Three and a half hours into our most recent play of Bloodstones, I turned to the five other players sitting at my living room table. “I just wanted to say,” I began, in the tone of a hard-bitten battlefield commander trapped in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. “There is nobody I would rather share this ordeal with than all of you.” And then we laughed the laugh of soldiers who had spent too many weeks cowering at the bottom of foxholes.

Bloodstones is the latest title by Martin Wallace, a designer who has produced some of my favorite games of all time. It’s an impressive production, with multiple cloth maps, six unique factions, and oh so many bags filled with wonderfully clacky tiles. Between pedigree and production, it’s an easy sell.

I can’t stand it.

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