What a curious beast this is.

Wolffdesigna’s Trick Shot has a reputation as the greatest hockey-themed board game out there. BGG lists 275 titles, so that’s not as hilariously specific a statement as it may read to most of us, myself included. Many of its fans argue that it is, in fact, the single greatest sports board game. I can see why. During those moments when everything clicks, when the puck is shooting back and forth and skaters are ramming into one another, when plays are coming together, you feel, no bones about it, like you are watching a game of hockey.

Trick Shot achieves much of this through simplicity. On your turn, you pick one of your players and have them move, pass the puck, or attempt to shoot a goal. Then, you roll a die. You have a five-in-six chance of success. If you fail, your turn ends. If you succeed, you pick a different player and have them move, pass the puck, or attempt to shoot a goal. Then, you roll two dice. You have a 25–in–36 chance of success. If you succeed, etc. You get the idea.

This is a push-your-luck game, which strikes me now as the perfect format for a sports theme. The emotional effect of rolling more and more dice and getting…

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Hello and welcome to ‘Focused on Feld’. In my Focused on Feld series of reviews, I am working my way through Stefan Feld’s entire catalogue. Over the years, I have hunted down and collected every title he has ever put out. Needless to say, I’m a fan of his work. I’m such a fan, in fact, that when I noticed there were no active Stefan Feld fan groups on Facebook, I created one of my own.

Today we’re going to talk about 2006’s Rum & Pirates, his 2nd game. Rum & Pirates is notable as Feld’s first ever collaboration with publisher alea.

In Rum & Pirates, the notorious pirate Red Corsair and his crew have made port at their secret pirates’ den somewhere in the Caribbean. After so much time crammed together on a ship, they’re ready to stretch their legs and get up to some good old fashioned cavorting, carousing, and capers. The Captain’s crew are loyal and follow him around wherever he goes, for as long as they’re able to stand. Get enough rum into a man’s belly and the inexorable force of gravity becomes his master.

The gutters in the pirates' den are absolutely littered with drunken sailors.

On their turns, players will move Red Corsair along an open path from one location to…

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I never had the chance to play the game My Shelfie (2022, Cranio Creations), but I wanted to try it.

I am always trying to track down the games designed by Phil Walker-Harding, the gifted artist who has given us games such as Sushi Go Party, Super Mega Lucky Box, and Cities. Knowing that Walker-Harding was a co-designer on My Shelfie made it appealing, and that appeal only grew when I learned that Matthew Dunstan (Next Station: London, The Guild of Merchant Explorers) was also involved.

But My Shelfie fell flat for at least one of the folks in my game group, and I never pursued it afterwards. In early 2024, I had a meeting with the team at Cranio Creations to talk about My Shelfie: The Dice Game, loosely based on the original game with a Yahtzee-style approach to gameplay. And there’s a really cute cat on the cover.

Unfortunately, the gameplay in this new iteration of the My Shelfie brand didn’t land with the gamers who sat with me for each play. In fact, my family said it best: they would rather play the “OG”, Yahtzee, over this newer iteration.

You Get Three Rolls

My Shelfie: The Dice Game asks…

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One of the few disappointments I experienced during 2024’s SPIEL event in Essen, Germany happened on the second day of the show.

Despite meeting with our contact at Devir early in the weekend, I still wasn’t fast enough to grab a review copy of The White Castle: Matcha, the new expansion to The White Castle, my #6 game of 2023. At a show where I have sometimes grabbed as many as 50 new games, missing out on just one game shouldn’t have been much of a thing, right?

But I LOVED the base game. I loved the tension in each turn, thanks to the nine-turn structure. I loved the production. I loved the variability in set-up. I liked the solo variant. I loved the player aid on the back of the rulebook, despite the fact that I never really needed it.

Now, I didn’t always love the end-game scores. Depending on die rolls and player count, I sometimes finished a game with less than 40 points, in a game that comes with an “80+” points tracker. (I have never seen a player score more than 75 points in any of my six plays, across all player counts. This gave me a weird feeling: am I playing The White Castle badly? Inefficiently? Flat-out wrong?

I received a…

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Publisher Shadowborne Games burst onto the scene in 2022 with their debut hit Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood. The sheer enormity of Oathsworn is impressive to say the least, from both a first-time publisher and first-time head designer Jamie Jolly, although the staff is composed of some industry veterans in both the board game and screenwriting industries,  Behemoth in both size and scope, this game comes complete with optional high-quality miniatures, terrain, and even an ‘armory’ of various weapons that can be physically equipped to the character miniatures via a removable push-fit system. Want your hero to swashbuckle two swords at a time? Just pop out their current arms and replace them with the new blades you picked up last session. The armory system and larger-than-life terrain, while completely superfluous, adds to the experience in a fun way. It’s a “they didn’t have to do that” kind of sentiment that you’ll end up seeing throughout the entirety of the game.

[caption id="attachment_310504" align="alignnone" width="1500"] To flail or chop? Decisions, decisions.[/caption]

Into the Woods

Oathsworn is a large campaign game that effectively boils down to two phases: exploration and combat. In a given ‘chapter,’ the formula is the same. Players start with a narrative-driven exploration, making choices throughout, until finally reaching a…

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Hello and welcome to ‘Focused on Feld’. In my Focused on Feld series of reviews, I am working my way through Stefan Feld’s entire catalogue. Over the years, I have hunted down and collected every title he has ever put out. Needless to say, I’m a fan of his work. I’m such a fan, in fact, that when I noticed there were no active Stefan Feld fan groups on Facebook, I created one of my own.

Today we’re going to talk about 2024’s Civolution, his 41st game. This game marks a couple of firsts for Stefan Feld. For one, it’s his first ever collaboration with publisher Deep Print Games. Secondly, Civolution is Stefan Feld’s first foray into the realm of classic science fiction (unless you’re counting 2014’s Aquasphere, in which case it’s his second). Regardless, as you’ll soon see, there’s no arguing that Civolution is his heaviest game to date.

Overview

In Civolution, players take on the roles of deities that are taking the final exam in their Civilization Building 101 class. The exam is being proctored by a highly-developed AI called Agera. Over the course of the game, players will be tasked with things such as exploring the map set before them (populating it and exploiting it for its resources) and developing their civilization to…

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As I was packing up the 20-pound box of bits following my fifth session of The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era, the new cooperative tabletop adventure game from Chip Theory Games based on The Elder Scrolls video game, a feeling of sadness began to set in.

I was getting that Voidfall feeling. A game this heavy (both literally and strategically) was going to be exceptionally hard to get back to the table, and the life of a tabletop media member can be a bit rough, at least in the “first-world problems” sense…you are always working hard to invest in a new property, only to move on to the next behemoth.

Make no mistake: The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era is a behemoth.

Beasts, Not Beast Mode

The Elder Scrolls Online—the massive video game world, created by the team at Bethesda Softworks—is an investment. Chip Theory spared no expense in its attempt to bring a slice of that world to life in a board game. In board game form, The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era almost scared me away despite the fact that I raised my hand desperately seeking to cover it for our site. (Does “desperately” seem too strong a word? The…

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I love dice games. There’s just something about the feel of grabbing a handful of dice and chucking them across the table. Sure you’ve got to deal with lady luck, but that’s okay for the right game. And 2012’s press your luck dice game Sausage Sizzle, a game from Inka and Markus Brand re-released this year by 25th Century Games, might just be one of those games. Note that in Australia, a “sausage sizzle” is a community barbecue focused on sausages. You learn something new every day, right?

Light on theme, but heavy on fun, Sausage Sizzle has players rolling dice in order to score points for each of 6 Australian animals (echidnas, snakes, crocodiles, kangaroos, quokkas, and platypus).

The game plays out over 6 rounds, which correspond to the number of animals. Each round you’ll be scoring one animal, indicated by the 6 animal scoring tokens that each player has in front of them. On your turn roll all eight dice (4 with numbers 2-5 and a sausage, and 4 with animals), and keep at least 1. After you’ve set aside all 8 dice, you score. But what, dear reader, are you scoring for?

Sausage Sizzle scoring is all about multipliers. You’ll multiply the value of the…

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“Daddy? Is this a math game?”

My son recently helped me rip open a box of new games from our partners at Blue Orange, including the new game Scatter Brain. The package was interesting—a pink snow globe-style head on a small tin can that looked like it held a small treasure trove of cards. My son then read the side of the container:

“Scatter Brain–The Quick-Thinking Match & Grab Counting Game.”

Yep, sounds like a math game to me!

Scatter Brain attempts to carry on the great tradition of other real-time snatch/slap/grab games at our house such as Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, Gimme That!, Galaxy Trucker, and to a certain degree, co-op games like Quicksand. Somebody scatters 10 cards on the table, featuring numbers that range from 3-18. Then someone rolls the four pink dice before people scramble to grab any cards that match either a single die face or a total based on any number of rolled dice.

For example, let’s say there’s an 11 on the table. If three of the rolled dice showed a six, four, and one, that equals the card’s total, so it’s a legal grab. Any cards grabbed illegally cause the person who touched those cards to miss…

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A few years back I was wandering through various campaigns on Kickstarter (as I am wont to do) and I saw a pair of images that were right up my alley. The images were sci-fi but of the old 1930s to 1950s variety. The sort of images that invoke some of my childhood heroes!

[caption id="attachment_307619" align="aligncenter" width="600"] A return to the golden age of sci-fi![/caption]

Pulp Invasion! I read the description of the game and saw that it was a solo affair. I decided to get two copies: one for me, and one for my friend, Steve (Steve loves solo gaming). I started getting the expansions, too. I stopped, but that is another story (see below).

This game (and Pulp Detective) came about after Mr. Sanders acquired the rights to a whole bunch of pulp magazine covers and interior illustrations. In other words, this is the real deal! These are not modern artists mimicking the pulp era styles, these are authentic pulp era pieces. And they are beautiful!

Engage the hyperdrive!

In Pulp Invasion, you are a Free Captain, a sort of trader and mercenary who roams interstellar space. However, you are no ordinary Captain! In secret, you are an agent of the Intergalactic Council, an arm of the…

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A few years back after discovering Todd Sanders’ latest work (Pulp Invasion), I was looking into this game designer and discovered that he had designed a game around the old Gumshoe genre.

[caption id="attachment_307620" align="aligncenter" width="600"] I need a card in this game that lets me play as Rigby Reardon.[/caption]

I loved it! I searched around and I located the base game for Pulp Detective, all three expansions, the slip-cover to hold all of the boxes together (like a set of books), and the puzzle-piece playing board for the combined experience.

This game (and Pulp Invasion) came about after Mr. Sanders acquired the rights to a whole bunch of pulp magazine covers and interior illustrations. In other words, this is the real deal! These are not modern artists mimicking the pulp era styles, these are authentic pulp era pieces. And they are beautiful!

Just the facts, ma’am!

In Pulp Detective, you are a gritty private eye (or detective, or socialite avenger, etc.) who is hot on the case of some nefarious crime that has been committed. You have a day (or sometimes less!) to find the clues, solve the crime, and confront the culprit what did it!

The game is about playing your odds and hedging your bets. But…

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In classic mythology, the hydra was a many-headed demon that proved very hard to kill. As if its poisonous breath and tainted blood weren’t enough, a hero attempting to slay a hydra would have to contend with its heads not just  regenerating, but doubling, just as quickly as they were lopped off. Back then, the hydra was a friendless, angry beast.

The modern hydra is a much friendlier, more jovial hydra. Much of that is due, no doubt, to the hydra’s affection for the loveable, peaceable otter. Nothing pleases a hydra more than making its otter friends happy and, if there’s one thing that makes them happier than anything, it’s shiny stuff.

In Reef & Ruins, from Carla Kopp (Way Too Many Cats, Roar and Write!), players take on the roles of otters directing their 3-headed friends (represented by three 6-sided dice) as they search through the ruins of wrecked ships and the surrounding reefs for treasure. If they’re feeling particularly generous, they’ll even impart some of their magical essence into their finds to make them even shinier, enhancing their overall value for the end game.

Each round, a player will roll the three dice and players will use those dice however they wish across their three sheets: Ship Ruins, Enchantments, and Reef. Everything a player does…

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Anyone that has followed my work for the past few years knows that I have a weird affection for the deckbuilding genre. I have been into deckbuilders since the days of Ascension and Dominion, and my first handful of reviews were deckbuilders. Because of this experience, it’s hard for me to get interested in any random deckbuilder.

Queen by Midnight’s hook is that’s a battle royale with a heavy emphasis on diplomacy and a round limit. Yes, a round limit, in a deckbuilder game. Absolutely bonkers proposition that engrossed me enough to play the game and spend some time writing many sentences about it.

The plot is not too hard to understand. The Queen is dead and her last wish is to have a trial by combat with the deadline being midnight. Six princesses show up and you know the ending to this one.

Like many other deckbuilders, the starting deck is full of money cards that you use for the first few rounds to buy new cards to improve your deck. So far that seems quite straightforward, until you look at your options to buy. While this does use Ascensions’ familiar “market row” system where you buy your cards from a row, the similarities end there.

Dealt a Royal Hand

On your Princess playmat, you have a “Vault…

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