It’s a familiar game, for sure, but I think it’s more like a refinement than anything else. It’s like making the most amazing sandwich, then someone saying, “You know what, let’s see what happens when we add fewer flavours of crisps in this”.
Once you have more than four people sitting at the table, that’s when Between Two Castles has its ‘hold my beer’ moment.
Sometimes a game is good enough to stand on its own. It has a theme, but that theme is like a dog wearing a bumblebee costume – it’s cute, but it’s not fooling anyone.
The combination of trying to do well in the current round whilst setting things up for the next round is at the heart of Jackpot. And you know what? It’s tricky. It’s really tricky.
Whether you’re sick of -span games or not, Finspan is here, and you know what? It’s good.
What’s on the menu? Hors d’oeuvres of influence & backstabbing, followed by a main course of skullduggery and shenanigans.
Shackleton base is built around some seemingly simple actions which belie how deep and malleable the game is. Like a drainpipe full of play-doh, maybe.
You can keep your Marvel and Cthulhu cash-ins, it does nothing for me. Yet here I am singing the praises of a game I love that’s wearing Tolkien’s fantasy garb.
Wayfarers combines traditional worker-placement, dice-as-workers, and tableau-building and it does it brilliantly. Like, chef’s kiss good.
Faraway is one of those games that actually deserves the hype, and deserves its recent As d’Or win.
