Given the mind-boggling number of games designed by Dr. Reiner Knizia (sitting at 765 on BGG, as of this writing) it’s no wonder so many consider the German mathematician to be the Board Game GOAT. For the past 40+ years, he’s been creating innovative and accessible games, but what’s always impressed me has been the staying power of some of his earliest titles. The man is no stranger to auction and bidding games, with classics like High Society and Ra to his credit. However, there is a reason that Modern Art, in particular, has been consistently reprinted since  it was originally released back in 1992.

I got 5 on it

In Modern Art, each player is a curator of a world-famous museum, buying and selling paintings by 5 different artists, using 5 different auction rules, until the 5th painting from a single artist is revealed and the round ends. Value is assessed based on the popularity of each artist and money is paid out for every painting purchased that round. Four rounds of this and the museum with the most money wins. Buy low, sell high, and try to grab the best deals. Simple enough, right? Well, this is very much a case of a game with an…

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In the sea of historical, card-driven war games, the COIN series (short for COunter-INsurgency) from GMT Games has always stood out to me because its subject material is precisely NOT what most others are: large, national superpowers fighting one another in historically well-known and globally impactful (but otherwise covered-to-death in the wargaming space) conflicts. From the Colombian government hunting down Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel (Andean Abyss, Volume I) to Mohandas Gandhi’s civil resistance against colonial rule (Gandhi, Volume IX) to a bloody civil war in Finland (All Bridges Burning, Volume X) the COIN series focuses on smaller guerilla, revolutionary, and civilian fighters and protesters taking on the powerful, ruling parties (as well as one another), using asymmetric powers, variable winning conditions, and an innovative turn structure to produce some of the most compelling war games I’ve ever played.

A quick COIN gameplay overview: Using a deck of Event cards, players take actions on their turn (based on the faction initiative on each card) with the resources at their disposal, attempting to reach their unique winning condition. A small number of cards, spaced out and mixed into the Event deck, lead to a “victory check” when flipped up, and if no player has reached their particular winning condition, there is some shuffling of the map, resources, and/or pieces, and…

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