In space, no-one can hear you scream. Luckily they can hear you shouting “Oh my god, I can’t believe you did that! You absolute nerf-herder!”, because you’ll be saying things like that quite often when you play Gravwell: 2nd Edition.
For many people, board game nirvana is teams of finely-detailed miniatures beating the fluff out of each other. Godtear, from Steamforged Games, is a game which epitomises the idea, where warbands of humans, creatures and… rocks throw down the gauntlet and vie for domination of the battlefield.
You’re sitting in a busy train station, wearing a pink carnation in your buttonhole, and reading a copy of The Times. A man in a fedora sits down on the bench behind you and says “The geese have flown south for the winter”. You reply with “Yes, but they’ll return in the spring”.
My first foray into the world of proper wargames is with the game with the longest title in my collection. Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India 1917-1947, to give it it’s full name, is an asymmetric game from the undisputed masters of the modern wargame, GMT Games.
Do you know that feeling at the start of a game of Chess? Your opponent makes their first move and you immediately start trying to get into their head. What are they doing? What’s their plan? That’s how Senjutsu gets after just a game or two.
Spooky is a great word. It conjures up images of ghosts, ghouls, monsters and horror, but does it through the lens of something safe and fun. It’s kid-friendly, it’s all things Scooby-Doo, and it’s one of my favourite feelings. Vast: The Mysterious Manor aims to recreate that feeling in the poster child for all things spooky – a haunted mansion.
Complete challenges, earn points, laugh, and get to know your guests a bit better. Let me tell you, when you play Final Challenge, you’re going to know everyone around the room a lot better than when you started.
If you yearn to recreate the thrill of cubicle life of a brown-nosing office minion, then I have the game for you! Welcome To Sysifus Corp, from designer Wonmin Lee, is a highly interactive game, which sees the players take the roles of employees at the eponymous Sysifus Corp, in a cat-and-mouse race to be the first to their performance review.
When I first saw the name ‘Subastral’, I immediately thought “Cool, definitely a space game”. I was wrong. Subastral in this context refers to exactly what it describes – below the stars. The focus is our own blue marble, our own speck of beauty on the canvas of cosmic insignificance: planet Earth.
I really like Z-Ball. It quickly turned from a game I wanted to play a few times to give it a fair review, to a game my son and I take when we go somewhere, because we really enjoy playing it.
