If this is your first game of this sort, there’s a good chance that’s the first thing you said. There’s a ton of stuff in the box. Physical props, flyers, a beer mat, police reports, CCTV stills, and a bag with a code on it.
Oooooooh, mysterious!
The Shores of Tripoli is a two-player, event-driven wargame from Fort Circle Games. It’s set on the Barbary coast of North Africa at the turn of the 19th Century, and it’s great.
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is not only as piratey as a middle-aged man in eyeliner, it’s a darn good game too.
The Guild of Merchant Explorers doesn’t just look like a fancy version of Kingdom Builder, it actually plays like one too.
Eleven surprised me. Eleven has shown me that it is possible to make a good game based around a sport, as long as it doesn’t try to directly mimic the sport itself.
Let me guess. You found your way here because you’re board-game-curious and heard that Obsession has a Pride and Prejudice / Jane Austen vibe. How am I doing so far?
If you found your way here as the result of looking for a review of Cuba Libre, there’s a good chance the question fuelling your Googling was: “Is this the best COIN game for a newbie to the series?”. The short answer is yes.
Shake That City is a tile-laying puzzle game with really light rules. The (very tenuous) theme has you choosing a series of tiles to make your own little city on your 5×5 grid boards. “But Adam, how am I – a lowly civil engineer – meant to choose which buildings and infrastructure go into my city?”. Don’t worry, friend, that’s where the cube shaker comes in.
You’re on a shuttle, heading from Ganymede (one of Jupiter’s moons) to one of the moons of a red dwarf called Demeter. You’re heading there because they’re extremely similar to Earth, and as luck would have it, they’ve discovered dinosaurs on one of the moons.
Dinosaurs. In. Space.
Pearladora is a game set around a series of lagoons, and in these lagoons are piles of pearls, just waiting to be claimed. The inhabitants of the islands, dotted around the lagoons, want to be the best and to collect the most pearls.
