Tabla de contenidos para Issue 71 en Tabletop Gaming

Why do we buy boardgames? Or more importantly perhaps, why do we buy more boardgames than we can realistically play? During lockdown many of us bought in far more boardgames than we could play at all, given that most games need other people around. Playing games gives us a whole load of positive chemical responses – dopamine from doing, oxytocin from doing with other people, endorphins from competition. And when we don’t have that we accept watered down versions. We can get dopamine from shopping and oxytocin from getting a like of a social media post. In the absence of doing, we spend. Each of us has in essence a hobby bank which we can fill with time or money or emotion depending on what stage we are in our…

There are three ways chess players can go on their gaming journey. They can take the obvious route, become a chess person – go to the conventions, read the books, get into the lore, and eventually attempt to fight a computer. They can take up Go and realise that they’ve spent a lot of time of a very shallow game until this point (or so it is reported to me). Or they will find their way into the world of hobby game abstracts. Some of these are a little like a deconstruction of chess itself. Thrive for example gives players a way to build their own set of rules as they play. Onitama gives your pieces different moves, which you pass to your opponent once you’ve taken them. That Time…

My relationship with board games started in earnest when a friend introduced me to Carcassonne back in 2009. Since then I’ve been hooked, inhaling any game I can get my mittens on. In the first few years after we opened Chance & Counters, every waking hour was spent at the cafe either working or playing a new game one of us was super hyped about. I remember our first play of Terra Mystica after a midnight close, and covertly slipping games into our Asmodee orders because I’d seen them on a recent Shut Up & Sit Down video. Terraforming Mars was BGG’s ‘hot’ game at the Essen convention in 2016. The theme had struck a chord with the community, the mechanics were neat and it presented a new set of…

“We do quite a lot!” was CEO Ronnie Renton’s enthusiastic response when I asked what Mantic Games actually do in the world of tabletop gaming. Fans of Mantic may already be familiar with their miniature wargames, including the fantasy themed Kings of War, and the sci-fi world of Deadzone and Firefight. Others may have encountered their boxed and board games, with titles such as Hellboy and League of Infamy; or their Terrain Crate scenery for RPGs and wargames. Mantic didn’t start with quite so wide-ranging a goal. “When I started the company I had one goal in mind: making wargaming affordable and fun,” says Rennie, “at the time I thought that wargaming had become inaccessible to the masses, due to the complexity of rules and the cost of buying all…

Q. Dear Ben, The meme. When future generations are learning about the early 21st century on their viddy-units and snort derisively at our primitive ways they will be bombarded by memes. A pithy phrase splashed across an image in Impact. This is our generation’s philosophical contribution to the human canon. I saw one yesterday that really stuck with me. It was a spaceman, silhouetted against the vastness of the cosmos and underneath him in 36-point Impact were two words. ‘Be Kind.’ Well I, for one, am bloody well fed up with being kind. Kindness, in fact, is sucking all the joy out of my life like a Henry Hoover who’s just too into his job. Let me explain. Denny found our game group and was so grateful that he had…

Designer: Bryce Brown | Publisher: Castillo Games Gather your merry band, sharpen your arrows and prepare to storm the castle, our verdant leader has been captured and we must join to liberate him. The simple artwork screams ‘family game’ and while it works well for families, the interesting mechanics should keep more serious gamers entertained too… at least for a while. Alongside the entertaining whimsy of pun-filled character names and their jolliness ratings, there’s a level of complexity that provokes interesting tabletop discussions and plenty of tension. In the first four (of five) rounds, players take it in turns to attack guards that are holding villagers hostage. Dispensing with a whole line of defence frees the villager (or villagers) they were guarding, and these villagers can then be drafted and…

Designer: Gabriel J. Cohn | Publisher: Rio Grande Games They say it takes a village to raise a board game and, by his own admission, Gabriel J. Cohn’s Space Station Phoenix started life as a “giant and slow-moving mess”. Almost a decade of playtesting later, as well as input from Rio Grande Games, it’s finally been brought to market. So has it managed to rise from the ashes? The name is actually also a pun on this engine builder/destroyer’s very premise: dismantle your spaceship fleet to get metal for a showier space station. The reason for doing so is woolly – aliens have discovered Earth and want to profit from it. Perhaps a more topical backstory may have worked better here, such as aliens farming eco materials to help Earth…

Designer: Juan A Nácher | Publisher: Draco Ideas Scope Stalingrad takes place during the Second World War and sees German and Soviet troops engaged in tense battles in the ruins of Stalingrad. Your aim is to either reach a certain number of objective points or to take out all your opponent’s snipers. Scope’s production is, in a word, perfunctory. The two decks are compromised of a mix of stock images and the occasional cropped black & white photo. The graphic design is readable but lacks character or atmosphere. In an era of crowdfundingled component bloat, it’s certainly good to see games dispensing with unnecessary miniatures or expensive first-player markers, but here the art style feels undercooked rather than crisply minimalist – a functional prototype rather than something you feel excited…

Designer: Various | Publisher: Wizards of the Coast The latest adventure anthology for Dungeons & Dragons’ wildly successful fifth edition is a delight to play, run, and read. Over the course of 13 different quests, it blends Star Trek-esque optimism with high adventure and uses a talented cast of authors to take us on a whistlestop tour of settings that reach beyond D&D’s traditional comfort zone of western fantasy. As with most of the other anthologies Wizards of the Coast have published in recent years, the array of adventures found in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel are all linked by a common theme. In this case, each one of them can be accessed through the titular Radiant Citadel – a utopian city-state built around an enormous diamond drifting through the…

Designer: Jaime Miller | Publisher: Indie Boards & Cards Make It Happen takes place during New York City Fashion Week, as two rival design teams compete to create the most eye-catching outfits and show them off on the catwalk. Since style is, of course, subjective, you also have to hype up your fashion choices so when your collection launches everyone will think it’s the new hotness. You accomplish this by drawing cards from a personal deck of fabric styles, from polka dot or stripes to floral or tartan, and slotting these behind models wearing various outfits. The model cards have the clothing sections cut out, meaning when you slip a pattern behind them, they’re suddenly wearing a stripy top or a flowery ballgown. It’s a neat, immediately appealing bit of…

BELL & HAMMER This leisurely family gambling game was purportedly invented by Viennese art dealer H F Müller around 1800. It became popular throughout Europe during the 19th century and is said to be still played today in various places, though I can’t locate a current publisher. An old Dutch friend of mine tells me his family always used to play it at Christmas. One source says it was (like Dreidel) especially popular among Jewish communities during Hanukkah. Five or more play, using eight specially marked dice, five picture cards, and at least 150 counters. The dice are blank on five faces; on the sixth, six dice bear a number of spots from 1 to 6, one has a Bell, and one a Hammer. The five cards variously depict a…

After thousands of entries and a hotly contested final round of voting, our winners are announced. Thank you for your votes, and thank you to all of those publishers who have made great games this year. Congratulations to the winners, who will receive a little something from us at Tabletop Gaming Live! BEST BOARD GAME 2022 Winner: Ark Nova (Capstone Games) Runners up: Crescent Moon (Osprey Games), Bitoku (Devir) BEST WARGAME 2022 Winner: Oathmark (Osprey Games) Runners up: The Silver Bayonet (Osprey Games), Lion Rampant (Osprey Games) BEST MINIATURES GAME 2022 Winner: Stargrave (Osprey Games) Runners up: Sniper Elite: The Board Game (Rebellion Unplugged), Gunfighters Ball (Knuckleduster) BEST CARD GAME 2022 Winner: Radlands (Roxley Games) Runners up: Art Robbery (Helvetiq), Floriferous (Pencil First Games) BEST TRADING CARD GAME 2022 Winner: Flesh & Blood –…

1 POKÉMON BATTLE ACADEMY Gotta Catch ‘em all! Taking out the obvious aspect none of us enjoys talking about, which is our youth at the first wave of Pokémon, there’s little more joyous than sharing memories of your first Charizard. The great thing about Pokémon Battle Academy is the step by step instructions and pre-constructed decks that make it up, because these are perfect for young and old alike to begin playing, and playing confidently. Generation proof from Grandma to a reading-age kid, and bound to start a new wave of collecting – yet another thing to bond over. 2 MAGICAL KITTIES SAVE THE DAY RPG’s are somewhat perfect for family gatherings, though of course, Pathfinder Second Edition may not be entirely suitable for diving into headfirst with the asymmetrically…

The annual Spiel des Jahres is the most important prizes for tabletop games in the world, arguably the most important for games of any kind, and possibly in the top ranks of consumer awards globally. A game that wins the SdJ can expect to sell an extra 3-500,000 copies, which knocks lesser awards like, say, the Booker Prize right off the table. For many titles it’s been the accolade that anoints them as a modern classic, a must-own or at least a musttry for anyone who calls themselves a gamer. Spiel des Jahres’ literally means ‘Game of the Year’, and the award was set up in the late 1970s by a group of German games reviewers and journalists on a mission to raise the profile of games – ideally German…

Hot off the back of a Silver ENNIE win, we sat down to chat about hopping vampires, running a restaurant, and racism with Banana Chan, the creator of Jiangshi: Blood In The Banquet Hall. Jiangshi themselves are the famous hopping zombies of Chinese myth and folklore – although of course, like all folktales, they slip between the boarders created by the living into all neighbouring cultures. These reanimated corpses have the dual aspect of being extremely funny (they hop!) and terrifying (they’re a reanimated corpse of a neighbour who wants to eat you now!). And they also form the background threat of this exciting and innovative roleplaying game. Banana Chan is a game designer, writer and one of the co-founders of a small publishing company with a very appealing offer…

Rising out of the subaqueous northern reaches of the world’s longest mountain range is Iceland – a sparsely populated volcanic island set atop the immense Mid-Atlantic Ridge. With the country possibly only being inhabited by Björk and a scattering of neighbours, one might not expect Iceland to possess a notable tabletop gaming presence – but, as we shall explore, the hobby is as active as the island’s many volcanoes. Iceland’s Nordic roots point toward the likelihood of early Viking settlers regularly engaging in the chess-like, asymmetric Hneftafl games popular across Scandinavia, but there’s very little evidence suggesting the existence of other Icelandic games until much later. In the 19th century, Brus became a popular pastime for people in the Svarfaðardalur valley area of northern Iceland. This trick-taking card game is…

Few years have such an impact on history quite like 2009. Barack Obama becomes USA’s first African-American president, Minecraft’s alpha release launches for €10, starting its climb to becoming the best selling video game of all time, whilst on the silver screen everyone was wearing 3D glasses to watch the Box Office smashing Avatar, which still stands as the highest grossing film of all time. That’s not to say that massive releases weren’t also happening in the world of tabletop, as with new companies like Indie Board and Cards as well as Plaid Hat Games releasing their first titles along with a slew of other gaming classics, 2009 is a year that deserves to be remembered. Join us as we discover why! DOBBLE Would you believe that of the many…

Designer: Thomas Lehman | Publisher: Rio Grande Games The deck builder has settled in a something of an old standard. Everyone knows the mechanic, and it crops up in all sorts of games as a light and interesting way of giving players a sense of growing power and deepened long term strategy. Dice Realms does something far too clever and unbelievably well implemented with the classic formula of deckbuilders, and frankly it’s stunning. Instead of a deck of cards and a standard market of cards in from to you, players are handed a set of dice with pop-outable faces. Each face does something like ‘gain gold and two wheat’ or ‘gain one upgrade point’ or ‘defend against an attack’ or even ‘get some points’. Players roll their dice, decide if…

Designer: Jeff Chin & Andrew Nerger | Publisher: Road to Infamy Games I’ve never been referred to as any kind of artist, and in fact, my skill levels out somewhere below stick figures, but in Canvas, I’ve somehow blagged my way into fancy art festival competition, and I’m nothing if not competitive. Thankfully, this isn’t a drawing game, but rather a creative layering game, with satisfying results. The artwork, that I’ll take credit for when the game finishes, is the core of this game, and is truly lovely. You’ll have a background card as your base, which turn by turn, you’ll layer more upon using art cards. The cards themselves are transparent, bar the feature being added, which means you’re building aspects bit by bit into the scene. All cards…

Who Made This? Rainy Day Games are a collective of indie games designers comprising of Anna Blackwell (DELVE, Apothecaria), Chris Bissette (The Wretched, Treasures of the Troll King), Jack Harrison (Artefact, Orbital), and Matt Sanders (Sealed Library, Have You Heard About The Beast?) NOT YET So it has finally happened, you’ve died and you’re sat across from the Reaper responsible for taking your soul. Unfortunately for them, you aren’t ready to go yet. This little game should be played when your RPG character dies as a final attempt to escape Death’s clutches. Set Up: Give both players 10 cards - Ace through to 10. Keep these close to your chest. During this mortality themed microgame, the player will attempt to escape by whatever means fit the theme or world of…

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The Mirroring of Mary King is the sixth title from Jim Felli, the mad man behind 2021 hit Cosmic Frog. While similarly off-beat and as unusual as that previous release, this design is a two-player head to head battle of control that is both intimate and inspiring. It’s a 30 minute high-stakes affair that is unlike anything I’ve played before. The story is surreal. Mary King is a mortal contemporary woman whose role is assumed by one of the players. The other player is a 17th century ghost of the same name, an ancestor of the modern Mary King and intent on stealing her body to rekindle its existence. This is a war of spirits for a mortal corpse, the corporeal form caught in a tug of war that threatens…

The Tarot, a deck of cards most associated with the act of fortune telling, divination, probably something a bit spooky, started out as a simple set of cards used for a number of European card games like Tarocchini (Italy) or Grosstarok (Germany). That is until some (French) occultists got their hands on it in the 18th century and, more or less, started making some stuff up about the meaning of each card. In many ways, this interpretive flourish of lore-making (a suggestion that the cards are born out from the Book of Thoth, an Ancient Egyptian text which is also an umbrella term for a great deal of unassigned writing) is a bit like a roleplaying game, or a LARP. This isn’t to diminish their use in divination or similar,…

Designer: John D. Clair | Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group At first glance, John D. Clair’s nautical 4X game is yet another title which embraces the kind of high-seas skulduggery repopularised by the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Don’t get us wrong – Dead Reckoning does feature piracy. You can hoist your black sail (represented by a piracy token that slots neatly into your dinky ship miniature) and plant an imaginary parrot on your shoulder whenever you like. But that is not the whole story here. As you’d expect from a 4X title, which awards victory from a wide menu of possible achievements (ship upgrading, trading, exploring, island-owning, sinking other player’s ships, etc.), there are a variety of ways to play. You could lean into the mercantile side of things, trading…

Designer: Various | Publisher: Wizards of the Coast If you’ve ever needed a reminder that Dungeons & Dragons has never been the exclusive domain of devout medievalists intent on historical simulation, you need look no further than the existence of Spelljammer. Quite possibly the weirdest, wackiest, and eighties-ist of the famous game’s many settings –and remember, there’s one where halflings ride dinosaurs into cannibal raids – Spelljammer blends the highest of fantasy and lowest of sci-fi into a single, glorious mess. Founded on a core idea of ‘D&D, but in space,’ it gives official permission for GMs to reject the influence of Lord of the Rings and instead crib from Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and the campier side of Shatner-era Star Trek. The core idea of the setting has always…

PAINTS & TECHNIQUES » Abaddon Black » Auric Armour Gold » Barak-var Burgundy » Blue Horror » Bugman’s Glow » Cadian Fleshtone » Caledor Sky » Caliban Green » Canoptek Alloy » Carroburg Crimson » Celestra Grey » Dark Reaper » Dawnstone » Doombull Brown » Dorn Yellow » Druchii Violet » Emperor’s Children » Eshin Grey » Evil Sunz Scarlet » Fenrisian Grey » Gal Vorbak Red » Gauss Blaster Green » Incubi Darkness » Kantor Blue » Karak Stone » Khorne Red » Kislev Flesh » Knight-questor Flesh » Lothern Blue » Mechanicus Standard Grey » Mephiston Red » Moot Green » Mournfang Brown » Pallid Wych Flesh » Phalanx Yellow » Pink Horror » Rakarth Flesh » Reikland Fleshshade » Retributor Armour » Rhinox Hide » Runelord…

Decent notes are the lifeblood of any long-running campaign. They’re the information-grease that lets the story-wheels flow. They’re the thin thread of sense stretching across a river of nonsense. Honestly, they’re all that allows us to enjoy sessions separated by mere moments in-game but several weeks in real life, without everything falling to pieces the moment one of our players asks “wait, who the hell is that guy?” However, taking and maintaining a decent set of GMing notes isn’t as easy as it might first appear. After all, compared to rolling dice and yelling about fireballs, carefully maintaining what are essentially really, really nerdy minutes is… kind of dull. It’s so easy to get distracted during the game and forget to write down important details at the turning point of…

Tell us about yourself and how it first started? We are a family run business, comprising of myself (Jenni) my husband (Jon) and two brothers-in-law (Jacob & Luke) not to mention our five year old Charlie who we nickname the “Diddy Director.” We have always been fond of gaming as a family, both tabletop and computer based, and this hobby grew during Covid – as it did with many households who had the time to explore other forms of entertainment. I had personally worked in hospitality for most of my working career and when my employment status changed in 2021 we saw it as a chance to combine experience and passion to create a gaming centred community hub. We now have a team of 10 additional team members who share…