Category: Reviews

Rise of Tribes (Saturday Review)

Post read time 4 min readLeave a Comment on Rise of Tribes (Saturday Review)

Rise of Tribes by Breaking Games looks like your normal area control game with the usual random terrain made out of hexagonal tiles. The game is set in ancient, prehistoric times, and you move your tribe members around the terrain, collect resources, craft tools to upgrade your tribe's abilities and generally do things that you will have seen before in other games. However, look closer and you will see that there are at least two interesting mechanisms in this game, which make it stand head and shoulders above the rest.

Mystic Vale (Saturday Review)

Post read time 2 min readLeave a Comment on Mystic Vale (Saturday Review)

Card games come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from the traditional games played for centuries throughout Europe to the modern card collecting, card drafting and deck building games. It is the modern deck building games that I want to focus on in this review. In Mystic Vale by Alderac Entertainment Group you don't just build your deck in the traditional sense, where you simple buy new cards to improve what you have. Instead you have a fixed deck where every card can be added to, meaning that you literally customize every card. That creates a very interesting mechanism not seen in other games.

Haspelknecht: The Story of Early Coal Mining (Saturday Review)

Post read time 4 min readLeave a Comment on Haspelknecht: The Story of Early Coal Mining (Saturday Review)

Haspelknecht: The Story of Early Coal Mining, to give it its full title, is a kind of action selection game by Quined Games set in the Ruhr region of Germany. The game is set at a time when the area was still covered by forests and coal was first discovered close to the surface. During the game your task is to dig up that coal until its depleted and you have to start digging deep pits to get to this precious resource. The great mechanism in this game is the action selection element, where you draw all tokens of one colour from one of a number of common pools at the start of each round. These tokens are then used to activate your workforce and develop new technologies. It sounds simple, but it creates a really complex, interesting game with lots of options and very few player interaction.

Chai (Saturday Review)

Post read time 3 min readLeave a Comment on Chai (Saturday Review)

I had the pleasure of trying the prototype PnP version of Chai by Deep Aqua Games, which is due to launch on Kickstarter on 4 December, so keep an eye out for it. The aim of the game is to collect resources, in this case flavours and additives, to fulfil the outstanding tea orders for customers, which give you points. It's the classic mechanism of completing contracts or quests, like in so many other games. However, the twist is how you collect your resources from the market, which creates a really interesting puzzle which forces you to think ahead and work out what you need versus what other players may need.

Assembly (Saturday Review)

Post read time 4 min readLeave a Comment on Assembly (Saturday Review)

After the Kickstarter campaign for Assembly by Wren Games finished successfully back in June, the game is now close to being sent out to backers. So it is time to have a closer look at this fun, co-operative card game. The game can be played solo, which is also possible using an app, or in a two player co-operative setup. The aim is to manoeuvre a set of tokens along a randomly configured circle of locations into their correct slots by playing cards that allow you to rotate, swap and lock these tokens in place. To do this efficiently you need to play cards that your team mate can match with a card in their hand - but the problem is that you don't know what cards they have.

Battle Ravens (Saturday Review)

Post read time 3 min readLeave a Comment on Battle Ravens (Saturday Review)

My latest review is for Battle Ravens by Daniel Mersey and published by PSC Games. Just for disclosure, it was PSC Games who kindly sent me a review copy, but that didn't influence my view of the game. It's a war game set in Viking England and due to launch on Kickstarter on 20 November 2018, so keep an eye out. You either take the side of the Norse or the Anglo-Saxon armies, who face each other's shield walls on the battlefield. Your aim is to puncture three holes in your opponent's line to win the game by manoeuvring your warriors and attacking with your six-sided dice. However, the clever twist to this game is that your actions are determined by how many raven tokens you place on your six battle spaces. It creates a bidding element which means that being the first player isn't necessarily an advantage.

Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small (Saturday Review)

Post read time 3 min readLeave a Comment on Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small (Saturday Review)

In my third review I look at another digital conversion by Digidiced that Asmodee Digital was kind enough to let me try out. It is another Lookout Spiele game by designer Uwe Rosenberg. In Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small (I shorten this to just Agricola for the rest of this article) you are a 17th century farmer in central Europe. It is a very clever 2 player only worker placement game where you have to manage your resources, life stock and farmland. Of course, this game also has some clever little twists, which make the gameplay so interesting.

Lincoln (Saturday Review)

Post read time 4 min readLeave a Comment on Lincoln (Saturday Review)

In my second review I look at the fast-paced, two-player only wargame Lincoln by Martin Wallace and published by PSC Games and Worthington Games, which finished its Kickstarter campaign back in May. Just for disclosure, it was PSC Games who kindly sent me a review copy. The game is set in the American Civil War and you can choose between taking the side of the Union or the Confederate. The game is completely asymmetric, in that the Union and Confederate sides have different decks, different starting locations and strengths, and opposing aims. That in itself makes for an interesting game, but the mix of deck building and strategy board game creates an additional interesting angle.

Le Havre: The Inland Port (Saturday Review)

Post read time 4 min readLeave a Comment on Le Havre: The Inland Port (Saturday Review)

Digidiced has been very kind to offer me the opportunity to review a number of the games they have converted to digital, and I decided to start with Lookout Spiele's award winning game Le Havre: The Inland Port which is one of the many popular games by designer Uwe Rosenberg. The game is set in the 18th century in the maritime city of Le Havre in the Normandy region of France. Players are harbourmasters who try to build the best harbour by constructing great buildings to attract trade. It is a two player only resource management game with a large action selection element - but with a twist.

UK Games Expo 2018

Post read time 1 min readLeave a Comment on UK Games Expo 2018

If you are interested in any type of tabletop game for pretty much any reason, and you live in the UK, then the UK Games Expo 2018 at the NEC in Birmingham is a must. It's probably the biggest, and in my opinion best, tabletop games and accessories exhibition in the UK.