Tabletop Games Blog - board game reviews and discussions with a personal touch

The Chancellor's new reign had begun, as the Exiles had fled to the far reaches of the land. They had failed in their attempts to usurp the ruler, but here was another chance for them. They would muster their warbands, campaign against the Bandits, explore the world until eventually, they were strong enough to try again and finally succeed in overthrowing the leading power. Yet, they could never b...

I think we can all agree that 2020 has been an "odd" year. It all started to well, with lots of promise, but then deteriorated into a right mess. In this article, I want to look back at the year that's nearly gone and talk about the ups, the downs and everything in between. Read the full article here: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2020/12/29/2020-in-review-topic-discussion/ Links AireCon : https:/...

As is customary at the end of a calendar year, it's time for my top 5 board games of this, rather odd, year and for me to announce the winner of the Top Table Award 2020. Let me say that this year, I happily allowed games into the top 5 list that were published before 2020, as long as these games were new to me this year. There is a clear winner for me, not just based on the number of plays, the a...

Harald Lieske was born in 1975 in Siegen, Germany and is an illustrator, game designer and musician. After beginning to study art in Siegen, he switched to studying design in Münster with a focus on game illustration and comics. Even during his studies, he already created relationships with publishers and was created illustrations for a few games. During this time he also worked on a handful of ga...

Many of us in the board game hobby love our collection. Some of us have many, many Kallax shelves with dozens upon dozens of games, others, like myself, have maybe 80 or so small games stashed under the sofa and in a small cupboard, and others still only have a handful. Normally I would say, it doesn't matter how many games you have, but for the purpose of this article I want to look at if maybe s...

It was getting dark, which meant it was time to light the campfire. We had already collected plenty of wood and tinder and someone had started to build the first layer of the fire. Now we were going to take turns and add more wood to it. After all, we were on a teambuilding camping trip, so we had to show we could work together. Of course, most of us were very competitive and soon people were star...

It is the time of cheer and joy - and giving: Christmas. Of course, for many of us it's about receiving gifts, but there is also a lot of joy to be gotten from giving. If you think Christmas has become over-commercialized, then it's especially important that you give a gift - and I don't mean buying someone something, but giving away what you've already got. I'm talking about giving away some of y...

"Asbestos and its use have a long history. A naturally occurring mineral, asbestos was once celebrated for its seemingly wondrous resistant and strengthening properties until it was declared a human carcinogen by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer in 1987. [...] This odd dichotomy between the recognition of the harmful effects of the mineral and lure of the...

Mihai Georgescu is a freelance artist living in Scotland. He enjoys drawing goblins, painting miniatures and having too many hobbies. Throughout his career, he has created band logos, album covers, video game assets, and really silly sketches on sticky notes. He is most proficient in Adobe Photoshop and, more recently, Clip Studio Paint. His most ambitious project so far has been the continued wor...

As you can probably tell from my review of The Crew, I love trick-taking games. I grew up with them. I learned to shuffle cards when I was about six and started to play Skat with my family when I was about eight. In secondary school, I learned Doppelkopf. I didn't play them for many years after I left school and it was only when I played Vivaldi at Gaming Rules' evening during last year's Essen Sp...

Space, the final frontier. We're on a 50 mission journey to find a new planet in our solar system. We have to work together to seek out new theories, new experiments and new proof. It's no trick and we have to boldly go, where no scientist has gone before. These are the adventures of The Crew by Kosmos. Read the full article here: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2020/12/05/the-crew-the-quest-for-pla...

The old topic of "house rules" keeps cropping up. Some of us are purists and feel that you have to play games with the rules they came with, because otherwise you won't get the experience that the designer intended. Others feel that tweaking a few rules here and there can make a game more fun for you and the people you play with and that designers want us to enjoy their games. In this article, I w...

I was ready. It seemed like an impossible task, but I was mankind's only hope. I had to do what I could and fight my way through the ever-increasing number of machine parts, which were making the machine stronger and bring it closer to sentience. It was a matter of taking it one machine part at a time until I reached the core and was finally able to put an end to the Doom Machine by Nathan Meunier...

Sabrina Miramon is a French illustrator based in the UK who works mostly on boardgame and video game art, but also does the occasional book illustration. She originally studied 3D, but after a few years decided that she preferred drawing and painting. Her artwork has appeared in games such as Ecos : First Continent, Coral Islands, Welcome to DinoWorld, Planet and many others, having worked with pu...

As a board game reviewer, you need to have access to board games. That's obvious. Some reviewers rely solely on games they bought themselves, maybe got as presents or borrowed from friends, while others will only review games sent to them by the publisher or even the designer. Many reviewers will rely on a mix of both. What I want to look at in this article is how review copies, which are (usually...

We were sitting quietly at each end of the sofa in the living room, fully engrossed in our needlework. It was so relaxing to use our hands and make something. Arts and crafts. That was the way. We looked at each other for a moment, seeing the contentment in each other's eyes. I reached into the bag to pick out another piece of material to add to my quilt. It would look all higgledy-piggledy, but t...

The longer we enjoy our hobby and the more games we play, the more our taste in games is likely to change. As a reviewer, I can only write about a game as I feel about it at the time, but even if my taste in games changes, the review will remain on the blog. So the question is whether a review should stay frozen in time or if it should be revisited with a fresh perspective. Let me try and answer t...

We had all the plans ready, planning permissions had been sought and approved, contractors had been signed up, the project manager was ready and a rough schedule had been put together. We also knew what building materials we needed and where to get them, so it was time to build our Micro City by Thistroy Games. Read the full article here: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2020/11/14/micro-city-saturda...

Natalia Rojas is a self-taught artist and illustrator from Colombia living in Tampa, Florida. She specializes in highly detailed and realistic graphite and coloured pencil drawings and loves to create portraits of people, pets and wildlife, as well as meaningful pieces that could be anything from a portrait of a loved one to a special item or a still life. She has worked on the board game Wingspan...

As we all know, different people play games for different reasons and with different goals. Even the heaviest of games can be played in all sorts of different ways, and I don't mean with different strategies in mind. Sure, in an 18xx game, you probably want to do everything to win and it's unlikely that people will play it who just want to build scenic routes going through cities that they like -...

The seasons began again. We had to build our rice paddies, fill them with water, plough them with our buffalos, plant our rice and wait for it to grow. We had to be clever about how we divided the land to make the best use of the most fertile soil. We also had to have enough help to get the harvest in, but overall, we had to be patient and wait for the end of the Seasons of Rice by Button Shy. Rea...

So, the convention season for 2020 has drawn to a close, and it’s obviously been a very different set of experiences compared to The Before Times. The last show I actually physically attended was AireCon back in spring, and even that was under the shadow of the then-upcoming nationwide lockdown in the UK, a last hurrah before we all spent the summer indoors. Since then, many and various show organ...

"...crisis on Wall Street as Lehman totters towards..." - "...worries could wreak havoc on markets..." - "...banking giants rush to raise capital..." - "...markets in disarray as lending locks up..." - "...sweeping plan to fight crisis..." - "...vast bailout..." - I switched off the television. The news wasn't good and it was clear what we had to do to stop the world markets from collapse. It was...

Jessi Cabasan is a freelance artist based in Co. Meath, Ireland. She works in a variety of industries including games, logo making and traditional pencil portraits. She designed the artwork for the game board and cards for Luzon Rails published on Kickstarter in 2020. She is skilled in graphic design and illustration with Affinity Designer on the PC, Artstudio Pro and Procreate on the iPad and pho...

If you have played a number of games, you will have noticed how the pace in some games changes over time. A game might start slow and then speed up towards the end, or it keeps an even pace throughout. Some games even slow right down in the last round. In this article, I want to look at this more closely and see what affects the pace of a game. Read the full article here: https://tabletopgamesblog...