Setup is something most of us will want to be quick, so we can get to the fun bit as soon as possible.

On the Underground London/Berlin (Saturday Review)

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After a short journey by train, you arrive in Berlin at Friedrichstraße central station. Wasting no time, you immediately take the stairs down to the U-Bahn platforms. You want to see as much of this metropole as possible, not just the usual tourist sites, but also the more regular stations that locals would travel to. Your first destination is Zitadelle in Spandau, after which you want to see the famous Potsdamer Platz. However, as you arrive on the platform, you notice there are no trains running. It turns out that you have to take a taxi to Jungfernheide, after which you can take the yellow line to Zitadelle, then back to Jungfernheide and another taxi to Zoologischer Garten, where you can catch the white line. It seems weird, but this is On the Underground London/Berlin by LudiCreations.