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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I’m a huge video game junkie, spending nearly 40 years of my life grinding on the Sega Master System and the Atari 5200 as a child before moving up and around the ranks of every system you can think of through to modern-day consoles like the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PS5.

I love video games, but I usually don’t like video games ported into other formats. Movies based on video games? Usually, no thanks. TV shows based on video games? This is a growing category, and one that is getting better (Fallout and The Last of Us were worth it), but it still has a tough legacy to overcome. Board games based on video games? My experiences with board game adaptations of video games have been almost universally atrocious.

Frostpunk: The Board Game? My group thought it was terrible. Fallout: The Board Game? No…just, no. This War of Mine: The Board Game? I’m in the minority on this, but by the time I found myself going through the 18th different deck of cards to find out if my character’s fate was sealed or not, I wanted to chuck This War of Mine out the window. I did a demo of Call of Duty: The Board Game last year and it was a massive disappointment. I wanted…

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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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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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From card games to social deduction, mega games to role-playing adventures, the possibilities of board games might seem endless. However, this wasn’t always the case. In the late 2000s, 'narrative' games were far less common than they are today. The concept of app-integrated storytelling or voice-acted narratives wasn’t even an idea at the time. If you wanted to have your story experience in a board game form, options were scarce, and the most well-known at the time was Tales of the Arabian Nights.

As you can tell from the game’s name, it draws inspiration from the classic “One Thousand and One Nights” as players traverse the lands to seek fortune and glory. Instead of complex mechanics, they are told about their situation through a book and the players decide on their response to the situation. To some players, this was a great game, especially for families that want to tell silly stories. For others, like myself, we found the game to be quite random and nonsensical, often overextending its welcome.

When I heard about Tales of the Arthurian Knights, saying I was interested is downplaying my reaction. I loved the idea of Tales of the Arabian Nights, but I was yearning for something that was a bit more consistent and I was quite curious to see fifteen years’ worth…

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In Maps of Misterra, you’re playing as explorers, mapping out the island’s landscapes—landscapes that might change from turn to turn, say Mountains become Forests. That’s because there’s a difference between terrain types that are ‘confirmed’ and what your sponsor has said they want to see on your map. Score the most points at the end of the game and you’ll be the winner.

If that sounds a bit confusing, stay with me. The mists will part as we get the game to the table.

[caption id="attachment_305395" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Maps of Misterra: The Box[/caption]

Cartographers At the Ready

You’ll place the large central board in the middle of the table, then hand each player their own smaller version of the map. Depending on the player count, a number of Forests will be placed, full-color side up. (More on this soon.)

[caption id="attachment_305401" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] A 3 or 4 player game ready to be played.[/caption]

Each player will also get a Cartographer of their choice and three Claim tokens in their matching color.

At the top of the board, place the four stacks of terrain tiles full-color side down. Then shuffle the…

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About two years ago, I stared at the copy of Maracaibo (2019, Capstone Games) sitting on my shelf.

The game looked back at me. “You keep looking at me like you love me, but we used to spend so much more time together.”

“You’re right,” I said. “The problem isn’t totally on you, and I don’t think the problem is me, either. The problem is that as much as I love you, you take a while to set up, you take a while to teach, and every time I have to explain how combat works and where cubes go on the map and how all that affects the end-game scoring mechanics, I pivot to another game. Plus, all that usually takes two, maybe three hours, to play…I just think it’s best that I find another home for you.”

With that, I gifted Maracaibo to a guy in my review crew. I got the Maracaibo app (which, sadly, still doesn’t support play against AI opponents outside of the solo game) then basically stopped playing the game until it appeared on Board Game Arena a few months ago.

But recently, something at the Bell household changed.

Near the end of my time at Gen Con 2024, I stopped by the Capstone booth to chat with the team…

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Pencil erasers. You know the sort, the molded 3D variety that were never intended to erase. They were more like elementary school status symbols, beacons of personality that wagged in the air as you filled in bubbles with your Ticonderoga No. 2. Truth be told, they were a bit of a nuisance for how they threw your pencil out of balance, but they looked so cool.

Finally, someone has made a game with erasers as player markers—minus the hole necessary to properly top a pencil. It was the artwork that first drew me in as I listed Kyoto No Neko among my most anticipated list for GenCon 2024. Even as I tore into the shrink to check out the illustrations, though, I had to pause to admire the kitties made of the stuff of erasers. Endearing, they are.

In fact, everything about Kyoto No Neko has a charming look. The square board is flanked on all sides by stair-stepped player-specific territories to create a unique overall shape. The finished grid is an overhead map of the city: rooftops, terraces, and roadways for kitty travel. Cute little kitty paw tokens are scattered about, face-down and waiting to be discovered.

Feline It Out

The whole of the game is a series of skill checks. Every token requires one of several…

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Over the course of several months, I led a group of six players through the Grand Campaign scenario from Europa Universalis: The Price of Power. For 4-6 hours a day, every other Sunday, we would convene around the gaming table, remind ourselves of where we left off, and get to the business of running the great nations of Europe in the 16th century.

All six players were acquainted with Europa Universalis IV (EUIV), the massive computer game that served as source material for this massive board game. Several of them had put thousands of hours into exploring its nooks and crannies. This isn't, I am told, unusual. EUIV is the type of game that consumes lives. It is one of PC gaming's largest sandboxes. “I mean, it's a Paradox game,” people would say over and over, the developer's name considered enough of an explanation.

The first EU computer game, released back in 2000, was itself adapted from a 1993 board game of the same name. Given that, a modern board game adaptation feels inevitable. It also feels ludicrous. The Price of Power…

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If you’ve had the chance to read any of my previous Mindclash Games coverage, you probably think I’m a fanboy…and, you are right.

Mindclash has put out a bevy of bangers, including Anachrony, Trickerion: Legends of Illusion, and the granddaddy of them all, Voidfall. I wanted to try the 2022 release Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles Episodes 1 & 2, so I reached out to the Mindclash team to grab a review copy and I spent about a month working through both episodes.

The format is wild. Perseverance is a four-game series that will wrap up with a third and fourth episode later this year, so I wanted to get in now to ensure I know what’s going on when the new games are delivered to backers. Players take on the roles of leaders stranded on a remote island in the present day that also happens to be inhabited by dinosaurs. By the end of Episode 4, I’m guessing Perseverance (the name of the game’s deserted location) will be a full-blown city where dinosaurs and humans are living side-by-side, working together to further a shared way of life.

The backstory is richer than that, so while I’ll talk about both episodes in the first box, I won’t talk about the things that Mindclash always does better…

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Clash of Galliformes is a bit of a throwback to when area control games contented themselves with being dumb and proud of it. As a dumbo, I appreciate this. I do not demand intricate combat systems with convoluted rules about order of battle, troop deployment, terrain. I’m not here to be a grognard, dammit, I’m a lord of the giant sage grouse kingdom, and I demand blood, not rules overhead!

[caption id="attachment_302380" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Blood for the bird god![/caption]

I don’t like “animals” or “nature” as a setting for a game. Sorry, Dominant Species, I’d rather play as a man than as a bug. Now, if you cast me as a group of humans who have co-evolved with gigantic landfowl and ride them around like horses, now I’m interested. Thomas, the great Quail-lord. I suppose birds are the exception to my no-animals rule.

Them’s fightin’ birds

Anyway, Clash of Galliformes is an area control euro-puzzle hybrid game where you build bird soldiers, march them around a point-to-point map, take over sites, build outposts on them, and try to level up your bird board to get better powers. At the start, you have a single minion, but you expand to develop greater resource production capacity, and you start collecting chits.

The almighty…

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Nothing out there explores this theme quite like the worldwide sensation The Walking Dead (TWD). For the most part, the world of TWD follows a single group of Survivors, led by Rick Grimes, as they try to find their way in a world that’s hardly recognizable. And, while it initially seems the thing to fear is the titular walking dead, they soon discover that the real terror is other people.

TWD first arrived on the scene as a comic book in 2003. Written by Robert Kirkman, the series’ themes and rabid fan base eventually attracted the attention of the AMC television network who turned it into one of the most popular shows in the history of television. It ran for a total of eleven seasons over a period of twelve years and has spawned a number of spinoff series. While the core television show, and the comic books, have come to an end, it’s clear that The Walking Dead isn’t going anywhere.

From low effort tie-ins such as TWD Monopoly and TWD Jenga to more nuanced efforts such as TWD: Something to Fear, it…

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