Updated: December 6, 2024

In my original review of Pagan: Fate of Roanoke, I talked at length about feeling as though I, and the two or three other people who read the rulebook after me, had missed a rule. It seemed far too arduous a process to get tokens out on the board, with games grinding along at a horrendous tempo as a result. I read the rulebook all the way through three different times, and two or three other people read through it in its entirety. None of us were able to identify a missed rule.

Subsequent conversations with other people who've played and enjoyed the game gave me the answer: we had indeed missed a rule. Every time you visit a villager, tokens are distributed to other villagers. I, and everyone I played with, took this to mean that tokens are taken from the visited villager and moved around. It turns out those tokens are taken from the supply and distributed amongst other villagers. Because this rule would make an enormous difference in the experience of the game, and because I will not have the opportunity to revisit the game with the corrected rule in effect, I do not feel comfortable leaving my review as it existed.

If you play Pagan, please note that the distribution of…

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I am not really sure, most of the time, what it is that draws me in and makes me want to get and play a new game. Sure, in my youth, the idea of someone suggesting a game and introducing it to me certainly was a factor. But now that I am seeking out games (both board and role-playing), it is the oddest things that grab my attention. Back in 2022, I was immediately hooked on the game Hidden Leaders when I saw this image online:

[caption id="attachment_306969" align="aligncenter" width="450"] Be honest: what is not to love about this guy?[/caption]

I mean, look at this guy! He is a confident and self assured individual. There are a few meanings for the word ‘queer’ but none of the definitions that fall outside of ‘gay’ seem to apply. As an ally, and someone with many friends and family in the LGBTQIA+ community, this is the sort of character I can get behind! I got a copy for me, and one for one of my old Navy buddies (who happens to be gay). I have never regretted this purchase, because beyond the wonderful artistic style of the game comes great game play as well.

Overview

Hidden Leaders is a card-driven board game where two…

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A Brief History

I do not recall the first time I played this game, but I do recall loving it for years and years. The best sessions of Diplomacy were while I was in the Navy. We had a six-month deployment, so what we would do is handle the game one move per day. Players had a 24-hour window to secretly negotiate and scheme with each other: and scheme they did!

One person (usually me) would collect the orders from each of the players; at a designated time set so we could all be there, we would run through what took place, adjust the board. Everyone would crib down notes on who was where and then disappear for a few hours. Phone calls would take place. People would meet for lunch or midnight rations. And then, within a couple of hours of game time, I would start getting visited by players as they turned in their orders. One game we played on the USS RANGER lasted over two months. Given that two moves in the game is one year, in that game World War I lasted over 30 years.

Diplomacy is a wonderful game... if you have the right people.

[caption id="attachment_306158" align="aligncenter" width="600"] A classic version of the Diplomacy board.…

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As a board game reviewer, I frequently venture into the unexplored realms of tabletop gaming. While the masses hunt for the latest offerings from first-rate publishers, I find a unique excitement in unearthing games yet to grace store shelves or Kickstarter campaigns. Sometimes this leads to interesting gems, while others remind me why not every game is published.

Runner Tactics is a game where these two perceptions are engaged in endless combat. While its core concept is undeniably intriguing, certain aspects of its product design and gameplay raise questions about its readiness for the spotlight. Of course, for you to understand where I’m coming from, we need to delve into this game’s mechanisms.

In a few words, Runner Tactics is a strategic, grid-based, two-player programming game where the players will draft a team of three members for a 3 vs 3 match. Instead of abilities, each member has their own movement range and attack pattern. On the field itself, there are two lines, similar to a North American Football field. The objective is easy: Eliminate your opponent’s team or, at the end of any round, have more members on the other side of the line than your opponent.

Gridiron Hussle

Turns are as simple as the objective. You put a big wooden player shield in front of you and…

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At last year’s SPIEL event in Essen, Germany, I had the chance to try The Warp, a game I followed during its crowdfunding campaign because I was intrigued by its approach to the 4X genre of spacefaring adventure games (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate). The campaign, which ended in late 2020, gave me the sense that there would be a real chance at being blown off the map, so the “eXterminate” portion of the 4X mechanic here looked real…and many games in this category do not really follow through on that promise.

I’ve now played The Warp in both three-player and four-player arrangements, and after these plays and a promising demo back in Germany, I know that The Warp does a lot of things well, particularly in the way objective scoring takes place. While it falls a tier below the best 4X and 4X-adjacent games I have played, such as Voidfall, Scythe, Circadians: Chaos Order and Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy, I think The Warp delivers on many fronts.

The real challenge? Finding it, especially if you live in North America.

“Do You Want to Follow?”

The Warp is a relatively rules-light, 1-4 player area control and hand management experience that can be…

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Following close on the heels of my man Tom Franklin’s review of 2020’s bluffing game Spicy, I had the chance to get a different iteration of the Spicy system to my table: Sweet & Spicy (2023, HeidelBӒR Games). Sweet & Spicy is a member of the “Radiant Culture” series of games, a series noteworthy for the vibrant artwork done by people from all over the world. Our team has reviewed other games in this series, including Spicy, Coyote, and Anansi.

Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of bluffing games. If you call and invite me to your house to play a game of Coup or The Resistance, I’m going to pretend I’m not feeling well. If this is a hidden role game where I need to lie about my identity (you pick it: Among Us, Werewolf, Blood on the Clocktower, Spyfall, etc.), I’m probably going to play because I love hanging out with my friends for a few hours, but the fake identity collection of games on your shelf are never going to be the games I pick first.

But, if I only have to bluff my way through a game for 5-10 minutes? Oh, I can work with that.

Spicy is essential a game of Bull****, for anyone who played the…

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[caption id="attachment_301265" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Spicy Box[/caption]

When it comes to games, I tend to favor crunchy Eurogames and 2-player abstracts. It’s been a surprise to me, then, to discover just how much I enjoy a good bluffing card game. I’ve previously written about Skull and Cockroach Poker Royale—two games that I thought were the only bluffing card games I needed in my collection.

Then I played Spicy. 

The game’s background story is there were once three tigers who grew tired of fighting one another for dominance. Having grown tired of fighting, they decided to settle their claim by seeing who could eat the spiciest food. A silly concept, but it makes for such a great game.

Let’s get it to the table so you can see for yourself.

Spicy Deck of Cards Pun

The Spicy deck of cards consists of three types of spices (or suits): Pepper (blue), Wasabi (green), and Chili (red). Each spice has three complete runs of cards numbered 1-10. 

The deck also includes three Wild Spice cards that show all the spices, but have no number associated with them. There are also three Wild Number cards that show 1-10, but have no spice shown.

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Sometimes you know, and you know right away. Reading the rules for Matches, a gorgeous-looking card game from designer Daniel McKinley and publisher Thing 12 Games, I was a touch baffled. “I don’t know what this is going to be,” I said.

Matches sells itself as a “trick-taking style game,” but I was disabused of that notion pretty quickly. I’m not sure if we have a word for this kind of card game. The closest I can get is either an inverted shedding game or a backwards set collection game. It’s an odd one. In order to score points, you either want to be the last player left in the round, or you want to play as many pairs as possible.

At the beginning of each round, the starting player puts a single card from their hand into the middle of the table, adding a Fire Token on top. This card has a value between 1 and 10, and is called the Blaze. The Blaze is both the final pot, with the last player still in the round collecting all the Fire Tokens on top, and the target for the round.

For our purposes here today, let’s…

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Cosmic Encounter is a classic. It is a bright and shining star in the history of board game design. When I introduce the game to new players, I have encountered a few who hear ‘variable player powers’ and begin to doze off. I get it. The idea of an asymmetric game allowing players to break the rules in unique ways is fairly common these days.

These days.

Set the wayback machine to 1977, however, and this game is nothing short of revolutionary. It’s like the film Citizen Cane. Kids watching it for the first time today look at how the story unfolds, how it was filmed, what it does, and they have no idea! They think it’s quaint, or even old fashioned, but they do not see the greatness. They fail to grasp how every movie they watch in a theater or over some streaming service today owes that film a sizable debt. It is not a stretch to say that modern cinematic storytelling began with Citizen Cane. Likewise, the modern concept of variable player powers and asymmetric game design began with Cosmic Encounter.

Let’s take a look at this masterpiece.

A Little History

[caption id="attachment_298973" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The science fiction game for everyone.[/caption]

The original Cosmic Encounter was published…

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I would have told you that Decrypto had been out for way longer than five years. Like Just One, Decrypto arrived in 2018, out of the blue, and immediately established itself as a go-to word game. To think there was a year in which we received Decrypto and Just One. The heart quickens. We had no idea how good we had it.

To celebrate five years of success, Scorpion Masqué has released a 5th anniversary edition, spicing up the classic—board gaming has a short memory—with 440 new words. Does it change the game in any appreciable way? No, this is still very much the Decrypto people know and love. It does freshen things up a bit, though, for those who’ve put their copy of the original release through its paces.

It takes a round or two to get used to Decrypto’s structure, and it’s difficult to describe in absence of the game in front of you. What I’m trying to tell you is, what I describe may not sound fun. I assure you, it is.

The players are divided into two teams, each of which has four secret words that everyone on the team can see. Each round, one player on each team (the “Encryptor”) has a secret three digit code that they need their teammates to guess.…

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