Category Archives: Board Game
Auto Dominion
I believe Gricha German and Corentin Lebrat have cracked the code. Ever since the auto-battler was popularized way back in 2019, the format has seemed ripe for cardboardification. I mean, its alternate title is auto-chess, for heaven’s sake. But while plenty of titles have attempted to bring the genre to our tabletop, none of them have really captured the spirit of the thing.
Until now.
Afterlives
Sometimes I think about the afterlife. Not the actual afterlife. I’m suspicious about the probability of any such thing. But the afterlife as it appears across faiths and cultures, as reflections of our lived values and fears.
Take Club Spooky and That’s the Spirit!, the forthcoming duo by Connor Wake, whose Out of Sorts was one of last year’s unanticipated (and overlooked) hits. These small-box titles present contrasting soteriological outcomes for our disembodied souls, one an endless celebration and the other an endless process of self-doubt. To my Manichaean mind, one of these afterlives must be paradise and the other purgatory. The only problem is that I can’t tell which is which.
Belligeniture
It isn’t often that a title will cause me to spend more time thinking about its system of political succession than its gameplay, but that’s exactly what happens every time I try to break out Leaders. According to designer Hugo Frénoy, these borderline abstract contests serve to keep the kingdom peaceful. Every spring, would-be rulers engage in a bout to capture their foe. Recruiting warriors from the sidelines and calling it quits the instant one potentate has been surrounded, these matches are bloodless, honorable, and prevent infighting.
Sure they do. Because a loser has never decided to stab the winner in the face. Because the court eunuchs have never manipulated the odds to favor whichever weak-willed sycophant will let them do their thing. Because the mercantile class has never said, you know what, annual belligeniture isn’t suitable to long-term economic policy, let’s poison the game-masters.
Am I fretting too much over throwaway details? Undoubtedly. But that speaks to some flimsiness on Leaders’ part. This is a game that ticks so many of the right boxes. All the more pity it doesn’t quite work.
The Hero We Became
Every time a pearl necklace is scattered across a rain-soaked alleyway behind a theater, a superhero is born. Sorry, them’s the rules. While endless reboots have turned origin stories into a topic of much lampooning, there’s no denying the appeal of watching an everyman transform bit by bit into a reluctant defender of justice. Or maybe a relatable villain. Or, perhaps, hear me out, both.
Origin Story, designed by Jamey Stegmaier and Pete Wissinger, tills the well-trod ground of superhero origin stories to craft a hybrid trick-taker and… wait for it… engine-builder. It’s a combination I haven’t seen yet, at least not in such a compact format, and it certainly seems like it was built to appeal to my preference for hybrid designs.
But I’ll say it right now: this is a weird one.
Once More Unto the Leviathan
Any opportunity to get back into Leviathan Wilds is a good thing. That’s another way of saying you already know my impressions of Deepvale. As expansions go, nothing major has changed. There’s one new character, one new class, and another seven hospital-sized colossi to beef up the original game’s already ample rotation. In one sense, it’s rather workmanlike.
But when you have a game as good as this, it’s better to not over-alchemize the formula. Leviathan Wilds was already near perfect. With Deepvale, Justin Kemppainen reveals himself at top form, unspooling his most confident creations yet.
Space-Cast! #50. City of Six Amabels
Not many board games are as mysterious as City of Six Moons. Is it a puzzle? A working board game? A grift? To answer those questions and many more, today we’re joined by Amabel Holland to discuss her oddest title yet, the joys and perils of translation, and her recent efforts to preserve board games that have fallen out of fashion.
Listen over here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.
Oh No, We Repaired Our Ship!
Oh No, We Crashed! is one of those games that begs for a gag review. “Write the whole thing in as many minutes as it takes to play,” that sort of thing. Problem is, the game takes around two minutes. Maybe a little more. Maybe a little less. Regardless of the exact count, that’s less time than it takes to write an introduction, let alone an entire review. I’d pretty much have to cut it off right here.
Which would be a shame, because this little game is surprisingly delightful.
Almost Famous
I know what it’s like to be scooped. Years before I could write The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner got to it. It’s doubly unfair because I wasn’t even born yet. That’s why I’ve vowed to cover any board game that seems like it’s riding the coattails of a more popular title.
For example, Famous: Stage I, the build-a-band game by Jared Lutes, might seem like a knockoff of Jackie Fox’s Rock Hard: 1977, but it would be a mistake to confuse their proximity for inspiration. Famous, it turns out, is the more tangled game, messy like a rocker who’s stayed up too late penning songs and doing drugs. Sorry, candy.
Trick-Taker or Treat
All I play anymore is trick-taking games.
But when they’re this good, that isn’t exactly a burden. The latest four sets from New Mill Industries are here in time for spooky season, and I can safely say this is the first time there isn’t a tarantula in the bunch. Let’s blitz through the whole hand.
Anti-Fun
There’s one word I try to never use when writing about board games. The F-word. No, not that one. “Fun.” There it is. My critical curse word.
Today I want to talk about why “fun” isn’t an especially useful word — and more than that, why it can be misleading or even counterproductive when discussing board games as cultural artifacts. Along the way, I want to propose some alternatives. Nay, some improvements.
SPACE-BIFF! 