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Let’s face it. The pandemic has made a huge impact on the world overall, including, of course, board games, which is what I want to focus on in this article. Without being able to meet in person, many of us have changed how we play games, while others have stopped playing board games altogether and turned to other forms of entertainment. All of that has directly impacted the design and development of new games and I want to try and evaluate what that impact is. (This topic was inspired by the always wonderful Bez.) Personally, I was able to successfully move our weekly games night online, which is great, because I still get to play games with my friends (mostly) every week, and it’s the closest to a real games night that I can achieve given the situation. I have also started playing more often with my wife in the evenings than we used to. It’s one of our ways to escape what’s happening in the world and allow us to think about something else for a while. However, I know many other people who have stopped playing board games and have turned to video games or stopped playing altogether, because the day-to-day has taken over and doesn’t leave enough capacity to deal with anything else for the time being. I don’t know how the overall amount of board game play has changed, but I would venture that it has either roughly stayed the same or that playtime has actually risen. I reckon probably the latter, given that more games seem to be sold all the time and that more and more board games are now available in digital format and given that online platforms are reporting huge increases in subscribers and overall playtime. The answer to the question about how this change has impacted the design and development of new board games seems to me all about moving online. It seems more and more developers are taking advantage of digital platforms to get their games prototyped and also playtested. I’ve taken part in two online playtest sessions myself, which seemed to be very productive for the designer. I’m not a designer myself, but I assume one advantage of online platforms is the opportunity to record sessions with relative ease, allowing for later playback and analysis. There are a number of tools that allow you to record the screen and computer audio, which are usually free and relatively easy to use. Doing that for a physical playtest session relies on cameras, lighting, etc., which is a lot more involved and often more costly. However, it does allow to film the players’ faces and see their body language and their physical actions. As a designer, you can probably tell a lot from someone’s body movements. You can definitely more easily see someone’s emotions, which is very hard to tell from someone’s voice in an online playtest session, even if video chat is used. Of course, the best way to gauge players’ emotions is in a real-life, face-to-face playtest session. However, there is probably a lot more work involved when trying to take notes of what’s being said, what actions someone took, the scores, etc., unless you do have video cameras rolling and record the audio as well. There is another implication to moving online of course. Some types of physical board games are virtually impossible to faithfully convert into the digital world. Dexterity, speed and party games fall into that category. Imagine flicking wooden discs across the table to hit a target. Not so much of a problem in real life, but a completely different experience online. On the other hand, digital games can be very helpful when it comes to housekeeping steps in a game. Shuffling cards, tracking scores, etc. can be handled automatically, but for a playtest session which is trying to see how the game would behave in real life, you don’t want to use this sort of automation, because it wouldn’t be available in a physical game. At the same time, there is no way of shuffling cards that I know of, when playing online, other than letting the platform do the shuffling for you. One last thing is reaching playtesters. Digital platforms tend to allow designers to reach out to a bigger audience, at least when you compare it to how many people you might be able to reach at a convention or when trying to arrange real-life playtest sessions. At a convention, you’re limited to the people attending and from those you rely on people having time to and wanting to play a game that’s in its early stages and will probably be not as exciting as the final game. If you want to arrange a real-life playtest session, you’re limited by the physical location of people and their willingness to travel to wherever you want them to meet – on top of having willing playtesters. It probably ends up being the same sort of people and it’s no surprise that designers traditionally playtest each other’s games at their design club, which might meet once a month. On the other hand, arranging online playtest sessions removes the need for people to be in the same place at the same time. There is no travel time, no venue needs to be found or booked, etc. The logistics are much simpler and people are probably more likely to accept an invite, because they can play at home. You’re likely to find a wider range of people to playtest your game, because everyone does this in their spare time, rather than at a convention, where everyone is constantly trying to get to the next booth or the next appointment. So, yes, how games are playtested is changing – and has already changed. It will affect what games we will see coming out this year and probably in the near future. Designers will have to change their approach to playtesting or bide their time until we can meet in person again. Some games will be delayed as a result or maybe never see the light of day, which is a shame. On the other hand, if you always wanted to playtest a game, but were put off doing so at conventions or didn’t want to go to a board game club that was holding playtest sessions, then keep an eye out for online playtesting, which more and more publishers are doing. If you can be more active there, we can help designers make their games a reality and ensure our hobby continues to grow. If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)

Release Date: 2012Players: 2-4Designer: Seiji KanaiLength: 15-30 minutesArtist: Kali Fitzgerald, Andrew Hepworth, Jeff Himmelman, John KovalicAge: 10+Publisher: Z-Man GamesComplexity: 1.0 / 5 Buy from Zatu I had to get my message to the Princess. It was vitally important that she would hear this, but I had to be extremely careful. Many people were plotting against her, and against me, so nobody could be trusted. I had to try and get past the guards, the handmaiden and others to reach her. My heart was beating in my throat and my emotions were welling up. I tried to keep it together, because I was so close to delivering to her my Love Letter by Z-Man Games. I know, Love Letter is almost a classic game, being eight years old. Yet, it still exudes a lot of charm and is a great game to introduce people to modern board games. It’s really easy to teach and learn and relatively quick to play. Everyone starts with a single card and on your turn, you draw a card and then play one of the two cards you have in your hand now. It couldn’t be easier really. Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that. The cards portray different characters from the royal court, such as guards, handmaidens, all the way up to the king – but the highest card of all is the princess. The aim of the game is to end a round with the highest card – and not be killed or otherwise die during the game. You keep playing until one player has won a certain number of rounds, depending on the number of players. When you play a card, you get to carry out an action. One type of card allows you to swap hands with another player or make them, or yourself, discard their card and draw a new one. Another protects you from other cards, which is often very important, because a lot of the cards are about ousting other players. You can try and guess what card someone has in their hand and if you’re correct, they are out. You can also secretly compare cards with another player and if you have the higher card, they’re out. In fact, most of the time you’re trying to knock the other players out of the game and if you’re the last player left, you win the round. Each round in Love Letter is very quick, so even if you’re removed early on, you don’t have to wait long, because you’re back in the game in the next round. Player elimination really isn’t a problem in the game. As you can probably tell, Love Letter is a bit of a memory game, because to play it well, you need to know what cards are still in play. Mind you, we always play it open, revealing which cards were played, making it a lot easier. Personally, I don’t like the memory element in games where it’s really just a matter of card counting, so we remove that element and it makes the game more accessible to a wider range of people as well. Love Letter has a large luck element to it, levelling the playing field further, but it’s not all about luck. You do need to consider which card to play and a bad decision can have fatal consequences. There is also a good amount of social deduction in the game, because when you play with the same people regularly, you can probably tell if they’ve drawn a certain card and you do need to try and keep a poker face on as much as possible, so that you don’t give away when you draw the princess for example. The fun in Love Letter really comes from that social element for me. Drawing a card and deciding which of the two cards to play is great, but ultimately it’s watching other players’ reactions as they draw cards or when you announce that you want to compare hands with another player to decide who has the higher one. You keep an eye out for subtle tells to help you choose the player who has a low card and will therefore be removed from the round. If you want a quick, fun game that is easy to teach and quick to play, then you can’t go wrong with Love Letter. Buy from Zatu If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Useful Links Love Letter: https://www.zmangames.com/en/games/love-letter/Z-Man Games: https://www.zmangames.com/ Transparency Facts I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way. I bought and paid for the game myself.At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind. Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)Music: Now We Ride by Alexander Nakarada (https://filmmusic.io/song/6074-now-we-ride)License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

It is nice when you have a regular games group, be it friends or family or a mix of both. You get to play games regularly, you can share each others’ collections, you can maybe even decide to buy games together and split the cost and there are many other positives when you have a group of people to play games with. What I want to talk about in this article, is why I think it’s so wonderful to learn a new game together with a group of people you regularly play with. I don’t think many people like the learning part of playing a new game. It can be interesting and maybe people don’t really mind, but it’s more of a necessary evil, because everyone wants to get on with playing the game, than spend time reading rules or listening to a rules explanation. Yet, when you have a games group that you see regularly, you will have found a way of dealing with learning rules. Every games group will have their own approach, which may differ from game to game, but often it’s someone within the group who teaches the game. It could be the same person, because they’re really good at teaching, or maybe it’s whoever bought the game and wants to introduce it to the others. Maybe your group’s rule is that everyone needs to learn a game in their own time and however works best for them, before you all play it together. However, whatever it is, it’s just nice that you know what’s expected and between you, you have worked out a way that works well and that everyone is comfortable with. Of course, learning the rules is only the first step. The next thing is to play the game and master it, which is another form of learning. Again, it’s nice when you all start out at the same level when you start playing a game together as a group. Nobody is an expert yet, so everyone can explore their ideas, try out their strategies and find something that suits their play style. Chances are, some people will grasp a game more quickly and get better at it faster than others. In our games group, there is someone who tends to really quickly grasp a game and they tend to win the first few times we play it. However, it still feels nice learning to master a game together. The person in our group who grasps games quickly finds it hard to express their understanding of the game, but nevertheless, we always discuss afterwards how we found our first play and what we’ve learned. We try and share what we’ve learned, so that next time we play we can all improve. Over time, everyone will (probably) get better at the game, as you learn more with each play, but as everyone adjusts their strategies, you have to adapt to those changes. Again, it’s really only something that happens when you play the same game with the same people. Together, you all improve your understanding of a game and as you do, you change the way you play, which in turn affects how the game works for you as a group, which means everyone has to find new ways of winning that are no longer available, because other players have learned to defend themselves against your previous approach. It’s a wonderful dynamic, where everyone needs to adapt to everyone else’s changes in approach. I suppose, you do get something similar when you play the same game with different people. Suddenly, a strategy that always meant victory for you doesn’t work any longer, because the new people you play with play the game differently, forcing you to find a new solution. The problem is, you can never test that new solution again, if you don’t play with those people again. Another wonderful thing about playing with the same group of people regularly, is the feeling when you finally win a game, after trying and failing many times before. I remember finally winning chess against my brother. It wasn’t so much about defeating my brother, even though that did play a part, of course, but more about being able to win at chess, which I had never won against him and generally usually lost whoever I played with. Winning a game that you usually lose is a great feeling, but winning that game against the same people you played many times before feels even better, because they have shown how well they play the game up until that moment when you finally clinch victory. That makes me sounds like a bad winner, but rest assured, I rarely win games, so I think I am allowed to enjoy a victory, when it does eventually happen. So when I do win, I don’t jump up and do a victory lap, I don’t pump my fists in the air and I don’t rub it in. Ultimately, for me playing games with a regular group of people is very much about sharing an experience together and learning something new as a group. It’s the social aspect, that’s important, and the fact that there is something to look forward to for me each week. Not that there is nothing else for me to look forward to, but my regular games evening is definitely important to me and I cherish the friends who share that time with me. I’d love to hear if you have a regular games group yourself. How often do you meet? How do you approach learning new games? What do you like about your games group? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)

Release Date: 2020Players: 2-5Designer: Michael “Geis” Geithner, Martin Thiele-SchwezLength: 15-30 minutesArtist: Alex WohlrabAge: 12+Publisher: DDR MuseumComplexity: 1.0 / 5 The crowds were gathering outside, asking difficult questions, asking to be let in, not sure if we still had any control over them – but we fobbed them off with excuses, sent them to a different office and generally put up a smokescreen. We hadn’t finished our final project yet. There was so much left to do, so much evidence to destroy or get out of the back door. We didn’t know how much time we might have left, when we finally heard the chanting outside: “Stasi raus, es ist aus!” by DDR Museum. As a German growing up in the West, I knew about at least some of the terrible things that the Stasi, the Staatssicherheitsdienst, was doing in the East. As the secret service of the German Democratic Republic, they didn’t spy on foreign agents or foreign countries – they spied on their own people in their own country. They encouraged people to report each other, turning children against their parents, siblings against siblings, friends against friends and neighbours against neighbours. Nobody knew who they could trust or who might report them for watching West German television or listening to Western radio. People disappeared, either for a few weeks or sometimes forever. As it turned out later, these people were tortured and made to reveal other dissidents or sign confessions for things they never did. The Stasi was creating an atmosphere of fear among the population. They collected large archives of files on a huge number of East German people, containing names, addresses, phone numbers, photos, telephone recordings and many other pieces of information that the government appartus was collecting on everyone. These files were supposed to provide the proof that someone was committing treason. The problem was, when the German Democratic Republic eventually reached its end, the same files were also proof of the terrible actions that the Stasi was responsible for, with names of agents and staff, allowing the new government to prosecute the perpetrators of the regime of terror that the Stasi had imposed. So the order was given to destroy all of the files – shred them, burn them and do whatever it takes to eradicate all traces of what the Stasi had done – and that is where the game Staus Raus, Es Ist Aus! begins. The thing is, you’re not a citizen trying to storm one of the service’s offices and retrieve those files, but you’re a member of Stasi staff whose aim is to destroy as many files as possible, while buying some extra time by giving out misinformation to the people waiting outside the doors, until eventually the crowd becomes too big and the game ends. The game is a deck of cards, most of which represent secret files, which can either be put onto your “shredded” deck to give you victory points or used as an action. The actions are varied, ranging from allowing you to shred more files or taking a card from another player and shredding that, depriving them of points, and much more. Of course, when you use a card as an action, it won’t give you victory points – and the player with the most victory points at the end wins. Some of the cards represent people who are gathering outside your office building. Having a few waiting is fine, but when the number of people waiting outside everyone’s offices reaches a certain number, the game ends immediately, representing the storming of these office buildings that happened in real life. You can take a turn to send someone away, but they are just added back to the draw pile, meaning they will eventually come back again. The thing is, what you do is tricky. On your turn, you draw three cards from the draw deck, putting them face-up in front of you for everyone to see (which is unusual for such a secretive organisation). Then you can take up to two actions: shred a document to give you victory points, i.e. put one card onto your “shredded” deck, take a person card from in front of you and put it at the bottom of the draw deck, hopefully for someone else to draw in the future, or use a card’s action ability, but losing the card’s victory points. At the beginning of the game, shredding files is your main job, but as more people cards are drawn, you need to start getting rid of them, so that the game doesn’t end. Also, you’ll have started to get some really helpful document cards, which give you useful one-off actions or abilities, but they’re also worth a lot of points. So you have to think whether you shred them to get into the lead or use them to slow someone else down. The pace really ramps up as the game progresses and you can imagine how the people started putting more and more pressure on the Stasi. They had to decide between sending people away, shredding documents and doing over their colleagues. It is also very interesting to be put into the position of a member of staff of the Stasi. You don’t know if you should root for the people or for the Stasi to destroy all the documents. As you play, you do relive the history that unfolded at the end of the 1980s. The game helps with this, because every card refers to an actual file or piece of information that wasn’t destroyed and recovered later on. The cards also tell you about a number of events that happened, and the game is sent out with the cards in a specific order that follows the actual timeline, so you can learn a lot about that part of East Germany’s history from playing the game. Stasi Raus, Es Ist Aus! also teaches you the game as you play it. Again, the deck is stacked in such a way as to introduce new things as you go along. Once you’ve played it, you can either stack it back in the same order, so you can teach it to others, and the cards are numbered so it’s really easy to reset the game, or you can just shuffle everything up and play it that way, which gives you endless replayability without losing the historic context and educational content. The whole game was carefully put together and was intended to teach you about those events before Germany became one again. It’s well researched and really well made. I know, I’m probably biased, but I highly recommend you buy the game and learn about what the Stasi did. It could be a very timely lesson from history. If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Useful Links Stasi Raus, Es Ist Aus!: https://onlineshop.ddr-museum.de/buecher-spiele/422/stasi-raus-es-ist-aus?c=148DDR Museum: https://onlineshop.ddr-museum.de/Unboxing video: https://youtu.be/oSbAsWqcgE0Playthrough video: https://youtu.be/CBZlnCK9G_A Transparency Facts I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way. I bought and paid for the game myself.At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind. Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/) Unboxing Video Playthrough Video

Some games just click. There are very few rules and you can basically start playing after reading a couple of paragraphs. Other games take longer to learn, with pages upon pages of rules, turns that consist of multiple phases or maybe some sort of conflict resolution steps that take a while to grasp. In fact, even seemingly simple games can take a long time to master. So in this article, I want to look at how patient we are with games and why some games deserve our perseverance. I think there are no hard or fast rules about how simple or complicated a game should be. We all like different types of games and sometimes we want something light and breezy, while at other times we really want to use our brain and take our time enjoying a game. Yet, there seems to be a threshold at which a game is just more work than fun or at which a game just outstays its welcome. Again, that threshold will be different for each and every one of us and probably vary day to day or hour to hour. The first point of contact with a game is usually the rulebook, or maybe a rules teach. If a game has a lot and/or very complicated rules, we expect it to keep us entertained and involved for a fair amount of time. We would expect a game like that to take more than an hour to play, ideally several hours. Basically, the more rules there are and the more complicated they are, the longer it takes us to learn a game and therefore we expect it to entertain us for a long time. I don’t think anybody would happily spend an hour learning a game that lasts only five minutes, at least not usually. Sometimes it’s not necessarily the length of time of a single game that matters, but how much we enjoy the experience, because if we have a lot of fun while playing even a short game, we will happily play it over and over again. So if you happily play a game that takes five minutes dozens of times, the game rewards your efforts in learning it in the first place. Yet, spending an hour learning rules for a game that says that it lasts only five minutes is still not usually something people want to do – and that’s where I think maybe we should persevere, at least for some games. That’s the difficult part though. We take a risk investing our time, and often our money, in a game without knowing if we enjoy it, so it’s easier to just look at the learn-time / playtime ratio and just dismiss games that are unlikely to give us more time of enjoyment than it took to learn them. Of course, with the deluge of games available at the moment and the seemingly endless supply of new games, there is even less incentive for us to persevere with a game, because it’s easier to just get a different game. So I think I’m fighting a losing battle if I ask you to give games more of a chance sometimes. At the same time though, there have been games I’m glad that I persevered with. Oath is the most recent example and the game that sparked the idea for this article. During our weekly games nights, which are now online, we spent one evening learning the game, another evening playing half a game using the tutorial and then got to play it properly, but still with many rules mistakes and even more checking of the rulebook, on the third evening. So it took us three weeks to learn Oath and get to play it. That seems like an insane amount of time. Yet, I’m so very glad that we stuck with it and didn’t give up. Of course, it helped that one of our games group had pre-ordered the game, so there was a financial incentive to learn it, as well as the hope that we will play the physical copy once we can all meet again. Without that, maybe we would have given up and I would have missed out on this wonderful game. There is another angle to this. Some games are really quick to learn, set up and play – but then take ages to master. Again, it is possible that you play it a couple of times and then give up, because you just never win. You just don’t see how to play it effectively, while your friends seem to have worked it out and beat you every time. So it’s easier to just move onto another game, rather than spend time working out what you need to do to win. That game, for me, was Scythe. I just couldn’t work out how to play it well. I hated it when I lost, yet, the next day, I was eager to play it again and couldn’t wait for our games group to meet again the following week. Of course, I lost again the following week and the week after that, but eventually, I did some research and learned some strategies. Suddenly, I started to win. It wasn’t so much an investment in time for me, but a huge emotional investment. I had a real love-hate relationship with the game. Again, it helped that one person in our games group had bought the game, which isn’t cheap. So I felt it was important to help my friend get their money’s worth out of it. So, I don’t know if I have convinced you to give some games another try and maybe persevere for a bit longer, because you might miss out on something. If you think there are games you might want to give another go, then please let me know in the comments below. I would also like to hear how you decide if a game is worth spending time on. It’s always great to know how others approach our hobby. If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)Music: Acoustic Breeze by Bensound (https://www.bensound.com)

Release Date: 2014Players: 2 (only)Designer: Mikkel BertelsenLength: 15-30 minutesArtist: Mikkel BertelsenAge: 8+Publisher: Klask ApSComplexity: 1.0 / 5 Buy from Zatu I could hear screeching tyres and gunshots coming from video game machines, the melodic sounds of fruit machines and some general hubbub of laughter, talking and other noise. I was standing at one end of the air hockey table, with my opponent on the other side. Yet, even though it felt like we were at some sort of amusement arcade, we were both at home and hadn’t left the house. We were just about to play a game of Klask. I know, you’re probably thinking that I’m stretching the meaning of tabletop game, but as Klask clearly sits on top of a table and it’s a game, I think it fits perfectly. It’s a wonderful game of fast reflexes, a good eye and just having lots of fun. If you have ever played air hockey, then you will immediately understand how Klask works. The aim of the game is to use your striker to manoeuvre a little ball into the opponent’s goal, which is a small, circular indentation at their end of the table. It’s not quite that easy though, as there are many ways to lose yourself, before you get anywhere near scoring yourself. If you ever lose control of your striker, or when your striker ends up in your own goal circle, or when you pick up two of the three small “biscuits”, as the white obstacles are called in the game, your opponent scores instead. Also, you have a magnetic peg that you hold underneath the table and that controls the plastic striker on top of the table. If you’re too forceful, the striker can easily come off and fly across the table, losing you one point. Also, because the “biscuits” are magnetic too, they can easily be picked up by your striker. It’s really quite difficult to do it right and try and score a goal while avoiding losing a point yourself. In fact, a good strategy to score is nudging the biscuits into your opponent’s half of the table, making it harder for them to manoeuvre and making it more likely that they pick up two biscuits and lose a point. Now, I said that Klask is about having fun and of course it is, but there are a lot of people who do take it very seriously, with competitions being held in many countries around the world. Yet, when I played it with my wife and daughter, we quickly decided to just enjoy it and not take it too seriously. There is one thing we decide to change though. The plastic ball that you’re supposed to use is just not practical. Unless you have a completely level table, the ball constantly rolls away, making it very hard to play the game. So we decided to replace it with a 1 Pound coin, which functions more like a puck. It’s a good size and weight and it slides nicely across the smooth surface, so is a perfect replacement for casual play. Other than that, Klask is a really high quality product. The table is heavy and sturdy, with nice rubber feet that keep it in place as you play. The magnets are amazingly strong and everything feels really good. It’s definitely worth the money, if you want to experience air hockey at home without having to buy a full-size table. Klask is small enough to fit onto any kitchen table or even coffee table. I don’t think there is much else to say about the game. It’s a lot fun and the closest you get to feeling like you’ve gone to your local amusement arcade without actually leaving the house. Buy from Zatu If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Useful Links Klask: https://klaskyourway.com/Big Potato Games: https://bigpotato.com/ Transparency Facts I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way. I was sent a free copy of this game by Big Potato Games, who distribute the game in the United Kingdom.At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind. Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)Music: Motion by AShamaluevMusic (https://www.ashamaluevmusic.com/)Sound Effects: BBC Sound Effects (http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/)

Madeleine Fjäll is a 2D-artist who loves to make artwork inspired by history and fantasy. She has a bachelor’s degree in Game Design and Graphics and has a Higher Vocational Education Degree in 2D-graphics, which helps her a lot as an artist in the board game industry. Right now she’s working at Ion Game Design and is an artist for the games Pax Viking, Bios:Mesofauna and Dawn on Titan. Twitter: https://twitter.com/madeleinefjallWebsite: https://www.madeleinefjall.com/ Audio Transcript “Hi, my name is Madeleine Fjäll. I’ve been a board game artist since January 2020. “I became a board game artist because I’ve always loved to make illustrations and to make a very cool product at the same time seems like a good deal to me. It’s also a very diverse job since I get to do a lot of different things which I think is super fun. For example, I do bigger illustrations and then do some graphic design and some icons and smaller illustrations. “The art style I’m best known for I think is semi-realism. I don’t know if I’m very known for an art style though, so… “The first board game I was an artist for was Pax Viking, but I have done a few other projects before with friends that never got published. “The work I’m most proud of was for the board game Pax Viking because it’s a topic that is very dear to my heart having grown up in a family which has been doing historic reenactment with a focus on the Viking age since I was seven. So it was really an honour to be able to use my knowledge about the Viking age, mostly about fashion history though, in this game. “I like creating artwork that shows story from moods, characters and environments, but I also enjoy just making character designs and in these illustrations, I do also like to try and use textures sometimes. “I get my inspiration from history and interesting things that exist in our world. Like I could get a lot of inspiration from a weirdly shaped tree, but also games books series I like that have cool designs and ideas. “I think the most important part of making artwork for board games is readability and consistency because things need to read well and show what you need to know, and to make a nice experience, the art and mood needs to be consistent everywhere to make it more compelling and work together. “I think the most challenging part of making artwork for board games is the connection between art and game design because there’s a lot of time something that looks good but it doesn’t play good and to understand and make compromises with art to not destroy the intended gameplay is challenging. Also to make the games colourblind friendly so it’s available for more people which I think is very important, but sometimes challenging to make the colours and shapes work. “The longest I worked on art for a board game was for Pax Viking. It took me six to seven months from start to finish, with a few other things in between. There was a lot of iterations between playtests where I sometimes had to change a lot in the bigger art files. “In my view, more board game artwork should just do what they want to do. I don’t think there’s a correct way to do art and you can use whatever style you see fit. “The artists whose style I admire the most are a lot of different people and I can’t really pick between just a few, but I do love, for example, Sam Hogg, Little Ulvar, Tomas Duchek, Even Amundsen because of their style, colours, designs and textures. “My favourite colours are green and purple, so I’m basically a Disney villain. “What very few people know about me is that I have a very big burn scar inside of my left hand. It looks pretty cool I think and kind of like I’m a fire bender. “If you wanted to become a border game artist yourself I would tell you to study fundamentals and don’t stress and do what you love. “If you want to get in touch you can reach me on Twitter at madeleinefjall or write an email to me which you can find on my website at madeleinefjall.com. Thanks.” Transcript by Make My Game Travel (https://makemygametravel.com) If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you!

I think like pretty much every hobby, playing board games is about having fun. You might prefer to play solo, you might like to play with your partner or you have a group of friends you play with. You probably play different types of games with different people. Maybe you play lighter games with your loved one in the evenings, because you’re both tired after work and want to have some relaxing time together, but when you play with your games group you want something complex and thinky to really stretch your brain. Ultimately though, I think it’s all about having fun. So the question is, where the fun of playing board games comes from. The answer is, as so often: it depends. Different people have different things they enjoy, and what someone enjoys also changes from day to day or hour to hour. When it comes to playing games, it will also depend on who you play with. In my experience, people want to have a feeling of achievement and progression when they play games. In many games, you start with something very basic and simple and you slowly make it better and better. That’s certainly true for engine building games, of course, but area control, deck building and even tile laying games can all give that sense of progression and achievement. I would say that even in a game of Carcassonne, you do feel like you’re progressing. You all build the map together, you add to your own cities, roads or monasteries. You place meeples and take meeples back when you score a feature. It feels like things grow in front of you and by the end of the game you feel like you’ve achieved a lot, even if you never achieve everything and some cities, roads or monasteries remain unfinished. Fun can also come from beautiful illustrations, custom meeples, chunky dice, realistic resources or even from the ever-popular miniatures. A clean graphic design can also help with making a game more fun. The visual element is certainly important to me and I think a lot of people feel the same. It’s not just the visual element, but often also the tactility. Rolling chunky dice, playing with metal coins, moving amazing miniatures or otherwise touching and physically interacting with the game can be a lot of fun. I would even go as far as saying that for some people, visual appeal and tactility can be the main source of fun when they play games – at least sometimes. I think many of use have played a game that isn’t actually that exciting or clever, but because it looks or feels great, we still had a lot of fun. In a similar vein are IPs. A game that uses a popular book, film or other intellectual property can sometimes get away with actually not offering much in the way of gameplay or complexity or anything new and exciting, yet because the players love the IP, they love the game. I’m sure many of us seen this also. Of course, that is not to say that great IPs always lead to terrible games, just like great artwork or components always mean the game itself is bad. When a great game is married with great artwork, components or IP, then it really shines, and there have been games like this that will have ticked all of the boxes for us. Storytelling is also often very important to creating a fun experience. Some people I know just love spinning a story as we play a game. They seem to get most of their enjoyment from narrating what’s happening and linking it all back to what happened earlier in the game. They don’t care much about winning, but when another player’s actions fit perfectly into the narrative the game has told so far, they are over the moon and have a lot of fun, and it’s often those moments in a game that we all remember. On the other side of all of this is that fun can come purely from the mechanisms and the gameplay. Some people love an abstract game much more than one with an amazing setting or theme. They get their fun from playing well and maximizing their turns, when they’re most efficient with their resources or make the most points. Artwork, components, story and everything else has no impact on their enjoyment of the game. Often, for these people, it’s more about solving the puzzle that the game presents. They basically play solo, even when they’re not playing alone. They probably enjoy multiplayer solitaire games just as much as solo games and just as much as multiplayer games, because really it’s about how well they do on their turn and how efficient they are, rather than how well they play against other players. Finally, I think there is a group of people for whom the fun comes from socialising with others. Spending time with friends or family, maybe a loved one, is more important than anything else about the game. To be honest, I think for many of us, that’s at the core of playing games with others. So even when we enjoy a complex strategy game and love that we’re playing really well and enjoy the wonderful art, ultimately the most fun we get is from being with a great bunch of people – even if these days it’s not in person, but virtually. In fact, I think that’s why our hobby is so great. You can play games with complete strangers and have a good time. Each of you might see the fun in something different, but everyone has fun in their own way. Board games provide the shared interest that allows us to be together, even if we’re all very different as individuals. Board games can be a focal point that allows us to be ourselves, or become someone else, while having fun. If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)Music: Tranquilize by Purple Planet Music (https://www.purple-planet.com/)

Release Date: 2021Players: 1-6Designer: Cole WehrleLength: 45-120 minutesArtist: Kyle FerrinAge: 10+Publisher: Leder GamesComplexity: 4.0 / 5 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 be sure if their fellow Exiles would deceive them and maybe even swear allegiance to the Chancellor, instead of staying strong and following the Exiles’ code of honour, sticking by the sacred Oath by Leder Games. The game hasn’t been release yet, but I’m already writing a review. That’s only possible because the publisher released a Tabletop Simulator version of the game that I was able to play with my games group. I’m sure the game will be tweaked a little bit more before the official release, but it’s more or less finished, so any changes will be minor, which is why I think it’s all right to review the game in its current state. Of course, I will only be able to speak about the gameplay experience in this article, as well as maybe the artwork, but because I’ve not seen the actual, physical components, I can’t talk about how these feel or how good they are, even though I can talk about how well the virtual components work – and this last point is quite important. The reason is, that I’m really impressed with how few components there really are to build a world that feels like it has a lot of depth and subtleties. There are eight location cards, which make up the three regions of the world. These alone already create depth, as they will have certain benefits or disadvantages, which will have a direct impact on how you will interact with them – or if you’d rather avoid them. Add to that a deck of cards that you can either use to give yourself abilities or that you play at a location so that everyone can use them. These “denizen” cards add more depth and interconnections to this world, which is really awe-inspiring to watch. Yet, on the table, this very detailed world takes up very little space. It’s rather crazy, because if you’ve seen how the game looks on the table, you will think that the world of Oath is rather boring and bland, when in fact it’s really deep and what denizens you play where and what locations you try and control will have a huge impact on the game. In fact, it does feel like every decision counts and the timing of your decisions count too. You have to think ahead and try and predict what the other players might be doing next, so you are prepared for it. After all, even in a three-player game, the world is very small and you are forced to attack other players or otherwise interact with them. There is no avoiding it. Actually, even if the world was much bigger, if you want to win, you do need to interfere with what other players are doing, making your proximity to your competition absolutely vital. It sounds like Oath is very hard to master, and that’s certainly true. It’s also quite difficult to learn, at least from the materials available online at the moment. The final rulebook and guides may be different and may make learning to play the game easier. It also doesn’t help that the online game has things set up for you, so you miss out on learning the names of the components in the game and what they do. Speaking of names, Oath does introduce quite a few terms that all have a specific meaning and it’s important that you learn those terms and understand them. Once you do, the game does start to flow actually quite well, but it did take me about three games before things fell into place and it was only during the fourth game that I felt I knew what I was doing. At the same time though, when you play the game for the first time, it already feels like you have control over what’s happening and even though the flow is slow and you probably end up referring to the rulebook quite a few times, by the end of the game you do feel like you’ve achieved something, even if you didn’t win. You will have gotten a sense of what adventures might await you the next time you play Oath. You will certainly know, if the game is for you or not, but do give it some leeway, as it’s one of those games that will take a while to learn fully and even longer to master. There is one thing though, that’s left me a bit deflated. I love playing as an Exile, where you have so many ways of winning, allowing you to try a wide range of different strategies or playing in a way that suits your style and giving you a feeling of satisfaction and achievement, even if it’s very hard to win. However, as the Chancellor, I felt like I didn’t really do anything to deserve a victory. It ended up being decided on the roll of a dice that I won. All I did was survive long enough to continue my reign into the next game. I suppose, surviving six or more rounds is achievement enough, but for me, it didn’t provide any satisfaction and even though I enjoyed the game itself in the role of Chancellor, my victory just wasn’t deserved in my view. There is one more thing that I’m not sure about and that’s the luck of the card draw. Another player and I both, and independently during two different games, noted that you really struggle to catch up with everyone else if you simply don’t draw denizen cards with suits matching the locations. The suits are important to gain favour, which is basically money, or secrets, which are the other currency in the game. If you don’t have matching suits, you will take a long time getting enough money to do anything meaningful in the game. Saying that though, even when the suits didn’t match, we were still able to run grand campaigns and come close to winning. I guess, like in so many games, there are different ways to victory and you have to play according to what the game presents you with. If the card suits don’t go your way, you need to find a different way to win. Yes, despite all my concerns, I really can’t wait to play Oath again, even if I do take on the role of the Chancellor again. I love how the world is different every time and how cleverly everything is linked together. I love how the outcome of one game influences the next, if you play through a campaign. I love how a relatively small setup creates such a deep, complex and wonderful world that you can explore. I love how you have so many different ways to victory. I just love Oath. If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Useful Links Oath: https://ledergames.com/products/oath-chronicles-of-empire-exileLeder Games: https://ledergames.com/ Transparency Facts I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way. I used the official Tabletop Simulator mod to play the game for review.At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind. Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)Music: Village Ambiance by Alexander Nakarada (https://filmmusic.io/song/6586-village-ambiance)License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

I think we can all agree that 2020 has been an “odd” year. It all started so 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. Before I launch into it though, I would like to thank everyone who supported me this year: everyone reading the articles on my blog or listening to the audio version on my podcast,everyone watching my YouTube videos,everyone liking or resharing my posts on social media,everyone who recommended the blog, podcast or YouTube channel to others,everyone who follows me on Twitter or LinkedIn,everyone who joined my Discord server and had a chat,everyone who bought something from my Spreadshirt shop,everyone who added a little money to my PayPal pot,everyone who donated to my efforts using my Ko-Fi page, andlast, but definitely not least, my wonderful Patreon supporters who continue to support me every month. All of your support is especially meaningful during these tough times, where nothing is certain and things are much more difficult for pretty much everyone. So, thank you again to ALL OF YOU! Let’s start with some statistics. During 2020, I published 54 “Topic Discussion” articles, 51 game reviews, 12 episodes of the “Let me illustrate” podcast series and 33 unboxing videos. I had over 10,000 visitors to the blog and over 7,000 video views. I spent over 400 hours writing, editing, recording and otherwise working on all of my content. I also worked on 12 episodes of the Tabletop Inquisition podcast, together with my co-host Antoinette, which adds another 50 hours or so to the total. 450 hours a year equate to an average of nearly one and a half hours every day of the year, including weekends and holidays. Those feel like impressive stats to me, but it’s all very much worth it, given the wonderful support I have received from you all, and given the lovely people I have met and got to know along the way. It’s been hard work, but also a lot of fun. So, after all of these hard stats, let’s look at the year that was. It all started really well. There was a lot of hope, lots of ideas, lots of potential. I had great plans to meet publishers and introduce myself to them in person at the various conventions in the UK and, of course, Essen Spiel in Germany. I had written an article to appear in the UK Games Expo show catalogue and Antoinette and I were going to have a live episode of our podcast during the event. Yet, as we know, it all turned out differently. The last convention I attended this year was AireCon up in Harrogate. I think it was probably the last UK board game event this year as well. I had thought long and hard about whether or not to go, and I know a lot of people who decided it just wasn’t the right thing for them to do, so it was a tough decision to make. However, at the time, the government had not published any advice about not travelling and conventions were still allowed. So I went. The event itself was amazing and I was able to meet a lot of people, play quite a few games and generally have a really lovely time. Yet, it all felt a bit weird. I made sure I always asked if people were happy to shake hands or would prefer not to. So there was a mix of elbow-pumps, handshakes and no contact at all. Despite all that, I think the atmosphere was great and I feel that exhibitors and visitors got a lot out of it and it’s an event I do want to attend again, whenever that is possible, despite it being a very long journey for me. After AireCon, things changed quickly and it became clear that no further events would take place. Nobody wanted to publicly announce anything until the last minute, mainly due to contract clauses, but all of the big exhibitions did reschedule and offered an online experience instead. Additionally, publishers launched their own online events as well, which created an interesting mix of publisher focussed and more general “gatherings”. For me, attending a digital event proved more difficult, because I was at home. Going away for a few days to attend a physical exhibition creates a clear separation between work and home, which allows you to focus fully on seeing exhibitors, talking to friends and playing games. Also, there was no way of randomly walking the halls and accidentally coming across an interesting game. An exhibitor list, whether in print or on a website, just doesn’t provide for these chance encounters. However, publishers’ digital events do work, because there is a much smaller selection of games to look at and you’re more likely to be able to talk to the people you want to talk to. So for me, these do work, or at least work better than the larger exhibitions. Of course, digital conventions were great for people to attend who otherwise would not be able to, and I do hope that there will always be a virtual version of exhibitions to give people the opportunity to take part, even when physical conventions are possible again. The other effect of the global pandemic was that pretty much every game was released with a solo mode, as well as two-player versions of course. In fact, it does seem like there were more solo-only games released this year, but I might be wrong and I’m not much of a solo-player myself, so it’s just a feeling. Speaking of solo games, I have started playing solo myself now and even though I don’t think they’ll ever be my mainstay, I have certainly enjoyed playing them and will probably continue to play them in the future. 2020 also had various challenges outside of our hobby, of course. I say “outside of our hobby”, but we don’t live in some sort of bubble. What happens in the wider world does, and should, reach our community and be addressed there. So it was great to see the positive momentum the Black Lives Matter movement gathered this year and that it found support in the board game industry, even if there was some resistance and even rejection. It has been a long road up to now and the journey is by no means over, but hopefully, there is much more awareness and willingness to change things, in our hobby at least. I also think that the wider issue of representation and diversity has been highlighted by this movement and I have seen a large amount of genuine effort to improve it. I hope this will continue and we will keep moving forward. It does feel like it’s been a long year, for so many different reasons. It’s been tough for many of us, but I must say, overall I have focussed on every positive moment and I feel quite upbeat about the future. Whatever may happen in 2021, I know there are a lot of wonderful people in our community. So let’s focus on the positives and hope that we can all meet again in person very soon. If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Links AireCon: https://www.airecon.co.uk/Discord server #topic-ideas channel: https://discord.gg/wuPjy5TwGB Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)

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 amount of enjoyment the game brought and the nostalgia factor that the game has for me, but because this game took a well-established genre and took it to the next step, making it more accessible to a wider range of people. However, let me not spoil it for you, but start at number 5 and work my way to the top slot. #5 – Tapestry Release Date: 2019Players: 1-5Designer: Jamey StegmaierLength:  90-120 minutesArtist: Andrew Bosley, Rom BrownAge: 12+Publisher: Stonemaier GamesComplexity: 3.0 / 5 No, it’s not a civilization builder in the traditional sense, but thematically you do see your people live through generations and discover new technologies, explore new parts of the world and spread across the land. However, those discoveries can be quite random, allowing for your civilization to still have not developed a written language, but already use electricity. So don’t go into Tapestry expecting to recreate an alternative history of a fictional race that makes logical sense, but instead just enjoy the journey and accept that winning can be down, at least in some part, to the luck of the draw or the luck of your dice rolls. As you will see in my review, I do really enjoy the game and have played it now many times and it’s really only once you have played it a dozen or so times that it clicks a bit more and that imbalances of some of the factions become more obvious, even though I still don’t think all of them are as over- or underpowered as some might say. #4 – Jaws Release Date: 2019Players: 2-4Designer: Prospero HallLength: 60-75 minutesArtist: n/aAge: 12+Publisher: RavensburgerComplexity: 2.0 / 5 Remakes of classic films aren’t always better than the original. In fact, they’re often worse. Board game adaptions of great IPs have also often failed to deliver, focussing on visual appeal and setting rather than gameplay. However, Jaws has achieved where others have failed – and then some. As my review shows, here is a game that’s partly co-operative, partly competitive, as one player takes on the role of the man-eating great white shark, while the others take on the roles of the human team trying to put an end to the animal’s killing-frenzy. Mixing hidden movement of the shark with open discussion of the human characters and intentionally dividing the game into two acts, create an intense game where nobody quite knows who is having the upper hand. #3 – Dune Release Date: 2019Players: 2-6Designer: Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge, Peter OlotkaLength:  60-120 minutesArtist: Ilya BaranovskyAge: 14+Publisher: Gale Force NineComplexity: 4.0 / 5 A great story as the backdrop for a board game is always a good start. Add to that intrigue, asymmetrical player powers, alliances and betrayal, area control, combat and a lot more, then you end up with an amazing game that you want to play again and again, but also want to savour and enjoy – like a fine wine, even though I’m not a huge fan of wine. Dune does it all amazingly well. My review will tell you more, but if you know the books or have seen the film, or if you’re eagerly awaiting the remake of the original film, and you like board games with direct player interaction, a large map to keep an eye on and lots of surprises and constantly changing alliances, just like the sand dunes on the planet Arrakis, then this game will be for you. #2 – Back to the Future: Dice Through Time Release Date: 2020Players: 2-4Designer: Chris Leder, Ken Franklin, Kevin RodgersLength: 45-60 minutesArtist: Matt Taylor, Pilot, Sam DawsonAge: 10+Publisher: RavensburgerComplexity: 2.0 / 5 Co-operative games aren’t for everyone, I know, and often suffer from the alpha-player syndrome, but when a game taps into the Back to the Future films and adds an interesting twist to dice-rolling and dice-placement, then I think, you stand a good chance to make a great game – and Back to the Future: Dice Through Time is a great game – and my review confirms this. No, the game doesn’t do anything to prevent one player from taking over everything, and yes, you do have to have spare brain capacity to think through the best way to use the dice results everyone has got to allow you to achieve the optimum result as a team, but it’s one of those games where, at first, you can’t believe that it’s ever possible to win. Then you play it a few more times, you learn new tricks and you get closer and closer to winning, but never quite get there, until you finally do and it feels so great – and if you’re a Back to the Future fan, then it feels even more amazing. #1 and Winner of the Top Table Award 2020 – The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine Release Date: 2019Players: 2-5Designer: Thomas SingLength: 15-30 minutesArtist: Marco ArmbrusterAge: 10+Publisher: KosmosComplexity: 2.0 / 5 If you have read my review of the game, you will know how much I love this game and why. For one, I grew up with trick-taking games, so seeing this ancient genre of games being reinvigorated by a new contender, which turns trick-taking into a fully co-operative idea, is amazing. It gets even better when the game makes trick-taking much more accessible to people, so it’s easier to teach and easier to learn. Here is a game that ends up being played again and again and again, several times an evening, every evening a week, for several weeks and you just can’t stop. The pinnacle of any game, for me at least, is if it’s something my wife and I equally enjoy playing – and this one is all of that. So Kosmos has done an amazing job with The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine and very much deserves to win the Top Table Award 2020. Congratulations! If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Useful Links Tapestry: https://stonemaiergames.com/games/tapestry/Stonemaier Games: https://stonemaiergames.com/Amended setup for Tapestry: https://app.box.com/s/uqp6m71co7gdyfahz5qamp3bd7o1v06iTapestry review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2019/11/09/tapestry-saturday-review/Tapestry unboxing video: https://youtu.be/vT8kOHae9j4Andrew Bosley interview: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2020/07/22/andrew-bosley-let-me-illustrate/Jaws: https://www.ravensburger.org/uk/discover/jaws-game/index.htmlRavensburger: https://www.ravensburger.org/uk/start/index.htmlDune: https://www.gf9games.com/dune/Gale Force Nine: https://www.gf9games.com/homeDune (1979): https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/121/duneBack to the Future: Dice Through Time unboxing video: https://youtu.be/FUdEq4QZbtYBack to the Future: Dice Through Time rules teach video by Watch it Played!: https://youtu.be/loYoxo6-kowBack to the Future: Dice Through Time: https://www.ravensburger.org/uk/products/games/strategy-games/back-to-the-future-26842/index.htmlRavensburger: https://www.ravensburger.org/uk/start/index.htmlThe Crew: https://www.kosmosgames.co.uk/games/the-crew-quest-for-planet-nine/Kosmos: https://www.kosmosgames.co.uk/ Transparency Facts I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way. I was sent a free review copy of Tapestry by the publisher, but had to pay for postage from the US to the UK.I was sent a review copy of Jaws and Back to the Future: Dice Through Time by the publisher.A friend of mine owns a copy of Dune.I bought and paid for The Crew myself.At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind. Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)Music: Superhero Fanfare by Freesound (https://freesound.org/people/humanoide9000/sounds/505426/)

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 game prototypes. At the end of his studies, he had two prototypes, one of which (Das Gold der Inka) has already been published. Website: http://haraldlieske.de/ Audio Transcript “My name is Harald Lieske. I have been a board game artist since 2005. I became a board game artist because I love playing games and I love drawing, so it’s the perfect combination for me. “The art style I am best known for is having no certain style but a huge variety of styles. I love challenging myself with new styles I’ve never done before if it fits with the game I’m working on. “The first board game I was an artist for was Piratengold by LudoArt. The work I’m most proud of was for board games like Colonialism, The Cost, Kohle und Kolonie and others, because I also like working on special themes. So I have no certain favourite. I like creating artwork that is some kind of different or special. “I get my inspiration from simply everywhere and also very important for me: coincidence. I think the most important part of making artwork for board games is to keep it clear, because board game illustrations should support and simplify the understanding of gameplay mechanics. “I think the most challenging part of making artwork for board games is to define sizes of game components, like punch boards and cards, at the beginning of the working process, because this step defines how much space I will finally have for illustrations and often there isn’t that much space for illustrations left. “The longest I worked on art for a board game was for… I simply don’t know. I have been working on more than 100 games now, I simply can’t remember, because I’ve grown old in the meantime. “In my view, more board game artwork should show more variety in illustration styles. “The artist who I admire the most is none. I’ve seen so many different illustrations of different artists I really like. “My favourite colour is white, because any other colour works on it. “What very few people know about me is, I am a musician as well. I play bass guitar in a band called Zimt. “If you wanted to become a board game artist yourself, I would tell you that illustrating board games is about working with a tight time and money budget for the best possible result. “If you want to get in touch, you can reach me per email via my website haraldlieske.de.” Transcript by Make My Game Travel (https://makemygametravel.com) If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you!

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 some of us have too many games. (This topic was inspired by the always wonderful Bez.) There are many reasons why someone’s board game collection is the size it is. Some of us want to be able to play a game with anyone who visits (that is, once we can visit each other again), so we have a selection of different types of games available, even if we probably ever only play four or five of them regularly. Others are collectors of sorts, and maybe always want to have the latest and hottest games, or maybe they collect special editions or rare games. Just like any collector, these people will accumulate more and more games over time and will probably never sell any of them, because they’re all special and important to them. Chances are, many of these games will never be played, because they need to be kept in pristine condition. The common theme here is that a lot of the games in these collections either never get played, or maybe only get played once or twice and then put away and never again see the light of day – or maybe only once in a blue moon. That seems like a real shame, because games are there to be played and enjoyed, but it’s also an indication of our consumer society, our single-use approach to a lot of products. I fully understand how nice it feels to have a large board game collection. You have a feeling of pride, you’ve invested a fair amount of time, and money, into these games. You probably also made some tough decisions when it came to choosing what game to buy next. It feels like a life’s work and knowing that you have a huge choice of games to play, is just satisfying. However, maybe it’s time to change our approach. I would argue that we should take a long, hard look at our collections and see which games we played maybe once or twice, but probably won’t ever play again. Maybe there are games that are just a bit too complex and we can’t be bothered to invest more time in learning them. Maybe there are games that are only really fun at a player count that we will probably never reach. Maybe we have played a game so often, that it is no longer interesting and feels more like you’re going through a routine. I think many of us will have games at home that fall into one of those categories or are games that we’re unlikely to play again for other reasons. It’s time that we move these games on and let others enjoy them. You can sell them on, trade them for other games, give them to a charity, a community club, maybe even your local library or give them to a friend or family. There are probably other ways of culling your collection. Another option might be to have a games group to share your games with. I know, we can’t meet in person at the moment, but before this all happened, my games group was like that. All of us have a few games that we would play together. That would give us plenty to choose from, without anyone owning a lot of games alone. My friends would also often play with other friends or with their family, so these games got a good amount of play out of them. I think sharing games and maybe even loaning games to others, are great ways to reduce the need to buy lots of games. You can maybe even swap games with friends and family. Again, that’s something I used to do a fair bit, before the pandemic, swapping games with my in-laws. It meant I could play lots of different games without having to buy them all myself. Of course, there are also people who don’t share games or are part of games group. They just buy the odd game here and there, because a friend recommended it to them or it’s like another game that they love, but have played a lot now. These people will probably regularly move games on that they’ve played enough – and I’m sure they love their small collection and they love every single game in it. I think that’s where I want to be with my collection. I want to have only games that I enjoy playing and that I play regularly. There will be some games I will keep, because they have a special meaning to me, even if I play them hardly at all, but I think that’s fine, as long as it’s only a few and not a dozen. Of course, I will probably always have more games than I really need, because I review games, but I will always endeavour to move these games on, unless I really enjoy them and want to continue playing them of course. I think it’s important that we think carefully about what games we buy and keep. The less we buy generally, but also with regards to board games, the lower our impact on the environment. I appreciate that a game made from cardboard and wood is probably not as terrible as other things, but we’ve seen an increase in plastic miniatures, so our hobby is starting to have a bigger impact on the environment than it used to. Also, if we can share our games with others, maybe donate them to charities or community clubs, and if we generally pass our games on, even if it’s for money, I think we will have a more positive social impact than if we just kept the games to ourselves. I think our hobby is about having fun and it would be great if we could share that fun with lots of people. So what is your board game collection like? How many games do you own? Do you share them with friend, family or your games group? Do you ever trade games? Do you tend to cull your collection regularly and only keep those that you still enjoy playing? Do you think about the environmental impact of the games you buy? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please share them in the comments below. If you want to inspire a Topic Discussion article on this website, please head over to the Tabletop Games Blog Discord server and switch to the #topic-ideas channel: https://discord.gg/wuPjy5TwGB If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Links Discord server #topic-ideas channel: https://discord.gg/wuPjy5TwGB Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)Music: Upbeat Acoustic by AShamaluevMusic (https://www.ashamaluevmusic.com/)

Release Date: 2020Players: 2-6Designer: Rob SparksLength: 15-30 minutesArtist: Rory MuldoonAge: 8+Publisher: Alley Cat GamesComplexity: 1.0 / 5 Buy from Zatu 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 starting to show off. The head of marketing decided that adding branches vertically, balancing them on the base, was the thing to do. IT, of course, went one further and decided to light the fire in a couple of places to add extra peril. It was quickly turning into a mad competition of Tinderblox by Alley Cat Games. I think you get the gist. Here is a mad dexterity game, where you have to stack wooden piece on top of each other in a specific way. The more pieces have already been stacked, the harder it is for you to add the ones you need to add. If anything is knocked over or falls on the fire on your turn, you lose. That’s simple enough. However, there are a couple of twists here. First of all, you have to use little plastic tweezers to pick up and stack the wooden pieces. That’s harder than it sounds, because the tweezers don’t want to really hold the pieces tightly, so as you pick things up, they move around and if you squeeze too hard, they fly across the table, knocking over the fire in the process, unless you’re very lucky. The other twist is, that a deck of cards decides which pieces you have to stack and how. There are brown, long, square shapes, like the roads in Catan, which represent the logs, and cubes that are either red or yellow, which stand in for the fire. The cubes are a tiny bit bigger than the square face of the logs, meaning that your bonfire is very quickly unbalanced. The cards, that tell you what to stack on top of the fire, can be quite easy, requiring you to add a single log or fire cube, but more often than not are more difficult. You might have to put a log vertically, then balance a red fire cube on top, before you can put the whole thing onto the fire. Of course, you always have to handle the pieces with the tweezers, taking them out of the tin one at a time, assembling them on the table, then lifting the assembled section onto the bonfire in the middle of the table. Some cards make it even harder by making you use your non-dominant hand. It’s all a bit of fun, of course, and if you like Jenga, you will also enjoy Tinderblox. Most games are over very quickly, within 15 minutes, but the more you play, the better you get and soon you have assembled a giant, roaring fire that’s nearly touching the ceiling – or at least, that’s what it feels like. The whole game comes in a mint tin, so you can imagine how small the cards are and the tweezers. I love mint tin games though, because you can easily fit them in your coat pocket, a rucksack or your handbag and have them with you everywhere. You just might want to make sure you play at a stable table or if you play outdoors, that it’s a quiet, calm day, without any wind, or you’ll be increasing the difficulty a few more levels. So, if you want a quick, fun game, that’s easy to teach and learn, quick to play and fits in your pocket, then Tinderblox comes highly recommended. Buy from Zatu If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Useful Links Tinderblox: https://www.alleycatgames.com/tinderbloxAlley Cat Games: https://www.alleycatgames.com/ Transparency Facts I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way. I backed this game on Kickstarter and paid for it myself.At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind. Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)Music: My Dream by AShamaluevMusic (https://www.ashamaluevmusic.com/)Sound Effects: BBC Sound Effects (http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/) Unboxing Video

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 your board games to spread the joy of our hobby to others. I totally understand that this isn’t something everyone can do. However, if you’re in the lucky position of owning more board games than you actually play, then go through your collection and decide which ones you definitely need to keep, maybe for sentimental reasons or because you still play the game, and which ones you could give away. It might seem hard, but I can assure you that it will feel amazing when you’re done and know that someone else will enjoy your game. You then have to decide how you want to gift your games and you have several options. There is still time to drop your game to your local supermarket, many of which collect games to be given to charities who will distribute them as Christmas presents to families in need. We used to give away a game when we attended the family Christmas service in our local church, but even though that’s not going to happen this year, it’s still worth checking with your church if they accept donations to be given away as Christmas presents. Local community clubs also often accept game donations, but do check with them to make sure they can accept your gift at the current time, or if you need to take extra steps to ensure they can accept it. Sometimes libraries also gladly accept board game donations, but again you need to check with them first to make sure they are able to take donations. Children’s hospitals are also usually open to board game donations, either to be used as presents for children in their care or to be put into the general pool of games to be played in the hospital itself. Again, do check with them first to make sure what you have to do to ensure they can accept your gift. You can also donate your board games to a charity shop of course, so someone else can buy them at a much more affordable price and you support the work of the charity as a whole. That might not feel quite as rewarding as giving your games away for free, but it’s still a very worthy cause and many charities need extra support in the current climate. If you want to look closer to home, you can give some of your games to neighbours, friends or family of course. Just make sure you pair the right game with the right people, which isn’t always easy of course, but when you succeed, you will have given a personal gift to someone close to you and spread the hobby further. Lastly, you could sell your games and donate the profits to charity. That will take quite a lot of effort and time, but it will be extra rewarding when you deposit the money into the charity’s account. Make sure people know that the sale is for charity and offer the option to pay more than the asking price, because people tend to be more generous when something is for a good cause. I’m sure there are other ways in which you can spread some Christmas joy with your board games. Have you done something similar? Have you got some other ideas? How does it feel when you give your games away? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you. If you want to inspire a Topic Discussion article on this website, please head over to the Tabletop Games Blog Discord server and switch to the #topic-ideas channel: https://discord.gg/wuPjy5TwGB If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Links Discord server #topic-ideas channel: https://discord.gg/wuPjy5TwGB Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)Music: Christmas Party by AShamaluevMusic (https://www.ashamaluevmusic.com/)

Release Date: 2020Players: 2-4Designer: Armando Canales, Lyndon M. Martin, Brian A. WillcuttLength: 60-75 minutesArtist: Harald LieskeAge: 12+Publisher: SpielworxxComplexity: 3.5 / 5 “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 potential to make a profit on it is by no means new to industry or unique to asbestos. As game designers and game players, however, this is thought provoking.” From the rulebook of The Cost by Spielworxx. It took me a long time to pluck up the courage to write a review about a game that deals with such a controversial topic. I wanted to have played it often enough and with enough different people to make sure I would understand how the game deals with the topic and how it works from a gameplay persepctive, as well as hear how playing The Cost makes people feel. After all, as the player, you’re trying to make as much money from mining, milling and selling asbestos in order to win, without paying any attention to the very real human cost this activity had. The Cost is not your usual action selection, area control, resource management game, where you’re just pushing cubes around the board. It’s not going to be for everyone. So I always made sure to let people know what this game was about and the real-life events that it is built around, allowing everyone to decide for themselves if they wanted to try it. The Cost is, as I said, an action selection game with area control and resource management. All the mechanisms in this game are a little different to other games, adding more interest to The Cost and giving it a strategic element. For the action selection mechanism imagine a grid of hexes, like in Catan. Players select one corner where three hexes converge to take the three actions displayed on them. Once a corner has been chosen, it’s blocked and other players have to use a different corner. Already you can see that you need to think about what actions you want to carry out and what actions you might want to block for other players. The area control is about where you build your mines and mills, the railroad tracks you lay or the ports you build. Railroad tracks and ports can earn you money if other players use them. Mines and mills are your main source of income though, and mills can be used by other players, except that you end up with the refined asbestos to sell yourself and make money from. Resource management is about investing in countries to give you local currency that allows you to mine, mill and sell your asbestos there. Even the flow of the game is a bit different. There are basically four phases, two of which are more to do with housekeeping than anything else. First, you select your actions, via the hexes, as explained above, but these actions are all about getting money or building mines, mills, railroad tracks or ports. They have an effect on the game boards and even though the choices you make during this phase are vitally important, it doesn’t feel like anything much is happening. That all changes in the third phase, where players take turns to mine, mill or move/sell asbestos, or pass. Players have to continue taking one of those actions until nobody can do anything else. It is in this phase that you run your engine, so to speak. Mine some asbestos, move it to a mill, mill it, move it to a market to sell for a profit. You can see the asbestos move around on the board until nothing is left and the third phase ends. So already it’s clear that The Cost is different from other games. The graphic design actually adds to this feeling. It all feels rather industrial, a little bit dusty even and the pattern of asbestos fibre panels can be seen throughout, constantly reminding you what this game is about – that is, if you do actually need reminding. The thing is, when you mine or mill asbestos, you always have to make a choice – do it safely and protect your workers, but pay a fair bit of money, which erodes your profits significantly, or do it unsafely, putting your workers’ health at risk, but costing you nothing and therefore giving you the most profit. The decision seems very clear here, but The Cost makes it harder by making the real-life implications obvious. If you want profit, one of your workers dies and is moved to a coffin area on your player board, where that worker will stay until the end of the game, as a constant reminder of the choice you made. That’s where the game starts to make you feel uncomfortable, if you weren’t uncomfortable enough from the beginning when you heard what The Cost is about. It gets worse though. Once you go down the route of letting your workers die, you need to get new workers, of course. The thing is, hiring workers doesn’t cost you anything. You don’t even have to pay them anything when you put them to work, if you accept that one of them will die. You really feel how cold this industry was – or in some places still is. People, the little worker meeples in the game, are just a commodity, with new workers being readily available to take the place of others who didn’t make it. It’s all about profits and making the most money. Unless you completely divorce yourself from the theme, you do really feel that as you play The Cost. The game then ratches it up one notch. When the game ends, you don’t get penalised for the dead workers you have on your player board. There are no negative points, nothing. The designers intentionally didn’t want the game to get involved in the decisions you make. They didn’t want The Cost to chastise players. They wanted the players to make the decisions in the game themselves – and even though that’s probably one of the more controversial decisions the designers made, I do actually think it works. However, to make it work, I think it’s vital that all players read the rulebook, especially the introduction and all the call-outs that describe how your actions in the game relate to real-life events and what the consequences were. Without that, the game could feel more like any other game where you just try to make the most money, even though I’d say that the artwork, such as the coffins at the bottom of player boards, are by themselves very clear as to what you do in the game and what effects your actions have. Yet, when you read the rulebook and learn about asbestos, then play The Cost, you can see how the world changed from wanting as much asbestos as possible to some countries banning it completely, making it harder for you to make a profit. If you’re not careful and too greedy, you can even force an early game end. If too many workers die, it is possible that all countries ban asbestos, at which point it’s all over and whoever has the most money at that point wins. Otherwise, the game ends after four rounds – yes, only four rounds. One last thing about the rulebook, before I close. I found it very hard to read, but once I set up the game and followed the steps through, it all made sense and the gameplay flowed really well. Yet, every player gets a double-sided A4 reference guide, which gives you an idea of the complexity of this game and that it will take a while to play well and quickly. I also want to say that I have a physical copy of the game, but all my plays have been via the free Vassal module online. So I can vouch for the component quality of the game from the printed game I own, which is high and what you would expect from Spielworxx, and my experiences of the gameplay from my digital exploits. So, let me finish by saying that it is very clear that The Cost was cleverly put together to create a mechanically interesting and challenging game, while treating the serious subject matter with respect and even trying to teach players about asbestos as they play. If you can stomach it, then I highly recommend you try The Cost for yourself. If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Useful Links The Cost: https://www.spielworxx.de/produkte-shop/The Cost unboxing video: https://youtu.be/mn4fAwY3j8EThe Cost Vassal module: http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:The_CostSpielworxx: https://www.spielworxx.de/ Transparency Facts I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way. I was sent a free review copy of this game by the publisher.At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind. Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/) Unboxing Video

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 work on the board game Arcane Blaster Casters as the art half of Battle Boar Games. Website: https://www.allbrotnar.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allbrotnar/ Audio Transcript “My name is Mihai Georgescu. Thanks for having me on the podcast. I’m a Romanian artist currently living in Scotland and I am the artist for Battle Board Games. “I have been a board game artist since about 2014 when a friend approached me about doing some prototype art. The prototype was a lot of fun so we just kept working on it together. “I became a board game artist because I hated animation. I was on a video game course but a lot of the local industry at the time was looking for artists who could do a bit of everything and animation just wasn’t my jam at all. Board games let me continue to have a creative output into games but without the need to animate. “The art style I am best known for is cartoony and vibrant with a strong focus on motion. I really enjoy drawing exaggerated poses with a lot of energy behind them. “The first board game I was an artist for was Arcane Blaster Casters. The work I’m most proud of was again for the board game Arcane Blaster Casters because I really learned a lot being part of the process from the beginning. I think as the game’s design evolved so did the art so now the game is a lot more inclusive and engaging. “I like creating artwork that includes goblins. They’re just so much fun to draw and they kind of embody the energy most of my artwork conveys: chaotic, lighthearted, in your face. I just try to include goblins in everything I do. “I get my inspiration from a lot of different sources: late 90s cartoons, metal music, speculative biology and natural landscapes form a big part of my influences. “I think the most important part of making artwork for board games isinclusivity, because I think everyone should be able to put themselves into the game. I think this hobby is for everyone but the artwork doesn’t always reflect that and in my opinion this is something that can and absolutely should change. “I think the most challenging part of making artwork for board games is finding the right balance between detail and readability, because I tend to get carried away. It’s something I find myself doing a lot in digital artwork, which is fine in most cases, but in board games it’s a different story since you’re limited by the physical size of the card or token you’re workingwith or working on. “The longest I worked on art for a board game was for Arcane Blaster Casters. I mean so far it’s taken me six years to have it mostly finished, though in my defense it’s been part-time work here and there rather thana constant workload and it involved a lot of prototyping and overhauls. “In my view, more board game artwork should move away from standard sci-fi and/or fantasy tropes. I like those settings as much as anyone else.I just think that there is room for a lot more innovative concepts in thosescenarios beyond star map with ship miniatures on it or elves, dwarves, humans and orcs at war with one another. “The artist whose style I admire the most is Eyvind Earle. I’m also a huge fan of Zdzisław Beksiński, H.R. Giger and Wayne Barlow, but Earle‘s landscapes are just mesmerizing. I discovered him from The Banner Saga video games where they use a similar style for the backgrounds. In terms of board game artists, Nick Nazzaro and Catherine Hamilton are among myfavourites. “My favourite colour is orange though I tend to use it pretty sparingly. “What very few people know about me is that I learned a lot of English by watching cartoons. I don’t want to dismiss my primary school teachers who were and still are excellent, but cartoons pretty much shaped my vocabulary as I was learning. “If you wanted to become a board game artist yourself, I would tell you to draw a lot, learn the principles of graphic design and learn how to guide someone’s eyes through the frame. I think those are key skills. “If you want to get in touch, you can reach me on pretty much any social media by searching for Allbrotnar – a-l-l-b-r-o-t-n-a-r – or Battle Board Games.” Transcript by Make My Game Travel (https://makemygametravel.com) If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you!

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 Spiel Messe that I rediscovered the genre. So I wanted to talk more about my fascination with these games. Trick-taking games are generally a rather specific genre of games and usually take quite a while to learn and even longer to master. I grew up with German trick-taking games, but of course, in the English speaking world, Bridge is probably one of the better known and rather popular trick-taking games. In Italy, you also find a lot of classic trick-taking games, such as Scopa or Briscola, and I’m sure there are many more trick-taking games that are popular around the world. These are all very traditional, classic card games, that have been around for centuries and are often played slightly differently, depending on the region or country they’re played in. They are all competitive at heart, even though many are played in teams, giving them a co-operative flair, where either one person plays against the rest, or the teams have the same number of players. All trick-taking games have some common terms. Suits and trumps feature in pretty much every trick-taking game. These terms are important and need to be understood, before you can play these games. In particular, the concept of “following suit” is important. It is this that means all players have to be honest, because everyone’s hands are private, so nobody will know if you did actually follow suit or not – until you play a card of that suit later in the game. For the same reason, you do have to be attentive to what everyone plays. There is a certain amount of card counting going on in everyone’s heads. You don’t necessarily need to know all the cards that were played, but knowing if others have cards of a suit and if they have any trump cards left are the sort of things you do need to keep in your head to play well. As a result, trick-taking games have a language that’s unique to them. Every card you play can convey information to the other players. In fact, every card you play should convey information to your teammate, but ideally no information, or as little as possible, to the opponent. Whether you take a trick, that your partner already has in the bag, or whether you play a card to offer up to be taken, it all has meaning and the response of the other players will give you more clues as to what cards they have or haven’t got. Even when you take a card from your hand, then hesitate, put it back and play a different card can give the other players a lot of information. In fact, any sort of hesitation is full of meaning, just as much as when you play your card very quickly, without thinking. Now, what I haven’t mentioned is that verbal communication isn’t really allowed in most trick-taking games, even though it’s very common to hear players happily announce when they take a trick or give their teammate a lot of points or challenge the opponents to take a trick. There is a lot of taunting and bluffing. Yet, announcing which cards you have, if you want the next trick or anything that directly reveals anything about your hand is strictly forbidden. Bridge is famously strict. In tournaments, there is only so much you can and can’t do, because long-term partners have found ways to signal information to each other in very subtle ways. Of course, if you play Bridge for fun, the rules are more relaxed, but it is amazing to think how important table talk is in trick-taking games. Trick-taking games aren’t this old-fashioned genre of games though. Vivaldi is a relatively recent revamp of the traditional Briscola Chiamata for example, and of course, The Crew is a new take on trick-taking games and the first version that creates a fully co-operative experience. So it seems that trick-taking games are here to stay. They’ve been around long enough and are still very popular and with new entries coming into the genre, I should be kept busy for some time to come. Have you played any trick-taking games? If so, what games have you played and how did you find them? If not, what has you put off trick-taking? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear form you. If you want to inspire a Topic Discussion article on this website, please head over to the Tabletop Games Blog Discord server and switch to the #topic-ideas channel: https://discord.gg/wuPjy5TwGB If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Links The Crew review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2020/12/05/the-crew-the-quest-for-planet-nine-saturday-review/Skat: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6819/skatDoppelkopf: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9364/doppelkopfVivaldi review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2019/11/23/vivaldi-saturday-review/Gaming Rules: https://www.youtube.com/c/GamingRulesVideos/Spiel Messe: https://www.spiel-messe.com/en/Bridge: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2181/bridgeScopa: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/15889/scopaBriscola: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11733/briscolaBriscola Chiamata: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/99696/briscola-chiamata Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)

Release Date: 2019Players: 2-5Designer: Thomas SingLength: 15-30 minutesArtist: Marco ArmbrusterAge: 10+Publisher: KosmosComplexity: 2.0 / 5 Buy from Zatu 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. After this rather average introduction, it’s time to look at this very much above average trick-taking game, that has taken the hobby by storm – or at least those people who love trick-taking games and want to share their love with people who don’t, or those people who have never played trick-taking games before, but want to learn and find out why this game is hailed as such a success. Trick-taking is really a mix of several mechanisms and concepts, and it’s something that’s very hard to understand or teach. Trick-taking games have been around for centuries, if not longer and each trick-taking game has developed its own language, which takes years to learn and decades to master. Trick-taking games are all about subtle hints and conveying information through the cards you play. Timing can mean the difference between victory and defeat. These games may often seem to involve a large element of luck and guesswork, but when played by masters, virtually every card is played for a reason and with intent. Trick-taking games also seem daunting and off-putting and are treated a bit like chess or modern heavy games, like 18xx or similar. People are afraid to learn them, because they don’t want to spend hours learning something that they might not even like. So for Kosmos to release a trick-taking game into the hobby is daring. Yet, The Crew has achieved something that even Skull King hasn’t quite managed. It’s a trick-taking game that you can learn within a couple of games, each of which will take less than half an hour. So within an hour, you will know how trick-taking works – even if it will take you a lot longer to master it. Where Skull King assumes that you know how trick-taking works, at least in principle, The Crew assume you know nothing about it. The rules are pretty easy to follow and even if nobody in the group has even heard of trick-taking before, you will be playing a few tricks and starting to understand how it works. Play a couple of games, or missions, as they are called in The Crew, and you will all get it and start to develop strategies. The real clincher here is, that The Crew is the only trick-taking game, at least that I know of, that is fully co-operative. So even if all of you start from nothing, you will all help each other and you will all learn together, because you all want to succeed and beat the game together. That’s a really amazing achievement and is what makes it possible for you to learn trick-taking without having to watch someone else play and learn from them. Yet, even though the game is fully co-operative, you will still learn many of the things you would learn in any other trick-taking game. You will learn about suits and trumps, you will realize that emptying your hand of a suit can be beneficial for the team and you will start to learn the language of how playing a specific card at a specific time will tell everyone else something very important. Speaking of telling others information. The Crew is one of those co-operative games where you can’t communicate, just like in The Mind. However, all of you can share one piece of information during each mission: whether a card is the only one you have of that suit, whether it’s the highest or whether it’s the lowest of that suit. That can be critical sometimes, but sometimes may be better conveyed by learning the language of trick-taking games and playing specific cards at a specific time. As you can see, I’m enthralled by The Crew. Yet, there is one more thing that is amazing about the game. You can play it 2-player. Now, that is an amazing feat, because most trick-taking games require at least three players, or if you only have two, you rely on a third dummy player, which usually plays their hand randomly and which really spoils the experience. In The Crew, there is also a dummy player, but this one actually works really well. You basically see half of their hand face-up, while the other half is face-down. That means both of you know some information, but not all of it. One of you controls the dummy player and as you play face-up cards, you then flip over the face-down card underneath it, so that you reveal more information. The dummy player does create a certain luck element, but because you have some knowledge of their cards, you know enough to be able to deal with the randomness, just as you deal with the randomness of the cards your dealt as a real player. So The Crew is a really clever game and even though it won’t teach trick-taking everyone, it’s the best game to do so that I have come across. It’s great for someone who knows trick-taking and wants to teach it to others and it’s just as great to learn trick-taking if none of you know anything about it. Buy from Zatu If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Useful Links The Crew: https://www.kosmosgames.co.uk/games/the-crew-quest-for-planet-nine/Kosmos: https://www.kosmosgames.co.uk/Skull King review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2020/01/04/skull-king-saturday-review/The Mind review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2019/01/05/the-mind/ Transparency Facts I feel that this review reflects my own, independent and honest opinion, but the facts below allow you to decide whether you think that I was influenced in any way. I bought and paid for the game myself.At the time of writing, neither the designers, nor the publisher, nor anyone linked to the game supported me financially or by payment in kind. Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)Music:Star Trek original series opening themeA New World by Purple Planet Music (https://www.purple-planet.com/)

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 want to speak for the latter group and show that house rules aren’t a sacrilege. Let me start by saying that you have to do what you feel is right for yourself, of course. If you really don’t want to use house rules, then that’s absolutely fine. It’s your game and your experience. If introducing house rules ruins the enjoyment of a game for you, then definitely don’t do it. However, for myself, I found that tweaking rules here and there can improve a game, and not only increase the enjoyment for myself, but also the people I play with. In fact, depending on the group of people I play with, I sometimes use different house rules. Carcassonne is one of those games for me. Many people feel that playing with farmers is an absolute must, and I completely understand the strategic element they introduce to the gameplay. Yet, for my family, farmers tend to be a distraction and create an unnecessary competitive element that makes the game less fun. So we always play without farmers, because we get enough direct player interaction from trying to control cities, or sometimes roads. When I play Carcassonne with my games group, we do play with farmers, because we want that extra way of gaining potentially large points and the push and pull farmers can create. However, for a very long time, we had our own house rule. We played that you couldn’t place a meeple, and therefore couldn’t score a city, road or monastery when placing the last tile that completes that feature. The idea was, that if you didn’t add to a feature, you weren’t allowed to get points for it. Now, that is actually not a house rule, of course, but us misreading the rules. We only learned about our mistake when we played Carcassonne online and the app gave us the option to place meeples while completing a feature. After playing it wrong for years, we had to relearn it a bit and adapt to the way the correct rules change the gameplay. That’s an important point, actually. Whenever you add a house rule, bear in mind that you’ll change the gameplay. Of course, you hope to make the gameplay better for yourself and the people you play with, whatever “better” means in this context, but you still affect how the game plays. Pretty much every game has been playtested a lot before being released, so usually, the rules create the perfect experience or at least the experience the designer intended. So your own house rule has the potential to break the game. So do be a bit careful when making changes to rules and don’t just introduce house rules for the sake of it. Some games may seem to be imbalanced or wrong and it won’t be until you’ve played them a good few times before you realize that the original rules actually work really well and are there for a reason, and that your house rules actually make the game worse. However, your house rules may be perfect for people who haven’t played the game before, so you can introduce them at the beginning and then drop them later. In any case, make sure your house rules do actually work and create the experience that you and your group want from the game, but be ready to run into a situation where your rules may just not work or make the game worse. Saying that, some rulebooks are awful and you have to interpret them yourself, effectively creating house rules, simply because it isn’t clear how to play the game from the rulebook alone. You have to try and work out what the designer meant and make decisions based on what “feels right” for the game. For me, Boss Monster is one of those games. It’s not always clear in what order spells fire and who gets precedence, but you can usually make a decision within the group and take it on a case by case basis. Some games also have edge cases which aren’t covered by the rules and again, you have to make a decision during the game, thereby creating a house rule. Just make sure you check the publisher’s website for FAQs or addendums that might explain those bits that the rulebook doesn’t cover. At the end of the day though, it’s your game and it’s up to you what you do with it. No designer I have come across has ever said that they are absolutely against house rules. They want you to have fun with the game they created. The experience they want you to have while playing it, isn’t necessarily the experience you or the people you play with want to have – and sometimes you want to play without house rules and sometimes you do, depending on your mood or how tired you are. Whenever you introduce your own rules and find that they work really well for you and your group, even after a number of plays, then why not share them with others or maybe even send them to the publisher or designer of the game. Many games have variants published for them, so that they work for a wider audience of people. Some games can only be played with certain player counts, if you go just by the rules, but sometimes you can make changes so you can play them with the number of players you want. So, have fun with the games you play and make them your own, so that you will still enjoy them even after many plays. Now, what I want to know, is whether you have ever introduced house rules yourself? Are there any you want to share here, because they really changed a game around for you and turned something that wasn’t right or boring into an experience that was exciting and fun? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear what house rules you have come up with. If you want to inspire a Topic Discussion article on this website, please head over to the Tabletop Games Blog Discord server and switch to the #topic-ideas channel: https://discord.gg/wuPjy5TwGB If you enjoyed this article, please tell your friends about it. If you like this blog, my videos, podcasts or my other work, please also consider supporting me on Patreon. Even the smallest pledge is highly appreciated: https://www.patreon.com/tabletopgamesblog If you prefer, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-Fi. I'll post a photo of it on my Twitter feed so you can share it with your friends: https://ko-fi.com/tabletopgamesblog Thank you! Links Discord server #topic-ideas channel: https://discord.gg/wuPjy5TwGB Audio Version Intro Music: Bomber (Sting) by Riot (https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/)