Author Archives: Dan Thurot
Majestic Fifty-Seven
The Pax Series has long been free of Phil Eklund’s original authorship, but Pax Illuminaten, designed by Oliver Kiley, feels like the final broken link in a long chain — or perhaps the final thumb in the old man’s nose. This is simultaneously the most Pax of all Paxes, directly engaging with the Enlightenment thinkers Eklund has always been (selectively) enamored with, and the least Pax, directly descended from P.D. Magnus’s Decktet and eschewing the customary market manipulations for a session of musical chairs in the Bavarian court. It is uneven, sometimes baffling, and, contrary to all expectations, wholly engaged with what made the series so venerable in the first place.
Climb Ev’ry (Other) Mountain
Sigh.
Solstis is a puzzle. Not in the game sense, where you’re trying to figure something out. More like it’s an actual puzzle that somebody handed to a pair of designers, Bruno Cathala and Corentin Lebrat, and said, “Please make a game around this puzzle.” To which they replied, “Sure, haha,” and then spent the rest of the afternoon talking philosophy before remembering their assignment and slapping the whole thing together in twenty minutes.
Speaking of puzzles, Solstis has me seriously reevaluating my policy of playing every game three times before I review it. Solstis barely supports a quarter play, let alone a complete trio.
Eternal Sunshine of the Trick-Taking Mind
Once, in high school, I embarrassed myself in front of a crush. Emerging from the school play’s pit orchestra, I was accosted by a friend with a cup of hot cocoa. He grabbed me by the front of my shirt, snagging my then-new chest hairs in the process. In agony, I smacked him on the back of the head, only for his cocoa to splash onto the dress of the school police officer. “What the hell is wrong with you?” the officer shouted. I turned to find a crack to wither into. But there she stood, the girl I just wanted to play footsie with, gaping in horror at my behavior.
We all have bad memories. Sometimes, though, those memories are dangerous to touch, like prodding a canker sore. Brendon Fong’s We Need to Talk is a dual trick-taker and card-shedder about overcoming the painful memories of a failed relationship in order to move on to something new. And it’s about as close to therapy as the format gets.
Imperium: Kobayashi Maru
More than most fictional settings, Star Trek lends itself to what-ifs. Mirror universes, alternate dimensions, and time travel play a big role in making the final frontier ever more expansive, but we don’t even need to breach the time-space continuum to find uncomfortable alliances and enemies-turned-friends. In its messiness, Star Trek has always been playful. Ever wondered what would happen if a dilithium leak briefly tricked an intoxicated Commander Sisko into courting Lursa Duras? Me neither! But there’s a non-zero chance that someone in the writer’s room drafted an entire Deep Space Nine episode about that very scenario.
Star Trek: Captain’s Chair swims in those possibilities. Designed by Nigel Buckle and Dávid Turczi, and built around the deck-building system they unveiled in Imperium: Classics, Legends, and Horizons, this isn’t the first board game to bottle the spirit of Star Trek, but it is perhaps the one that most exemplifies its endless possibilities.
Chu-se Wisely
The time has come for Tom Lehmann to design a trick-taker. Okay, that’s not wholly accurate. Chu Han, set during the Chu-Han Contention, is strictly a ladder-climber and card-shedder, but the genres overlap to such a degree that most laymen couldn’t tell the difference. More importantly, as befits the creator of Race for the Galaxy, Res Arcana, and Dice Realms, Chu Han has a few cool ideas up its sleeve.
Unwitched
As much as I would prefer to cast off all longing and become immune to nostalgia, I will confess a squishy soft spot for The Witcher. No joke, my adventures with Geralt of Rivia helped me come to terms with becoming a father to a tiny screamy baby. And while parenthood hasn’t contained quite as much monster-slaying as promised, I still sometimes find myself asking how the White Wolf would handle daily indignities like PTA meetings and where this grocery store has hidden the chicken stock. (It’s a fetch quest, I tell myself. Just a fetch quest.)
Which is why, even though I had determined to pass on any additional sets until the next Unmatched Adventures showed up, I discovered that I was still helpless in the face of this tie-in. Please note that these two sets, Steel & Silver and Realms Fall, are not parenting guides.
The River Mild
So you’ve gone on a group river rafting trip without making a plan. It happens to everyone. Now everybody has their own idea how this trip ought to go.
Even me! Last week, I reviewed Roaring River, the latest design by Joeri Hessels and Wouter Moons, except it turns out I’d made a huge mistake that turned the game on its head. My apologies to the designers, who I’m grateful set me straight. Because while Roaring River still isn’t my favorite small card game, it’s significantly better than I assumed the first few times down the canyon.
Meet the Faceless Cusk
We all know that one of the juvenile pleasures of Wingspan is calling out the birds that sound like human anatomical features. Abbott’s Boobie! American Woodcock! Truly, I will never age past thirteen.
Finspan is the second spinoff of Elizabeth Hargrave’s unexpected smash hit, following last year’s Wyrmspan by Connie Vogelmann. Designed by David Gordon and Michael O’Connell, Finspan drops us into the sea. It also changes the nature of the game. Now, instead of calling out funny body parts, it’s all about announcing which fish resemble the people at the table. Me? I’m a Porkfish.
Wrinkles in Space-Time
I don’t know if time is a flat circle, but it does have a way of bringing us back around to where we started. Ascending Empires, Ian Cooper’s mashup of space exploration, empire building, and dexterity-based gameplay, was one of my first modern tabletop flings. I even reviewed it, way back. I got a rule wrong, and the embarrassment was bad enough that I considered not writing anymore.
Now, fourteen years after the original game’s release, Cooper has produced the Zenith Edition. The original game can be found in the box, but let’s be real: fourteen years is like three full generations in board game time. Let’s see how the new edition fares in the cold depths of space. Or worse, an over-saturated tabletop market.
Photograph of a Battlefield
Persistent readers will be well aware that I’ve been writing about some of the titles to come out of the recent Indie Games Night Market. Three of them, High Tide, Out of Sorts, and Torchlit, were among my favorite tabletop experiences of 2024.
Chris Lawrence’s Propaganda represents a different manner of showing from the Night Market, both tonally and in terms of polish. Where that previous trio had been fashioned to a high sheen, functioning almost like an audition — and indeed, two of them have since been picked up by publishers — Propaganda is an act of unsettlement. It is the most starkly “indie” of these indie games, confronting players with difficult questions about the media we regularly consume.
SPACE-BIFF! 