When I was a kid, I had a dream video game. It was basically “Wing Commander: Privateer”, only bigger, and it was set in the Star Wars universe. I’m still waiting on the video game, but Fantasy Flight have this year delivered much the same experience, only in board game form. Outer Rim is the…
I’ve been playing a few board games that use an app lately, but Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth is the first one I’ve played that’s been designed from the ground-up with a digital companion in mind. Funnily enough it’s published by Fantasy Flight, source of most of the other app-based games I’ve…
There’s a new Sonic the Hedgehog board game out. And having spent the last week playing it with my kids, I think that aside from Mania it’s maybe the best Sonic game I’ve played in years, regardless of the medium. Sonic the Hedgehog: Crash Course—designed by Sean Mcdonald and published by IDW—is a family board…
Architects of the West Kingdom is what you get when a designer takes a very good board game they’ve already made and figures, you know what, I’ll now do something similar, only better I reviewed Shem Phillips’ Raiders of the North Sea earlier this year after absolutely loving it. A simple worker placement title, it…
Captain Sonar is a board game about submarines, but it’s also so much more than that. There are boards (several, in fact), and rules and competition and cooperation, but to call Captain Sonar a board game would be to massively undersell the experience. It’s a crucible for friendships. It’s a drunk gamer’s worst nightmare. It’s…
Flamme Rouge is a game about early 20th- century bicycle races, and I promise you, it is a lot more fun than that sounds. While unable to actually use the words, since it doesn’t have the license, Flamme Rouge—a “Red Flag”, waved when a race is one kilometre from the finish—is based on early Tour…
Mars is inhospitable. Let’s change that. Terraforming Mars is not a new game, having been released in 2016, but I still thought it was worth reviewing here in 2018 because a) I just played it and b) it’s so damn good A game for 1-5 players, Terraforming Mars puts players in control of futuristic corporations…
I’ve played plenty of board games that are better than GKR, but I don’t think I’ve ever played one that’s cooler than GKR Giant Killer Robots: Heavy Hitters is the first board game designed by the guys at WETA, the art and effects house you probably know from stuff like Lord of the Rings, Mad…
Vengeance is what happens when someone takes the murderous revenge tale of movies like Kill Bill and turns them into a board game. Or at least tries to. A game for 1-4 players, Vengeance puts you in control of a person who has been wronged at the hands of criminal gangs, and who is now…
There are too many board games about pirates. But Black Fleet is one you should fight through the fatigue for. It’s similar in scope to other buccaneering board games, since it involves merchants carrying goods across the Caribbean and pirates raiding (or trying to raid) them. But where Black Fleet is cool is that it…
Raiders of the North Sea is the brightest, breeziest way to pillage the shores of Europe I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing. It’s a worker placement game for 2-4 players, where everyone is in competition to build up a crew of bloodthirsty marauders, secure provisions then head out raiding monasteries and villages in an…
The card game Android: Netrunner does not feel like a game. Jacked into its system, Android: Netrunner’s thorny mechanics melt away until all that’s left are electric impulses in my brain interfacing with my opponents’. It becomes a stylish dance of psychology. Android: Netrunner is not a new card game, but it’s the most captivating…
Scythe is one of my favourite board games of the last few years, and having missed its first expansion I was super excited to drop back into the game to test out its second, the airship-based Wind Gambit Having begun as a game about mechs and workers stomping their boots around the grasslands of an…
It’s hard work, turning a video game into a board game. Video games are big, sprawling pieces of audio-visual entertainment. They come packed with AI, can resolve battles in an instant and look fantastic while doing it all. It’s unfair to ask a board game, with its sedate pacing, books full of rules and cardboard…
Fallout: The Board Game is as faithful an adaptation of the source material as you could possibly hope for. There have been other good video-to-board games, sure—Doom most recently—but its similarities were merely thematic. Fantasy Flight’s Fallout game, on the other hand, has been built from the ground up to play the same on a…
In 2011, the board game Letters from Whitechapel put detectives on the hunt for Jack the Ripper. In 2017, that game has been stripped down to all but its most essential systems, and has become better for it. Whitehall Mystery is the name of the new offering. Made for 2-4 players, it puts one person…
Star Wars Rebellion is an excellent board game that manages to capture the feel of the entire classic trilogy inside a single tabletop experience. Rise of the Empire is a new expansion for the game that does the same thing, only for Rogue One If you’re new to Rebellion, here’s a quick intro: it’s a…
I never knew being a truck driver could be so much fun. Wasteland Express Delivery Service is a new board game from Pandasaurus, designed by Jon Gilmour (Dead of Winter), Matt Riddle (Fleet, Back to the Future) and Ben Pinchback (Fleet, Back to the Future). It pits 2-5 players against each other as couriers in…
Star Wars Armada is a great gameto play every once in a while. But committing to play a lot of it in the name of an organised campaign is another story. The Corellian Conflict, released last year, is an attempt by Fantasy Flight to add a bit more weight to your fleet engagements by linking…
V-Commandos is, in everything but name, a board game adaptation of 1998’s stealth strategy game Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines Kickstarted back in 2014, the game has recently been released to retail, and over the last few months I’ve been enjoying the hell out of it. It works like this: players choose from one of a…
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