Brian Boru Review
Peer Sylvester is the designer behind one of my favourite games ever: The King Is Dead. When Brian Boru: High King of Ireland was announced, I got excited.
Peer Sylvester is the designer behind one of my favourite games ever: The King Is Dead. When Brian Boru: High King of Ireland was announced, I got excited.
Designer and self-publisher, Ben Downton (aka Prometheus Game Labs) has created a teeny-tiny little game which promises to give the same experience as a proper big-boy game.
The rather wonderful people at Big Potato Games sent me a selection of their games to play, so I made the most of the Christmas break to test them out. A collection of people from 9 to 70-something helped me out, and here’s what we thought.
English country gardens are exactly what spring to mind when I’m playing Flourish, the latest game from James and Clarissa Wilson, names you might remember from one of the prettiest games ever – Everdell
Whirling Witchcraft is the latest in a proud line of games which let you build a tableau, your ‘engine’, on the table in front of you. Rival witches are aiming to wield magic so powerful that they simply overwhelm their neighbours, claiming victory in the process.
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.