“Pipeline” made my head hurt, but not necessarily in a bad way.  It’s a fairly heavy economic game that I felt was over before it had even begun…but I feel that way about most engine builders that I play.  The components were of pretty good quality, though expect to set aside a couple of hours to both learn and play your first game.  It’s also a bit of a table hog, what with the a formation of each player’s personal pipe network that they’ll be tapping for oil on a regular basis.

Continue Reading

Bluffing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoy a good psychological mind battle.  “Curios” has a bit of that, along with some hidden information mechanics that keeps the players engaged throughout.  Essentially, you’re trying to determine the values of the different colors as you’re taking gems of that color throughout the game.  You can reveal more cards in your hand in order to grab more chances to take gems, but this will give others information that could turn the tide in their strategy for the better.  It’s simple, yet lovely to look at.  It’s an easy recommend for those looking for a relatively light, but “thinky” filler.

Continue Reading

It’s difficult to crunch any kind of complicated 4X into a 1-2 hour experience, but “Tapestry” did so rather well I thought.  The components are absolutely beautiful and the gameplay is pretty streamlined to a point.  There’s still a bit of a learning curve, so this game isn’t for the faint of heart.  Expect a 3-4 hour experience your first time out if you’re unfamiliar with moderate to heavy Euro-games.  Go check out our gameplay video below for a long, exhaustive, but fun first run-through.  Stick around for first impressions afterwards.

Continue Reading

Engine building, train networks, hiring personnel to grant you abilities…this game has everything I like.  Better yet, no dice!  “Empyreal: Spells & Steam” is a bit on the pricey side (the MSRP according to the Kickstarter was around $90), but if you have the money to drop on this you’ll be in for a treat.  The quality of the components rivals that of “Wingspan”, most notably the leathery feel of the manual and player boards.  The rest of the components look and feel great too.  Aidalee was most impressed that the train models were different depending on color…a subtle bonus that I myself missed.

Continue Reading

We often see games lean toward fictional characters with supernatural abilities as their protagonists.  When games aren’t doing that, they employ everyday Joe’s that somehow have the ability to wade through mobs of enemies with two punches and an uppercut (I’m looking at you, Cody from “Final Fight”).  “Unperfect Heroes: Battle Lines” doesn’t feature such people.  Rather, the protagonists here, if you can call them that, are misfits looking to cut in front of their opposition in order to obtain their goal (getting to the front of the line).  “Unperfect Heroes: Battle Heroes” is scheduled to launch on Kickstarter in January 2020, so it goes without saying that all the content you will see and read about here is subject to change.  Per FCC regulations I’m required to disclose that I received compensation in order to cover this game, though any thoughts and/or opinions listed here are my own.

Continue Reading

Did you ever buy a board game, open it up, and think to yourself…”dear goodness, what did I just get myself into?” That’s how I felt about “The Taverns of Tiefenthal”.  I don’t get what I like to call “setup fatigue” often, but there were so many components in the box.  That’s not always a bad thing, but there was no dedicated components page in the rulebook.  The gameplay isn’t bad, in fact I quite like the deck building, dice drafting, and worker placement mechanics.  The rulebook, component quality, and the Return On Investment felt lackluster however.

Continue Reading

“Lanterns” is an extremely engaging board game, mainly because you’re earning something on every player turn rather than just your own.  “Lanterns Dice” turned out to be more of the same, but instead of building a tableau of tiles you’re rolling dice and filling out a score sheet (known as roll-and-write).  Scoring turned out to be just as tight as it was in “Lanterns” in the sense that there was never a clear leader, sort of like a typical Soccer match.

Continue Reading

I’m not a big fan of Mahjong, but “Dragon Castle” opened my eyes a bit when I took the plunge via the digital adaptation released not too long ago.  “Dragon Castle” does, for the most part, stay true to the “Mahjong” style gameplay, but here each player is creating their own castle from the tiles they match from the central board.  There are a number of different ways to score too.

Continue Reading

While I loved the idea of the original Codenames, at most you had to have a three player minimum where one was simply the mediator between the other two players.  No longer.  “Codenames Duet XXL” can be challenging in the sense that there’s a risk/reward system at play…the more words you assign to a single clue, the more your partner may misconstrue what you mean.  I believe that almost half of this game is knowing the way your partner thinks.

Continue Reading

In case you missed it, “Castle Dice” recently released for iPhones and IPad devices for roughly $7.  It’s an interesting mix of dice drafting and resource management.  Seeing as how I can’t find the tabletop game anywhere (when I do the price is beyond inflated) this is a great alternative.  Watch the video below to learn how to play!

Continue Reading

I can’t recall how many hours I’ve spent fiddling with my digital cities throughout the many versions of “SimCity” and variants thereof, only to tear them down on purpose when I was through with them by calling upon every natural (or man-made) disaster available.  “Cities Skylines” is a fantastic video game adaptation of “SimCity” and I was pleased to be able to give this physical copy a go.

Continue Reading

I frequently ate at restaurants as a kid and one of the things I most looked forward to was the menu and the puzzles/games listed thereon.  Of course, the waiter/waitress only had two crayon colors and my younger brother always had to have the cooler looking of the two…I was often left with some off-putting, unhealthy puke orange color.  Mazes were often the star attraction on these kid menus and most were solvable in seconds.

Continue Reading

What an incredibly potent game for such a small package!  I was pleasantly surprised by “Songbirds” and would have definitely placed it on my honorable mentions for this year’s DGA Awards had I gotten the game sooner.  In “Songbirds” you’re trying to figure out which songbird color will be the loudest…that is, which color will gain the most victory points before the end of the game.  Players play cards to a grid to effect victory point awards and the one card they are left with determines the color that they’ll score.

Continue Reading

I’m not a big fan of dice, but “Roll For Adventure” scratched all the right itches enough for me to thoroughly enjoy it.  It’s a cooperative game where players are tasked with collecting so many gems/stones of power before one of the four lands they are trying to protect are overrun.  A typical turn involves rolling dice unique to your character, activating your character’s special ability if possible, and assigning dice to one of the many boards to complete tasks.  Enemies still remaining have the possibility of being activated, thus doing damage to your lands.

Continue Reading