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Reply: 커피 러시 프로모: 크리스마스 (Coffee Rush: Christmas Promo Cards):: News:: Re: Availability?

GinaSpel — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:07:19 +0000

It’s been two years but I will reply anyway 😄
I don’t have the country promo’s but got two promo sets at Spiel yesterday when I got the Winter edition. The country promo’s what I understand where distributed by Korean Games to local Retailers, but what they did with them no clue. I never heard anyone having them among the community…

Review: Undaunted 2200: Revolution:: Undaunted 2200 Trilogy (Barney on Board review)

barneyhawes — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:07:00 +0000

by barneyhawes

🎙️ This review is also available to listen to as a podcast.

I have a problem with recreations of fighting action from the two so-called “Great” wars. However much hype there is about a piece of art, regardless of whether it is a film, a novel, a computer game or a board game, I struggle with the way we often glorify trained killers as heroes, and yet are somehow insufficiently troubled by the people they kill, not to mention the thousands of people who suffered frequently pointless deaths in these wars. This is why, despite hearing great things over the years about the Undaunted series of games set in World War II, I hadn’t given any of them a go.

On the other hand, I am very comfortable with wars between Orcs and Elves, or spacemen, mechs and aliens, or any other fantastical fictitious fighting. Which is why, when Osprey Games announced that the Undaunted series was jumping into the future, I was all for it.

Immediately I was hooked by the theme, a tale of downtrodden space Miners rebelling against their greedy corporate overlords. The artwork looked fantastic. I could immediately sense how I wanted to lean in to this world, the Miners vs the Man, with echoes of Thatcher’s stand off against the mine workers of the 1980s, as well as none-too-subtle inspiration from any number of sci-fi tales from Star Wars to The Expanse. I could choose to sympathise with the off-planet Miners who have had enough of being exploited by these profit-maximising Earth-bound corporate types, or I could get jingoistic with the private military contractors paid to stamp out the problematic resistance.

]]>The Undaunted 2200 Trilogy boxes
The first game in this trilogy is Undaunted 2200: Callisto. It updates the much venerated Undaunted games, but with Rebel underdog moon miners vs space cops with mech warriors. Will this be a cause for celebration, or just rebels without a cause?

The second game in the set, Line of Fire: Burnt Moon, takes us forward a few years and relocates the action to the moon Io - oh, and the warriors are all robots this time. The smaller box and smaller price tag promise a more svelte experience. Will Line of Fire: Burnt Moon toe the line, or get its fingers burnt?

Rounding things out, the third installment in this game series is Undaunted 2200: Revolution. Taking us back to the big box experience of Callisto, but with new flying units added to the mix. Maybe this will be where the series really takes off?

[heading]Undaunted 2200: Callisto[/heading]
Scenario 1. An industrial area on Jupiter’s moon. A flattened region of the moon’s surface surrounded by storage facilities and industrial buildings. To the west, a rag-tag collection of workers armed with industrial tools shelter amongst some of the buildings. Looking across the work site to the landing pad they see a dropship commissioned by the LFA - the Lunar Frontier Authority - disgorging two squads of militia, sent to secure the precious harvested ice that is stored at the base. There’s plenty of cover around the edges of the base, which is where the ice is stored, and in the centre, between the opposed forces, a raised platform provides a strategic opportunity, but it’s surrounded by exposed open ground. That could be a dangerous place to be caught out - especially as those LFA squads each brought a mech to the party.

The objective for this scenario is the same for each team: either control 5 objective points - those are the precious ice containers - or neutralise 3 of the enemy units. And in case you are in any doubt, “neutralised” is Undaunted-speak for dead.

Both teams start with two squads, each with 3 units. Each of the units has a different speciality: scouting, scoring or shooting, the three main things you need to do in Undaunted Callisto. Let’s look at the Miners units in more detail.

The miner’s scouting units are the exo-skeleton-suit equipped Survey Techs. Think of Ripley at the end of Alien and you’ve got the general idea. The job of your scouts is to open up the board to your other units - and also to fight mechs, but more on that later. At the beginning of the game only the board spaces closest to your crew are scouted, and your other units cannot leave these scouted spaces until your scouts units have been out and explored, so what are you waiting for? Get them out there!

Next up are the Rippers: blow-torch wielding mechanics whose job it is to take control of key locations on the map. To claim an objective space, you need to occupy it with a unit that has the Control ability - like these Rippers - and then use their Control action in the space. So, it’s a three step process: first you explore the space with a scouting unit, then you bring in your control unit, and then that unit takes control of the space. That leaves plenty of opportunities for your opponent to derail your plan, typically by getting there first or shooting you.

Which brings us to the weapon specialist. All of your units can shoot, but some are better at it than others. In the case of the Miners, the Survey Tech and the Ripper both get the basic 1-die attack. The Nailgunners, however, get a stronger 2-dice attack, and they also have the ability to lay down a 4-dice suppressing fire attack, which slows your opponents down without harming them.

A few things to note here: first, as you will have gathered this is a direct interaction game. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re at war here! Second: we’re rolling dice. Yep, there is some luck involved, but in this game you can control your own luck. Fortunately, combat is simple, it’s fast and it’s fun. It works like this: add together the target unit’s armour level, the range you are firing from, and the cover bonus if there is one. That total is the number you need to roll on a ten-sided dice to hit.

Let’s say that your Ripper decides to take a pot-shot at the LFA’s Corporate Security unit right at the start of the game. You add up 4 pips for Corp-Sec’s armour, 4 more pips for the range and 2 pips for the cover bonus at the landing pad where the LFA are hiding out, making a total of 10. So to hit, you need to roll a 10 on a D10. That’s a one-in-10 chance, a pot-shot.
Now if, on the other hand, your Nailgunner has moved two spaces closer, made it onto that central platform, and he spots the Corp-Sec on its way to an objective, caught out in the open. Things look very different this time: the same 4 pips for armour, but only 1 for range and no bonus for cover. That means you only need a 5. Oh, and your Nailgunner, don’t forget, gets to roll two dice, being your combat unit. And one more thing: your Nailgunner is on a raised platform; he is higher than the poor Corp-Sec. That means you roll eight-sided dice instead of ten-sided dice. So whilst your Ripper was hoping to get a 10 on a single D10, our Nailgunner is aiming for 5+ on either of two D8. What would you rather: a 10% chance of success or a 75% chance of success? Boom.

Ok, so we’ve seen the Survey-Techs, the Rippers and the Nailgunners; the scouting, scoring and shooting units for the Miners. What about the LFA? Well, they have their equivalents, but this game likes its asymmetry and so they aren’t simply renamed versions of the same units.
The LFAs aptly named scouting unit is the Scout, and these guys and gals are super fast - they can scout 2 spaces in a single activation - but also less heavily armoured than the Miner’s Survey-Techs. The LFA’s scoring unit is the Corp-Sec, our bullet magnet from the earlier example, who is fairly similar to the rebellious Ripper.
But after that, things start to diverge a bit more between the two teams, because instead of a regular shooting unit like the Nailgunner, the LFA gets two mechs. Yep, that’s right, they’ve got giant armoured mechanical warriors. If I’m playing as the Miners this is quite a terrifying prospect: I’m up against massive armoured units that dominate the game board with giant tokens, and if I play as the LFA I feel like I have a cave troll ready to smash up some hobbits.

The two god-like mechs in the first scenario are called Artemis and Vulcan. They both have Scouting, so they can move out into unmapped spaces. The Artemis mech is a fast unit; whilst the Vulcan has a two-dice attack. Both these mechs are heavily armoured units, which means that regular weaponry bounces off them. The miner’s shooting unit, the Nailgunner, can’t touch them, so it is down to the scout and the point-scorer, the Survey-Tech and the Ripper. They each get a secondary attack that can damage the mechs, but only at close range: they’ve got to get into the same space as the mech to attack it.

]]>A scenario unfolds in Undaunted 2200: Callisto
The stage is set for our first clash and we are ready to see what unfolds. Each team will get to activate 3 units each round, unlocking the map with scouts, sending out control units to secure objectives and trying to pick off the enemy whilst not getting caught out in the open. How this plays out is up to the players. Perhaps the Rippers make an early move to secure the centre of the board, occupying the central platform and shooting from above. Meanwhile, the LFA divide their efforts: they use their fast scouts to get around the edges of the map, followed by the Corp-Secs, securing the valuable ice reserves.

Or perhaps the LFA leads with the mechs and simply aim to mow the Miners down. Now the rebels are forced to redirect their Survey-Techs and Rippers units to go and chop up the mechs before they do too much damage.

This feels like you have real agency. The game gives you a problem and set of tools, and you get to decide how to solve it. They say that when you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail. Well, this game equips you with a blowtorch, a nailgun and an exoskeleton, so now what does your problem look like?

So far, so good. This is not too dissimilar to many other dudes-on-a-map games, from Small World to Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team. What sets Undaunted apart is how you activate your units.

It is very common in board games to introduce tension and decision making by reducing your options. In worker placement games, for example, once an action space has been taken by one player it is no longer available to the other players. In Battle of Hoth, you draw cards which determine which area of the board you will fight in that turn. In Arcs, you play a meta-mini-game of trick-taking to determine what you are allowed to do on your go. So what about this game? Well, it uses what I am going to call the “Undaunted Card Game System.” It’s a deck-builder, but it's so much more than a deck builder.

Each of your combat units is represented by a counter on the map, and also has a small set of matching cards. At the start of the game you will have just one card for each unit on the map. As the game goes on, you can bring more of these cards into your deck.

Each turn you are going to draw four cards from your deck, and play three of them. Each card lists a number of actions that the unit can take - move, scout, shoot, control and so on - but you can only take one of the actions each time. So getting more cards for a unit into your deck means that that unit can do more stuff, more often. Want your Corp-Sec to clear that open space in a single turn? Ideally you’ll get two Corp-Sec cards in the same round.

In order to add cards to your deck you need to use one of your Command cards. These are powerful additional cards which don’t correspond to counters on the map. Bring too many cards into your deck, and not only have you paid the opportunity cost of not using one of your Command card’s other actions, but you are also diluting the deck so you’ll see those Command cards less often.

As you play, you’ll also have to dilute your deck with useless Interference cards. As I mentioned, most of the board is inaccessible to your units at the start of the game. You need to scout the board spaces first to make them accessible, but every time you do this you’ll get one of these Interference cards added to your deck. If you draw them they are useless, and they aren’t too easy to remove.

We talked about how to shoot first - now we need to ask the question ‘what happens when you get shot?’ The answer is that you lose a card from your deck corresponding to the unit that got shot. So the cards in your deck for a unit are also the health points of that unit. Neat! Every time it takes a hit, it also becomes less available to take actions, just like it’s wounded. Leave a unit too sparsely represented in your deck and it is at risk of running out of cards - at which point it is totally incapacitated. And if you don’t - or can’t - bring in another card into your deck for that unit before it gets shot again? Well, it’s dead. Sorry, I mean neutralised.

Already we can see that there are some really interesting decision spaces opening up just in this area of adding cards to your deck. What do you use your precious Command cards for? To bring more cards into your deck? If you do, who do you prioritise? You could go for scouting units to open up the map, but that will also fill your deck with Interference bloat. You could go for your combat specialists so that they can shoot down the enemy. Or perhaps your control units, the ones who can grab the objective points on the board. Maybe you need to go for the guy who just got shot because he’s now at risk of neutralisation… this is the deck-builder’s dilemma at its best.

There’s another delicious choice in this game that I want to tell you about, and that is the way Initiative is handled in Undaunted. The team with Initiative will go first, which is great because you can snatch objectives, you can run away from danger, you can shoot your opponent before they run away, and so on. Also, interestingly, if you are playing second, if you don’t have the Initiative, and one of your units gets shot, and you hold that unit in your hand then you lose that card right out of your hand. You just lost one of your three precious actions from your upcoming turn.
So, we’ve established that having the Initiative and going first is good. How do you get Initiative? Well, as I mentioned, you actually draw four cards at the start of each round even though you will only play three of them. The fourth is placed as a simultaneous blind bid for the Initiative. But here’s the rub: your best cards, such as your Command Cards and your more powerful units, have high Initiative values whilst your weaker cards - particularly Interference, which is useless - have low Initiative values. So do you skip the chance to play a powerful card in order to (hopefully) play first this round? Or do you dump a useless Interference card and risk playing second? There’s nothing as annoying as agonising over this decision, deciding to sacrifice a high Command Card, and then seeing your opponent drop an Interference card for their bid.

All these decisions come thick and fast. Each round: which card will you use for Initiative? How to best use the other 3 cards? Will you add new cards to your deck or activate your units on the map? Do you move towards the objectives or engage the enemy? Do you take a long shoot, lay down suppressing fire, or try to get into a better position? What cards does your opponent hold? Everything you choose to do carries a risk. Everything you chose not to do risks leaving an opening for your opponent. You have to take a risk - which risk is best?

You’re constantly making choices, and usually those choices are constrained - but they are constrained by the decisions you made earlier:
You didn’t take opportunities to remove Interference cards, and now you’re drawing hands full of them.
You didn’t draw extra cards for your control units, and now they’re just moving too slowly.
You went for the objectives rather than the raised platform, and you’re under fire from a better-positioned enemy.

What comes out of this is a story. It’s a story in which you have limited agency - but it’s limited by the decisions you and your opponent are making, rather than the game’s arbitrariness - and the memorable moments will be the ones you create: that Nailgunner that kept missing at close range; the Mech and the Survey-Tech scrapping it out on the platform in the centre of the arena; and that reckless Crop-Sec that ran across open ground to snatch control of the final objective.

There are two ways that games can tell stories: they can dictate the narrative, like a film or a book does, or they can show you the world and let you, the player, tell the stories. Undaunted 2200: Callisto actually tries to do both. The scenario book is overloaded with pages of dense text telling the backstory of these two warring factions. It might be really well written, but honestly, I didn’t make it past the first paragraph. If I wanted a rollicking sci-fi story, I’d read a good book.

Fortunately, Callisto also provides the toys and tools to let me tell my own tales through my actions in the game. Over the course of 8 scenarios it provides new unit types, including soldiers, mechs and vehicles, additional Command cards, and a variety of interesting maps with varied objectives, from rescuing prisoners to all out war. The asymmetry of the unit types between the Miners and the LFA helps sell the story: for example, mechs are powerful but hard to control due to their complex combat cards.

What you do with these tools is up to you - the maps tend to suggest certain courses of action, but there are often multiple ways to approach a scenario, and there’s enough unpredictability from the dice and the card draws - not to mention your opponent - that things rarely turn out exactly the way that you hope they will.

You’d think that a skirmish game with 2 teams would be a strictly two-player game. That’s not the case with Undaunted Callisto. There is an excellent four-player variant in which each player takes one of the two squads that makes up each side. Far from being an afterthought, it might even be my favourite way to play. And then there’s the solo mode, which is surprisingly good.

I’m not a frequent solo gamer because I prefer playing against a human opponent. That’s mainly for the social aspect, but also because I am instinctively competitive. Many games come with a solo mode, and I’ll usually play it at least once to try and help me understand a game, particularly if I am planning to teach others but have not yet played the game myself.
Some games have a solo mode that is a puzzle. Voidfall is a good example of this. You don’t play against an AI opponent, you play against the game itself. Other games have a solo mode that plays like an opponent, but one that follows substantially different rules from a human player. SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is one that works this way. In these games, you feel like you are playing against another player, but you are also aware that the playing field is not even. Unlike either of these solo design modalities, Undaunted Callisto offers an artificially intelligent opponent playing by almost exactly the same rules that you are.
To activate an opposing unit, you are given a priority-order list of actions the unit could take. Work your way down the list, skip over moves that are impossible, and then stop when you come to one that it can take, and follow the priority order for where to move, what to fire at, and so on. It’s a bit slow and cumbersome at first as you have to figure out concepts like ‘secure spaces’ or ‘non-threatened objectives’ but once you get your head around these, it flows quickly and logically. Sometimes things happen at random - a card draw here, a dice roll there - but the moves the AI makes are sensible ones - even good ones. It’s deeply impressive for a game with such an open decision space to have an algorithmic opponent that plays at such a competitive standard. At first I was playing the game on instinct and I kept losing; playing against the game’s AI forced me to improve my game.

Now, it’s not all good news: I do have some gripes. Terrain types are confusing, particularly bridges, which just don’t bring enough interest to justify their complexity. The game is meant to be asymmetrical, but that can be tricky to make fair and a couple of the scenarios feel unbalanced - in one case, it’s almost a foregone conclusion who will win. There were also some printing errors in the game, primarily inconsistencies between the scenario books and the map boards, though there is an errata sheet online. The rules themselves verge on the terse: some things are implied rather than stated, and it can take a bit of effort to figure other things out. The solo mode in particular takes a bit of work to get your head around, especially if you are learning the game itself at the same time and you’ve not played an Undaunted game before. All these things are, well, slightly annoying, but ultimately they didn’t get in the way of enjoying the game.

]]>A scenario unfolds in Undaunted 2200: Callisto
In case you hadn’t realised already, I think this game is a winner.

I actually have something to confess: I got a bit carried away with Undaunted 2200: Callisto. Finding the cardboard combat tokens underwhelming, I sourced some plastic figures and painted them yellow and blue. Wanting more from the multi-level terrain, I chopped my game boards up and glued them to foamboard to make multi-tiered game areas - which, given that the boards are double sided, required picking up a second copy of the game to cut up. That in turn meant that I had two of each mech token, so I doubled them up too to make beefier units. Diving deep on the units available, I made comparison tables and dice outcome probability charts. In effect, I liked the game so much that I made my own Deluxe Kickstarter edition of the game. It will therefore probably come as no surprise to hear that I highly recommend Undaunted 2200: Callisto.

[heading]Line of Fire: Burnt Moon[/heading]
The next game I’m going to talk about is a sequel of sorts to Undaunted Callisto. Line of Fire: Burnt Moon shares many things in common with the first game. It also takes place in the same game world, this time on the surface of Io, another of Jupiter’s moons. It also has an unwieldy, colon-separated two-part name. It also features the LFA fighting against some upstarts, this time it’s the hacker collective POSIWID. It also has beautiful, inviting artwork, and more rulebooks than are strictly necessary. But most of all, it also has the Undaunted Card Game System: deck-building with cards that represent units, and which determine the actions you can take.

]]>A lane battle in Line of Fire: Burnt Moon
There is however a crucial difference this time: instead of a board with figures moving around, this is a lane battler. For the uninitiated, I suggest leading with a high card to regain the Initiative. Sorry, that was an Undaunted Card Game System joke. For those who don’t know what a lane battler is, know that it is a much simpler, more abstract form of combat. Between the players are a set of objectives in a row. Players add their forces in a column on one side - their side - of an objective until they have enough strength to take control of that objective. Control enough objectives and you will win the game. This is very much streamlined.

Another difference is asymmetry. In Callisto the teams got different units, they play on an uneven battlefield and even work to different objectives. In Burnt Moon, despite some cosmetic differences, the two sides are identical.

I really wanted to like Line of Fire for several reasons. Obviously I was a fan of the previous game and so I hoped this would hit the same heights. The artwork and graphic design are compelling, with a kind of retro-futuristic look reminiscent of Miami Vice crossed with Blade Runner. The two teams are themed in pink and light blue, the same colours as my road bike, which just made me smile. And I’d also spent some of my hard earned cash on it, which gave me that sunken cost desire to avoid buyer’s remorse.

]]>Identical cards in Line of Fire: Burnt Moon
Unfortunately, this game puts up quite a few obstacles from the outset. The rules are split between two small, fiddly books in a way which makes it hard to learn, and requires constant skipping from book to book, and back, and back. The robot units are given such awkward names that I didn’t know how to pronounce them, let alone retain any knowledge as to which was which. Is my scouting unit the DaCU, the xED or the TIR? And whilst the cards for each unit have great illustrations, they also don’t match each other, making it hard to visually connect cards that go together. I mean, Happy Families has been getting this right since 1851, but Burnt Moon does this so badly that I was actually tempted to replace the game cards with my own printed versions. If you’re at a point with a game where you feel the need to redesign the components to understand what is going on, there’s a problem.

]]>Happy Families from 1851
Line of Fire: Burnt Moon does keep the two-squad-per-team system from Undaunted Callisto, but in this game it is used to limit your options because your squads cannot be in the same lane at the same time. Something I said I liked about Callisto was the way that it limited your options in ways that you had control over, and ways that felt thematic. This is the opposite: it’s a contrived restriction, and it just makes your life harder. It’s also easy to overlook due to this poor graphic design, so we often ended up illegally mixing squads and not even noticing until a few turns later.

If you persevere with this, you can get into the underlying game, and the deck building system remains a delight. The Initiative decision continues to provide an interest too, but it turns out that the Undaunted Card Game System is not the best fit for a lane battler after all. It’s like the movie trope of a bookish good girl and a jock: the thoughtful, loving Undaunted Game System wants to take its time and discuss philosophy and poetry, but the Lane Battler just wants a meaningless fumble.

Part of the problem is that winning table positions are telegraphed in advance and combat is deterministic, so for someone to lose the game early, that player needs to be either unlucky with their card draws or make a dumb mistake. In practice, most games become a prolonged back and forth, a war of attrition, until one player has insufficient forces to prevent the other from winning - by which time you’re just glad it is over.

Honestly, it all just feels like a slog. If the game took half the time to learn, half the time to play and had reworked card design, then it might have been a great filler between games of Undaunted Callisto. It may stay in my collection purely because it is part of this trilogy, but I’m not sure whether it will ever get played again.

[heading]Undaunted 2200: Revolution[/heading]
And so we come to the latest, the third and, apparently, final game in this story world. Undaunted 2200: Revolution takes us back to the board, with much that is familiar from Callisto - and a few tricks learnt from Line of Fire too.

The story continues rumbling along, with the war between the Miners and the LFA spreading across the solar system. At least, I assume that’s what’s going on. Once again, I tried to read the essay-length introductory stories and my eyes glazed over before the end of the first paragraph. Honestly, for a game with so much potential for emergent narratives to be developed by the player, it does try far too hard to world build. As well as the reams of story in the scenario book, this one also includes a fat deck of oversize cards stuffed with tiny text that I also haven’t read.

This is at odds with the overall direction the designers have taken because, aside from all this verbosity, everything in this game feels so much more streamlined than the first time around.

There are a few interesting changes to the formula, and these are mostly on the board-and-units side of the game, leaving the Undaunted Card Game System intact except for one rather excellent improvement, which I will come to later. But the biggest change, the literal game-changer, is that many of your units now have wings.

]]>Flying units in Undaunted 2200: Revolution
You’ve got three classes of unit this time around: ground units, flying combat units and the key unit, your flying transport ship. Think of those big boats in the Avatar films that all the smaller boats launch from, and you’ll get the general idea. But actually let’s back up a bit because, like these flying units, I think I’m coming in too fast.

So, firstly, the maps. These battlefields are bigger than Callisto - we’ve zoomed out so we can see entire buildings and landscapes, and there are also more spaces across the board. Despite this, the opposing forces come into contact much more quickly than in Callisto. You see, there’s no scouting this time around - you can go wherever you please from the outset - and the flying units cover ground quickly, so the first part of the game sees each player zooming their flying units directly to the interesting parts of the map.

The unit names are diametrically opposed to that inscrutable nonsense from Line of Fire; I think someone must have been listening to the feedback. In addition to your transport ship, the basic units are two ground units and two flying units. In each case, there’s one that’s good at shooting stuff out of the sky and the other one is good at shooting stuff on the ground. The ground units for both sides are called Sky-Shot and Ground-Shot, so that’s easy to remember, and the flying units are Fighters and Bombers, which also works for me.
As well as shooting things, all the ground units can control objectives, whilst the flying units cannot.
The two teams are pretty much symmetrically identical this time, so it is all simple and streamlined. Easy to learn and easy to remember. Oh, and unlike Burnt Moon, the card art for each unit is consistent and easy to identify. Brilliant.

So, as each game starts, the forces move out from their start positions on the periphery. Fighters exchange some initial shots whilst the Transport ships deliver the ground units close to their objectives, and players scramble for points. Now here’s another change that streamlines the game: in Callisto you generally won the game either by collecting enough objective points, or killing enough enemy units. In Revolution, you sum the two, combining your objectives and your kills. It’s quicker and easier. And as a result, games take half the time to play. Yet more streamlining.

Combat itself works in the same way as before, with the inspired system whereby shooting a unit removes one of its cards from your deck. I mentioned before that there was a change to the Undaunted Card Game System and here it is. It sounds subtle but it’s actually rather splendid.
In Callisto, if your opponent shot one of your units, and you had no cards left for that unit, it was neutralised. Killed. Removed from the board. As your units start with only one card in the deck, it was risky to do anything without getting additional cards into your deck: two hits to a starting unit would be enough to take it out permanently.
In Revolution, when a unit with no cards left gets shot, it is ‘Routed’ instead of ‘Neutralised’. You leave the unit on the board and put a marker on it to indicate a point scored by the other team. However, it is not dead. If you haven’t yet brought all of that unit's cards into your deck, you can still do so. If you manage to draw and play one of those cards before it gets shot again, you un-rout the unit, taking away that precious point.
This might not seem like much, but it really is. One of the actions you can take with a combat card in both Callisto and Revolution is Hunker Down, which returns a card to the supply. It never made sense to do this in Callisto because you were effectively surrendering a life point for that unit and helping out your opponent. In Revolution, it feels much less risky and positively viable, because even if the unit is routed you can bring that card back in and continue to use the unit. And that’s interesting because now you can deliberately thin your deck out by removing cards for units you don’t want to use right now. Maybe you’ll go big on combat cards for flying units early to get yourself into position, then return them to the supply in favour of cards for ground units to secure objectives. Perhaps my ground units are holding a position you want to take, so you make your Air-Shot and Fighter units hunker down, increasing the concentration of Ground-Shots and Bombers in your deck. Honestly, this is such a big improvement that I’m tempted to take it back to Undaunted Callisto and see how it works there.

Not everything in Undaunted Revolution is streamlined; there is still some turbulence in the air. You need something to push back on after all. This time around the Interference is called Discord. Ideally, all your units will take each action within two spaces of a Transport Ship. This is their Comms Range, the idea being that if you get too far away from your wifi connection, it is hard to coordinate your actions. If, through recklessness, poor planning or poor card draws, you do end up with a unit separated from your transport units then you need to take a useless, deck-diluting Discord card whenever your unit takes an action.
Meanwhile, your flying units have pretty poor turning circles, and when they are shooting then they can’t turn at all. This means you can easily find yourself flying off the board or into a mountain or a tall building. Oops. Better take a Discord card.

I mentioned mountains and tall buildings there. Revolution ditches the lovely mixed height terrain from the first game - so there’s only the 10-sided dice this time - but it does retain the original’s penchant for overly complex terrain rules determining who can walk, fly or even see through different parts of the board. Still, at least there are no bridges this time around.

The combat counters all sit flat on the board and, well, I couldn’t help myself: I designed and 3D printed some flying bases for the flying units. It wasn’t quite the Deluxe Edition that I created myself for Callisto, but it does feel right - and actually helps with the instant understanding of which units are flying in the game space and which are on the ground, an important distinction for movement and combat.

Like Callisto, Revolution has a set of scenarios to play through. In Callisto the eight scenarios were played in order, but also worked as stand alone games. The outcome of one scenario did not change anything for the next one. In Revolution, things work a bit differently. There are four games to a campaign this time, but this is a branching system. If the Miners win scenario 0, turn to page 1A; if the LFA win turn to page 1B. Scenarios 1A and 1B lead to 2A, 2B, 2C or 2D, which in turn lead to one of 8 final scenarios. Interestingly, the game adds some imbalance after the first two rounds. The idea is that scenario 0 is a tutorial which you would only play once or twice. Scenarios 1A and 1B are balanced, but after playing either of those, the losing team starts to get a helping hand. This helping takes the form of allies, including POSIWAD from Line of Fire: Burnt Moon, who bring more powerful units and Command cards to give the losing side a leg up.
A campaign runthrough consists of only 4 games - or just 3 if you skip the introductory scenario zero. As the games are quick you can play an entire campaign in one session. And the campaign is very replayable because you won’t get the same set of scenarios each time. Or you can play the scenarios as stand alone games if you wish.

So, Revolution sounds like a return to form after the difficult diversion that was Burnt Moon, right? The same great theme and artwork, the wonderful Undaunted Card Game System, and lots of streamlining, from guessable unit names to faster movement, shorter games and a shorter campaign. Unfortunately, the Revolution is not all good news. Continuing the theme from the first two games but returning to the systems of Undaunted Callisto should be a slam dunk for a fanboy like me - but perhaps my expectations were too high? In any case, let me try and unpick what doesn’t work this time around.

I’ve explained how the game has been significantly streamlined compared to Callisto. With all those rough edges removed, this game just slips by too easily. Individual games feel short and slight, and each one is actually quite similar to the last, regardless of the scenario. The differences between the LFA and the Miners are trivial this time, so both sides employ the same play style, reducing the replayability of trying out both teams.

The varied maps and scenarios help, and you can certainly play a run of three scenarios in a single session - so perhaps that should be considered the “complete” way to experience the game. But there are problems here too. Firstly, criminally, the scenarios just aren’t very interesting. The maps are pretty, and I like the modifiable terrain, but the other additions just don’t really land. There are things like turret guns for the LFA, and floating debris fields that can somehow be made to smash into enemy units by the Miners, or a remotely operated elevator, but most of these just shoot at you or get shot by you, and it’s not that different from shooting at or being shot by enemy units. The scenarios played on the moon Callisto are a bit more interesting because your flying units are constrained to the canyons between the mountains, but the game’s over before they really have time to wheel around for a second attack. Perhaps of more concern, there are a couple of missions that feel very unbalanced, like the one where the LFA starts with 2 control points already on the board but the Miners don’t get a corresponding boost. This matters more with a branching campaign. The idea with the branching campaign seems to be that the side that lost the last game gets a boost for the next game, but in practice both sides often get new units and sometimes the winners of the previous game get a more powerful-feeling toy to play with.

Another omission here is the solo mode, which was a surprisingly bonus in Callisto.

The addition of flying ships is interesting and I enjoyed the puzzle of making the most of them, but the flying mechanic itself feels abstract and gamified - I never felt like they were ships buzzing overhead, despite my 3D-printed stands to bump them up the z-axis.

Losing the requirement to scout terrain and putting all the ground units into transports makes all the games all start the same way, so there’s just not much variation - and they continue in the same way from there too.

The general trend here is towards uniformity: between the two sides, between the maps, and in the way that the games play out. Combined with the shortness of the games, there doesn’t seem to be the scope for dramatic narrative action to emerge from the gameplay that I enjoyed so much in Undaunted Callisto. You don’t get mid-game turning points where a unit makes a game-changing move or a heroic last stand. Every game is just a rush to the control points followed by a scrap.

I’m aware that I’m being pretty negative here, and I feel I should redress the balance. Undaunted 2200: Revolution is a solid game with excellent production values. If you want a fast and light card-driven combat game then this is fine, possibly even good. To me it feels like it should have been the first in the series because it is easier to learn and play, and if that’s what you are after then go for it. But if you want more - if you want dramatic action, interesting decisions, and varied scenarios - then Callisto is simply the better game.

Let me finish by telling you a story. My son played Undaunted Revolution just once - but he decided it wasn’t his thing and he didn’t even get to the end of the game. He was however inspired to dust off Undaunted Callisto. We set up scenario 6, which takes place in a warehouse containing 5 mothballed mechs. The LFA are here to wake them up and bring them online, but the Miners got wind of this and are trying to stop them. At the start of the scenario, one of the Miners’ squads is approaching the warehouse entrance from the south in a Hauler truck, whilst the rest of the Miners sneak in through the rear entrance.

Meanwhile, the LFA occupy some raised gantries holding good firing positions - but they’ve got to leave their stations to activate those mechs. 30 minutes into our game, all the mechs were active but the Miners had taken control of two gun turrets, and used these to lock down the rear exit and destroyed two of the mechs as they attempted to leave.

Another two of the mechs made a run for the main entrance, the fast-but-weak Artemis mech and the hulking Centurion. The Centurion ran clear of the base but the Artemis was pursued and caught by two of the Miner units, a Survey-Tech and a Ripper, who had come down from the gantry and were managing to slow it down. The Centurion went back to the warehouse entrance to protect the Artemis, physically shielding it from the Miners whilst laying down suppressing fire, but the Artemis had taken so much damage by this point that it was moving very slowly. The Artemis and the Centurion limped away from the warehouse, but as they did this, the Miners turned their attention to the final remaining mech. The LFA had neglected this one, deeming it unnecessary, and the Hades mech quickly succumbed to a rain of fire.

Once again, the greedy corporate types of the Lunar Frontier Authority had had their noses tweaked by the irrepressibly revolting Miners.

These kinds of player-driven, gameplay emergent narratives happen in every game of Undaunted 2200: Callisto, but are sadly missing from Revolution.

So there we have it. There are two games that I would recommend from this trilogy: one if you want a short, streamlined game, and the other for a longer, richer game experience.

Surprisingly, the streamlined recommendation is not the smaller package of Line of Fire: Burnt Moon. Unfortunately that game is not one I can recommend to anyone. Instead, if you want a snappy game, try Undaunted 2200: Revolution. The games fly by and you’ll have fun.

However, going back to Undaunted 2200: Callisto having not played it for a while, I was thrilled. It was even better than I remembered. The starting point is an excellent game design: the pairing of the board-based warfare and the Undaunted Card Game System works exceptionally well. But unlike Revolution, this is topped with interesting, asymmetrical forces and well-designed scenarios leading to compelling game play choices and memorable emergent narratives.

In terms of both game play and storytelling, Callisto is a revelation, whilst Revolution is an evolutionary step backwards.

--

If you enjoyed this review, why not check out my other reviews in this GeekList.

New comment on Image

jbbshalom — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:06:36 +0000

by jbbshalom

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GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "Shannyn's Curator's Encyclopedia of Trick-Takers, Climbers & Shedders"

shannyn_north — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:06:17 +0000

by shannyn_north

Numberwang± has been added to the geeklist Shannyn's Curator's Encyclopedia of Trick-Takers, Climbers & Shedders ]]>

Reply: Works in Progress:: Re: [WIP] Robinson Crusoe Adventure on 54 cards - solitary game

cbdb — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:06:15 +0000

by cbdb

This looks so fabulous!!!! Amazing!

Product For Sale: Camp Grizzly: Second Edition

darkodineon — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:05:52 +0000

by darkodineon

$40.00 for Board Game: Camp Grizzly: Second Edition
Condition: Like New
Location: United States ]]>

New comment on Item for GeekList "GCL Gelato 756 - Advertising"

hojoh — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:05:49 +0000

by hojoh

Review: Cross the Line:: Cross the Line review - the line is a dot to you!

Board_Game_Steve — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:05:46 +0000

by Board_Game_Steve

🎲 Cross the Line
✏ Gray Matters Games
👥 2-8 players
🧠 Complexity: Light

How well do you think you know your friends and family? Play Cross the Line and you’ll find out!

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🎲 Gameplay 🎲

Each turn, the active player gets a card with a prompt and a range of answers which they insert into the device. It sounds ominous but it’s not I promise! They read out everything on the card and secretly decide where they fall on the scale, cover up their answer using the board built into the device, and hand it round the other players

They each place a marker on the board which are worth 1-3 points if they’re right. If you’re not confident with your guess, the biggest marker is worth 1, but if you’re feeling confident, the smallest is worth 3

The active player reveals their answer, sliding up the board to show the line and where everybody’s guesses fall on it. Points are awarded, the next player takes their turn, and play continues until somebody reaches 12 points

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💭 Thoughts 💭

There are 100 double sided game cards, with one side more suitable for younger players. We appreciated this as we can enjoy it as a family and with friends. Having that many cards also makes it unlikely the same person would ever answer the same one twice

The components are great and work well, particularly the slider. The confidence bars slide freely along the device, and the insert doubles up as the points track! Even though it’s not the smallest box, you could play it out & about or on holiday

There’s minimal downtime apart from when the active player is waiting for others to answer, but that rarely takes long either

The challenge is not necessarily working out where YOU think that person would fall on the scale, it’s where THEY think they fall on it. We loved playing it with the girls to see what they think of us and each other, and it never felt mean

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I can see this being a great family/party game akin to Wavelength. It's fun figuring out what people’s answers could be, and the reveal creates a lot of laughs

[AD – gifted by VR Distribution for review purposes, all thoughts are my own]

(The review was originally posted to my Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/p/De06BbxkXb9/?dlrf=MXBzMzJqOW1yOW...==)

Reply: Too Little Time:: General:: Re: Too Little Time published images so far

ErickRPG — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:05:46 +0000

by ErickRPG

I'm following along. But I do not like the design of the playable characters anywhere near as close to how much I love the TMB gearlocs.

Reply: Sun Rot:: General:: Re: Solo?

morgopolis — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:05:16 +0000

by morgopolis

Just played my first game solo. Made up a scenario that had the fighter and oracle (an NPC) exploring the slums, visiting a church to recruit a cleric to the party, then visiting a hut to recruit an old man who happened to be a wizard. We made it to the end portal after fighting a few monsters but a last minute event went off right before the portal opened and it killed everyone but the cleric, who made it through! It was fun, I did make up the entire scenario, but that’s what you’re expected to do here. The game is essentially a combination of bits, bobs, and cards to make your own scenarios — the ultimate sandbox. I really enjoyed it, but I can see that the right group of people around the table could really make this shine. I think if you want to think of your own scenarios it’s excellent for solo, because you can easily run 4 adventurers at the same time without any confusion, bookkeeping, or game flow issues. This one’s staying in my collection!

Reply: Song of the Wildkin:: General:: Re: Song of the Wildkin at SPIEL Essen: What to Expect

bokengames — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:05:15 +0000

by bokengames

Thank you Anthony! I think you'll enjoy exploration scenarios as well. ;)

Reply: Eldritch Horror:: General:: Re: New player expansion recommendations

Solo_manKane — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:05:04 +0000

by Solo_manKane

@Bltnk, Thank you. Foresaken Lore to start. How do you feel about the AtMoM expansion? It's a favorite setting of mine.
Leahy, Lovecraft, Campbell & Carpenter, etc.

Product For Sale: Spooktacular

darkodineon — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:05:00 +0000

by darkodineon

$40.00 for Board Game: Spooktacular
Condition: Like New
Location: United States ]]>

Reply: General Gaming:: Re: Board Game Sporcle Quiz 162: --- Race against the time – Note-able Board Games 1 ---

psson73 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:04:55 +0000

by psson73

Wow, that was stressful... Completely stumped on my first attempt

86% with 13 seconds left on my second.

Thanks for the quiz!

Review: Paranormal:: The Purge: # 2503 Paranormal: The Supernatural game of clues, artifacts and lots of Monsters

william4192 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:04:18 +0000

by william4192

Please check out my Geeklist at:

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/145695/purge-reviews-reco...

My video reviews can be found here:

www.youtube.com/purgereviewsboardgames

Conclusion:

Paranormal is a solo board game designed by Gabe Barrett and published by Solo Game of the Month. I collect all of these games and really do enjoy most of them. I have a had a good time with most, if not all of them. Paranormal is one that I am sort of mixed on. Let me start at the top.

Paranormal is an adventure game that is clearly based off the TV show Supernatural. It "borrows" heavily from the show without being a parody or a joke. That doesn't mean Paranormal isn't without its unique qualities. Let's discuss a few:

1. This game is hard. Like balls hard. I am not even sure I can win this game. I feel like just getting to the boss is a huge accomplishment. To me, this is a negative that I feel like I cannot win. I usually want a 50/50 win split in a cooperative/solo game. Even if I cheat a little on the dice rolls, I just cannot win this game. Maybe it is me, but I do not think so from other comments on BGG.

2. The clue system is very good. Sure, there is some luck if the right cards come out and the logic works quicker, but I like the system of using these clue cards to find things. I feel like getting the lost hero is the best course of action but I still always run out of time. Another downer is you cannot just get a clue. If the ability to gain a clue is not on the board, then you are not getting. I lost one sitting because for two rounds I could not get clues or at least enough clues and the doom track keeps going.

3. The game holds you back intentionally. You are going to have to rest to get your dice back and that is not a fun turn (or action). With the pressing doom already causing so many issues that I hate "wasting" actions to get dice back. I feel like I have to be playing this wrong, but I am not. This makes the game frustrating to me.

4. The game is very thematic. I like the three bad guys that come with the game to shake things up, but I can play 5 times in a row and never see a boss due to the difficult of the game or poor dice rolling. Yet, I do feel like I am on a mission and the gate of Hell are against me. It all comes through like a season of Supernatural.

5. There are a lot of icons for what is a simple solo experience. I would have preferred a cheat sheet card for all the icons rather than having to open the rule book over and over again. The back page helps a little bit, but it doesn't really explain the icons.

Overall, I like this package. I feel I need to tweak it to make it a tad easier. When I play solo, I don't really want to be brutally beat down. I like thematic touches and the gameplay is very fun. It can also be played with more than solo as each person could handle one character if you wanted them to. With that said, I think it shines as a solo experience. This is just going to be a tough battle so be ready.

Keeper.

Components:

The components are good. The majority of the components are cards. You get cards for the locations, the assets, the monsters clues, and the heroes. Luckily, the game uses double sided standees instead of miniatures which I like a lot. The tokens are good quality. All of the components are very good and fit neatly back in the box. The inside of the box doesn't really have any sort of insert. The dice included are generic dice but they do the job.

Rule Book:

The rule book is a beast. It is pretty straight forward throughout most of it. There are a few rules I just didn't find in there (are dice used at a location spent?). Even so, you can easily find the flow of the game and make those judgement calls as you progress. There are quite a few icons and little rules you will need to learn as you progress. I felt the best way to learn is to expect to lose the first game and just take a turn and start pushing "levers". I learnt the rules during my first play and I was fine by half way through the game.

Flow of the Game:

To win, you have to find the boss by using clues (more on this later) and then battling and defeating the boss before the doom tracker hits its limit.

Each game is played with 3 heroes. Each hero on a turn gets three actions. The actions are:

1. move up to two locations
2. Combat - roll dice and you get 1 re-roll. You must spend a die after rolling as energy for the combat (more on this later). Each monster has different icons which might have you battling it differently
3. Interact - collect an asset (normally an item) at the location
4. Rest - gain 1 dice back (see combat to see how they are spent) or all of your dice if you are at the home location

Then the enemies go:

1. Increase doom 1 space for each monster and each skull symbol (if doom hits its max, then you lose the game)
2. Activate any moving monsters or spread monsters (these are seen by icons on the cards)
3. Spawn 3 monsters to random locations

* As an aside you are trying to gain clue cards. These clue cards will use logic puzzles to show you where a lost hero is (a 4th hero), the bad guy and the bad guys "plan". This is a really fun part of the game.

Should I buy this game?:

Fans of Supernatural (TV show) are going to like the parody or likeness this game is going to bring out. This game is super hard and I think it should be notated. If you want a little adventure game, but one you are likely to lose with a cool theme then this might be the game for you.

Keeper.

Reply: Too Little Time:: General:: Re: The perfect dice chucking game!?

ErickRPG — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:04:10 +0000

by ErickRPG

I'm interested. But I already have every single gearloc, most or close to all major expansions, and some of the bonus cards + the Treasure Trove. So it's a little late for me to just "replace" this game with that. I'm all bought in, and I do love TMB.

GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "2026 Challenge Champion"

Pyronik2003 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:03:02 +0000

by Pyronik2003

Flamecraft has been added to the geeklist 2026 Challenge Champion ]]>

GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "Sold out at Essen Spiel 2026"

dalembertian — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:02:13 +0000

by dalembertian

Nucleum: Gibraltar has been added to the geeklist Sold out at Essen Spiel 2026 ]]>

Review: The Royal Society of Archeology:: Disappointing production weighs down an otherwise promising game

dmoser22 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:02:05 +0000

by dmoser22

tl;dr: I really think I’d enjoy playing this on BGA, but not on my table.

Let’s start with the positives: Royal Society of Archeology is a really good entry in the increasingly crowded field of mid-heavy weight euro games, such as Galactic Cruise, Luthier, etc. It’s a worker placement game with only 4 locations to visit, so the decision space is limited but rich with tactical possibilities. I quite enjoyed the interplay between the various resources - money, reputation, knowledge, and expertise - and the way that the location placement bonuses add an extra dimension to choices made about timing the use of your various explorers.

The mechanics and theme are well integrated, and the artwork in all aspects leads to a wonderful immersion in the world of Georgian archeology (notwithstanding the less savory aspects of the profession in that era). Despite the limited number of different actions, there are actually a variety of different way to pursue prestige and science points. Your final score is the lesser of those two, so you also need to balance the points you go after in order to win.

A couple of aspects are less favorable, but these are purely subjective. They’re not my favorite things, but others may view them as positives. The first is that players actually have very few actions over the course of the game, only three explorers taking one action each per year, and the whole game is only 4 or 5 years, depending on player count. The White Castle is similar in this regard, but offers more potential for combos that include performing additional full actions, whereas in Royal Society you generally only get some resource bonuses. Secondly, there are a large number of rewards and modifiers that have to be kept track of: Explorer’s skills, Society card abilities, Bloomsbury tiles (awarded at certain prestige levels), ongoing penalties from missing Royal Requirements, Royal Society tiles that need to be checked each turn, etc. It’s a lot of overhead. When combined with free actions like spending Society disks to gain Reputation or spending Reputation to temporarily boost Expertise, it is very hard to play a turn without missing some adjustment or triggered event. Some people are fine with games like this; I play them and think, “How soon can I play this on BGA, where all of these rules will be checked and validated for me so I can concentrate on what I actually want to do?”

All in all, I really like the game design. What ruined the experience for me, however, was the graphic design and physical production. It’s actually quite surprising; I’ve been very happy with Capstone productions in the past, but this one doesn’t measure up to their standard.

First problem? The main board is way too big. It could have been 25-30% smaller without losing anything functionally or graphically, and you still need additional space along one side for the row of planned Expedition cards. As is, the space required by this game will outstrip what’s available for many people with modestly sized tables.

Speaking of those Expedition cards, the iconography on them (of which there is a lot) is a bit too small to read, especially in non-ideal lighting situations, or for older eyes (like mine).

For example, the 3rd requirement (upper left corner) of the blue Expedition is 6 pounds. The 2nd requirement of the yellow Expedition is Knowledge level 4 in the African region. Can you read those easily and quickly without enlarging the image?

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What about from this side of the table when they’re in the “Program” on the other side of the board?

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I don’t want to play a game where both players on one side of the board have to constantly stand up and lean over (or ask the other players to read cards to them) every time they have a decision to make about selecting one Expedition or another. It’s inconvenient, and may also telegraph your intentions to other players.

Another misstep that could easily have been avoided: why on Earth are the light yellow relics screen printed in white?? This got through final production and no one saw a problem?

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Finally, tracking the expertise of each of your explorers is done by simply moving cubes across a flat board, a method dangerously prone to jostling, dangling shirt sleeves, etc. I’m not suggesting that double-sided player boards are needed, but simply punching holes for each cube position would have dramatically improved usability without (I’m guessing) much added cost. That’s what they did for Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock and it works great.

So, as much as I enjoy the game itself, I’m going to be moving this one on, and hoping that someone ports it to BGA soon.

Reply: Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion:: Rules:: Re: Ambiguity

Froggery — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:02:04 +0000

by Froggery

If monster has disadvantage,it draws two cards and you choose weakest card from them to apply. So in this case -2 (btw I don't know how you can draw +0 with stun from monster modificators deck). If you are not sure you just choose one which is in your opinion more bad for monster and better for your heroes.
+0 and +1 = for monster is +0 weaker so you choose this.

Line of sight Is obstructed only with walls and closed doors

Reply: The Witcher: Old World – Wild Hunt:: Rules:: Re: Wild Hunt drawing Special Attack Card From Monster Trail Expansion

qetuol — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:01:34 +0000

by qetuol

wavedog98 wrote:

This is supposed to be compatible with the mo tee trail expansion, but neither rulebook addresses what happens when the wild hunt draws a special attack card from monster trail. Does anybody know?

If you fight the final boss, it has it own special card set (4 cards), you don't use the special cards from monster trail. You set up the wild hunt boss deck as it is written in the rulebook.

Reply: 1809: Talavera:: General:: Re: Is the preliminary French bombardment phase too strong?

IanQ09 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:01:12 +0000

by IanQ09

Really appreciate the quick response. Can I just double-check a few things. Firstly, appreciate the tip about screening units with artillery/skirmish formations and wondered if the setup allows any of Sherbrooke’s units to be so screened please - I think not, but just in case. Secondly, where a Leader moves to a unit/stack that needs reforming, do they have to end their movement in that hex (and thus risk being a casualty if a ‘0’ is rolled on the next round of bombardments), or can they move away if they still have MP left? Thirdly, does Senarmont’s red S1 DRM apply during the bombardment phase - I’m assuming it does? Lastly, you reference 12 fire checks? For Scenario 2 I thought it was three rounds of bombardment with 6 artillery units, totalling 18 fire checks? Other than the fact that the bombardment markers can’t be moved in the event of a rout and might therefore be firing at nothing, have I missed something please?

New Video for Camp Grizzly: Second Edition

edkofuzz — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:01:06 +0000

by edkofuzz

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Thread: Sushi Go Party! Chef's Special:: General:: US release date?

mooreofryan — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:00:53 +0000

by mooreofryan

Anyone have an updated shop date for US gamers? I pre-ordered from gamenerdz and their estimate was September 30th. We are a month beyond that now.

New comment on Image

Babylon_Games — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:00:48 +0000

by Babylon_Games

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GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "Solotober 2026"

Labrasolo — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:00:43 +0000

by Labrasolo

Labrasolo has been added to the geeklist Solotober 2026 ]]>

GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "My Collection "

Sk8ergirlLee — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:00:42 +0000

by Sk8ergirlLee

The Quacks of Quedlinburg: MegaBox has been added to the geeklist My Collection ]]>

Reply: Origins of Light: A Final Fantasy Board Game:: Crowdfunding:: Re: Neoprene mats question.

ErickRPG — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:00:39 +0000

by ErickRPG

KESS said they are trying to separate the player mats vs the main board and overworld map. because the game already comes with nice dual layered player boards. If they did that, I think I'll get them.

GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "2026 Spiel des Jahres Challenge"

Pyronik2003 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:59:44 +0000

by Pyronik2003

Harmonies has been added to the geeklist 2026 Spiel des Jahres Challenge ]]>

Reply: Ark Nova:: General:: Re: On Whether "Race" Should Be Listed Under Mechanics Here?

flyingtable83 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:59:25 +0000

by flyingtable83

zayzayem wrote:

flyingtable83 wrote:
Here's the description:
"Games where the first player to achieve a key objective wins the game. Typically this is expressed as the winner being the first player to reach the end of a track, but any type of fixed goal also qualifies as a Race mechanism."

The fixed goal is triggering the end game and being in first place. You cannot win Ark Nova without also fulfilling the end game condition.

You are misunderstanding what is meant by "fixed goal".

"Being in first place" is not a fixed goal. As the requirements for first place (the specific score) will change throughout the game based on your competitors score value.

What is meaning is a "fixed goal" that may not necessarily be "the end of a track". For example CATAN, where it is 10 points (no track). But regardless of anyone's points scored mid-game - the total required to win at the end of your turn is that you have 10 points. This is a fixed goal.

Triggering the end game in Ark Nova is a fixed goal that never changes. Who wins is the person who accomplishes that fixed goal best (highest score). But you cannot win Ark Nova without accomplishing the fixed goal.

zayzayem wrote:

Games like Terraforming Mars, El Dorado and Ark Nova, while rewarding fast and efficient gameplay that may race towards a set goal, are not race games that involve the winning being directly tied to crossing the line the fastest.

Quest for El Dorado is in the definition on BGG for the race mechanic. It is given as an example of the race mechanic.

Thread: Prestige:: Rules:: mark discs on other players property tiles

axel effert — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:59:21 +0000

by axel effert

Second Question:
The rules says:
"Additional tiles must alsways be connected to tiles with your own marker discs.This means that you may onlymay place tiles adjacent to tiles with your own markers"
What´s about disc markers on tiles placed by other players. May I place a marker there , that is not adjacent to tiles with my own marker ?
Thank´s a lot.
Axel

Thread: Deckers:: Rules:: Hacker’s palace on pathways

Lecathare31 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:58:25 +0000

by Lecathare31

Hello Could you pls confirm if it is correct. I have hacker's palace on pathways, with 1 move action can I pick up/drop off all the sparks on the pathway until I have still red installation ?

Reply: Wargames:: General:: Re: Military History Kindle Daily Deal Subscription Thread

RLMNANJING — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:58:02 +0000

by RLMNANJING

White Eagle, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-20 by Norman Davies

🇺🇸 $0.99 https://www.amazon.com/White-Eagle-Red-Star-Polish-Soviet-eb...

May well be a useful read when paired with this game.

Reply: New Cold War:: General:: Re: Historical Notes / Booklet

Pascal_M — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:58:00 +0000

by Pascal_M

That would be really nice, Andoni!

New comment on File Wondrous Creatures Score Card

sharls — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:57:56 +0000

by sharls

Review: Invincible: The Hero-Building Game, Season 2:: Invincible: The Hero-Building Game Season 2. Oh, Right! I Love This Game!

saunders — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:57:50 +0000

by saunders

This review originally appeared in the cooperative board and card games blog: CO-OP Gestalt

https://coopgestalt.com/2026/10/20/invincible-the-hero-build...

Invincible: The Hero-Building Game Season 2. Oh, Right! I Love This Game!

Welcome back to Cooperative Comic Book month! We’ve seen the DC Comic Book Universe! We’ve seen the Marvel DC Universe! We’ve seen some crazy space Comic Book universe! And this week, we venture into the Image Comic Book Universe!

I pre-ordered Invincible: The Hero-Building Game Season 2 a while ago from GameNerdz, and it just arrived late September 2026. That’s right! I had forgotten I ordered this! What perfect timing! It came during Cooperative Comic Book month!

This is an expansion for the Invincible: The Hero-Building Game. NOTE! This is not a standalone product! You need the original game to play!

You might remember that we discussed the original Invincible: The Hero-Building Game a while ago (see review here), and we basically loved it! This solo and cooperative bag-building push-your-luck game went over so well that it made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024!

Will we like the expansion? Let’s check it out!

Unboxing and Discussion

This is a relatively thin box compared to the original.

Luckily, it’s the same width and height as the original game so you can store them on top of each other.

This is an expansion! It comes with four new characters from the Invincible Cinematic Universe: Black Samson, Monster Girl, Dupli-Kate and Shrinking Rae. See above! Each of these characters plays quite different than the original characters from the base box.

Mostly, there’s just a bunch of new cards that give more Super Powers, more Ultimate Powers, more Events, more Challenges, more Helpers, more Episodes, more Villains and more starting Powers! More cards!!! It’s just more stuff to expand your base game!

Of course, there’s a bunch of new punchouts (the new heroes especially), but most of the new punchouts are tokens for specific Episodes in the game!

There’s two “new” big things in the game. The first is “falter” cubes. These “green” (?) cubes get added to your bag (usually as bad news), and if you draw them, they cause the biggest bad guy (in your area) to get a free shot! The worst part of these “falter” cubes is the color … I can distinguish them from the blue cubes, but I can see a lot of people not being able to.

The other new thing is “fuel” tokens, which you can use in place of cubes. They don’t go into your bag like cubes, but you can use these like cubes to power your powers!

The new stuff is all covered in the (smallish) Rulebook. There are also 6 new episodes in the Episode Guide: It’s basically a new campaign!

Overall. this is just more “stuff” for the Invincible: The Hero-Building Game! It looks like the original game, so the art and graphic design is consistent between them.

I Forgot!

I forgot how to play Invincible: The Hero-Building Game! I remembered “most” of the basics, but realized I couldn’t just jump in without reminding myself how to play the game! To give the expansion a fair shake, I wanted to make sure I was up on the original game! In fact, I had to play the first two Episodes in the original game (so you see ALL the mechanisms on the game) to remind myself of everything!

I forgot how much I love this game! I tend to eschew “weird” solo modes, so I just played Invincible and Atom Eve two-handed solo (with no weird solo exceptions) … just like I did back in the original review! I typically do this because solo games can get messy with extra rules, but if you just played as if it were a 2-player game, then you only have to worry about normal rules!

Oh ya, this is a great game. Even if this expansion completely sucks, it made me play the base game again and remember how much I love it!

New Heroes!

The best part of this new expansion is the new Heroes. Over a bunch of solo and cooperative games, I got to know and (mostly) love these new characters!

Dupli-Kate is probably my favorite! She’s so interesting and different as she can split into three, and you can choose which Kate will perform an action! She is great for keeping the minions under control as she spreads across the world!! She is a little fragile, as each Kate only has 4 points, but she resets if a Kate is killed (and that Kate can come back)! She was SO interesting!

Monster Girl was a close second favorite! Remember those new “falter” cubes? The “falter” cubes still gives a bad guy a free shot, but Monster Girl can use them and treat them as a wild cube! So, you kind of “want” Monster Girl to get “falter” cubes, as she can really use them! And it’s kind of okay if she gets KO’d (she takes a LOT of damage), because she’s so powerful! I think every game that I used her, she got KO’d at least once … and that’s okay!

Shrinking Rae was also great and a close third. She reminds me VERY much of Ant-Man from Marvel Champions (see review here): when she changes to big mode, she spackos a bad guy! And her powers are a little different if she is in big or small mode (and she even had minis for both modes). It makes sense to switch modes a lot if you are Rae!

Black Samson was probably my least favorite; he uses fuel a lot more than other heroes. He tends to embrace the use of fuel! I had trouble getting going with him. He wasn’t bad, and he was interesting with his power suit but I tended to prefer all the other characters more.

Solo

Over the course of at least 6 solo games, I got a good sense of the new heroes and the new powers! I, of course, played solo as two-handed solo (there is NO notion of true solo in this game: everything is balanced for 2, 3, and 4-Player games). I was pleased that I won Episode 1! It was a challenge though!

I lost Episode 2 when using Shrinking Rae and Black Samson! Basically, I couldn’t save enough people! (You have to have at least 2 people per zone “saved” as well as taking out the bad guy!) The Powers I got just didn’t have enough “saves” in them.

In a second game of Episode 2 with Monster Girl and DupliKate, I WAS able to save enough people and win! It seems like Monster Girl and Kate are a “little bit better” at saving the bystanders. Some of this was a function of the powers that Samson and Rae drew (not enough “saves”), but I think some of this was not paying enough attention to saving, and also Samson has NO SAVES on his front side! It was interesting to see that your approach does have to change depending on what you need to do!

Just a lot of fun to play with the new characters: they are all different and interesting, and the solo mode works great.

Cooperative

So, how do the new characters work together? Honestly, the game still flows the same for the most part; there’s no real change in flow.

Players still play “at their own pace”, drawing from the bag and playing cubes simultaneously. The more I think about it, the more this reminds me of how the game flowed with Slay The Spire (the board game: see review here: players kind of “do their own thing” simultaneously, keeping the game flowing, but every so often slowing down and synchronizing with their teammates.

“I need some help with this bad guy! Can you help if you have a chance?”

“I need to save a few people then I’ll be right over!”

Honestly, this “play when you want” works so well in this game! You can imagine super heroes having the agency to do good stuff on their turn, but still working together as needed! This is the perfect blend of player agency and cooperation!

To be clear, all the new rules (which there aren’t THAT many) don’t really change the flow of the cooperative game. This is the best kind of expansion: give me some more variety, but keep all the great stuff from the original game! This expansion keeps the original flow from the original game … which is so awesome!

Mixing This Up

So, you CAN play the game using ONLY the new Heroes, only the new Super Powers, only the new Ultimates, and only the new Enemies! In other words, if you DO NOT wish to mix all the new stuff back into the box, you can just play the new stuff. You still need a lot of tokens and save dice and all that from the base game, but you can play with “only” the new stuff.

If you look at my set-up above, you can see that I kept all the expansion stuff on the left (far) side of the table and all the base stuff on the right (near) side of the table. I wanted to make sure I kept everything separate so I can put everything back in their respective boxes.

At first I wasn’t worried, because I noticed the Super Power cards are notated with a 2 in lower right corner (see above).

But nothing else is! The Ultimate powers DO NOT have a 2!!

The Villains don’t! have a 2!! The Challenges and Helpers don’t!!! The Events don’t!!!!What the heck!!!??? Why would they mark the Super Power cards AND NOTHING ELSE???? THIS MAKES NO SENSE TO ME!

So, for all my games with the Expansion, I ONLY used the cards from the expansion, because I was afraid I’d never be able to separate the sets!

To help people, like me, who want to know what cards are in here, I have a section at the end of this review where I have pictures all of the cards that aren’t labelled so you can always separate them … if you want. Maybe this is just a me thing, but I am VERY annoyed that only one set of cards are annotated with the 2!!!!

Conclusion

The best expansions remind you how much you love the base game! If this expansion completely sucked, I’d still be happy that it reminded me to play the base game again and rediscover how much I loved Invincible: The Hero-Building Game! In the end, though, this expansion was great: it added 4 new heroes, a new campaign (with 6 episodes), and just a “few” new mechanisms … plus a whole bunch of new cards! It adds a lot to the game without making it much more complicated! I feel like (and did) I could show off the new expansion to a bunch of new gamers without missing a beat!

I am annoyed that the cards are not all marked with a “2” to show they are from Season 2. It’s weird they only marked the Super Powers and nothing else? If you are like me and want to be able to separate things, see the Appendix (below) for pictures of all the cards!

I am less annoyed that the “falter” cubes are SO CLOSE in color to the blue cubes, but I am still annoyed. I was able to distinguish them without problem, but I do worry that others will have issues.

Other than the lack of markings and weird coloring on “falter” cubes, I loved this expansion! I heartily recommend it with an 8.5/10 or 9/10. It’s easy to jump into, doesn’t make the base game much more complicated, but still gives you a lot more content! This is the best kind of expansion: it preserves the flow of the original game, but just gives you more stuff.

Appendix: The Season 2 Cards that ARE NOT MARKED

These are pictures of all Season 2 cards that are UNMARKED. All Super Power cards are marked with a 2 in the lower right corner.

The base powers and starting powers (granted, these probably don’t HAVE to be marked, because it’s clear which hero they belong to).

Season 2 Challenge cards (6 total).

Season 2 Helper cards (6 total).

Season 2 Level 3 Villains (8 total).

Season 2 Level 2 Villains (8 total).

Season 2 Level 1 Villains (3 total).

All Season 2 Villain Cards (20 total … includes Angstrom Levy).

All Season 2 Ultimate Power cards (17 total).

Season 2 Event Cards (9 total).

New comment on Item for GeekList "PAX Unplugged 2026 Virtual Game Market"

MassiveJammies — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:57:24 +0000

by MassiveJammies

Reply: Fragments: Solara:: General:: Re: Is this Box also included in the Big Box?

ARKnine1 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:57:09 +0000

by ARKnine1

Roger_IELLO wrote:

Nebelkraehe wrote:
Roger_IELLO wrote:
The booster will be included with every purchase at our shop in Essen and should be given out if you play a game for demo too.

Do you know if Pegasus will hand the promos out for the german version as well in Essen?

Hopefully yes.

Hello ! 🙂 We ve been at Essen and we played demo twice with a different group of friends but we have never received any promo tile or something, even the people playing next to us did not receive anything, was that normal then? A friend of a friend of mine bought it but no promotional stuff was delivered…

Reply: Skull:: Rules:: Re: If you have no discs left to play, MUST you open bidding?

dmoser22 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:56:52 +0000

by dmoser22

Yes, if you are out of discs, you must open the bidding.

Review: Qin:: Gazebo's song called Masterpiece

JakobLenz — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:56:36 +0000

by JakobLenz

The magic of Qin, the magic of Gazebo, is that in each turn, you're just placing a tile, and not much else. There aren't many placing rules to distract you, the aren't different tiles that affect the outcome of the placing: the only element that distinguishes tiles from each other is its color, and there are only 3 colors. These colors are not technically owned by anybody, so they can act as your allies, but also become a terrible weakness that makes you lose a game. This makes it s simpler game than Tigris & Euphrates, Babylonia or Through the Desert, and at the same time offers a puzzle that has almost the same high stakes and drama thsn those masterpieces. Gazebo adds a wrinckle: some double tiles are generated, handled and counted separately, but this doesn't make the game more complex while still reducing the impact of luck in the game.
This simplicity might give the impression that this game is just an abstract, but believe it or not, both productions of Qin and Gazebo help add a layer of meaningfulness to the game. And even if I don't think fighting to place a gazebo really conveys the battle of civilizations that Qin offers, it still has s botanical charm in how it navigates pots, double tiles and butterflies. Qin, on the other hand, focused more in offering maps with different structures and forcing players to learn each terrain, like a war commander would.
Both games have stellar experiences, even if some people think the game isn't really deep. But navigating the expansion of your areas to win a double placement of a pagoda, to conquer a city or absorb an enemy's gazebo, is extremely satisfying and an endless source of joy. It's one of Knizia's most condensed experiences, and in Gazebo's production, one of the most portable tile-laying games.
I'll always say yes to Qin's frog map, to Gazebo's butterfly map. And you might too!

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GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "2026 Gaming Challenges (Pyronik)"

Pyronik2003 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:56:22 +0000

by Pyronik2003

2026 Spiel des Jahres Challenge has been added to the geeklist 2026 Gaming Challenges (Pyronik) ]]>

Review: KLANG Music game:: The Bulgarian Song Guessing Board Game

LazarovP — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:56:17 +0000

by LazarovP

Overall: 8/10
Weight: 1.15/5 (quick and easy to teach to someone)

Played 3 full rounds competitively at 2 players and one full round of 2 player co-op for a total of about 100 minutes.

A fun party game with a goal of guessing the year, song name and artist.

There are multiple ways to adjust the rules in order to balance the game between players based on their knowledge.

Probably the best thing about it is seeing people's faces light up when they hear a song, that they love, come up (and listening to great songs in the meantime) .

Excited to try it out with larger groups and people from different generations.

There are multiple expansion options. I would gladly pickup a rock and foreign hits expansions to mix with the current deck and create an even better (for me) experience. There are a few song guessing games, but this is, afaik, the only one focusing on Bulgarian music.

Notes:
- The game uses QR codes to pull up the site and load the song there (from YouTube). You get 5 seconds from clicking 'play' til the start of the song. During this time you have to flip your phone over because the song is revealed the moment it starts. IMO it would be a great improvement to have it play and stay hidden, which is the case when you're testing the game (video plays, it's hidden until you click 'reveal'). The game's site has a try-it-out free option, but it's a lot more basic than the actual game (I wouldn't judge it from the try-it-out option only).

- Playing against someone who listens to a lot of Bulgarian music and knows every 3rd song that comes up can get really frustrating, especially if you don't know most of the songs or artists. We got to the point where i was allowed tokens for guessing either song name or artist.

- Balancing out the stacks might also be needed to create a stack with songs that the current players are more familiar with.

- Might require expansions to improve your experience if you're into a specific genre or not too familiar with Bulgarian music.

Review: Rock Hard 1977: Ear Candy:: 🎸Rock Hard 1977: Ear Candy🍬 - short review

RollingRabbits — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:55:52 +0000

by RollingRabbits

🎸 Rock Hard 1977: Ear Candy🍬

Well, I wanted to tell you abo... 🎶 *Just a small town girl!* 🎶 Oof, sorry, I just LOVE this song... 🎶 *Livin' in a lonely woooorld!* 🎶 Now, where was I...? Oh, right! There are those songs you just can't get out of your 🎶 *Going aaaanyyywhere!* 🎶 head. The ones that make you want to sing at the top of your lungs the moment you hear the first note. And that's pretty much what this expansion is all ab... 🎶 *It goes oooon and ooon and ooon and ooon!* 🎶

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Rock Hard comes back even Harder with this "Ear Candy" expansion! This time around, the songs we write 📝 become a resource that we can promote through the newly introduced Hits List Song Charts mechanic 🔥, earning us points at the end of the game. Song themes can come from our own life experiences or from the wild stories we've picked up backstage, at Bud's parties, at Jax, Slinkies, and all those other places 🍻. Plus, song themes can go in and out of fashion, and if we get our timing right, we can score some extra points 🚀.

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The expansion also adds new characters, jobs, events, and both global and personal bonus objectives 🎸.

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My thoughts 🤔:
- The new mechanic fits seamlessly into the base game. It adds something extra without demanding too much more from players 🧠.
- Turning the stories from our favorite hangouts into song themes gives these locations a whole new level of meaning, beyond the random benefits they previously provided🍺.
- The trend cycle adds a satisfying layer of strategic planning 🔥.
- Just like the base game, the components are top quality ✨.

🎶 *Doooon't stop! Beliiieeeving!* 🎶

🎸 @foxycmere
👩‍🎤 Jennifer Giner Lopez
💽 @devir @deviriberia

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GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "Shannyn's Curator's Encyclopedia of Trick-Takers, Climbers & Shedders"

shannyn_north — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:55:37 +0000

by shannyn_north

キメラトリックス (Chimera Tricks) has been added to the geeklist Shannyn's Curator's Encyclopedia of Trick-Takers, Climbers & Shedders ]]>

New comment on Blog Post Goin' First (plus a Top 10 List of Start Player Tokens)

black_daveth — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:55:26 +0000

by black_daveth

Review: Everdell Silverfrost:: Snow in the Valley

Skello496 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:55:24 +0000

by Skello496

]]>Snow time
*Disclaimer* A copy of Everdell: Silverfrost has been provided by Tycoon Games for the sake of this review. All thoughts about the game are my own and have not been in any way influenced by the publisher for the sake of this review. For those who are interested in purchasing a copy of the game themselves, it can be bought directly from Tycoon Games via their online store.

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]]>March of the Penguins
Game Name: Everdell Silverfrost
Publish Year: 2026
Game Publisher: Tycoon Games
Designer: James A. Wilson, Clarissa A. Wilson
Artist: Enggar Adirasa, Lukas Siegmon
Mechanisms: Hand Management, Open Drafting, Set Collection, Worker Placement
Players: 1-4

Box Size and Insert

11.7 x 11.7 x 3.1 inches (or roughly 29.7 x 29.7 cm)

The box is essentially the same size as a Ticket to Ride box, which is a pretty common and nice size for a game.

The insert is amazing, and it lets you store everything super well. The mountain folds up and fits perfectly in the areas where it is supposed to, which would make for a super easy setup and breakdown, if there was a guide to show you how to correctly replace the mountain into the insert.

Art, Theming & Quality

It’s an Everdell game - so it should be no surprise to anyone that the production quality and art here are completely off the charts. I adore the deluxe edition’s mountain, but the best part about the mountain boards is the decision to include the standard mountain board in addition to the deluxe one. This decision makes it far easier to play the game in a consolidated space or when less time is available, and it has been a really nice place.

The individual resource pieces are absolutely delightful to hold and handle. I love the choice to make the shrubs felt, as opposed to the resin fire and the rubber acorns. All the material choices feel like the appropriate selection for each individual item, and it all works together in concert to be an incredible production.

All of the art used within Everdell: Silverfrost is beautiful. The theme of the snowstorms pounding the valley comes out in each and every piece of artwork throughout the game, from the valley board to all of the cards.

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]]>Everdell calls for Aide!!
Set Up

To set up Silverfrost, first assemble the mountain, placing the four stands for the beacon cards in the face, the beacons themselves on the edge of the mountain, and fill the mountain peak with the snow tokens. Following that, the beast cards are all set upon their locations on the mountain.

After the mountain is completely set up, the main board is set out and the valley cards are all shuffled. Eight valley cards are dealt out onto the valley face-up and the deck placed next to them. Next, each player is dealt quest their starting quest cards, and the remaining quests are shuffled and a number of the bigger quests are dealt out face-up next to the guild space.

Finally, the snowstorm cards are shuffled and the snow deck is compiled and placed at the top of the main board, the final snow scoring tile is placed on the selected side and the Winter’s Fury card is placed on its starting side.

At this point, the main board is ready for play. Next, the players take their critters and select one as their starting Ranger, attaching the adorable little snowshoes to it, and one as their normal starting worker. The remaining meeples are placed above the main board, separated as indicated by the iconography on the seasons summary portion.

The last thing to do prior to beginning gameplay is to give all players their starting fire and their starting hands. The number of cards in each player’s hand is determined by that player’s position in turn order.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Silverfrost is mostly pretty straightforward. On your turn, you place a worker meeple on an available space on the board to collect resources, activate beacons or complete quests. You also may use your turn to build buildings or critters into your city using the resources you have collected on previous turns.

When you place a meeple, you immediately take the resources and/or cards indicated on that space. If you draw cards because of your placement, then you may draw from either the deck or the valley. Meeples may be placed on any unoccupied space with a single pawprint or any occupied space with multiple pawprints, indicating no meeple limit on them.

Each player has a ranger meeple, as depicted by the snowshoes on that meeple. Rangers may be placed on any space, even if other players have meeples on those spaces. The ranger may not be placed on a space with your own meeples, or on a space with another meeple. If the ranger is used to activate a location that is unoccupied, the player placing it may take a single fire from the supply.

To build buildings and critters, on your turn you may select that card from your hand or your deck and pay the cost in resources as shown on the card. Played and purchased cards are placed in your city, as mentioned above. The other way to build cards is by using your Chimneys. Through the course of the game, each player will acquire two chimneys, which may be used in conjunction with fire tokens to place buildings or critters for free. Most building cards have a spot on them for a chimney, and a symbol indicating which type of building/critter may be played using that chimney. Once a chimney is placed, it remains there for the entire game unless another card removes it.

After a player has run out of meeples to place and buildings/critters to assemble, the player passes and goes through the indicated steps for whichever season they are passing into. All players may pass at any time, so it is completely possible for players to be on totally separate seasons from one another at any point of the game.

One of the more intricate aspects of Silverfrost is the snow mechanic. Each time a player passes into a new season, they flip a number of snow cards as determined by the number of players and reveal them. Each card specifies a space on the board or a card in the valley, and the players must place a snow token on those spaces/cards. Also, players are required to place snow on a number of cards in their city, beginning with the highest point value and proceeding downwards. When a card or space has a snow token on it, it may not be used or activated, and it is not worth any points at the end of the game, which makes clearing your snow incredibly important to playing and winning the game.

Snow is cleared through the use of the fire tokens mentioned above. Each turn, a player may choose one card in their city and spend a single fire to remove the snow. Removed snow tokens are kept by that player and contribute to final scoring. After Winter’s Fury passes, the cost of removing snow is increased to two fire. Additionally, players may remove fire from any spot or card on the board by placing their meeple on that location and paying the cost in fire, or building the card and paying the fire for that card.

Gameplay continues this way throughout all 4 rounds of the game, until every player has run out of possible actions in the final round. At that point, the game ends and final scoring takes place.

Scoring

Final scoring sees players take all victory point tokens they have earned throughout the game, all building and critter cards in their city and all quests they have completed and add them together. Additionally, the players each count all of the snow tokens they have, and then score those per the rules indicated on the snow scoring tile that they chose at the beginning of the game. For instance, the base snow scoring gives one point per snow and a bonus of five points to the player with the most snow. Once all of these numbers have been added up, whoever has the most points wins!

Solo Play

Silverfrost has one of the most innovative solo modes that I have seen, using two separate decks of cards in sync with each other in order to determine what the solo bot’s actions are. This is a really unique way to control a solo bot, and it’s a decision that I really like.

Every 4 turns the bot flips a card that has 4 segments on it. Each segment indicates either cards or meeples. Then, the player flips the top card of the other solo deck and puts it on the indicated starting location of the first card, lining up one quadrant from the new card with the next open quadrant on the map card. If a meeple spot is covered, a meeple is placed onto the board in the spot shown on the top card. If a card is on the bottom card sector, then a card is placed into the bot’s city from whatever indicated space/area shown. Gameplay continues this way until the end of the game, progressing the same for the player as it would in the base game. The solo bot’s decks continue to be flipped and it continues to gather fire, clear snow, place meeples and build its city until it runs fully of out moves.

At the point that both the player and the bot have no further options, the game ends.

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]]>4-player.

[heading]How long does it take to set up? How difficult was the set up?[/heading]

It takes around 15 minutes to set up, in my experience. The setup can feel a little bit long, but the takedown is honestly more time-consuming. The Collector’s Edition is absolutely gorgeous, and I adore the giant mountain, but trying to get all of that back into the box well with the included insert is difficult, to say the least. There isn’t a good guide that shows how to properly repack the larger components.

[heading]How does it compare to other games like it? How is it different? Would this affect my likelihood of buying the game?[/heading]

I do not have a fully comprehensive knowledge of other Everdell games, but I have played the original without any expansions. I think that this one is certainly the more complicated game, but I enjoy the puzzle that the snow forces onto the players. If you are looking for a game with more complexity, then Silverfrost is probably a great choice for you.

[heading]How clear are the instructions? How many turns did it take to understand the game/get into the flow of it?[/heading]

The instructions are fairly clear, but there were several things that I ended up looking up on BGG in order to have a good answer. For instance, I originally read the rulebook and thought that players were allowed to clear the snow in their city for free once each turn, because it is never explicitly stated. Upon looking into it further, I found on the forums that you still have to pay the cost. I would have loved for this to be more clearly stated within the instructions.

[heading]What is the quality of the components and how do they measure up to other games like this one?[/heading]

The quality of the components here could not possibly be better. It’s an Everdell game, so we would expect nothing less, and this one does not disappoint at all. It’s a fantastic production, and one of the lovliest games I have ever seen.

[heading]Is this something I see myself playing over other games?[/heading]

This one will absolutely hit the table over some other games in my collection, but it’s not going to be my go-to for most game nights. I really enjoy it, and I will always be willing to play it. It’s a really well made game, but the added complexity of the snow mechanic makes it a more difficult game to pull out for a normal game night.

[heading]What would I pay for this? Is it worth the price?[/heading]

I would pay around $60 for the base game, and probably $75 for the deluxe. The MSRP here is $100, which is a little steep for my taste, but I can see why it would be listed at that with the incredible quality of the components here.

[heading]How “balanced” does the game feel to play?[/heading]

The game feels super well balanced, and while playing it for the first time usually leads to a poor score as players are figuring out all of the interactions, by the end of the game it’s smooth and easy, with everyone having the same chance at winning. I don’t think that there’s any specific strategy that actually blows the others out of the water here, which is a huge positive.

[heading]How does that game play solo? At higher player counts?[/heading]

For me, the solo here fell pretty flat. I will be the first one to tell you that I am not usually a solo gamer, so this one’s setup time and complexity made it a little more than what I am interested in for a solo experience. I will almost always choose something simpler and easier to set up and get through. I think if you are a solo-only player, then this is probably well within your wheelhouse - it’s just more than what I would go for!

[heading]How many times did I play the game? Am I wanting to replay it again after the review?[/heading]

At this time I have played 3 times, and I absolutely want to give it another shot soon. It’s a lovely game, and I find it to be a lot of fun and really entertaining, despite some of the criticisms I have for it. I would absolutely recommend this game to anyone looking for something with a little more complexity than the original Everdell, as I think that games takes the original and goes up one step.

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]]>Overall, very good!

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]]>What an impressive mountain.

Overall, I think this is a really good game, but one that suffers from its own goal of taking a previous game and making it more complex. That is not necessarily a negative thing with the right crowd, but it does make it a harder thing to get to the table. All in all, I really appreciate what they did here, and it’s a game that I will absolutely play more in the future.

And that’s it for this post! I really appreciate being able to play games like this, and I’m hoping that these reviews help you all to make informed decisions with your gaming.

Give me your thoughts: What’s your favorite animal-themed game?

Thank you for reading, and please hit the subscribe button! I appreciate everyone who comments and participates in my content, and would love to keep that going. Also, thank you to Josiah over at Journey Into the Unknown whose template I stole (with permission of course) for these reviews.

I look forward to bringing you the next review, and until then I hope you all have a great week and get to play some fun games.

Reply: Codenames: Critical Role Adventures:: Rules:: Re: hitting a Red card, if it wasnt seeded in the Red deck

Gregaria — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:55:24 +0000

by Gregaria

kawa6514 wrote:

If the mission only needed 3 rounds meaning there was 3 Red cards seeded. When guessing a Red card was guessed, but it was not one of the numbers in the seeded Red card deck. Does this mean that we only take a damage and not lose an additional round? or would we draw an additional Red card from the seeded deck and the normal Red card at the end of the round (so 3 Red cards would have come out) ? I hope that makes sense.

When a red card is guessed, the numbers do not matter. Simply take the top red card from the stack (or lose of it is empty) and put on the word.

The numbers matter when, at the end of the turn, you roll the die to see which word gets covered by a red card.

Review: Abyss Echo: The Forbidden Rite:: Beautiful box, hollow game — 5/10

lynxu — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:55:04 +0000

by lynxu

Finished it (more or less) as a two-player read-through over a few months of evenings. The rating is a 5, and most of that is for trying.

TL;DR
Here is the whole review in one test. Take away every artifact, print the text as a paperback, and bundle it with a die, a notebook and a pen. The gameplay would not change one bit. The price would, because then it would have to sell as what it is: a choose-your-own-adventure with minimal player agency and a multiple-playthrough gimmick, not a "deeply immersive narrative game." The extremely overproduced, premium-feel contents are not there to serve the game. They are there to justify the box.

Components
Credit where due: the production is excellent. Pins, theatre jewelry, spare dice, the "sanityscope," the custom binder, the cloth bag — all well made, all pleasant to handle. The problem is that practically none of it is used by the game, or even referenced. The model is "here's a book to read, and here are some toys to fiddle with in the meantime." The peak is the paperwork: ten copies each of a Prohibition-era alcohol prescription, an Arkham hospital admittance form, a Miskatonic entry form and so on. It feels like an alien that studied humans, concluded we fill in so many forms we must enjoy it, and thoughtfully sent ten of each. Not one is used in play. (The binder is cool and will see duty in my RPG sessions, so not a total loss.)
Even the additional books - an artbook and the Esoteric Codex - are following this pattern. Beautifully made, premium feel... but one is just an artbook (with massive unmarked spoilers, too), the other is basically a bunch of Wikipedia articles on Lovecraft lore copy-pasted into the book. It's beyond me why they couldn't go extra mile and make it a companion piece to game - explaining the lore of the in-game world, providing some additional nuances, etc. Instead we get generic Cthulhu and the lot, with 0 relation to the game.

Gameplay
It's reading. You read, you occasionally take a token, and a handful of times you fight. Combat is dropping a die from about 10 cm onto a hit box printed on the page; the rules are forgiving enough that missing barely matters, and most encounters resolve as "random encounter, monster, defeated." I still don't understand how we defeated an abstract cosmic horror that looked like blurry colors with a folding knife, but we did.

The decisions are cosmetic: take this token or that one, lose 4 sanity or 7, read two pages or skip two pages. Nothing you choose in chapter 1 is felt in chapter 4.

Endings
The rulebook promises 13 endings. In practice: [o]the final boss has two stages, you spend the tokens accumulated during the playthrough, and the ending is then picked by two binary checks — whether you hold more of token type A or type B, and whether your sanity is at or below 15. Four endings, decided essentially by the last fight. They are wildly different from one another, up to and including an "it was all a dream" variant.[/o] Branching that resolves on the last page isn't branching; it's a lookup table.

Story and writing
It starts well, and chapter 2 is actually good. Chapter 3 is filler and chapter 4 is poor. The tropes are lifted 1:1 from Lovecraft and almost never consequential, and the plot doesn't follow its own logic — [o]we are looking for a cure for Catherine and, entirely by accident, uncover the evidence for the separate Romanova thread. What are the chances.[/o] There are no twists, only checkpoints the text needs to reach. I can see why people suspect the prose was AI-generated; whether or not it was, it reads like badly prompted early chatbot output — surface-level, no logical flow, the same beats recycled. By the end I could not take one more sound that "hit my brain directly, bypassing the ears," and the last stretch I just wanted over.

Verdict
5/10, mostly for trying. The ambition is real and the craft is real; the game isn't. We spent some good evenings reading it together, so I won't call it a waste of time, but we would likely have had more fun with an old Lovecraftian CYOA — those at least don't pretend to be more than they are. If you buy it, buy it for the objects and the binder, and know that the "immersive narrative game" inside is a novella with a sanity track.

Product For Sale: Greenwood

mezzoforte — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:54:55 +0000

by mezzoforte

€70.00 for Board Game: Greenwood
Condition: Like New
Location: Germany ]]>

Review: Tenpenny Parks: Winter Lights & Spooky Nights Expansion:: Tenpenny Parks: Winter Lights & Spooky Nights: A detailed expansion review by Silver Duck Reviews

Squalidsafe — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:54:47 +0000

by Squalidsafe

Plays: 4 at player counts: 1 – 3

Appearance

The front of the box shows a ghost in a winter sleigh with reindeers, giving a good idea of the games setting. The back of the box shows all the new components to add to the game making it clear that two modules are present. The new holiday board lines up with the top of the base game board well with lots of colour matching the setting. The new Christmas trees are well printed and larger than the original trees making them easier to identify quickly. The new attraction cards and tiles have a winter feeling with their art and colour. The ghost meeples are again detailed with a screen printed effect on the bottom. The concession tiles are detailed and match the setting along with the attraction cards and tiles. The new attraction cards and tiles are marked so can easily be removed from the base game if necessary. The expansion fits in the base game box if the other expansion isn’t there otherwise you will have significant lid lift or the need for a second box.

Gameplay: New Mechanics

For a detailed review of the base game please check the respective forum and/or my blog. The expansion adds two expansion modules that can be used independently or together. Winter lights adds a new holiday board with a cheer marker for each player placed at the start of the game. Players must also replace two trees with Christmas trees on their starting property board, these trees can never be removed. When players gain a new expansion board, they may replace one of the trees present with a Christmas tree. The new attractions are added to the corresponding stack with one card removed. When a player builds an attraction orthogonally adjacent to a Christmas tree, they advance one step on the cheer track with further cheer track movement rewarded on the new attraction cards when built. Each space of the cheer track offer an immediate reward when the player moves onto the space, including any emotion track movement, money, and victory points. The other reward gifts an emotion track movement of that players choice to the player on the right of them. Before evaluating the emotion tracks the player furthest on the cheer track gets one victory points. In the solo game, the bot moves along the cheer track after their second action in addition to any attraction bonuses gaining the points on the track and rewarding themselves or the player emotion track movement.

Spooky nights adds new ghost markers, which can be acquired with the new concession tiles and attraction cards. Two dark concession tile are added to the offer of concession tiles and offer a track movement or money in addition to a ghost. This ghost is drawn from the supply with a different benefit and can be assigned to an attraction card in the advertising phase, maximum one per attraction. After advertising with an attraction with a ghost marker the player gains the reward shown on it, including track movement, money, or removing trees. Ghosts are also acquired when shown on listed attractions and every round a ghost is placed on the attraction with a +1 modifier. The new attractions are added to the corresponding stack with one card removed, two are removed if using both modules. In the solo game, the bot gains ghosts in the usual ways in addition to gaining a random ghost after its third action. It gains all applicable ghost rewards in the advertise phase for ghosts gained in this round only. For both expansions the bot chooses attractions with the new icons as a tiebreaker when multiple attractions meets the requirements it is looking for.

Theme and Game Length

This expansion adds lots of new attraction tiles which relate to either winter or Halloween, along with Christmas trees and ghosts to interact with. Christmas trees reward cheer when built next to which makes sense and rewarding other players on the cheer track makes sense with Christmas as a gift given. The ghosts haunt the rides and only one can be present and activate when people attend it so makes sense too. The game length increases slightly, ~10-20%, with more options to consider with what attractions you buy and how best to place them. It is also increased with spooky nights since the advertising phase has to be performed in turn order. The setup and teardown time is increased with more elements to randomise since you have to remove attractions when playing with these expansions.

Strategy

The expansion adds two modules, neither offer new end game scoring potential but give more rewards during the game. In Winter Lights, it is best to line up Christmas trees as close as possible to one another so you can get multiple cheer track movement with one attraction construction. It also best to build the trees as close to the centre of boards as possible to give you chance to build as many attractions next to the same tree. In Spooky Nights, you want to get ghost markers early so you can decide if you use them early in the game and get as many activations as possible. These significantly increase the strength of the lower priced attractions, giving an addition reward when used so if you gain multiple ghost markers you should aim to get several low cost attractions so you can benefit from as many ghost bonuses in the advertising phase as possible. Turn order is slightly more important with this expansion with these bonuses, so you should prioritise it more for the advertising phase and the ghost on the +1 attraction. The replayability of the game is greatly increased with two small expansions in the box with new polyomino pieces added to optimise with and differing rewards to consider. There are more considerations with how to place and advertise meaning you will play in slightly different ways with each expansion.

Accessibility

The expansion has more rules added to the base game with a new track and ghost markers. Both of these expansions shouldn’t be used in first games with new players as they increase potential options so its better to use with experienced players and you should only use both modules if not playing with the innovation expansion, or it might be too much for a lot of players and slow the game down too much. The game is light to medium with one expansion added and closer to medium when playing with both expansion modules. The iconography remains consistent with the content previously released for the game. The new components are marked so can be removed if necessary. The rulebook is well laid out with a section for each module and was easy to learn the expansion from.

Final Thoughts

Tenpenny Parks: Winter Lights & Spooky Nights is a great set of expansions for the base game, with each one offering new choices and weight with little rules overhead. Both modules add more weight to the game and I’m happy to play with both at the same time but not with the Innovation expansion, where I would only use one and alternate. Overall I think Spooky Nights impacts the game more, making cheaper attractions more attractive to advertise with due to more bonuses. The Christmas trees offer more restrictions on your player board adding more weight to the puzzle and having more attraction tiles gives more replayability. This expansion adds less weight to the game than Innovation and you might pick this one up if you only want a little more weight to the game and like the theming better.

8/10

A copy of this game was provided for content creation by Thunderworks Games. If you’re reading this, please leave a thumbs up so I know that you took the time to read my review and thank you for doing so. If you enjoyed it, there are more reviews on my blog (with pictures), Silver Duck Reviews, and consider subscribing to let you know when new reviews go live each week.

Reply: Company of Heroes: 2nd Edition:: Strategy:: Re: Why the Brits feel overpowered

LordTengil — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:54:37 +0000

by LordTengil

>Universal Carrier: An absolute beast combined with other units. A powerful early strategy is to field a few UCs before the enemy has meaningful mobile AT - zoom around capturing points while upgrading one of them with double flame to harass infantry. Playing against it feels like whack-a-mole: you spend CPs and ressources countering them and reigning them in, while the British player can spend their resources and CP elsewhere. Even a single UC with 2x flame upgrade will force most infantry to retreat.
<

I have the same experience. They ferry another troop up, then upgrade and are an asbosulte battle changer for a couple fo round. After that, you are just playing catchup. Often spending more to counter them tna they do fielding them.

Played this game 20 or so times. After we got experienced, I don't think they have lost one single 1v1.

Review: The Great Harbor:: The Great Harbor: Headlines from a Solo Player

headlines_soloplayer — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:54:35 +0000

by headlines_soloplayer

]]>
An excellent dice puzzle searching for a smoother home.

Overview:
Dice aplenty in this game from Archona Games, designed by Matteo De Nardis. Take your seat as a "powerful Roman governor of a Mediterranean colony" and get ready to build some buildings, recruit some helpful people and get some ships-a-sailing.

Each round has three phases:

• Phase One: Pull some coloured dice from a bag, take turns drafting them and then the player with the lowest combined value goes first in placing them out on the main board. Not just anywhere, of course - you need to slot them into spaces of matching colour. Hopefully that space gets you everything that your heart desires. If not though, you could always split the value of the pips to take a lesser action here and also a lesser action of the adjacent space. Choices aplenty. Do you use that lovely ‘Yellow 6’ to get one honking great action, or do you use it instead to get two different actions, but both working at only ‘3’ value instead?

What do those dice placements get you? Resources, building cards that offer ongoing bonuses, people that offer one-time bonuses and ships that can be prepped to set sail for some trading. Tasty.

• Phase Two: Head down, do lots of different stuff with everything you gained in the previous phase. Build those buildings, spend those resources, play those people, combo those combos, whirr up that engine…

• Phase Three: Built any ships already? Get them sailing on the ‘voyage board’. The further forward you sail them, the greater the reward might be - but beware! Each area of the voyage board sees a pirate card drawn with a varying strength. Are you strong enough to repel them and continue, or have they caused you to retreat slowly back to shore with your tail between your legs and a damaged ship to boot?

Do all of that ten times, see your engine build up splendidly and then tot up your final scores. Points from any cards you gained, points from those ships that sailed and successfully defeated pirates, points from any other combos here and there. Heck, you might have also upgraded your player board along the way and gained points for doing so.

Interestingly, there's no VP track in sight (grab VP tokens during the game instead), so the winner is going to be a surprise until the very end.

Let's just hope it's you!

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Solo Headlines:
Decent solo mode here (albeit with a few grumbles about the rulebook and some guesswork needed here and there - more on that later though). You're playing against a point-scoring Automa but, thankfully, not a huge amount of rules overhead given that the game already has quite a few moving parts and upkeep. Pretty simple stuff.

The Automa has its own board made up of four tracks (one for each of the game's four dice colours). During the dice drafting phase, flip a card from its deck. It takes the displayed dice (e.g. the purple die with the highest pip count, the blue die with the lowest pip count etc.), places them on the main board in the location displayed on the reverse of its card and then moves a marker up the equivalent-coloured tracks on its Automa board, gaining ‘stuff’ and swelling and growing ever more as it does. Perhaps it will gain some VP, perhaps it will snaffle up some cards, perhaps it will build some ships ready to set sail, gain a colonist or three. You get the idea.

I like the game-within-a-game here. The "I don't really need or want to take a Yellow die right now but, if I leave it, then the Automa might take it and it's just the colour it needs to do X, Y and Z. Aaaarrrgh" moments. Nice.

The Automa then largely stays out of the way, letting you play the rest of the round and build your own empire using the swag you gained during the dice phase. No managing its resources, no mimicking the human player, no running its own game. It just sits there quietly with some arbitrary stuff that it gained in that dice phase.

Then, during the final Voyage phase, if it can set any ships-a-sailing with you, then it will - competing in the same push-your-luck battle with the pirates for some points for its troubles. At the end of the game, score it some more points for those arbitrary cards and bits and bobs it hoovered up a throughout… and just hope that it doesn't have more points than you.

I do scratch my head a little that the rulebook doesn't seem to offer adjustable difficulty levels for the solo mode at all. Just one way or the highway. Perhaps there is method in that madness - an assumption that all players will eventually learn to ‘get good’ - but it struck me as a potential oversight.

As I understand it, the solo deck can also be used in a multiplayer game to replicate an additional player and make the main board a little more tense and competitive. The rules don't explicitly state this (along with a few other things), but my rummage around the BGG forums enlightened me. As I barely play multiplayer at all, I'll leave this revelation to those who find it more useful!

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General Headlines:
There is a good game here.

In fact, there were moments while playing where I thought there might well be a very good game here. The dice placement puzzle is excellent, with both the colour and value of the dice creating delicious decisions throughout the game. Indeed, that first half of each round - drafting and placing out dice - is elegant, smooth, interesting and quite unique (splitting die pips is always a nice addition, I find - I liked it in Woodcraft and I like it here). The dice placement board also changes considerably each game, adding a good amount of variability - not necessarily in what happens over the course of a game, but more importantly, how you get there.

The frustration, however, is that the further I moved away from that initial drafting and dice placement phase, the rougher things became.

Don't get me wrong - there was still a lot to enjoy. The push-your-luck ship voyages add great and quite refreshing tension (fans of Port Royal will be in familiar territory here), the engine building swells brilliantly, and there are constant little dilemmas around whether to invest in ships, crew, buildings or resources. There always seemed to be something interesting to chew over.

But while the first ‘dice phase feels quite structured and organised, the second "do anything you want or can" phase not only felt a little like the guard rails were off perhaps too much, but there also felt to be quite a lot of upkeep throughout - little bits of fiddle that, on their own, didn't feel too onerous, but collectively started to add up a little and bring about some fatigue.

The rulebook didn't help matters. I'm not usually one for slating a rulebook during a review - it's often subjective and, indeed, this wasn't the most egregious example by a long stretch. However, I do think the rulebook could have done with a lot more attention. It's telling that it was only after my fifth game that I felt I had "got the rules down" - and even then I now see on the BGG forums that I was still playing a major rule incorrectly (largely due to me having to guess what the rule was in the first place). Sure, with heavier games I anticipate needing two or three run-throughs to understand the minutiae of how a game plays. Here though, I felt that the rulebook was consistently making me ‘work’ just to find out how to play the game correctly.

None of those things completely ruined the game, but they did frequently get in the way of what was otherwise an enjoyable experience - and I wonder whether they also contributed to my general sense that the game is one round too long. In the fifth and final round, I was willing the game to finish (indeed taking suboptimal turns in order to bring it to a close). The fourth round? Still fully engaged and merrily setting sail.

What keeps me positive, though, is that most of those grumbles feel fixable. The core mechanisms are strong. The decisions are meaningful. The solo mode is enjoyable and the ship voyages create some lovely moments of tension. This is a game that I am glad I played, but also a game that left me wishing a little more polish had been applied around the edges. Had that happened, I suspect we'd be talking about something genuinely excellent rather than simply "quite good".

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At a Glance:
The Great Harbor threatened to become a favourite. The dice drafting / placement puzzle is clever, the push your luck ship voyages create some wonderful moments of tension and there are meaningful decisions lurking around almost every corner. The solo mode is a pleasant surprise too, adding competition without adding much upkeep. Unfortunately, a fiddly second half, a frustrating rulebook and a sense that the game runs one round too long stopped me falling completely in love with it. There is a good game here. In fact, there were moments where I thought there might be an excellent one. A little more (or perhaps less?) polish and I suspect we'd be having a very different conversation.

Final Score:
7 out of 10 (There is an 8 hiding in there somewhere)

***Review copy provided by the Publisher***

Thank you for reading this review. If you enjoyed it then do consider leaving a thumbs up and feel free to leave any comments, questions or thoughts of your own about this game in the comments section below.

Headlines from a Solo Player:

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Thread: Mythologies:: General:: Overview of card abilities for more ease of play?

The Iced One — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:54:10 +0000

by The Iced One

I played and bought the game at Essen and really liked it. But what I didn't like about it was having to read all the cards upside down or sideways when the Sanctuary was refilled. It took a lot of time to interpret all the cards and slowed down the game a lot.
I think an overview of all the card abilities on separate cheets of paper would be very helpful. This way you can read all the abilities in the correct orientation. You could add 3 check boxes to every card, laminate the overviews and use a whiteboard marker to indicate which cards are in play and how many times.
It would be great if the publisher could provide this for us, would be an easy task for the graphic designer I suppose.

Review: Emberleaf:: Emberleaf - a 5 minutes review

On_Point — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:53:51 +0000

by On_Point

Emberleaf is a game that, at first glance, looks like it’s about to tell us a charming little fairy tale about woodland creatures building their own tiny, colourful homes.
And, to be fair, we do get cute animals, a forest, beautiful colours, adorable illustrations, and all that fairy-tale atmosphere.

Looking at the box, you might think:
“Aw, how cute! This is probably going to be light, relaxing, family-friendly… maybe something along the lines of Everdell?”

And then you open the rulebook.

Suddenly, the forest feels a little less magical.

Because underneath that cute and colourful surface lies a proper euro game, where we’ll be planning, optimising, fighting over clearings, juggling our heroes, and trying to turn our little woodland kingdom into a respectable point-generating machine.

Basically, the classic situation: cute woodland animals on the box, Excel wearing a fox costume at the table.

So, is that first impression based on the artwork actually accurate?

Let’s find out.

Components
The overall quality of the components is pretty good.
The cards look great, and the wooden meeples are especially nice, which does a great job of reinforcing the game’s fairy-tale, woodland atmosphere.

But… as with any good fairy tale, there are a few goblins hiding in the forest.

The cardboard components are a slight disappointment. The victory point and food tokens, for example, are made of cardboard that could start to split after some heavy use.

The rulebook also gives us a little mystery to solve.

It says that we should randomly select trophies from the available ones, while the base game contains exactly six trophies, and we have to use all six of them.
But fear not! Nothing is lost - all you need to do is spend a few beets, some honey and wood, hyc! - buy the expansion, and suddenly you’ll be able to randomly select trophies, just as the rulebook intended.

Time and Table Space
If you’re heading into the forest, make sure you bring a suitably large table.
Because Emberleaf can simply devour it.

The main board is already pretty big, and then we need space for the building boards, trophies, favours, the hero market, our own player boards, and all the other woodland paraphernalia.

On top of that, I feel the game has another issue - time.

With two players or in solo mode, once you know the rules, a game will take roughly 90-120 minutes, in my experience.

With five players, once you add the time needed to explain the rules, you can quite comfortably get close to four hours.
For a cute little story about woodland creatures, that turns into quite the saga.

Rules
The rules aren’t particularly difficult.
Everything is explained in a 24-page rulebook, which covers most of the things we need to know.

There are quite a few rules to get your head around, but after the first game, most of the mechanisms start to make sense.

Gameplay
One of the surprising things about Emberleaf is that there are no traditional rounds or phases.
Instead, the game is one continuous sequence of turns, where on your turn you perform one of two main actions:
• play a hero card onto your board,
• move all of your heroes one space to the left, starting with the hero furthest to the left.

And this is where one of the most interesting elements of the game comes into play - the dance of the cards.

Our board starts with six spaces, and we can place our hero cards in those spaces.

The cards don’t immediately return to our hand. We have to “dance” with them, moving them to the left. When a card slides off the first space, it leaves the board and returns to our hand, while the remaining cards move one space over.
Sounds simple?

Well… not necessarily.

Because carefully planning when a card moves, when its ability triggers, and when it comes back into our hand can create some really interesting combinations.

Sometimes we’ll want to play a larger number of cards because their symbols allow us to gain additional resources or perform stronger actions.

The card-dancing mechanism feels fresh, and I genuinely like it.

The game also has a very interesting system for unlocking additional inhabitants.

We build buildings, which are then occupied by our inhabitants. Whenever an inhabitant moves into the appropriate building, we can unlock a specific ability or gain an additional benefit.

This gives us plenty of ways to gain more resources and develop our little settlement.

And since we’ve now built our own small woodland kingdom, we obviously need to make sure our neighbours don’t get too comfortable.
Because Emberleaf also has an element of conflict - although there is actually no direct player interaction.
It’s more of a race.

We race for spaces on the board and for the best bonuses, and later for trophies after defeating the bandits.
I feel the game really shines with three players.

If everyone knows the rules, the game shouldn’t take much longer than around an hour and a half, with two hours being the absolute maximum.

Unfortunately, this fairy-tale kingdom also has a dragon.

And its name is randomness.

If we treat Emberleaf as a euro game, the randomness can be very noticeable at times.
I often found myself with a very specific plan for developing my team. I knew what I needed and which cards I wanted to pick up.
Then I look at the available heroes.

One.
Two.
Three.
And…

I don’t want any of them.

None of them fit.

None of them work with my plan.

None of them want to join my glorious woodland kingdom.

So you take whichever one is the least bad option.

The same thing can happen with favour cards.

You look at them:
“I’m not doing this one.”
“Not this one either.”
“That one is impossible.”
“Oh! This one might work…”

And suddenly, out of five available favours, there are maybe one or two that are actually interesting.
Fortunately, I think the randomness is balanced a little better in this area.

So, if anyone is wondering whether Emberleaf is a deck-builder, my answer is - no.
Definitely not.

At the very end, there’s another question that I found myself asking more and more often during my games:
Who is this game actually for?

On the one hand, we have relatively simple core actions.
On the other, there’s quite a lot of planning, optimisation and clever decision-making to get your head around.
And then there’s the playtime, which can get close to two hours, especially with a larger group.

And that’s where I have a problem.
If I’m going to spend two hours at the table, I want every one of those minutes to feel genuinely satisfying.

Replayability
Replayability mainly comes from the random draw of hero and favour cards.
On top of that, we can also start the game with a slightly different set of starting cards.

Solo Mode
Essentially, you play in a similar way to a two-player game, except that there is a special set of cards for Sister, who acts as the automa.

Unfortunately, there’s quite a bit of randomness here as well.

Sister scores victory points based on what we build and what we accomplish.

And, well… when you add another layer of randomness to a euro game, sometimes it feels less like strategy and more like consulting a woodland fortune teller.
On the plus side, there are several different difficulty levels, so we can gradually increase the challenge.

Final Thoughts
In my opinion, Emberleaf is a good game. FULL STOP.

What impressed me, and what disappointed me:
🌲 The beautiful, fairy-tale artwork
🃏 The fresh “card-dancing” mechanism
🧩 The large number of optimisation possibilities
🎲 The randomness of the hero cards
⏳ The game is fairly long, especially with more players
🪑 It takes up a ridiculous amount of table space

Final rating 7/10

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Review: Gaia Project:: Gaia Project - a 5 minutes review

On_Point — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:53:28 +0000

by On_Point

Somewhere in the distant reaches of space, alien civilizations are fighting for control of as many planets as possible.

Sounds innocent? Don’t be fooled.

Gaia Project is one of those games where you sit down thinking, “I know how eurogames work,” only to start wondering after the first thirty minutes whether you actually do...

Here, it’s not enough to simply build something. You also need to know why, what for, how much it will cost, and preferably what this will allow you to do two turns from now.

Components
Gaia Project comes with a really impressive amount of content, especially considering that the game is now almost ten years old.
Most of the components are very well made, and the buildings are solidly moulded and feel great in your hand.

The main board consists of ten hexes that can be arranged in different ways. On top of that, we get player boards, the technology board, scoring tiles, tokens and a whole bunch of other components. Everything is made from good-quality cardboard and, from a functional point of view, the whole thing is very well thought out.

But...

Ten years is a long time in the board game world.

And when we put Gaia Project next to newer eurogames, we start noticing that technology has moved forward a little. We don’t have all those small conveniences that modern games have gotten us used to. For example, there are no recessed spaces on the player boards to keep our buildings from starting to live their own lives after a few rounds.
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Time and Table Space
Gaia Project is not a game you sit down to play “just for a little while.”
It’s more the kind of gaming session where you say, “Let’s play one game,” and then suddenly realize that more than two hours have passed, your coffee (or another beverage) has gone cold, while someone at the table has been planning their next move for the last ten minutes.

With four players, I’d say around two and a half hours is a reasonable minimum. Of course, it all depends on the experience of the players, but if you have people at the table who like to analyze every possible option, you can easily add a few more minutes.

And it doesn’t help that Gaia Project takes up quite a bit of space.

After all, we’re building a space empire. And space empires, as we all know, don’t fit particularly well on a coffee table.
Main board, player boards, technologies, buildings, resources... In short - there’s a lot of stuff. 😁

Rules
Gaia Project gets around 4.4/5 on the difficulty scale. And after your first encounter with the game, it’s hard to disagree.
But there’s a catch.

The rules themselves aren’t actually all that complicated.
During your turn, you perform one of nine basic actions. And that’s basically it.

The problem is that you can do a lot with those nine actions. It’s a bit like being given nine tools and then discovering that you’re expected to build an entire house with them.
The real difficulty lies in the consequences of your decisions.

You can do something now, but maybe it’s better to prepare for it two turns from now. You can gain a specific resource, but perhaps developing a technology would be more beneficial. You can upgrade a building, but then you might end up short on something else.

And suddenly, one innocent little action can trigger an entire chain reaction of decisions.

That’s why Gaia Project is a difficult game, but not necessarily a complicated one.

Gameplay
During the game, we take our turns one after another. On your turn, you perform one main action and, if you have the necessary options available, you can also make use of special actions.

The foundation of the game is, of course, building.
We place mines, then upgrade them into higher-level buildings and eventually develop our empire even further.
Every action costs the appropriate resources, so we’re constantly walking the fine line between “I have exactly what I need” and “great, I’m missing one resource and I’ve just wasted my entire turn.”

We can also develop technologies that give us new possibilities and improve our abilities.

On top of that, there are actions related to energy, power, faction abilities and special spaces.
We can form alliances with our planets, gaining victory points in the process while also opening the way to more advanced technologies.

And, of course, we can pass.

Gaia Project requires concentration and a very good understanding of how its various mechanisms interact with one another. At the same time, it provides an incredible amount of satisfaction.

The greatest pleasure doesn’t come from simply building an empire. It’s not even about watching our planets become more and more impressive.
The real satisfaction comes when everything suddenly starts clicking into place.

That one technology.

That one building.

That one action taken at exactly the right moment.

And suddenly, you realize that you can do something you weren’t even planning to do two turns earlier.
That’s when Gaia Project shows why it has remained such a highly regarded eurogame for so many years.

Another huge advantage is the variety of factions.

We have seven different planet types, and each one has two races. In the base game alone, that gives us 14 different options.
And most importantly - these aren’t just cosmetic differences.
The Space Chickens will want to make use of their money-related abilities and exchange it for other resources.
The Terrans, on the other hand, will focus much more heavily on terraforming planets.
And suddenly, the same board, the same technologies and the same rules start to feel completely different.

We also have, of course, the classic “point salad.”

Depending on which scoring tiles are drawn, the road to victory can look completely different.
Sometimes it pays to develop in one direction, sometimes in another.

The game doesn’t tell us, “Here is the one true strategy.” Instead, it throws several possibilities in front of us and says:
“Alright. Let’s see what you can do with this.”

And then there’s the technology board.
This is one of my favourite elements of Gaia Project, because technological development isn’t just something thrown into the game to give us more icons to look at.
It’s one of the foundations of the entire gameplay experience.

We develop technologies, gain new possibilities, use power and increase our ability to take different actions.
And all of this fits together extremely well.
You can clearly see how much testing went into the game. The balance between the different spaces, technologies, factions and ways of scoring points is genuinely impressive.

But before I get too carried away...
Gaia Project is a heavy game for board game veterans. It can grind newcomers down, chew them up and spit them out.
If you are an experienced eurogame player, however, Gaia Project can be a real feast.

Solo Mode
The solo mode obviously exists, and I have to admit that it’s been implemented very competently. The game works smoothly and can provide a lot of satisfaction, especially since we have several difficulty levels to choose from.

However, Gaia Project definitely shows more of its teeth when other players join the table. I had the most fun with three and four players, because that’s when you really start to feel the competition for planets, space and the best development opportunities.

Replayability
The large number of factions, the modular board setup, different scoring tiles and numerous elements that change the conditions of the game mean that no two games of Gaia Project will be exactly the same.

Summary
After many games with every possible player count, I can say that the game has:
✅ well-balanced factions and technologies,
✅ a large number of possible strategies and paths to victory,
✅ very well-designed mechanics,
✅ enormous replayability,
✅ plenty of satisfying planning and clever combinations,
⛔ a high entry threshold,
⛔ it takes up a lot of table space - after all, we’re conquering the galaxy, not a suburban backyard 😂
⚠️ The game works best with 3-4 players, where it really shows its full potential.

Rating: 10/10 (or 9.5/10 if we’re allowing half-points 😉)

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Review: First Giants:: First Giants - a 5 minutes review

On_Point — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:53:07 +0000

by On_Point

When most people look at fossils, they see only bones. I see history. I see a world that existed millions of years before us. First Giants tries to capture exactly that feeling – the excitement of discovering new pieces of the prehistoric puzzle. And I have to admit, it does it surprisingly well, allowing us to uncover fossils and later display them in our museum exhibitions.

Components
In the case of First Giants, the publisher has done a fantastic job. Almost every detail has been carefully considered. Inside the box, you will find three separate compartments with components, ensuring that everything has its own place. The wooden meeples are excellent quality and decorated with subtle golden details that add elegance to the game. The cards are thick, durable, and feature truly beautiful illustrations of prehistoric creatures.
If I had to find something to criticize... perhaps the rulebook could include more illustrations. But that is really just nitpicking. Overall, the quality is at a level that many publishers could learn from.

Playing Time and Table Space
Real excavations can take months. Fortunately, here thirty to sixty minutes is all you need.
The game sets up quickly, does not require a huge amount of table space, and the small box makes it easy to take with you on holiday or to a game night with friends.
However, while the publisher allows games for up to five players, I feel the best experience comes with two, three, or four players. With a full player count, the table simply becomes too crowded, and keeping track of what the other players are doing becomes much more difficult.

Rules
The rulebook is clearly written, and most of the rules can be understood without major issues. There are, however, a few small inconsistencies that require some interpretation. They are not serious problems, but they are worth mentioning.
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Gameplay
In First Giants, each turn essentially comes down to one decision. Should we send our meeple to one of the four excavation sites and uncover another card? Or should we end our expedition, collect all our meeples, and present our discovered fossils in the museum? Or perhaps collect amber instead?

It is a simple mechanism, but that is exactly why it works so well. It is easy to explain to new players while still leaving plenty of room for planning your next moves.
It is also worth mentioning that every card has its own ability – sometimes activating when you acquire it, and sometimes when a player takes that card. Thanks to this, every game creates new combinations and different ways to build your own scoring engine.

I also really appreciate how well the game scales. The mechanics work smoothly with two players as well as with larger groups.

Another interesting element is the newspaper headlines, which allow players to earn additional points for completed fossil collections. They encourage changing priorities during the game and add a small competitive race.

However, this is not a game with enormous strategic depth. It is more of a light eurogame from the “let’s sit down for an hour and play something enjoyable” category. And in that role, it works wonderfully.

Unfortunately, just like in nature, some species perform better than others. The same applies to some of the card abilities in First Giants. The strongest ones, in my opinion, are those that allow players to gain additional victory points from cards remaining in their collection. I feel that they provide the biggest advantage to paleontologists who manage to build their scoring engine around them.

Does that mean the game is poorly balanced? Not necessarily. A lot depends on the behaviour of the other players and whether they allow someone to freely develop this strategy. Nevertheless, I did get the impression that some abilities are simply more attractive than others.
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Replayability
The history of life on Earth never unfolded in exactly the same way twice. The same is true for First Giants. Each game feels slightly different because so much depends on the order of drawn cards, available abilities, and the decisions made by other players.
This variability is the foundation of the game's replayability.

Summary
First Giants does not revolutionize the genre, but it offers:
✅ Excellent production quality.
✅ Simple-to-learn rules.
✅ An interesting mechanism of managing excavations and museum collections.
✅ A large number of card abilities creating different combinations.
✅ Short playing time and low space requirements.
⚠️ Some card abilities that seem noticeably stronger than others.
⚠️ Minor inconsistencies in the rulebook.
⛔ A five-player game that can become too chaotic.
⛔ A certain level of repetition – in the long run, we will always be doing very similar things.

Rating: 7/10

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Reply: Timespan:: General:: Re: I’m a lumberjack

Anaesthetic — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:52:33 +0000

by Anaesthetic

Happy easter!! 🐣

Review: Mage Knight: Ultimate Edition:: Do You Remember the Nights in the Ruins of Atlantis?

danielhao1996 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:52:04 +0000

by danielhao1996

Mage Knight — a solo player's review
Designer: Vlaada Chvátil · Publisher: WizKids · Players: 1–4
Weight: ~4.4 · Ultimate Edition: 2018
Played: five games, all solo, base game
Overall Rating: 9/10
Scorecard
Overall — 9/10
Mechanism integration — 9/10
Power curve — 8/10
Theme and narrative — 6/10
Rules and teachability — 5/10
Solitaire suitability — 10/10
Multiplayer interaction — not rated (I have not played it)
Replayability — 9/10
Components and storage — 6/10

Do you remember the days of raiding through the ruins of the Atlantean Empire?
Do you remember the freezing night you stood at the monastery gate and made the brutal choice between renown and power?
Do you remember the mercenaries who followed you to the death, and the fortified city you broke open by the faint light of mana crystals?
Do you remember what it felt like to rise from a nameless wanderer into a Mage Knight who could shake the foundations of the planes and make the gods tremble?
That is the chinese publisher's blurb, and it is very thematic, one of the reasons why I bought this game. It also describes a game I have never quite played.

What I play looks like this. It is the last round of my first Solo Conquest. I have spent my hand reaching the city gate. Four defenders stand in front of me, all heavier than anything I have fought, and I have three cards left. I do not have the attack. I do not have the block. I take the wounds into my deck, and I lose.
Both things are true, and the distance between them is what this review is about. Mage Knight sells you a memory and delivers a problem set. The memory is not a lie, but you have to build it yourself, out of arithmetic — and whether that sounds like the best thing you have ever heard or a reason to walk away will decide your experience of this game.

I came to board games late, at the end of last year, with fragmented evenings and friends who are not available, which pushed me toward solo play almost immediately. I knew Mage Knight by reputation before I owned it; in solo circles it shares the crown with Spirit Island, which I also love. I bought the Ultimate Edition the day it was finally reprinted this May. Five games so far, all solo, all base game: one Recon mission, three Solo Conquests, one shorter solo conquest scenario. Five games is not a lot, and everything below is written from that position.

What this actually is
There is a phrase in chinese players for games like this one: 美皮德心 — Ameritrash skin, Euro heart. It looks like a fantasy role-playing game. It is a resource-management game in a very good costume.
You are a Mage Knight, but not the sort who rescues anyone. Several of you descend on the same continent at once; some negotiate, some conquer; and the solo scenario asks you to take cities that were not built to be taken.
Each round you hold a hand of cards and face a pool of shared mana dice. Cards give movement, attack, block, influence. Mana makes them better. That is the entire engine: a small hand, a limited currency, and a board that keeps asking you to do three things with the resources for one.

A turn, and what it costs
The skeleton is unremarkable. Play cards, move, then take one action where you stop — recruit in a village, hit an orc, rest at a monastery, or burn the monastery down and accept what that makes you. Then the dummy player advances.
What makes it a game is that every card has three lives. Play it for what it says. Turn it sideways for a single point of anything, or spend matching mana for its stronger half, . The same card is a bad move, a decent attack, or a winning spell, and you get one of those.
The first thing I learned is that mana crystals are not spent when convenient, but when it matters. Early on I treated them as change. By my third game I was hoarding them for the walls, because a city full of defenders eats a hand of cards and asks for more.
Your deck is the clock. When it runs dry, the round is over — for you and, in solo, for the dummy player. That single choice does more work than any other: a card spent on movement is a card not spent on attack, and "next turn" is often a sentence you cannot afford.
Day and night rewrite the arithmetic. Gold mana is wild in daylight; after dark, black mana takes that role and spells bite harder. Landmarks change with the hour, so the map you can reach at noon is not the map you can reach at midnight.
Combat is where elegance becomes demand. Attacks resolve in stages — ranged and siege, then block, then melee — and damage below a monster's armour simply does not count. You break it or you wasted the cards. Whatever gets through returns as wounds, which are not hit points but dead cards shuffled into your deck, diluting the next several turns.
It is a harsh loop, and it is why the game has a reputation for punishing carelessness: a bad assault does not merely fail, it makes the next three turns worse. It is also why a good turn feels like something. When the ranged attack, the block and the melee line up with exactly enough mana, you are not hoping. You are constructing an outcome.

The game I actually played
My first Solo Conquest ended at that gate: four defenders, three cards, no plan. I had explored whatever looked interesting, taken units because they were available rather than because they fit, and arrived at the walls with a deck that could not do the one thing the scenario required. Losing was not bad luck. It was the bill for five rounds of not thinking two rounds ahead.
The other side came later. In another game I had a large hand, several crystals saved, and a turn where everything lined up: multiple cards enhanced at once, most of the map crossed, two enemies killed before either could act. Nothing about it was lucky — the same arithmetic, pointed the other way. That is the feeling the blurb sells, and it is real. It just takes a few failures to reach.
I have won once, taking on a level 5 and a level 8 city, and even that game came with mistakes. In my first several games I was not house-ruling; I was missing rules, and finding out later by rereading the book or by hearing another player describe a game I did not recognise. "Wait, it works like that?" Five games in, I understand the flow. For a game this size, that is the milestone that counts.

The thin story is the point
Every review says the story is thin, and they are right. There is essentially no narrative in the base game. The dragon expansion adds a storyline I have not opened; the core box gives you a game system and a scenario, not a plot.
I think this is a feature, and I would go further: it is why the game lasts. A campaign asks you back for the next chapter; Mage Knight asks you back for the next problem. With no story to exhaust, there is nothing to tire of. The board, the hand and the city are new each time, and the only continuity is your own improvement (Wow kinda feel like Dark Souls now.that I mentioned it) . Spirit Island works the same way, and is better for it.
This is also where it loses people. If you want a story you inhabit, a character who changes, a campaign that carries you, you will be disappointed; Aeon Trespass: Odyssey and Dragon Eclipse do that job. Mage Knight hands you the ingredients and expects you to notice that you have been telling yourself a story.

The rulebook is the real boss
My one serious complaint is not about the rules, but rather rulebook written.
The rules are not that complicated once you are inside them. I believed the reputation for months, then around the third game it clicked and turns began to flow. What is complicated is the book.
Related rules are scattered instead of gathered where you would look. There is no keyword index worth the name. When a monster flips and I do not remember its ability, I hunt through three books for one sentence, and hunting is the wrong word for what happens next. It is the most painful part of playing, and it happens every game, not just the first.
It reminds me of Chip Theory Games — Too Many Bones and 20 Strong have the same profile: a game that is not that complex, wrapped in a rulebook that makes it feel like tax law. The Ultimate Edition helps, with a walkthrough and a reference guide, but it helps the way a map helps in fog.
That costs the game a point, and costs it more in practice: it is why I play less often than I would like. Not because the game is hard, but because starting it means accepting that I will be looking things up.

Why the solo mode is the whole argument
I have played solo games whose automata need maintaining — a card to flip, a board to update, a decision to resolve before you can return to your own turn. Some are good. All of them interrupt you.
The dummy player does almost nothing. It burns through a deck, and when the deck ends the round ends. No decisions, no placement, no bookkeeping beyond turning a card. What that buys is continuity of thought: you can sit with a problem for ten minutes without being tapped on the shoulder.
That is why I would put this solo mode in the top tier of anything I have played. It is not the most thematic or the most surprising; it is the least intrusive, and for a game that is essentially a thinking exercise, least intrusive is the highest compliment available.
It also explains something that runs against the consensus. The common description is a brain-melting optimisation puzzle in which you must squeeze every card. My experience is gentler: you do not have to optimise to enjoy this. You can take a step and see. What you cannot do is arrive at a city without a plan.
The reason is that I play alone. There is nobody to beat. It is BYOS — beat your own score — and that changes the emotional register entirely. You can play slowly, grow a deck, learn what each unit does, and count that as a good evening. The pressure appears only where it must: a city assault, a long move without margin, a fight you cannot afford to lose.

The table, the box, the other players
A solo game takes me under three hours, setup included, which for this weight is better than I expected.
The original insert is enormous and the box is comically large, but the card storage is genuinely good and setup is fast because everything has a place. I replaced it with a 3D-printed insert, out of affection, and regretted it: setup slower, teardown more annoying, table footprint larger, because everything now comes out of its own tray. Two accessories I do recommend — a magnetic board so the reputation and experience tracks stand upright, and a card stand so the decks stand instead of lying flat. Neither is essential. Both make the game fit on a normal table.
On components I can only speak to the Ultimate Edition: the miniatures are pre-painted but rough, and the production feels a decade old. It does not change how much I like the game. It changes how much I would pay for it.
I have not played this with other people, so I will not review multiplayer. What I can say is structural: every player is solving their own problem, and the problems barely overlap. Four people calculating in sequence will produce downtime. That is reasoning, not testimony, and I am labelling it as such. If you buy it for a group, buy it for a group that is comfortable being quiet together.

Scorecard
Overall — 9/10
Mechanism integration — 9/10
Power curve — 8/10
Theme and narrative — 6/10
Rules and teachability — 5/10
Solitaire suitability — 10/10
Multiplayer interaction — not rated (I have not played it)
Replayability — 9/10
Components and storage — 6/10
The two low numbers sit next to a nine without contradicting it. The five is not a five for the design; it is a five for the book standing between a new player and the game. The six is not a criticism of the world; it is an honest count of how much narrative the box contains. Neither is an argument against buying it. Both are arguments for knowing what you are buying.

Verdict
Nine is a very high number for me. Spirit Island will land in the same place, and I would not choose between them: they do different jobs. Spirit Island is a pressure system that keeps escalating, and the drama comes from the board. Mage Knight is a problem you solve at your own pace, and the drama is whether your arithmetic holds.
Buy it if you play solo and sword-and-sorcery does not repel you; if you like euros and calculation — this is resource management with a fantasy skin, and if you avoided it because it looked Ameritrash, you avoided the wrong thing.
Skip it if you need a story, a campaign, a legacy arc; if lavish miniatures are part of why you play; if you want a light evening, or if consulting a rulebook mid-game tires you before you start.
Start with First Recon, then go straight into Solo Conquest. The Ultimate Edition is what you will find; the base game alone is plenty. Either way you are looking at a hundred hours, probably two.
The blurb asks whether I remember those nights in the ruins of Atlantis. I do, but not the way it means. I remember a city gate, four defenders, and three cards. The game never gave me the memory it promised. It gave me the arithmetic to build one, which turns out to be the more generous gift.
That is what a nine means, from me: not that it is flawless, but that it is the kind of game I keep choosing to sit down with — and that the sitting down is the point.

Reply: General Gaming:: Re: Gamechat League: Gelato Division subcription list

PzVIE — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:52:01 +0000

by PzVIE

This is an ad for the new list:
GCL Gelato 757 - Advertising

Review: Segnavventura: The Tomb of The Living Shadows:: Dungeon crawling on a bookmark?!

pnptime — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:51:52 +0000

by pnptime

Wait... a dungeon crawler that's literally a BOOKMARK that also uses the book I'm reading?!

^That was my first reaction when Matteo reached out to introduce his game to me. A one-page (both sides used) dungeon crawler that can not only be folded into a bookmark but can also be played using the book you're currently reading. Super enticing stuff.

In case you don't know, I LOVE reading books, and currently I'm on a Halloween special Goosebumps sprint. So I thought, why not tag the bookmark along for the journey and see how it feels to fuse two of my favorite things, reading and gaming? Here we go!

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What's the game about?
In Segnavventura: The Tomb of the Living Shadows, you're an adventurer who has reached the catacombs of Kuth-Aghar, the Shadow King. Your goal? Explore the dungeon, survive the horrors lurking within, and eventually put an end to the Shadow King's reign.

Of course, getting there won't be easy. There are monsters to battle, traps to survive, treasure to collect, and plenty of decisions to make along the way. And your trusty companion throughout all this? You guessed it, the book you're reading!

Kay, what do I need?
The instant I heard about a bookmark dungeon crawler, I was wondering if I could carry the game and its components around, since I travel with books that I read. So having too many additional components might be a deal breaker.

To my joy, I found out the game only needs a pencil and eraser, alongside the bookmark of course. So the book you're currently reading, a printout of the double-sided bookmark, and something to write with. That's neat! I can easily carry around the game then.

I printed the game on glossy 100gsm paper cause it would fold much better and also be more durable than the regular inkjet paper. But you do you! You can also print it out on regular paper and keep multiple copies if it's your cup of tea.

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My experience with Tomb of the Living Shadows
Firstly, I was quite surprised with how packed the game is. For a game that takes place on just a page, a lot is happening. In a good way!

You're exploring a dungeon by moving between numbered areas, discovering what lurks in each area, battling monsters, avoiding traps, opening chests, collecting treasure, finding keys and elixirs, and gradually making your way towards the bosses.

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Since the game itself is a bookmark, my biggest curiosity was how it would integrate the book with the game, and frankly, it did so much more than I'd anticipated.

For starters, the book you're reading essentially replaces dice. Whenever you perform a Search, you randomly open your book and use the last digit of either page number to determine what you encounter. During battles, you randomly open the book again, but this time you use words from the page to fill an enemy's combat track. Depending on where your word ends, you might avoid damage, get hurt, or trigger something nasty!

And here's a fun bit. The words you can choose depend on your character's level. At level 1, you can only use the first word on the page. Level up to 2, and you can choose between the first two words. Level 3? First three words! So leveling up literally gives you more options when fighting monsters.

There's another clever little connection. When you stop reading and switch to the game, you note down the page number where you left off. Each digit of that number can then be used once as a Search result.

Also, a shoutout to Matteo for adding the classic bit of a dungeon crawler by having branching pathways on it, so there's no one fixed way about it. The branching is also not too much, so it doesn't get overwhelming. You get to decide which paths to take and when to go after the bosses, eventually the final boss, but you ain't got forever to do that.

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There's a torch tracker with 45 spaces, and every area you enter, including when you backtrack, uses up one of those spaces. Once you run out, your torch goes out, and so does your opportunity to win the game. So you gotta be mindful of that as well, along with your vitals like stamina, treasure, and how you manage your Sigils, which grant you special abilities.

And Matteo didn't spare the fun bits either. Being a game of Two Mad Racoons, you can literally find two raccoons hidden in the dungeon! Finding them and safely bringing them back to the entrance is one of the game's optional trophy objectives. There are several others too, including some pretty challenging ones.

I didn't quite rush the game. I've been playing it whenever I pick up my book. It's been 3 days since I started playing it, and I'm currently on my 20th move. I've already had like 5 sessions with it.

And in between sessions, I think of which way to go, how to level up or build my stamina, which Sigils to aim for, and whatnot. Doesn't mean you have to do the same. You can play it in one sitting. I'm intending to fuse it with my reading experience.

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It's not every day you get to read while you play or play while you read, but here we are! A big thanks to Matteo for creating this gem, which I'm sure will be part of my reading journey. Also a shoutout to Chiara Di Francia, the artist behind the captivating dungeon and the game overall.

Chased by mutant plants in Goosebumps while battling an Ash Colossus in The Tomb of the Living Shadows. I'm in trouble! 😂

- Tas.

PS- This review was originally published at PnP Time, so if you like what you see, please head over there for more: https://pnptime.beehiiv.com/p/when-dungeon-crawling-meets-bo...

Session: An Infamous Traffic: Second Edition:: Print and Play Readout / Rules Questions

AndrewBrailey — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:51:31 +0000

by AndrewBrailey

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Since Buried Giant has kindly made the prototype print and play files available, I decided to put my printer and scissors to work and take the 2nd edition for a spin. I used surplus scrabble tiles with printed stickers for the tiles as I didn't fancy cutting out all that chipboard.

I brought it to our Wednesday game night and we played 3 player. Only one of us (not me) had played the first edition. But I did watch a few of the playthroughs available on YouTube and walked through a turn solo the night before.

Now for the (rough) play by play. The players were Tan, Red, and Blue.

1820s:
The game started off with low demand [1] [3] in Canton, so everyone chose low value starting tiles. A good roll [6] on a bureaucrat turned that around fast but left us with a messily 2 revenue apiece after completing all the chains in Canton and Changsha. The Canton fish enforcement came out early to no effect.

The blue player started as William Jardine [If outrage is in the grey you may increase outrage by 2] and managed to trigger an opium war at the end of the decade, placing an early treaty port in Shanghai.

1830s:
The Taiping Rebellion came out midway through the turn, but was very quickly quashed by a conspiracy involving pair of Qing Force tiles. Blue consolidated a long line in Shanghai, shooting up to 7 revenue, while Tan and Red failed to coordinate their tile placements and were poised to end the turn with a fair amount of tiles stranded. Red managed to wiggle out of the trap with two cards that let him place opium and merchants without opportunity, adding demand later via conspiracy. Tan (me) had first pick both turns, and secured an early wife and daughter, but paid for it in debt.

1840s:
Not long into the decade, we realized that all of the remaining missionary tiles had been drawn and only a few demand dice remained on the board. Blue sought to capitalize on his presumed lead and end the game early while Tan and Red went on a fruitless boondoggle to India in search of opium. They were given a small reprieve when an enforcement action busted Blue’s supply chain in Shanghai, but soon after, Blue placed the last demand due, triggering an early end of the decade.

The bust up in Shanghai drove outrage high enough that there was a second opium war. In the postwar rush, tan and red were able to influence up some opportunity in Xiamen and complete a chain, returning a smuggler die to the supply—forestalling the end of the game…for about a second. Blue placed yet another missionary, re-triggering the endgame condition.

The final London season was a big pathetic. Red was in too much debt, so declined to take any cards despite partying into first pick. Blue had more money but had already taken a political career so couldn’t afford anything more. He ended up hate-drafting another daughter away from Tan, despite not having a wife, to take the win.

Closing Thoughts:
We all enjoyed our first play and spent some time afterwards talking through what mistakes we made and what we might have done differently had we known the game better. It was really short and snappy (though we did trigger an early end). It took us under 2 hours not including the teach. We may reprise this next week, and I am signed up to run a game at SDHistcon in November.

Rules Questions/Notes:
Recognizing that the game is still subject to change, here are some rules we had trouble decoding from the rulebook:

1. When the Taiping Rebellion is first established, we were not sure if it could be placed in a treaty port or not. We eventually landed on “not” as the player aid specifies it must be in a Qing region.
2. After we triggered the early end of decade, there was an opium war, but we couldn’t place new demand dice when the treaty ports were placed because there weren’t any left.
3. As written, it seems that the decade to be ended prematurely due to demand dice running out doesn’t guarantee the game will end, because dice could be added back into the pool during the post war rush.
4. In a 3 player game, you are instructed to randomly discard a card face down before passing the remaining prizes. Do these discards go on the top or bottom of the prize deck?
5. Taking a prize during the prize draft is a “may” action. Does that mean that if the first and second players opt not to take a card, the third player would see 3/5 of the cards instead of the usual 1/5?
6. There was a big of confusion as the player aids refer to “unsupported” tiles to mean what the rulebook calls “inactive tiles”, which is itself a bit confusing as one might thing tiles in their supply are inactive.
7. Probably relatedly, players kept trying to use the adjust price action to adjust upwards (essentially overselling their own tiles) in completed supply chains

This was such a blast. Very excited to see how the final version turns out!

Reply: Battle Cry: 150th Civil War Anniversary Edition:: General:: Re: A Guide To The C&C Games of Richard Borg

Robin — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:51:30 +0000

by Robin

amusedleg wrote:

His only complaint is the lack of asymmetrical victory conditions. So this topic was fresh on my mind today.

In CCN, some geographical objectives only give banners to one side.
That is asymmetrical in my book.
But - and that is a constant in all C&C games - the total number of banners to reach to win is the same for both sides. However, as geographical objectives may be different for each side, the number of units to eliminate in addition to occupying places will be different.
So that adds an assymetry to the number of units to eliminate to win.
Note too that eliminating Russian Cossaks earns no banner.

Thread: Heat: Pedal to the Metal:: Rules:: Can I play a Direct Play card with a Heat Cost if I can't afford the heat?

cynicaloptimist — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:51:22 +0000

by cynicaloptimist

The Gas Pedal #27 Upgrade Card has Direct Play, Heat (!) 1, and Cooldown 1. If I have no Heat in my hand or engine, can I play this card via Direct Play in Step 5? As far as I can tell, there is no rule preventing me from using Direct Play in this case, even though I can't pay for the mandatory Heat. The closest thing is this note under the Mandatory Heat symbol:

Note: If you accidentally played an
Upgrade card and you cannot pay the Heat cost
of it, discard it and play a random Basic card
from your draw deck instead by following the
same process as when you play a [+] symbol
(see page 5 of the Rules booklet).

There are two reasons I'm not totally sure on this interpretation. One, the note uses the word "accidentally", but my scenario involves a deliberate play knowing I can't afford the heat. Two, while converting a card played during step 2 into a [+] symbol (aka stress) is strictly a downgrade, converting the extra Direct Play card is like receiving a free Boost.

I know this is a crazy corner case but it came up in our race tonight. I couldn't find any thread covering this specific interaction (which I think can only happen with this specific upgrade card). Thanks!

Reply: High Frontier 4 All:: Reviews:: Re: A Solo Review: FORTY-EIGHT YEARS, THREE BURNS, AND ONE SOLAR FLARE

Attackmack — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:51:21 +0000

by Attackmack

danielhao1996 wrote:

Skeleton_Man wrote:
danielhao1996 wrote:

Then I rolled a die and a red event occurred, and the event was a solar flare, and it removed a radiator from the outpost stack.
A refinery needs a radiator. Without one, it does not function, hence no factory, no colony, no my bonus points!

Aabon wrote:
Hmm, it may be less harsh than you experienced. Solar flares don’t hit cards on sites.

As mentioned flares don't hit sites, but what hurts even more is than according to the core rulez (see I7g), you don't even need radiators for the industrialize operation

Great review and read, had a lot of fun reading it

I see that the necessary components are robonaut an refinery, but the refinery I carried needed 1 therm to operate, hence the radiator. I remember seeing it under industrialization that you decomission the robo and refinery, and their supporting cards, I don't remember that clearly, gotta check that up again.

Check the rules for the Industrialize Operation, especially part I7g: "Radiator & Cooling exception" p.33
Once the hardware is landed at a site you no longer need radiators to industrialize, thematically the night side of the world provides all the cooling you could need.
This is also mentioned on the player aids which IMO are brilliant! Once you get going you pretty much only need those at hand!

And as mentioned all Sites are shielded from Solar Flares. LEO, Cycler, Home Bernals and any belt space not around the sun is also shielded from flares.

So you missed a few rules and made it harder for yourself!
But dont worry, even when playing all rules to perfection there are a great many ways to mess up 😄

Its truly a masterpiece of a game.

New comment on GeekList GCL Gelato 756 - It must be love . . .

PzVIE — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:50:57 +0000

by PzVIE

This is an ad for the new list:
GCL Gelato 757 - Advertising

Review: Dominion:: Dominion expansions, graded — one player's tier list of the base game and all 16 expansions

bluekms21 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:50:47 +0000

by bluekms21

This review was machine-translated from my Korean blog post, as my base-game review was. I wrote the original myself; only the translation is automated. The original (Korean) is here: https://blog.naver.com/bluekms21/224449139955

Where I'm coming from: I've carried the base game (first and second edition), Intrigue, Empires and the promos around in a binder and played them a lot. This is a follow-up to my category-by-category review of the base game.

Dominion has had an expansion almost every year since the 2008 base game. Up to Rising Sun in 2024 there are sixteen official ones. In Korea, nine got an official edition: the base game, Intrigue, Seaside, Prosperity, Dark Ages, Guilds, Empires, Renaissance and Allies.

Grades run from S to D. Sets I haven't played are listed separately as Unplayed.

Dominion expansion tiers
]]>

The grades at a glance

S. Empires (Korean edition: yes). Events, Landmarks and Debt made Dominion the richest it has been
A. Base game (Korean edition: yes). Intuitive, strong cards everywhere
A. Intrigue (Korean edition: yes). The base game's twin. Cards with several effects you choose from
A. Renaissance (Korean edition: yes). Villagers are the heart; the Artifact race is good too
B. Cornucopia (Korean edition: no). Tournament Prizes are fresh but not very Dominion
B. Guilds (Korean edition: yes). The Coin token system is good; the tokens are not
B. Menagerie (Korean edition: no). Horses speed up the tempo, at the cost of longer downtime for others
C. Prosperity (Korean edition: yes). Platinum's value doesn't sit well with the other sets
D. Seaside (Korean edition: yes). Did a whole set need this many Duration cards?
D. Allies (Korean edition: yes). Favors and the ordered split piles are more hassle than fun
D. Rising Sun (Korean edition: no). Triggering a Prophecy feels bolted on

S. Empires
Once Events and Landmarks came in, the game stepped up a level. With shared options outside the ten Kingdom piles, the same card mix plays differently from game to game.
Debt is the part I like most. You can grab a card now with no money and pay later, which got me thinking about how modern capitalism works.
Catapult/Rocks, Enchantress and Farmers' Market are new ideas, but they fit Dominion's core system well.
When I play Empires I like to lay out two or more Events and Landmarks. The rulebook suggests about two, but I prefer more actions and more roads to victory.

A. Base game, Intrigue, Renaissance
The base game has simple effects and a lot of strong cards. I tried to list my favorites and gave up. Too many.
The 2016 second edition swapped six cards out and seven in. I still haven't seen another set that packs this many fundamentally sound, versatile cards.

Intrigue was meant to ship with the base game, and it's just as intuitive and strong.
Many of its cards carry several effects and let you choose, and given how quickly base-game strategies calcify, I sometimes think it should have shipped in the same box from the start.
Masquerade is a fun, memorable card. "I knew you'd give me that" moments come up all the time. The one thing is that depending on who's sitting where, you often wish you could pass the other way, so in a few games we house-ruled it so the passer picks the direction.

In Renaissance the new Villagers were excellent. They keep your deck moving even when no +Action card is in hand, which removes much of the frustration of a bad draw.
Artifacts are good too. Only one copy exists, so there's a race for whoever holds it, and that puts some tension into a game that's otherwise light on interaction. Projects add to the appeal without slowing things down. Its Korean edition is also the most recent one to come out.

B. Cornucopia, Guilds, Menagerie
Cornucopia's Prizes, won through Tournament, felt fresh. But there's only one copy of each Prize, which I think goes against the spirit of Dominion. If a card looks good, you can buy it too. That's Dominion, yet whoever grabs the good Prize first stays ahead to the end.

In Guilds I liked saving up Coin tokens and spending them on the turn that needs them. The problem is that the tokens are too small and too light. We always ended up with generic metal coins.

Menagerie I've only played in the app. Overall the cards are solid but unremarkable. Horses are one-shot actions that disappear when played, and I liked the tempo that gives. But I'm not sure it would feel the same with real cards. The longer my turn runs the more fun I have, but shuffles pile up and everyone else gets bored. Ways, which let you play an Action card for a different effect, felt awkward. I don't think they fit the heart of deck building.

C. Prosperity
Prosperity scales the game up with Platinum and Colonies. I think Platinum doesn't mix well with other sets. Most cards are designed around 1, 2 and 3 coins, so unless a +Buy card shows up it sticks out right away. Mountebank has a wonderful illustration.

D. Seaside, Allies, Rising Sun
Seaside is the set that introduced Duration cards. The idea itself, an effect that carries into your next turn, was carried further by a few cards in Empires later on. Looking back, many of the Durations in Seaside looked like filler to pad out the box.

Allies' stacked split piles make setup and teardown a lot more complex. They don't seem to work equally well at every player count either. Favor cards and tokens add hassle, but not as much fun.

Rising Sun I played in the app. Prophecies are shared cards that switch on for everyone once a condition is met. The whole process of getting there didn't mesh with the rest of Dominion for me. I found them hard to use strategically.

Victory cards in the Supply
One thing beyond any single expansion. Victory cards in the Supply almost always bring a unique mechanism and give everyone a plan B. I recommend including at least one kind whenever you can. It keeps strategies from calcifying, and the players in second place find their way back in there.

Closing
If you want to get into Dominion, I'd suggest trying it at a board game cafe or in the app first.
Here in Korea we can't really expect more expansions to be published, but the app is well made and every expansion is localized.

If after that you want the real thing, I recommend the base game and Intrigue.
If you want to add something new to the game, Empires is a good third set, but from there on you're opening three boxes to set up one game.

]]>

I even moved Dominion into a binder, but at regular A4 size the cards have to go in sideways. They slip out far too easily.
I found a taller specialty binder, but the Treasure and Curse cards still needed a separate deck box.
I feel I've had my fill of this game. It's one I love, and a fitting first subject for a proper review series.

Thanks for reading this far.

Original post (Korean, written by me): https://blog.naver.com/bluekms21/224449139955

GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "2026 Gaming Challenges (Pyronik)"

Pyronik2003 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:50:30 +0000

by Pyronik2003

2026 Solo Plays Challenge: Me, Myself and (A)I has been added to the geeklist 2026 Gaming Challenges (Pyronik) ]]>

Reply: Battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars:: News:: Re: Battlefields Pack 2 available from mid-November

gvr_ — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:49:53 +0000

by gvr_

PaoloMori wrote:

Walt Mulder wrote:
Hopefully they’ll get the base game back in stock as well since it’s been unavailable for a while now.

Yes, the game will be back in stock

Hey Paolo! Are you considering a newsletter to let us know once the games are available for purchase?

Thank you!

Session: Armageddon War: Platoon Level Combat in the End War:: Scenario 14 Strange Bedfellows

hwtrtgp — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:49:52 +0000

by hwtrtgp

AAR: Given the set-up requirements, the ISIL forces have the vehicles on 3 hex roads and one stack of infantry in the rough. The Rebel forces form a barrier 6 hexes in radius around the ISIL forces.
From these positions, the Rebels tried to breakout over the crest to the west to no avail. The alternative southern exit There the ISIL forces simply shot the Rebels like a carnival shooting gallery when they popped out of the rubble.

Lessons learned: An alternate approach was tried where the infantry worked their way south thru the rubble. This approach was unsuccessful.

Errata/Clarifications: There are two issues. First, should the ISIL forces be prohibited from attacking any Rebels, or merely the defectors (ISIL units used as Rebels), until the Defectors shoot at an ISIL unit? Second, should a rule prohibit ISIL opportunity fire for the same reasons.

Vassel and/or printed game comments: In the printed game using the ISIL units will make it necessary to indicate Defector ISIL units from regular ISIL forces. In the Vassal form, the defectors can be matched (cloned) from the Rebel units. It also needs a method to mark the Defectors from the main Rebel units.

Conclusion: With 36 chit-pulls, this scenario can take up to 120 minutes.

GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "Shannyn's Curator's Encyclopedia of Trick-Takers, Climbers & Shedders"

shannyn_north — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:49:41 +0000

by shannyn_north

Pipoca has been added to the geeklist Shannyn's Curator's Encyclopedia of Trick-Takers, Climbers & Shedders ]]>

Reply: New Cold War:: General:: Re: Historical Notes / Booklet

andoniorive — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:48:57 +0000

by andoniorive

This is a good idea, we will see if could be possible to make it happens

Review: The Dark Quarter:: The Dark Quarter: An underappreciated approach

SystematicGamer — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 06:48:42 +0000

by SystematicGamer

I heard about The Dark Quarter coming to Kickstarter years ago and I thought the theming was fantastic. An adult-themed gothic horror setting in 80s New Orleans, filled with occult and voodoo goodness. Fast forward a couple years and I found the game on sale for a reasonable price and decided to give it a try.

Knowing nothing about the gameplay, I was pleasantly surprised to find out The Dark Quarter re-implements the gameplay from Lucky Duck's former title, Destinies. Destinies was well-received but didn't have much staying power. I remember being impressed with the amount of components you get for the price, and this game gave me the same impression. This could have been a $70 game and instead I picked it up for $50, with a $59 retail price. The Dark Quarter isn't just a copy of Destinies. It tries to build on the system. At the heart of the game is a series of missions which are resolved like mysteries. You explore, encounter NPCs, and attempt to get information out of them through a dialogue interaction. There is quite a bit you can do to influence that interaction, including advancing your skills and acquiring items, so it's not a straight forward Q&A game like Chronicles of Crime.

The game adds a main city board with location markers that connect to local location area cards which you discover and place around the board. I think this is the perfect way to present large scale/small scale environments. One of the biggest criticisms of the game that I see online is that the components used to build these locations are unnecessary because the app contains all this same information. But I think without these visual reminders of the scene, you would feel like you were playing a video game instead of a board game. Everything is representative. You put a marker on the board to represent a lead, move your miniature figure to the location, place an interior location card with NPC tokens, move your miniature to the tokens, and interact with them through the app. The entire experience is seamless and awesome. I kept having the same thought. This is exactly how a murder/mystery board game should be played.

Ironically, this is where people seem to attack the game the most. Particularly regarding the somewhat repetitive nature of having to question someone over and over if you fail to get the response you want out of them. But the world is open and this approach isn't determined by the game. This is a player choice. The game never confined me to a single choice after about 4 hours of play. Maybe that changes later, but I wont fault the game system for that. Some reviewers have mentioned that the story writing declines in later scenarios. Again, I won't hate the gameplay and rate it less because of that. Narrative is very hard to get right in board games, and as a former writer, I do grant a considerable amount of leeway when judging fiction writing in games.

One thing I think in important to understand in terms of how the story is revealed, is that I never felt the game was a breadcrumb trail. It always felt like I had choices. There was always some other lead I could investigate, a side quest, or checking in with the boss to report progress, or finding a new item to confront your key suspects with. It was hard to tell under the hood if the game truly has A/B narrative pathways. Do the decisions I make ultimately branch off and effect the story and the eventual outcome? It is hard to know what other options might be revealed on a second playthrough, but it certainly feels like A/B decisions and that is good enough. If you want an example of a failed narrative experience, check out the breadcrumb trail method that Arydia uses. Instead of doing all the options to find the one trail, Dark Quarter, at least in its feeling, seems to have more open choices and outcomes.

I wanted to point out that despite the concerns about unnecessary components and repetitive gameplay, I found the game thoroughly enjoyable and was fully immersed. The same things that people raged about in their review comments didn't bother me one bit. I suspect that those gamers aren't used to playing detective games. I feel like some of the critical voices were trying too hard to "win" the game instead of just flowing with it. Some of the review scores were outrageous, with people rating the game a 3 or even lower. While opinions may vary, I think it is absurd to suggest this game is of that low a caliber. I don't think its fair that we can rate a euro game highly due to its 1 hour gameplay loop, and hold a 20 hour campaign game to the same standard of consistency.

I am going to rate the game a solid 8/10 and recommend it if you like narrative adventure games, and you understand this is neither a tactical game or a euro game, so winning isn't really the goal.

I also think the publishers deserve recognition for making a high-risk game that might not be perfect, but it certainly is ambitious and appreciated. I hope they continue to build upon and evolve this type of gameplay into new and exciting worlds. I am certainly a fan.

Final score 8/10. NOT a euro game and that is OK.

GeekList Item: Item for GeekList "GCL Gelato 756 - Advertising"