Blog Archives
Distant Rumble Train
Despite all outward appearances, Lightning Train doesn’t include any magic. Which is something of a double statement. I went in expecting locomotives propelled by atmospheric violence; instead, we got a rare Paul Dennen miss. It isn’t that I wanted another Empyreal: Spells & Steam, exactly. Just something with spark. Even a little zap from the light switch after walking on the rug with my socks would have done.
Gonna Decimate Them Like You Did to Me
I’ve never read Robert Kirkman’s Invincible, and I’ve watched exactly one (1) episode of the animated show. In that time, my takeaway was that this was a more grounded, gritty, and realistic — yeah, we’re stretching that word to the breaking point — approach to superhero mythology. Kinda like every other modern take on superheroes.
What I’m saying is that I don’t have any nostalgia or reverence for the source material, no allegiance that would prevent me from telling you that Kevin Spak’s Invincible: The Hero-Building Game is a big ole stinker.
But in a twist worthy of a penultimate issue’s final panel, Invincible isn’t a stinker. Not at all.
Observe, Feyd-Rautha
Arrakis. Dune. Desert planet. Warner Bros. property.
It’s not every day that a game I genuinely love hits it big in this hobby. I’ve been pleased to watch Paul Dennen’s Dune: Imperium thrive, earning two expansions in Rise of Ix and Immortality. That said, I’ve been as perplexed as anybody at the latest offering. Dune: Imperium — Uprising has a surfeit of subtitles and a questionable provenance, functioning neither as an expansion nor as a totally fresh start for the series. At a glance, it’s not all that far removed from the original game.
When I Roll Into the Wild Tiled West
It’s safe to say I’m a fledgling Paul Dennen connoisseur. After Clank! Catacombs and the utterly perfect Dune: Imperium, Dennen could design one of those gawrsh-awful “alcohol and vulgarity” party games I’m emailed about every other week, and I’d be game for a few hands.
Wild Tiled West is not about alcohol and vulgarity. Maybe it should have been.
Dunc: Immorality
The foremost question about Dune: Imperium: Immorality is one of abundance. Does Imperium really need another expansion? It hasn’t even been a year since Paul Dennen gave Dune: Imperium its first big addition, Rise of Ix. At this rate we’ll soon be juggling expansions for the Honored Matres and Fish Speakers. Talk about power creeps.
Speaking of power creep, have you ever heard of the Tleilaxu?
Clank! Again!
I have mixed feelings about Clank! — and that’s a sentence that would sound much less dramatic without the obligatory exclamation mark. When I wrote about it way back in 2017, my stance veered wildly between “This is an approachable and clever hybrid deck-building game” and “This feels deeply artificial, and also there are way too many dead turns.” I haven’t touched its offshoots: no Clank! In! Space!, no expansions, not even the legacy-game version. Ask me what designer Paul Dennen has been up to and I’ll excitedly tell you about Dune: Imperium instead.
In a way, that remoteness gives Clank! Catacombs the air of a reunion. Not a high school reunion, and certainly not a creepy polygamist ancestors reunion. Rather, a reunion with an old friend — more of an acquaintance, really — who’s become way cooler than you remember.
Slam Dunc
Expansions always make for peculiar reviews. One of the realities of writing about lots of board games is that there’s precious little time to revisit anything. Even the most impressive titles often fall by the wayside. Paul Dennen’s Dune: Imperium proved an exception, reappearing on my table again and again thanks to its smart hybridization of deck-building and worker placement. Now it has a major expansion, Rise of Ix, along with the usual burning questions. What’s changed? Are there new avenues for a house aspirant to pursue greatness? Doth the spice flow?
I’ll say this much: the Dennen who designed Rise of Ix must have played this thing a thousand times, because he understands exactly what makes Dune: Imperium tick.
Arrakis—Dune—Deck-Builder.
Paul Dennen gets deck-building games. More importantly, he gets that deck-building is an under-leveraged mechanism. Wait, you might be saying, aren’t there one billion deck-building games? Yes. More deck-building games than there are grains of sand in the sea. But not all of them are slick hybrid titles like Clank!, which mixed deck-building with just enough beyond-the-deck considerations to make it worthwhile. While the rest of the hobby lags behind Martin Wallace’s multiple experiments in hybrid deck–building, Dennen has been doing one better by taking those lessons and turning them into games you’re actually likely to play.
Dune: Imperium is the best of his offerings yet. Although not necessarily because of the systems Dennen is mixing together.
SPACE-BIFF! 