Tabla de contenidos para Issue 92 en Tabletop Gaming

Welcome back to Tabletop Gaming magazine, and this month we’re diving into making a game at home – whether that’s creating someone else’s game from a print and play, or things to consider when you’ve got that niggling idea in the back of your head… It’s been fascinating finding out how games go from that idea into a product on our shelves, and of course, the process can be different between games. We caught up with Wayfarer Games, a talented trio who launched a print and play (see? It all ties together!) ahead of a physical version later this year. Chris Marling gives us an epic how to turn your idea into a reality feature, plus we’ve got a ton of tips and tricks too. Of course, we’ve also got…

I love making print and play games. There have been so many reasons over the years I’ve found myself crafting a game at home. Sometimes I didn’t have the spare cash for my burgeoning desire for new games, so Print and Play (PnP) gave me a cheap way of exploring lots of new titles which only cost spare stationery in the house. It also opens up a world of independent designers, who often have intriguing and fresh ideas to bring into gaming. And let’s not forget that sometimes it’s really relaxing and rewarding to just get the glue and scissors out and spend a fun few afternoons making something. There are all kinds of games which can be made. For a newcomer, there are some highly accessible projects to begin…

I’m sure every gamer has had at least one of these experiences. Scenario one: You’re playing a game and something doesn’t quite sit right. If you’d designed this game, you’d have done X differently. Scenario two: You suddenly think, why isn’t there a game about Y? Scenario three: While thinking about favourite games you ponder, Why has nobody thought of combining X from this with Y from that? Congratulations! You’ve taken the first step toward designing your own game. YOUR GAME IDEA IS BROKEN Well, probably. Our ideas sound perfect in our minds. What could possibly go wrong? You’re a genius! The reality is usually quite different but the only way to know for sure is to take the next and crucial step in the design process…. GET IT TO…

Most game designers agree that you can’t learn how to make games from reading about it in a book, you’ll only start to understand the process when you’re drawing things on cards, drawing on meeple with a Sharpie and wondering why nobody’s ever made a nine-sided die. The trouble is that while you’re doing these things, a niggling voice may be suggesting that perhaps you’re doing it all wrong? Once you’ve got your game, what do you do next? And where can you go to find out? ‘I developed the Game Design Masterclass to answer as many of the questions that new designers face as possible,’ explains James Wallis, a veteran game… actually it’s hard to sum up what Wallis is. He’s designed games that have sold hundreds of thousands…

WHAT IS UK GAMES EXPO? UK Games Expo is the UK’s biggest tabletop game convention, taking place at the NEC in Birmingham each year. It invites a huge number of exhibitors from all over the world, giving attendees the opportunity to meet with their favourite designers and publishers, try out brand new games, and of course, buy the games they’re missing from their collection. The event runs a long weekend from Friday to Sunday, with Open Gaming space opening from Thursday. If you’re reading this magazine, you will almost certainly love what it does – from board games, to card games, to miniatures, to RPGs and far beyond. BACK FOR 2024 As usual, UK Games Expo was hosted over three huge halls. The first two halls were dedicated to exhibitors,…

THIS IS NEW! Pokémon Revealed their latest expansion this week; Shrouded Fable, set for release on August 2nd. This was somewhat of a surprise because it’s a special set (outside of the standard four sets a year) but based off a Japanese “a” set (their smaller sets between main sets). Usually, special sets are aimed squarely at collectors with shiny cards (see: Paldean Fates) or fantastic artworks (see: Crown Zenith) but the bulk of this set comes just from the Japanese set Night Wanderer. This is a huge set for players as it will become legal on August 16th, the opening day of the Pokémon TCG World Championships in Honolulu, Hawaii. It may be a smaller set but we’ve already seen a slew of cards that look likely to shake…

Abstract Strategy Definition: A genre of game where the game mechanics take the forefront, including little or no luck, theme or story. Noughts and crosses could be everyone’s first experience of an abstract strategy game. Of course, by adulthood most games will end in stalemate because we’ve played enough to know where to start, what to counter, and how not to get caught out by those sneaky diagonals. A fairly common feature of abstract strategy games is that they are completely repeatable. No changes happen during set-up, there is nothing random that alters how the game will play, you can learn a starting move that you always use and then build from there. Generally, you can see what options your opponent has and use this information and your knowledge of…

Designer: Mondo Davis | Publisher: 25th Century Games Color Field is a simple yet elegant game in which players add colour tiles to their canvaslike player board to create abstract paintings. Points are earned by matching colours on two or more different tiles or the canvas border. Everyone starts with six foundation tiles that are randomly drawn and placed on players’ boards. Some might get lucky straight away and get a couple of matches, however that doesn’t mean they are immediately ahead of the rest. Following the initial set up, players will then proceed to draft tiles to upgrade tiles on their board by getting more matches and hence more points. Sounds easy, right? Well, it’s harder than it looks. Ideally players match all their four sides, earning at least…

Designer: David Bernal | Publisher: Devir Who fancies playing a board game about drilling saline groundwater and turning it into power and batteries? Yay? I’ll be honest: in a hobby which covers some pretty niche/dull topics as a background, even I found myself blushing a little when I tried explaining this one. Salton Sea is about the real-life process of drilling geothermal areas in Southern California and turning that into sustainable geothermal power and lithium for batteries. Honestly, I found myself quite fascinated! For the really curious there is a whole double-page article in the front of the manual all about the setting and science of the game, so there is definitely passion behind this project. This is a worker-placement game with a very tight economy. Each player has their…

Designer: Samuel W Bailey & Mike Gnade | Publisher: Rock Manor Games The first thing you’ll see upon opening the box for Lawyer Up: Season 2 is a lot of empty space. Don’t worry, you needn’t call your lawyer – it’s designed to hold all the cards and components from the original Lawyer Up and expansions in a single box, which is either thoughtful or deceptive, depending on how generous you’re feeling. But this is a standalone title, offering three new card-driven court cases for one-to-two players, each of which builds off of some basic mechanics while introducing its own unique twists and play styles. One player takes the role of the Prosecution, the other the Defence, as – in the standard version of the game, at least – they…

Designer: Mark Gerrit | Publisher: Moaideas Game Design “It’s like one of those big 18xx train games, but simpler” I said as I unboxed Mini Express for my friends, dozens of wooden trains spilling out onto the table. In the basic sense, that is the shortest synopsis I can give for this game. Four train companies, four types of commercial goods, shared ownership, stock certificates and a map of the USA split up into hexagons. It’s all here, but with the sharp edges heavily sanded off and the approachability cranked up. In Mini Express, players increase the value of four train companies as they spread across the map, while also trying to increase their personal shareholding in the companies that they think are going to do best. Turns are straightforward,…

Designer: Ian Brody | Publisher: Ares Games On seeing this game, there are broadly going to be two groups of people; those who say “Ah yes, World War Two, okay, I know some stuff about that”; and those who say “Ah, East Front? I wonder if they’ll model the Vernichtungskrieg scorched earth policy properly? - Ooh! What’s their take on tank losses at Prochorovka…?”. In other words, it’s an area that some gamers have an exhaustive level of knowledge, and others don’t. Quartermaster General is a longstanding series in that vein from Ian Brody, who also created the War of the Ring: Card Game, another game that attracts players with an intense level of subject familiarity. East Front is the first of a new two player head-to-head adaptation of the…

Designer: Darin A. Leviloff | Publisher: Victory Point Games You don’t see people on TV shows spinning plates anymore. I’m not sure when it stopped being popular. I remember the madcap dashing back and forth keeping them all aloft, which led to the idiom many of us use. To be spinning plates is to be trying to do too many things at once, only giving each of them enough attention to stop them crashing to the floor, and that’s exactly what Hapsburg Eclipse is. It’s plate-spinning in Eastern Europe in WWI. Except the plates are armies marching on you from all directions, and instead of spinning them, you’re trying to fight them off with what feels like the odds forever being stacked against you. It’s essentially a tower defence game,…

Imagine a world where you could download your board games from the internet. Well, imagine no more, as it’s perfectly possible! Simply download a file from the internet, and get playing. Sure, you’re not going to get glossy constructs as in many games – unless you’re particularly dedicated – but games are more than the sum of their parts, and with an often low (if at all) cost attached to downloading them, there’s little risk in exchange for high reward. WHAT IS A PRINT & PLAY? Print and play games, sometimes shortened to PNP games, are ones that provide you with the digital files for the game, and leave you to do the rest. The expectation is that you can print these files off, and with a few household bits…

Although there’s no ‘standard practice’ in board game design, we perhaps often see certain things – someone will have an idea, then they’ll make a prototype, playtest it, pop it on a crowdfunding platform, and viola! A board game is born. Wayfarer Games did things a little differently, beginning focussing on a print and play style game (one you can download to your computer, and with a print out and a few extras, you can get playing immediately), before both the success and the enjoyment of it led to the formation of Wayfarer Games, with a physical version of the game becoming available on Kickstarter later this year. We caught up with Tristam Rossin and James Emmerson, two thirds of the new studio completed with Adam Hocherman, to find out…

No one ever said making a board game was easy. There are so many components that you’ll have to take into account. But it doesn’t have to be boring or difficult either. There are plenty of techniques and tools at your disposal, to create a title that boasts that entertainment factor and contains unique elements. Thinking outside of the box is the biggest challenge of all, but we’ve broken down some of the key areas of consideration for you to digest and ponder over. Each of these elements can make or break a game, and the choices made at each stage will impact all the others. But, if you lead with enthusiasm and a clear vision, then these pieces of the puzzle will slot together perfectly. GENRE The first thing…

A juvenile blackbird flew into my house the other day. It skittered through a horde of ‘gor’ standees patiently waiting for the continuation of our Legends of Andor campaign, then U-turned straight into the kitchen window before defecating over my carefully curated fossil collection on the sill beneath. After freeing the winged intruder I reflected upon the chaos it wrought upon the tabletop and smiled at the parallels between this incident and my partner and I’s first attempts at introducing our son to board games. Stressful, futile, and, to an extent, funny are words that spring to mind when recollecting these early days, but there was also the lingering feeling that we were somehow going about this the wrong way. Obviously, the promise of an ever-present third player is the…

THE LOCATION In a very old house, in an even older town, sits a board game that no one has played for generations. Covered in cobwebs and sat in a rusted metal box, you’re almost certain that some of the pieces are missing. But when your character picks up that board game, they are sucked into its world, alongside your party. You might have started your campaign in a fantasy town, or perhaps in the depths of the Wild West, but when your character looks up, they’ll find they’ve arrived in a strange world of metal chess pieces, checkerboards, wooden blocks, and golden dice. Having been sucked into the board game, your character has entered a landscape inspired by the board games from every reality in the Multiverse. Mix and…

This month we’ll be relaxing on the island of Hawaii, soaking up its gaming history and basking in its contemporary tabletop scene. Representing somewhat of a departure for this column, though, Hawaii is no longer an independent country, becoming an American territory in 1898 and eventually an American State in 1959. With that said, our first area of focus predates Hawaii’s subsumption significantly. When Captain Cook first made contact with the island in the eighteenth century, the ancient Polynesians had already long been enjoying the tactical challenge of the checkers-like Konane. The Hawaiian natives typically played the game upon carved volcanic rock (pahoehoe) dotted with sunken pits, using shards of white coral and black lava stones for playing pieces. Konane boards (or ‘papamu’) were also believed to be used for…

HIVE Perhaps the pinnacle of modern abstract games. There’s no board, the table becomes a creeping, crawling, nest of beasties. Your aim is to capture your opponent’s queen bee by completely surrounding her. Tiles are added one by one, and then everyone moves in their own way. It’s a thoughtful game of strategy and planning. There’s a loose theme of insects, but it’s minimal and serves on the whole just to make the game easier to put into words, rather than having to talk about surrounding the yellow tile and the movement properties of the blue or green tiles. MASTERMIND A now classic two player game from the 1970s. One feature of abstract games is often “perfect information” which simply means everything you know, I know. Nothing is hidden. There…

Designer: Paolo Mori and Remo Conzadori | Publisher: PlayPunk A hoy! Man overboard, literally, flip him over and put him on the board! Captain Flip is a family-weight strategy game, laced with push-your-luck elements that’s all about putting the best pirates down (or up) for the job. It’s super simple, you have a board with some spaces on it, waiting to be filled with characters drawn from a bag. Take a tile from it and decide if you want to use the face you’ve just seen, or if you want to flip it over and use the unseen back of the tile. Careful though, once you decide to flip it over, there’s no going back! That’s about the extent of gameplay, each tile face could be one of a handful of…

Designer: Robin David | Publisher: Games 4 Gamers & dlp games “Trepanation?” my mum says, as I get the box out at the family dining table, “didn’t they try to do that to Chekov?” I had been concerned that the theme would be off putting, but in the end, I set it up as Mum and Dad tried to remember the Star Trek storyline and everyone was immediately on board. My experience aside, as themes go, this one is a little out there. Trepanation invites you to play as fraudulent physicians, putting on shows to be the most renowned quack in town. Think Dr House meets Derren Brown. You get a player board, five meeples in your colour, and a random couple of starting resource tokens. Playing order is decided…

Designer: Anthony Howgego, Konstantinos Kokkinis & Dávid Turczi | Publisher: Artipia Games It’s not often that I have to give a professional disclaimer for a review; but in “real life” I’m actually a doctor, working in A&E and a variety of other areas. Rush M.D. is a game simulating the speedy admission, treatment and discharge of patients as quickly as you can. Depending on your viewpoint, I’m either the perfect person to review this game, or uncomfortably close to the action already. If you’ve not heard of Rush M.D., the easiest touchstone is the addictive video game Overcooked, where you manage a busy kitchen, moving your minions around and wait for them to complete activities. If you’d like a closer facsimile to that, there’s a board game called Kitchen Rush…

Designer: Jens Alms | Publisher: Free League Ad Astra is a campaign expansion for the popular Free League roleplaying game Mutant: Year Zero. It takes the action off the crumbled remains of human civilization on Earth and puts the spotlight on… the crumbled remains of human civilisation in Space. I’m afraid it’s pretty tough to cover much more ground without some serious spoilers. For one thing, Ad Astra picks up the storyline exactly where The Path To Eden adventure ends in Mutant: Year Zero, so knowledge of the core book is pretty much a requisite for enjoying this one. Not that it’s too railroad-ey; the writers actually provide a number of ways to tie in the beginning of this adventure to almost any of the other Mutant books and expansions,…

Designer: Wade Piche | Publisher: Ephyrean Games Dogfighting is perhaps the most epic type of duelling. It’s not the only type, obviously. There’s treading the crisp dawn dew as you walk ten steady paces away from your opponent, armed with just your wits and a freshly primed musket - and that might be a more romantic option - but there’s an adrenaline inherent to screaming across the skies that nothing else can match. And yes, my wife did insist on playing the Top Gun soundtrack throughout our games of Aerodome. Aerodome is a competitive game of aerial combat. Its setting is a universe where WWI biplanes can somehow compete fairly with the laser guided aircraft of the world of Futuria - or with digital creations from a fictional 1979 arcade…

Designer: Will Shick | Publisher: Atomic Mass Games Depending upon your knowledge of the wider Star Wars universe, characters like Hondo will either elicit a “who’s that?” or “finally, they’re making Hondo a playable character… all my dreams have come true”. However, no matter what side of the fence you sit on, there’s still the question of whether Hondo and his entourage of pirates are actually fun to play. Well, grab your peg legs or a bottle of rum and let’s find out. First up, let’s take a look at those miniatures. The pirates, including his second in command Gwarm, have all got pretty cool poses. This is particularly true of the female Weequay pirate, who’s captured ducking behind a crate while popping off a shot with her pistol. Hondo,…

TUSSIE MUSSIE The game I always think of first when it comes to print and play games, is Tussie Mussie. The Victorian art of using flowers to convey messages – for example, Hyacinths mean please forgive me, whereas carnations represent disagreement–turned into a I-Split-You-Choose drafting card game, which is most readily available as a print and play. Not only has it been well received, but it’s notable as the game that preceded the ever popular game of Wingspan by Elizabeth Hargrave. It’s published through Button Shy Games, and you can find it on PNP Arcade. UNDER FALLING SKIES Under Falling Skies felt like a real moment. The Space Invader like game uses 9 cards, 7 six sided dice, and 11 tokens, and was launched as a solo print and play…

Don’t worry, because we’ve got your back. Tabletop Gaming Magazine is a great place to look for inspiration, examples, and detailed essays about the minutiae of the industry. But, you don’t just have to rely on this magazine for guidance. There are lots of other incredible books and printed resources to glean some knowledge from. Here are some notable examples that you should check out! BASIC ROLEPLAYING: UNIVERSAL GAME ENGINE We’ve already put together a review of Basic Roleplaying in a previous issue, and ranked it a must-have! The book, designed by Jason Durall and Steve Perrin, and published by Chaosium, is an exquisite introduction to writing roleplaying titles. From designing worlds from scratch, to creating characters that bring that landscape to life, Basic Roleplaying gives you all the tools…

Card games are a genre unto themselves, but there are so many tabletop titles that utilise cards as part of their core mechanics. These valuable tools can be repurposed again and again. If you’re creating a game that feels as if there’s a piece of the puzzle missing, look to the benefits of cards to bridge those gaps. Cards play a variety of roles and whether it’s the character cards in the Forbidden series, or perhaps the items in Villainous, you’ll find that these interactive elements can bring an additional layer of gameplay to your title. HOW CARDS CAN BE USED Before diving into what should be featured on your cards, it’s important to analyse how cards can actually be used. What are the problems that they are solving, that…

Ellie Dix is the kind of board game designer who seems to be constantly spinning plates, and never letting one drop. She began in our industry publishing her own games with The Dark Imp Board Game Studio, before leaning more heavily into board game design. Now, Ellie offers board game design consultancy, develops for other publishers and licensed games, and assists with self-publishing, with an astonishing lineup of games awaiting us in future. If that wasn’t enough, you may remember seeing her name amidst the pages of Tabletop Gaming as a writer, or perhaps listed as the winner of the Hasbro Innovators of Play Challenge. We caught up with her to find out her journey, and any tips for future designers. THE GAMING CLASSROOM It’s long made sense to many…

Taylor Navarro is a TTRPG designer, editor and project manager who has created independently as well as for the DM’s Guild, Ghostfire Gaming and Evil Hat Productions. Readers may remember the review of her co-op cooking mini-game, Chefs de Partie. She is currently working with Poorna M on completing their latest title; Not Yet, a romantic TTRPG duet. I caught up with Taylor to find out about her journey to becoming a successful TTRPG designer and get some tips for aspiring creators. How did you get into creating TTRPG’s in the first place? I pushed my DM into publishing some of his stuff on DM’s guild, so I could edit it and get that experience. And then I started playing an Artificer in his campaign and… put them in a…

While I don’t do it as regularly as some, I love a rummage through the charity shops on an afternoon in town. I’m inevitably drawn toward the board games and have found several ridiculous bargains over the years. But rather than talk about the one-offs, I’ve put together some of the games I’ve regularly seen for as little as 50p or £1 that are well worth their place in any board game collection. What makes these games more common is having a UK publisher that shifted these games in bulk to toy and department stores, rather than just hobby stores, so make sure you take advantage if you see one peeking forlornly from behind the jigsaw puzzles. CHILDREN’S CARD GAMES MONOPOLY DEAL Hey! Wait! While I’m not going to claim…

Designer: Martin Chiacchiera & Silvano Sorrentino | Publisher: dV Giochi Detective games are always mechanically challenging to put together. To create a narrative that isn’t immediately obvious to the player, but has a satisfying payoff, is the biggest hurdle to get over. Many board games have tried and succeeded in this area, but there are more limitations on the card game format. Decktective: Bloody-red Roses attempts to stand out from the crowd in its simpler approach to the genre. With just a box, a set of cards, and a few plastic clips, Bloody-red Roses manages to achieve a great deal with such a simplistic setup. The basic concept behind this Decktective title is very simple. Players can work together to solve the murder mystery by progressing through the deck of…

Designer: Dani Garcia | Publisher: Alley Cat Games When starting a review, there’s always a tension between describing a game’s theme – which is usually the easier hook – or describing what the game does – what makes it a game, and not a story. Arborea’s theme is one of psychedelic fantasy creatures in weird ecosystems, and you, the peculiar, shamanic custodians of this natural world, embarking on pilgrimages to rejuvenate the wilds. Okay, so that’s what the game’s artwork and the blurb in the rulebook tell us is going on. But how does that translate into mechanics? Haphazardly, as it turns out. Each turn, you’re going to send one or more of your villagers on a pilgrimage, which means placing them on one of four conveyor belts of sliding…

Designer: Square Enix | Publisher: Square Enix You would think that Chocobo’s Dungeon: The Board Game is an incredibly niche product primarily aimed at the fans of the Japanese fantasy role-playing video game series Final Fantasy. For those unfamiliar with the series, Chocobos are giant – and adorable – avian creatures that act as equivalent of real-world horses. Yet they must be popular because Chocobo’s Dungeon is the third game featuring these feathery beasts in the title of the board game! Chocobos can do it all it seems! From stealing crystals in set collection card game Chocobos’s Crystal Hunt to guiding your friends to safety out of the forest in the dice rolling Chocobo Party Up! The premise of Chocobo’s Dungeon is no less peculiar than that of its predecessors.…

Designer: Matt Riddle, Ben Pinchback and Adam Hill | Publisher: Motor City Gameworks and 25th Century After a bumper crop of applause for Three Sisters, Motor City Gameworks are back with another home-grown roll-and-write point salad, once again with illustrations from Marlies Barends (this time working without Beth Sobel). It’s the weekend and players find themselves in New Orleans’ French Quarter for a Saturday night to remember. The party heart of the city, there are just eight ‘hours’ (rounds) to do as much as possible, drinking in culture and Creole Bloody Marys along the way. And nobody needs an invitation to jump in the line for a parade. The victor is whoever downs the most entertainment. As with Three Sisters, each person works from two sheets. The first depicts…

Designer: Travis Hancock | Publisher: Facade Games I would’ve loved to have been a fly on the wall for the inception of this game. We have an idea. We want a word association game, where you match words together, but we need a theme to add intrigue. Let’s think of some themes that work well with matching things and have wide appeal. What’s something that everyone loves? How about car parks? On the whole, I like to think a theme that works and is a genuine part of the game is a key difference between a good game and an excellent game. Genuinely, I’m a big fan of word games, but I’m at best apathetic towards car parks. And I’m completely unsure what to make of Parkade. This small box…

Designer: Nils Hintze | Publisher: AMC Networks & Free League Publishing Initially created by writer Robert Kirkman and artist Tony Moore, The Walking Dead began as a graphic novel series from Image Comics and has expanded into an impressive universe of dystopic storytelling. It was only a matter of time before the video games, initial TV show, and various spinoffs inspired an RPG set within this same harrowing landscape. The Walking Dead Universe Core Rule Book was consequently launched in late 2023, accompanied by a separately sold Starter Set that rounded out the experience. Created in collaboration between AMC Networks Publishing and Free League Publishing, the game was pushed on by a successful Kickstarter campaign, which was fully embraced by fans of the franchise. We’ll be reviewing the standard Core…

Designer: Javier Garcia de Gabiola | Publisher: Victory Point Games The small crossover between wargames and other tabletop games is larger than you’d think probable. Tabletop fans tend toward buckets of luck or very little, with a wider player count preferable. Your average wargamer prefers one-on-one conflicts where the sheer volume of luck-based decisions balance out in the long run, with the better tactician or strategist winning the war. Card-based war games have done a good job bridging that gap, with Twilight Struggle the best example at the serious end and Memoir ‘44 at the other. These games add more of a euro feel to proceedings, often limiting the number of units in play or replacing much of the direct conflict or dice-rolling with card play and political intrigue. Cuba:…