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Cyclades Nuts
Cyclades. Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.
Except, of course, I’ve heard it plenty. How could I not? Cyclades, along with Kemet and Inis, was the first member of Matagot’s unholy trinity, the gods-on-a-map game that urged the genre in a new direction. Without Cyclades, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that there would be no Blood Rage, no Ankh, no renaissance of plastic figurines murdering each other, but murdering each other via modern tabletop mechanisms rather than just rolling dice, Risk-style, hastening the genre’s gradual decay into obsolescence. Cyclades was the pantokrator that filled the form’s lungs with new breath.
It’s also an essential strand of my own gaming DNA. My review of Kemet was one of the first to draw any attention. Inis is still possibly my favorite game of all time. And before those, there was Cyclades, experimental and bold, off-kilter in its own way, a little imbalanced, but always gripping.
And now Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc have a Legendary Edition out. Over the past month or so I’ve revisited the classic, partaking of its deified air once more — and also marveling at how far game design has come in the intervening sixteen years.
C3K is K4Me
I don’t believe there’s anyone alive in the world of board games who’s managed to corner the Awesome Light Wargame With Badass Mythological Miniatures niche so well as Matagot, as evidenced by Cyclades being one of the best games of 2009 and Kemet knocking everyone’s socks off in 2013. Proof, and more proof (at least for the Kemet half of that claim).
Now Matagot has put out an expansion aimed at anyone who owns both of those masterpieces. It’s C3K, or the Creatures Crossover Cyclades/Kemet expansion, and it’s… well, let’s take a look.
The Board Game Box Review
The board game boxes under review on our first installment of The Board Game Box Review!
Okay, I’m taking Space-Biff! across the threshold into true nerd territory. This is nerdier than a sixteen-hour game of Runewars, a GLaDOS pumpkin, or dressing up as characters from RAGE… alright, less nerdy than that last one.
I’m writing this because if there’s one thing I can’t stand (and trust me, there’s at least one thing I can’t stand), it’s poorly-designed board game boxes. That’s right: When the box is too big, too small, won’t play Tetris with other games, or falls apart after a year, it really ticks me off something mighty. And I’m sure there’s at least one other person out there who feels the same way. Cue The Board Game Box Review.
SPACE-BIFF! 