Tabletop Gaming #021 (Aug 2018) - PDFCOFFEE.COM (2024)

SUMMER’S HOTTEST GAMES REVIEWED

WA R H A M M E R : A G E O F S I G M A R | S TA R S H I P S A M U R A I M A S K S O F N YA R L AT H O T E P | L O W L A N D S | R A I D S + M O R E ! tabletopgaming.co.uk

August 2018

PATHFINDER: SECOND EDITION

The fantasy RPG prepares to enter a new era – but can it keep up with D&D?

WESTERN LEGENDS

Saddle up for an unforgettable ride in the Wild West sandbox

GAMER’S TRAVEL GUIDE

Richard Borg blasts off his sci-fi successor to Commands & Colors

THE MAKING OF CAPTAIN SONAR A deep dive into the party hit

£5.25

RED ALERT

Display until 30/8/18

Everything you need to take your hobby on holiday

You’ve studied the footage, connected the dots, and gathered what meagre evidence you could. You’re close – soon the whole world will know the truth behind the cryptid. A group of like-minded cryptozoologists have come together to finally uncover the elusive creature, but the glory of discovery is too rich to share. Without giving away some of what you know you will never succeed in locating the beast, but reveal too much and your name will be long forgotten!

Cryptid is a unique deduction game of honest misdirection in which players must try to uncover information about their opponent’s clues while throwing them off the scent of their own. Each player holds one piece of evidence to help them find the creature, and on their turn they can try to gain more information from their opponents. Be warned: give too much away and your opponents might beat you to the mysterious animal and claim the glory for themselves!

3-5 10+ PLAYERS

24 86 18

MINUTES PLAY TIME

AGES

30-50

Explorers have been returning from the Amazon with extraordinary tales – conquistadors withered with age marching through the rainforest, unidentified beasts stalking expeditions, and an ominous mountain that is said to be more perilous than the jungle itself! Only the most reckless adventurers would ignore these warnings, but even they might find that they need some help. The Fountain of Youth & Other Adventures brings four different expansions to The Lost Expedition, adding new cards to the adventure deck, introducing companions to assist your party, and revealing a new trail that offers a range of new gameplay decisions. Add them individually or combine them to provide new challenges as you continue your search for El Dorado!

THE LOST EXPEDITION EXPANSION!

- EAST WERE B

RINTY

ORDER ONLINE AT WWW.OSPREYGAMES.CO.UK TLE

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EDITORIAL EDITOR Matt Jarvis 01778 392 400 [emailprotected] CONTRIBUTORS Kit Buss, Sam Desatoff, John Dodd, Owen Duffy, Robert Florence, Holly Gramazio, Sam Illingworth, Richard JansenParkes, Dan Jolin, Joshua King, Andy Leighton, Phil Robinson, Alex Sonechkina, Charlie Theel, Paul Wake, James Wallis, Chad Wilkinson

Welcome I

HEAD OF DESIGN & PRODUCTION Lynn Wright DESIGNER Richard Hallam COVER IMAGE FROM PATHFINDER: SECOND EDITION ADVERTISING TO ADVERTISE PLEASE CALL GROUP ADVERTISING MANAGER Claire Ingram 01778 391 179 [emailprotected] KEY ACCOUNT MANAGER Cat Gray 01778 395 059 [emailprotected] ADVERTISING DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Nicola Lock 01778 392 420 [emailprotected] MARKETING MARKETING BRAND MANAGER Nicola Lumb

Now Playing... Lowlands

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PUBLISHED BY ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Claire Ingram Warners Group Publications PLC The Maltings, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE10 9PH 01778 391 000 www.warnersgroup.co.uk NEWSTRADE DISTRIBUTION Warners Group Publications PLC 01778 391 150 PRINTING

This publication is printed by Warners 01778 395111 The views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the publishers. Every care is taken to ensure that the content of this magazine is accurate, but we assume no responsibility for any effect from errors or omissions. While every care is taken with unsolicited material submitted for publication, we cannot be responsible for loss or damage. While every care is taken when accepting advertisements, we are not responsible for the quality and/or the performance of goods and/or services advertised in this magazine. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) exists to regulate the content of advertisements. Tel: 020 7429 2222

t’s one of the hottest summers in years – we’re not just talking about the weather, but the tabletop, too! Leading August’s scorching releases is the second edition of D&D-rivalling fantasy RPG Pathfinder, which launches into a playtest later this month. Lead designer Jason Bulmahn tells us what a decade’s worth of improvements has brought to the game in our exclusive interview on page 18. With the heat comes the inevitable urge to don a cowboy hat and have it be acceptable, so there’s no better time to roam the world of Western Legends; we explore the incredible Wild West sandbox on page 26. If you’d prefer a dip in the seas, maybe cool off afterwards with our dive into the making of Captain Sonar on page 36. If you’re jetting off on your holidays over the summer, make sure to check our Gamer’s Travel Guide on page 45 to learn how you can take your favourite games (or new favourites) with you. Then turn to page 58 to ensure your gaming is as eco-friendly as possible, wherever you play. We’ll have the summer’s biggest releases while they’re still hot ready to play at Tabletop Gaming Live in September – and that’s not all, with tournaments, live seminars, participation games and more set to turn Alexandra Palace into the new home of tabletop. Find out the latest on page 6.

Matt Matt Jarvis Editor

[emailprotected] | @liquidmatt

Q U I C K S TA R T

You want Billy Nothing’s The one thing the Kid to be better than we don’t want the best marshal RPGs for me, but to do is make a that ever lived? board games can fundamentally You can do that! still try to approach different game. those kinds of sensations. Jason Bulmahn says Second Edition is still the Pathfinder you love, p18

Travis R. Chance invites history to run wild in Western Legends, p26

Captain Sonar co-creator Yohan Lemonnier dives deep, p35

tabletopgaming.co.uk

In this issue 06 AT A GLANCE

Your 30-second guide to the latest in gaming

08 FIRST TURN

Martin Wallace returns to Lords of Creation – his first game ‘that wasn’t awful’

10 10 OF THE BEST

flickin’ fun Catacombs Conquest

Knowing when – and where – to draw the line

44 THROUGH THE AGES

91 EVENT REPORT 92 CLUB DIRECTORY 95 SHOP SPOTLIGHT 98 TABLETOP TIME MACHINE

Marking the demise of Android: Netrunner with a look at the life of expandable card games

Trust us on this pick of social deduction games

45 GAMER’S TRAVEL GUIDE

13 ROLE CALL 14 ALL THE JAHRES

Every game you should take on holiday – and how to get them to fit in your suitcase

48 MY LITTLE SCYTHE

17 MY FAVOURITE GAME

51 PLAY IT SMART

How do you follow Settlers of Catan’s monumental win? With El Grande, of course Dragoon designer brothers Zach and Jake Given revisit their gaming childhood

ON THE COVER

18 PATHFINDER: SECOND EDITION

Lead designer Jason Bulmahn takes the wraps off the fantasy RPG’s next evolution

26 WESTERN LEGENDS Travis R. Chance takes us for a ride in the rootin’-tootin’ Wild West sandbox

32 HAVE YOU PLAYED?

The love letter to collectible card games that’ll leave you hooked: Millennium Blades

35 KICKSTARTING FROM SCRATCH 36 HOW WE MADE

Taking a deep dive into the creation of Captain Sonar, the party game that blew up Battleship

18 4

41 THE INDEPENDENT SHELF 88 DUNGEON MASTER’S Dungeon-crawling with a twist in the finger GUIDE TO ROLEPLAYING

August 2018

Meet the father and daughter who reinvented the modern strategy classic with a magical touch Giving games life using cardboard AI

52 RED ALERT

Wargaming legend Richard Borg heads to space with his Commands & Colors successor

57 UNEARTHED ARTEFACTS

Looking back on the unforgettable brutality and realism of conflict explored in This War of Mine

58 PLASTIC FANTASTIC

Can tabletop games give up their deadly dependence and help save the environment?

63 PLAYED

Your need-to-know guide to the latest releases

83 PAINTING GUIDE Make the heroic investigators of Arkham Horror Files look the part

Learning the love the oddities of 1980’s Quirks

LOOK OUT FOR EXTRA CONTENT WHEN YOU SEE THESE ICONS

Gallery

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Sound

Video

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THE GAMES

Android: Netrunner 44 Arkham Horror Files 83 Art Deck 35 Banquet Royal 73 Black Orchestra 68 Blue Moon 44 Call of Cthulhu 66 Captain Sonar 36 The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game 45 Catacombs Conquest 41 Dungeons & Dragons 88 El Grande 14 Emperor’s Challenge 17 Endless Pass 72 Genesys 79 Gretchinz! 69 The Grimm Forest 71 Hannibal & Hamilcar 77 HeroQuest 17 Lords of Creation 09 Lowlands 67 Lucidity 74 Mansions of Madness 83 Marvel Contest of 80 Champions: Battlerealm Micropolis 76 Millennium Blades 32 Mint Works 45 My Little Scythe 48 Pathfinder 18 Photosynthesis 58 Princess Jing 72 Quirks 98 Raids 70 Red Alert 52 The Resistance 10 Robit Riddle 81 Star Wars: 78 Han Solo Card Game Starship Samurai 65 Sushi Go! 45 A Tale of Pirates 75 This War of Mine 57 Twilight Struggle 58 Warhammer: 64 Age of Sigmar Warhammer Quest: 51 Silver Tower Western Legends 26 When In Rome 78 Werewolf 10

tabletopgaming.co.uk

AT A GLANCE

PLAY, LAUGH AND LEARN IN PANELS AND TALKS AT TABLETOP GAMING LIVE

Painting workshop, roleplaying advice, designer interviews, play sessions and more among live stage line-up We’re excited to announce our line-up of fantastic live talks and panels taking place in Alexandra Palace during September 29th and 30th as part of Tabletop Gaming Live! » Hear from the creators of Call of Cthulhu as they unveil the latest news about the RPG and reveal their personal tips for GMs. » TV presenter, author and Mind ambassador Anna Williamson (pictured) joins the team behind card game Book of Beasties to discuss how games can be used to tackle mental health. » Designer and writer James Wallis hosts a side-splitting panel on comedy in games, with a panel of very funny folks and lots of laughs!

» Don’t miss the first-ever live Tabletop Gaming Podcast, with editor Matt Jarvis, special guests and plenty of entertaining chat. » The clever-clogs authors of the magazine’s ‘Play It Smart’ bring the column to life with a special look at what games can teach us. » After tips on beautifying your miniatures? Visit our drop-in painting workshop on Saturday morning to help perfect your technique. » Be among the first people to try Catan: Global Warming, an unofficial expansion for Settlers of Catan, during an intimate play session. » Join Actualol’s Jon Purkis for a special onstage version of his hilarious video series.

» Follow Jackson Pope as he takes us through the creation of his one-of-a-kind handcrafted games from scratch. Those are just a few highlights from a weekend full of unmissable talks and events – the full schedule will be announced on tabletopgaming.co.uk very soon. Admission to all of the panels and talks is included in the price of your ticket to Tabletop Gaming Live. Tabletop Gaming Live takes place in London’s Alexandra Palace this September 29th and 30th. Tickets are on sale now from just £10, with family and weekend passes available – visit The Ticket Factory to get yours today.

Tickets from just £10 | theticketfactory.com

2019

KNOW YOUR NUMBERS The Castles of Burgundy expands into digital next year, with an app of the Spiel des Jahres Recommended dice-roller on the way

1-100

Imhotep: The Duel is a twoplayer version of the blockbuilding game from Sushi Go! designer Phil Walker-Harding, docking this September

Number-counting co-op card game and The Mind predecessor The Game is getting a makeover from Dinosaur Island artist Kwanchai Moriya

320,000 Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra is this year’s sequel to the beautiful tilelayer, which has sold a LOT of copies

Troyes co-creator Sébastien Dujardin has revealed his first game in four years, resource-collecting airship adventure Sun Moon

REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE

• SAVE UP TO 10% PER YEAR • GUARANTEE YOUR FREE GIFT EVERY MONTH • DON’T MISS OUT IF THE SHOPS SELL OUT January 2018

We asked…

With over half of 2018 having already wooshed by, what are your favourite games of the year so far?

For the latest news from the world of gaming visit

tabletopgaming.co.uk/news

You said…

IT’S ENNIE-ONE’S GAME

Starfinder and Delta Green lead nominations for 2018’s best RPGs

Star Wars: Legion’s kinda started well, few shit sculpts, but the game seems orite? Bobbie Catterall

recognition for Best Rules, Best Setting, Best Writing and Product of the Year. Cthulhu Confidential, Torg Eternity and Star Trek Adventures complete the list of hopefuls for Best Rules. For the first time, the ENnies will hand out a prize for Best Organised Play, with D&D Adventurers League adventure collection Lost Tales of Myth Drannor, Bleeding Gate: Amalgamation, End of the Line, Wreckers and Best Friends Forever fighting it out to be the inaugural recipient. The winners of this year’s ENnie Awards will be announced on August 3rd during Gen Con.

The Mind. It’s such a simple idea – but so entertaining with the right group! Paul Hardy Ganz Schön Clever. Definitely. Jamie Yardley The Chameleon by Big Potato Games, or Colour Chess by DogEared, or Retail Magic. Anna Blackwell Thoroughly enjoying Dwarven Smithy – the first game I ever backed on Kickstarter. The artwork is just shmexy. Steve Davies Age of Sigmar: Second Edition. It’s a much sleeker beast, offers deeper customisation and the endless spells make for some very cinematic gameplay. Benjamin W. Porter

GOING IN FOR THE KILL

Ganz Schön Clever here – it’s been a huge hit in my gaming group. Stuart Riddock

Warhammer 40,000 spin-off Kill Team is returning bigger and better Kill Team is back! Originally created as a Warhammer 40,000 expansion for featuring tighter-knit missions and smaller groups of models, the variant later came out as a standalone set. The new Kill Team keeps all of the things that made it so much fun in the first place, focusing on squads of between five to ten miniatures that can be customised and led through a series of standalone missions or a connected campaign of scenarios, levelling up and gaining new abilities along the way.

The gameplay has been polished by the team behind Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire, tightening up Kill Team’s alternating activation and expanding the effect of terrain. New to the game are ‘tactics’, a mechanic similar to stratagems in Warhammer 40,000’s eighth edition that lets players to re-roll dice, shoot first and gain other benefits and advantages. The game has also borrowed the three-pronged approach to open, narrative and matched play options.

A box set and several expansions are planned for release later this year alongside new scenery packs, with the rulebook available separately for players who want to use their existing Warhammer 40,000 models.

Magic: The Gathering simply because of the great cards that come out so far this year. I found that the Core 2019 and Dominaria sets are the best for deckbuilding. Stephen Shering Fog of Love. Such a novel game that I made a point of playing it so much during the first few months of this year, and everyone I subjected it to had a really fun experience. I fondly remember some of those relationships, though notably the more toxic ones stand out. Simon Brake

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tabletop_gaming_magazine STUFFED FABLES

SUBSCRIBE PRINT OR D I G I TA L F R O M J U S T

Agrax Earthshade Averland Sunset Balor Brown Blue Horror Celestra Grey Ceramite White Dawnstone Deathclaw Brown Dechala Lilac Doombull Brown Dorn Yellow Emperor’s Children Evil Suns Scarlet Fenrisian Grey

Flash Gitz Yellow Fulgrim Pink Gauss Blaster Green Genestealer Purple Karak Stone Krieg Khaki Lugganath Orange Mechanicus Standard Grey Mephiston Red Mournfang Brown Pallid Wych Flesh Pink Horror Rhinox Hide Russ Grey

THEADORA

Screaming Skull Seraphim Sepia Skavenblight Dinge Skrag Brown Slaanesh Grey Temple Guard Blue Thunderhawk Blue Wazdakka Red Xereus Purple XV-88 Yriel Yellow Zamesi Desert

STAGES

STITCH

Each model is split up into four stages, each with a list of colours and the corresponding paint that was used for it. Each stage uses a different technique to achieve a similar effect on each element but with different colours. Stage 1 is basecoating. Base colours are applied using flat colours. This is usually applied over several thin coats, to achieve a bold, flat colour that is evenly spread. Stage 2 is layering. During this stage we apply a flat even coat, generally a lighter shade, over the basecoat. A thin line of the base colour is left in all of the recesses to help simulate shadows.

Stage 3 is highlighting. This stage involves applying a line of your colour along the hard edges and ridges of the area. I would recommend using a fine brush and adding a tiny dash of water to your paints. Stage 4 is for final details. This stage involves adding the finishing touches, sometimes just small details like the eyes, or adding an extra highlight of increase definition. If you find yourself unsure of where to apply the highlights or spot highlights, look over the images alongside the guide and compare that stage to the last.

BASE COLOURS

XV-88, Karak Stone, Rhinox Hide & Mournfang Brown: Apply a basecoat to the body, arms, head, cape and hat using the different colours randomly across the patches. Doombull Brown: Apply a basecoat of the cape and the sash. Averland Sunset: Add a basecoat to the pencil. Karak Stone: Apply a basecoat over the stitches. Temple Guard Blue, Moot Green and Averland Sunset: Apply a basecoat to the buttons. Pink Horror: Apply a basecoat to the eraser.

BASECOATING

Mournfang Brown: Apply a basecoat all over the body. Averland Sunset: Apply a basecoat to the belt. Xereus Purple: Apply a basecoat to the scarf and the small patch beside the heart. XV-88: Apply a basecoat to the scabbard. Dawnstone: Apply a basecoat to the sword. Mephiston Red: Apply a basecoat to the heart patch. Skavenblight Dinge: Apply a basecoat to the eyes, nose and mouth. Karak Stone: Apply a basecoat to the stitches.

HIGHLIGHTING

Karak Stone, Skrag Brown & Mournfang Brown: Apply a layer over the patchwork. Flash Gitz Yellow: Apply a layer to the pencil and an edge highlight to the yellow buttons. Emperor’s Children: Apply a layer to the eraser. Pallid Wych Flesh: Apply a layer to the stitches. Blue Horror: Apply a line highlight to the blue buttons. Gauss Blaster Green: Apply a line highlight to the green buttons. Averland Sunset: Mix one part paint with around five parts water and, with only a small amount on your brush, apply lines to some of the lighter patches.

Kreig Khaki: Apply a line highlight to the patches. Deathclaw Brown: Apply an edge highlight to the hat and cloak. Fulgrim Pink: Apply an edge highlight of the eraser. Ceramite White: Apply a dot highlight to the top edge of the stitches and the buttons. Dorn Yellow: Apply an edge highlight to the pencil. Skavenblight Dinge: Apply a layer to the end of the pencil.

PIGGLE

10 RPGs YOU MUST PLAY IN 2018!

LAYERING

Skrag Brown: Apply a layer over the body, making sure to miss the inner ear. Genestealer Purple: Apply a layer over the scarf. Yriel Yellow: Apply a layer to the belt. Celestra Grey: Apply a layer to the sword. Thunderhawk Blue: Apply a highlight to the top left of both the eyes and the nose. Pallid Wych Flesh: Apply a layer over the stitches and add a line highlight to the scabbard. Evil Suns Scarlet: Apply a layer to the heart.

PLUS OUR REVIEW OF D UNGEONS & DRAGONS’ NE W E XPANSION January 2018

BASE COLOURS

HIGHLIGHTING

Deathclaw Brown: Apply a highlight to the fur of the body. This should be applied as an edge highlight on any hard edges, like the ears and the brow, and a line highlight to the top edges of each body ‘section’ – the body, head and arms. Also, add small sections of cross-hatching to help simulate the texture of the fabric. These can be achieved with two or three thin lines horizontally and then two or three vertically. Dechala Lilac: Apply an edge highlight to the scarf and a layer to the tab on the edge of the heart. Dorn Yellow: Apply an edge highlight to the belt. Lugganath Orange: Apply an edge highlight to the heart. Fenrisian Grey: Apply a dot highlight of the top left of the eyes. Ceramite White: Apply a dot highlight of the top of the stitches and an edge highlight to the sword.

SHADING & LAYERING

FINAL DETAILS

Lugganath Orange: Apply a very fine highlight to the cross-hatching, leaving a little of the original colour around the edges.

Ceramite White: Apply a dot highlight to the top left of the eye.

July 2018

Pink Horror: Apply a basecoat across the body, head, arms, legs and rattle. Pallid Wych Flesh: Carefully apply the lines around the rattle. Xereus Purple: Apply a basecoat to the shield. Mechanicus Standard Grey: Apply a basecoat to the trotters. Skavenblight Dinge: Apply a basecoat to the eyes, brows and mouth.

SHADING & LAYERING

Emperor’s Children: Apply a layer over the pink, applying only an edge highlight to the snout. Genestealer Purple: Apply a layer to the Shield. Dawnstone: Apply a line highlight to the brows, mouth and trotters. Ceramite White: Apply a layer to the handle and stripes of the rattle.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

HIGHLIGHTING

Emperor’s Children: Apply an edge highlight to all the hard edges, like the ears, as well as around the top edge of each section of the model. Add cross-hatching horizontally and vertically to simulate the knitted fabric. Dechala Lilac: Apply an edge highlight to the shield. Celestra Grey: Apply an edge highlight to the trotters, eyes and brows. Fenrisian Grey: Apply a dot highlight to the upper left of the eyes.

FINAL DETAILS

BOGUS BOARD GAMES Do you own a fake?

Ceramite White: Apply a dot highlight to the top left of the eye. Apply a fine highlight to the cross-hatching, leaving a little of the original colour at the edges. Add two lines down the head for the rattle. Xereus Purple, Genestealer Purple & Dechala Lilac: Paint the words ‘play clay’ onto the shield, building the highlights up from the base colour.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

STUFFED FABLES | FAKE BOARD

LEARNING EVOLVED

Games aren’t just help you boost fun – they can also your brainpower. Professors and students tell us the cranium-cram about Darwinian delight ming benefits of Evolution

GAMES

FALLOUT Words by Anna

Blackwell

Wasteland warfare Nuclear

JANUARY 2018

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PAINTS YOU WILL NEED:

FALLOUT: WASTELAND WARFARE |

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PAINTS & TECHNIQUES

PHWOAR! We go behind the the action-packed post-apocalyptic scenes of minis game

£5.25

setting, monsters, free game, cartography and accessory. Hot on its heels is horror hit Delta Green (pictured) with seven nominations overall, including one for Best Game. It’s joined in the hotlycontested category by the similarly acclaimed Blades in the Dark, Zweihänder, Red Markets: A Game of Economic Horror and Vurt: The Tabletop Roleplaying Game. Harlem Unbound, the groundbreaking examination of racism in a Lovecraftian 1920s setting that also earned creator Chris Spivey a place on this year’s shortlist for the Diana Jones Award for Gaming Excellence, continued to pile up its heap of nominations with

Display until 29/1/18

Nominations for this year’s ENnies – the annual awards show that celebrates tabletop roleplaying games – have been announced. Leading the way is Pathfinder sequel Starfinder, which collected a total of eight nods for Product of the Year, interior art, supplement,

tabletopgaming.co.uk 44

February 2018

FIRST TURN

MARTIN WALLACE The former history teacher and British gaming veteran behind Age of Steam, London and Brass tells his designer Genesis story with 1993’s Lords of Creation Interview by Dan Jolin or Kingmaker, which technically are broken. Even though I am known for more complicated games, I try and do them with a relatively simple ruleset: a simple core idea which you hang everything else off. I mean, at the same time I was working on more complicated board games than Lords of Creation, it’s just none of those ever reached the point where they were suitable for publishing.”

SETUP “When I first published Lords of Creation I printed it off on an Apple Mac desktop printer, 50 copies originally, and sold them by mail order. I didn’t have a colour printer, so when I needed different-coloured sheets, I’d just print on differentcoloured paper. I had to stick the sheets down and cut them out myself, which is why the pieces aren’t hexagonalshaped, because they’re really difficult to cut out.”

HOW TO PLAY BACKGROUND “It took me a little while to find a direction in life. I went to sixth-form college but didn’t do terribly well. Started a computer course, then dropped out. Then ended up working for Games Workshop for a little while as a minion, the lowest of the low: a shop assistant. It was a good grounding for learning all sorts of games. I did a few other jobs, including developing software for the early Spectrum computer. And then I went back to college as a mature student to do a degree in history. Pretty much the only thing I could do with a degree in history was go and teach. Although, luckily enough, the other use for a history degree is designing games.”

COMPONENTS “Lords of Creation wasn’t the first game I designed. I designed all sorts of different games, but they were all awful. It was the first game I designed where I played it with people and they would say, ‘Ooh, yes, I’d like to play that again.’ So I knew I had something worth publishing. I’m not exactly sure where the inspiration came from. I suppose it was this idea of doing a Risk-style game. I think the key idea was the idea of civilisation-spreading.”

OBJECT “It was around that time I discovered German-style games, like some of Reiner Knizia’s early ones. I mean, this was before Settlers of Catan came out! I suppose I was impressed by the simplicity of them, the way they were fully formed, not baggy, with no loose ends – unlike games like Monopoly

August 2018

“You set up a random world by placing terrain tiles on a hex grid. Each player has their set of counters which are double-sided, with barbarians on one side and civilised on the other, and they play a card facedown, then flip it up to show a terrain type, with a number – that is the number of counters you can place on that terrain type. So you put your counters on and you can attack other players with a simple dice roll. And then at some point you can flip your counters onto the civilised side, which means they can’t fight but you score more points for them. Once per turn you can civilise the group of barbarians adjacent to you – which may be your own, but may also be another player’s. So you can protect yourself from being attacked by civilising your opponents. And you play until the cards run out.”

It was the first game I designed where I played it with people and they would say, ‘Ooh, yes, I’d like to play that again.’

END OF THE GAME “We did reprint the game, and went to Essen with a hundred copies the following year, which was the first time I went to Essen. We sold them all, which was good at the time. But even though the game never really made me any money, it got me attention. It got reviewed in a German magazine and allowed me to start making contact with people in the industry there, which is the invaluable bit, because it led on to other things.”

STRATEGY TIPS “The advice I’m always giving newbie designers is: think carefully about the story you’re trying to tell and try and reflect that in the mechanisms that you use. Don’t stick mechanisms in there that jar [or] are at odds with the story you’re trying to tell. So that’s probably the best advice. Apart from: ‘Get lots of practice.’”

tabletopgaming.co.uk

THE RESISTANCE: AVALON

Building on the brilliant bluffing of its sci-fi predecessor The Resistance, Avalon takes a trip to the fantasy world of King Arthur, facing players off in a heated battle between good and evil. On one side, Arthur’s servants and Merlin. The other: Mordred and his minions, who are concealed among the goodies. Some of the characters have special powers they can use to try and help their side to victory while taking care not to put themselves in danger – such as Merlin, who knows the evil players but risks being assassinated and losing the game for the forces of good if they give away too much. Tense, tight and full of unforgettable reveals and deceptions, Avalon is pure magic.

SECRET HITLER

Working out which of your friends are liberals and which are fascists might feel a bit close to home in 2018, but Secret Hitler handles its weighty historical inspiration of pre-World War II Germany with a biting satirical edge that results in one of the sharpest cut-throat games around. Each side works to swing the passing of policies that benefit their party, while electing a president and chancellor who can wield the power for good or ill. All the while, one player is Secret Hitler, working behind the scenes to try and seize complete power. Add in assassinations, government powers and reptilian fascists for a party experience that’s as outrageously entertaining as it is frighteningly current.

OF THE BEST

SOCIAL DEDUCTION & DECEPTION GAMES Honestly, lying to your friends – or sniffing out the lies of others – is some of the best fun that can be had around a table. Trust us on these games that are all bluff, zero fluff Chosen by Matt Jarvis

ONE NIGHT ULTIMATE WEREWOLF

Werewolf is a classic, and ONUW gives it the modern updates it needs to feel fresh and fun for years to come. Best of all is the ditching of player elimination, so everyone gets to enjoy every match the whole way through. Everybody also gets a special role with different rules and abilities, so that every player is able to engage with the hunt for the werewolves terrorising the villagers. Best of all, this fits into just 10 minutes or so, making it easy to squeeze in between longer games – or just play again and again.

August 2018

A FAKE ARTIST GOES TO NEW YORK

How can so much fun fit in such a small box? It doesn’t matter – the important thing is that Fake Artist belongs in every collection, and you’ll definitely have space. As fast and easy as it is hilarious (on all counts: very), this pocket-sized prize involves everyone collectively drawing something one line at a time. The hook is that someone has no idea what it is, so they must bluff their way through without giving their fakery away. But if they are uncovered and manage to guess the answer, they win – so everyone else wants to be careful they don’t draw too well…

5 7

COUP

A slick game of poker-faced bluffing, Coup has a simple and timeless idea at its heart: what if you don’t actually have the card you claim to have in front of you? Instead of numbers and suits, this time it’s characters with special skills that can be utilised to gain coins and ultimately launch a coup against your opponents, forcing them to lose influence. You don’t have to possess a character to use their skill, but others can accuse you of using talents you don’t have, leading to a reveal and the person in the right losing one of their two characters. The last person with a character left wins, but matches don’t drag on too long even with those eliminations.

DECEPTION: MURDER IN HONG KONG

Deception takes a classic crime-fiction shocker – the killer is one of the investigators on the case – and turns it into a constantly entertaining murder-mystery conundrum. One player gives the group vague clues about the details of the crime, trying to point to the murderer in their midst. Everybody has a unique combination of evidence and means of murder in front of them that lead to some blackly comic setups (how exactly do you murder someone using their underpants?), and the search for the truth feels like a proper whodunit mystery without a lot of the face-to-face accusation of more confrontational games. Just watch your back – or should that be backside?

DRACULA’S FEAST

Not everyone enjoys the pressure of lying to their friends. This spooky yet adorable game is designed to be a friendlier take on social deduction, revolving around monsters asking each other to dance at a function hosted by the snappily-dressed bloodsucker – depending on which ghoulie they are, they might prefer not to or be unable to resist a boogie. Once a player reckons they’ve gathered enough intel, they try to guess everyone’s identities at once. Nobody gets eliminated and a match normally finishes in 10 minutes, with little complexity to learn the first time through. It looks great, plays beautifully and is the ideal side dish to the meatier bluffing experiences out there to sink your fangs into.

THE CHAMELEON

A cross between the one-word efficiency of Codenames and the confident blagging of Fake Artist and Spyfall, The Chameleon is either a code-cracking search to figure out the answer that everyone else knows that you don’t – while bluffing your way through the need to give oneword clues – or a tense analysis of everything that your friends say in an attempt to point the finger at the faker among you. It’s simple and familiar, but applies some clever twists in the way that dice are rolled to pick the solution from a grid of answers (which you can write yourself).

TWO ROOMS AND A BOOM

If deceiving a handful of friends doesn’t quite get your rocks off anymore, why not try lying to an entire crowd? Two Rooms lets dozens of people participate in a hunt for a dangerous bomber: one team is trying to get the bomber into the same room as the other team’s president by the end of the game, with hostages tensely exchanged between the rooms between rounds. Even with a full house, Two Rooms doesn’t drag on, and the advanced role cards provide an endless amount of variation and fun ways to shake up the already entertaining standard game. Win or lose, you’ll have a blast.

SPYFALL 2

The perfect game for anyone who’s ever bluffed their way through an interview, Spyfall is all about coming up with the perfect replies to questions – even when you have no idea what the answers are. Players grill each other about the shared location they all have written on their cards, hoping to trip up the one or two spies among them who have blank cards and therefore no idea where they are. Anyone can be accused of being a spy at any point, and the non-spies are racing to catch the liars before a spy successfully guesses where they are. Although it can be mixed with the original due to identical gameplay, this sequel is the better standalone buy thanks to a bigger player count and option to include multiple spies.

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Role Call Find your path to insanity, boldly go where others have gone before and search for riches in tyrannous lands Words by John Dodd

SANDY PETERSEN’S CTHULHU MYTHOS FOR PATHFINDER

The definitive guide to all things Lovecraft for the Pathfinder rules system. This book has a large bestiary of creatures that have never been seen in the fantasy RPG before, plus new rituals, spells and artefacts. There are additional types of player character, including the races of gnorri, zoogs and ghouls. Of course, as with all things Cthulhu come the inevitable rules for when you eventually go insane. Petersen Games | $40

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MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS: ROGUES GALLERY

A collection of the supervillains for the superhero RPG. Covers all the different power levels that might be needed in the game, from wannabe villains still knocking over dime stores to the massive organisations that threaten entire continents with their schemes. Each villain comes with their own adventure hook, providing more than a hundred new encounters for players. Green Ronin | $35

7TH SEA: LANDS OF GOLD AND FIRE

The five nations of Ifri are awash with gold and power, rich pickings for the adventurer bold enough to dare everything. This book contains details of all the five nations of the new continent, from the gold of Manden to the dark secrets of Mbey where a broken king serves an evil beyond the understanding of mortals. Plus, rules for creating and playing heroes native to Ifri and extra quirks, advantages and sorceries. John Wick Presents | $40

GHOST OPS

Ably filling the Tom Clancyshaped mould set by Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six, players in Ghost Ops take the role of highly trained operatives working in places where lesser mortals would fear to tread. Combining real-world settings with modern technology and a well-researched playbook taken from the most popular of espionage novels, this provides everything needed for those looking to work in the shadows. Feral Games | £20

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All the

Jahres Replaying the winners of the Spiel des Jahres so you don’t have to Words and photographs by James Wallis

t’s 1996 and you are the jury of the Spiel des Jahres, the most important games prize in the world. Last year you awarded it to The Settlers of Catan or, more accurately, to Die Siedler von Catan, because the prize only goes to games published in German. Catan wasn’t a typical winner: the prize is supposedly for familyfriendly games and, at the time, Catan was perhaps the most complex game to have worn the Spiel des Jahres logo on its box. Now you’re faced with a difficult choice. Do you give the

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EL GRANDE Year of win: 1996 Designer: Wolfgang Kramer, Richard Ulrich Number of players: 2-5 Playing time: 60-120 minutes Worthy winner? Arguably Worth playing now? Yes Availability: Common in Germany, rare elsewhere Price: About £85 for the big box prize to a technically brilliant, tactically complex, grown-up game by one of the great designers of the age, Wolfgang Kramer? Or to an audaciously fun dexterity game that combines F1 racing with the flicky skills of Subbuteo, Carabande?

You can guess the answer from the pictures on this page. I said Catan had been the most complex Spiel des Jahres winner to date. El Grande leaves it in the dust. BoardGameGeek rates its ‘weight’ at 3.08, almost the same level as Snowdonia. That’s still only a medium in BGG terms, but for Spiel des Jahres fans used to light pleasures, it came as a shock. This is not a game for having a cheery time with a few friends or relatives; this is a demanding and tactical contest. You know the sort of game where the first time you play you’re really just learning how its systems and strategies work? One of those. El Grande is set in medieval Spain and takes place over three centuries – if you’re playing with five people who take time over

Players place cubes into regions adjacent to their king, controlling their actions – and blocking rivals – using a selection of cards

going on in El Grande, and they all interlink, and they’re all clever. Kramer’s previous Spiel des Jahres winners had tended towards the simple-and-elegant, but his short-lived partnership with Richard Ulrich gave him licence to delve to new depths of complexity. For all its elegant mechanics this is still a game from the 1990s, with slightly amateurish hand-drawn art and maps. It was the aesthetic of the time; it was just how a lot of games looked back then. The influence of Magic and other American games that sold themselves on fully painted cards would be felt very soon, but for modern eyes these games lack visual appeal. Still, not as bad as Bluff. The question remains: did El Grande deserve the Spiel des Jahres? It’s a prize for the ‘Game of the Year’, and there’s a strong argument for El Grande being exactly that: it’s a powerhouse of intelligent game design and interesting strategy. But there’s more to the Spiel des Jahres than that: it was and is a prize for family-friendly intro-level games, not for big boxes aimed at enthusiasts, and 1996 was the year where things were diverging, the runaway success of Catan having created a new appetite and even a new market for more strategic titles.

El Grande is almost certainly the game of the year, but not the right game for the Spiel des Jahres. their moves, it can really feel like it. You’re a grandee, a Spanish noble, and you have nine turns to manoeuvre your knights – caballeros, the Spanish word for ‘small wooden cubes’ – into controlling numbers in as many of the nine regions as possible. However, you can only put caballeros into regions that are next to the one where the king is, but not the one where the king actually is. Players use action cards to decide the play order, but the same cards also determine how many caballeros you add to your pool. Then players choose one of five face-up action cards that dictate how many caballeros they can add from their pool to the regions of the board, but which give an optional special move, too. These can add extra pieces, move pieces around, send opponents’ caballeros back to the box, score a region early or move the king to another region, all of which give you different types of advantage.

Oh yeah, there’s a king. And a castle – castillo – and they’re both huge, impressive bits of wood. The king, curiously, is a lot like the robber in Catan, visually and in terms of what it does; it moves around the board freezing particular regions, it controls the allocation of resources around its position and activating it means you don’t do much else that turn. The castillo functions like a region: you can place caballeros there, but other players can’t tell how many, and caballeros in the castle are scored early and then reassigned to the regions, where they can score again. Unusually for a Spiel des Jahres winner, or even for a Eurogame of this vintage, there’s a fair amount of confrontation. You can mess directly with other players’ pieces; there’s no actual war, but it’s a lot more antagonistic than you might expect. I’m only scratching the surface of the mechanics. There are a lot of different systems

So El Grande is almost certainly the game of the year, but not the right game for the Spiel des Jahres. This tension within the award surfaces in reverse in 2002, where a weaker family-friendly game (Villa Paletti) triumphed over a future BoardGameGeek number one (Puerto Rico), before the jury spun off a separate award, the Kennerspiel des Jahres, for hobby-level games in 2011. El Grande is hard to find in English these days: used copies are cheap in Germany, but it’s a game with a lot of text on the cards and Google Translate is not at its strongest with Spanish-inflected German. Still, it’s worth playing if you get a chance; if Catan had never happened, El Grande could have ended up as the big one. Next month: All aboard for paddle-steamer races with Werner Hodel’s Mississippi Queen

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Our favourite games

ZACH & JAKE GIVEN The designer brothers behind glittering action game Dragoon and time-travelling bluffer Human Era run us through their earliest childhood memories of gaming

ake: One of the earliest games I remember falling in love with was Emperor’s Challenge. Honestly, I only vaguely remember the rules, but it involved collecting certain items and returning to your home base to win. What I remember most vividly were the pieces themselves. You played as a sage and could gain the use of a companion dragon; both were beautifully-moulded plastic about three inches tall. There were colourful glass jewels, a plastic sceptre and the overall aesthetics were captivating. Zach: It’s important to provide the context of my formative gaming years, because I was more like an annoying, excitable muppet watching my two older brothers playing these incredible-looking board games that I utterly did not comprehend – I was one when Emperor’s Challenge came out. The components for Emperor’s Challenge were more than toys to me though; they bore mystical secrets that I wanted to unlock. They had powers in a world I wanted to go to. Jake: When I think of other games I grew up with that had a similar impact, the three I keep thinking of are HeroQuest, Battle Masters and Weapons and Warriors. HeroQuest was one of my first introductions to tabletop RPGs and the slew of minis it came with were so exciting to play with. Turning a corner or opening a room to then see the GM populate the area with new monsters was just thrilling. It drew me into the experience with the threat of the unknown. Battle Masters literally took up the entire floor of our bedroom with the giant game mat, and put you right in the action moving your units into battle. And the catapults and cannons in Weapons and Warriors were such a fresh experience, at least to this 11-year-old: lining up shots, the tension mounting, hoping the marble you fire will activate the spring-loaded mechanism that reduces your opponent’s ramparts to rubble.

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Zach: I remember leafing through the instructions and scenarios for HeroQuest when there was no-one to play with. The art created a world I could see, where the minis lived and battled. And that was the best part of these games: they provided a place you could temporarily inhabit as well. Battle Masters and Weapons and Warriors both took up an entire room, which made it impossible not to feel fully immersed. Jake: When I think back on the games we played as kids, and the games I want to play and design today, there tends to be some elements that really work to draw me in to the experience, to let me immerse myself in the world of the game itself. Sometimes it’s the theme, sometimes the components, other times it’s the art style that create a world I want to engage with. The gameplay itself – more so today than when I was eight! – needs to be there as well, but a huge part of what that constitutes for me is, “Does this fit the world in which I’m participating?” Basically, the rules and mechanics are there as a guideline for how to interact with the world and its inhabitants – the other players. Zach: It doesn’t matter to us whether we start with an inspiration for a mechanic or a vision of a world. What matters is that, in the end, the two are as seamless as possible. That the player feels ‘Oh, that makes sense’ when they’re learning the rules. Jake: All of these games provided a world for us to explore and engage with, a world I wanted to be a part of. As a designer today, that’s the kind of experience I want to facilitate: theme, components, art and mechanics all work together to draw the players into a world of make-believe, something that gets harder to find as we grow up and face the challenges of everyday life.

The games I want to play and design today, there tends to be some elements that really work to draw me in to the experience.

Jake (left) and Zach (right)

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August 2018

THE PATH AHEAD

After toppling Dungeons & Dragons from its throne a decade ago, Pathfinder finds itself faced by the might of Fifth Edition. As it prepares for its first major revision, can the fantasy RPG keep up?

Words by Matt Jarvis s someone who spent his formative years in the 1980s playing Dungeons & Dragons, Jason Bulmahn could have never imagined he would himself go on to become a guiding light into roleplaying for a new generation of gamers just two decades later. “That never gets not weird for me!” he laughs. “It’s always strange to run into folks who are like, ‘Yeah, I first played roleplaying games with Pathfinder!’ I’m like, ‘No, c’mon now...’” It is Bulmahn who has been at the heart of Pathfinder since the fantasy RPG first appeared ten years ago; as director of game design at Paizo, he was lead designer for Pathfinder’s first edition and now leads the team working on its upcoming second incarnation, which launches into a playtest this month ahead of a planned full release next year. “It is really exciting how that audience has grown over the years and how it’s kind of matured,” he says. “We’ve kind of reached a point now where there are people who consider themselves old-school Pathfinder players. They were there in the alpha playtests.” As its creators and audience have expanded and evolved, so has Pathfinder itself, rapidly ballooning from an evolution of Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 created

as a reaction to Wizards of the Coast’s restrictive fourth edition to a roleplaying giant in itself, with a singular universe – the capacious setting of Golarion – and gameplay systems that, while derivative, were distinctive enough to take it beyond being a simple act of preservation. The significant modifications Pathfinder layered on top of D&D (the game was nicknamed ‘D&D 3.75’ during development) converted roleplaying diehards and newcomers alike. Within two years of the first edition’s launch in August 2009, Pathfinder had become the first roleplaying game to outsell D&D since the seminal title’s release almost four decades prior – a lead it went on to hold for over three years. Dungeons & Dragons’ fifth edition retook the crown in 2014, spurred in part by streamlined gameplay changes and a free rules taster. Pathfinder has continued to nip at D&D’s tail since, offsetting its aging systems with fresh injections of supplements and modules, but has remained outpaced by the bigger game’s more drastic iteration. Pathfinder: Second Edition presents the chance to bring together the RPG’s decade of many parts into a whole and finally take the leap forward. “You know, it’s funny; I think the first steps for Second Edition started the day we sent first edition to the printer,” Bulmahn says. “Because there’s always things that you look [at], you’re like: ‘Well, I wish we

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PAT H F I N D E R

so much to it that we really were working with a brand new entity. So I think we kind of stopped and took stock of the situation and realised: ‘Hey, if we codify all of this, if we start kind of from scratch and build the game to make all of these components work with the core of the engine, we’ll end up with a much better experience for everybody involved.’”

STAR CHILD While Pathfinder’s second edition has existed as a hypothetical next step for as long as the game has been around, it wasn’t until more recently that it began to actually take shape. Specifically, development of Second Edition started roughly at the same time as an even more radical reinvention of Pathfinder in the form of sci-fi sequel Starfinder, which took both Pathfinder’s gameplay and universe into the far-flung future last summer. “I like to talk about them [Second Edition and Starfinder] being more like siblings,” Bulmahn suggests. “They both kind of grew up at around the same time. The new version of Pathfinder just had an extra year to kind of finish. To be honest, some of the same people worked on both – I designed the entire starship combat system [in Starfinder]!” Alongside completely new considerations for vehicular combat, character themes and exploration of alien worlds, Starfinder boasted a polished version of Pathfinder’s core rules, fine-tuned to both better accommodate its focus on ranged combat and account for the way that roleplaying trends had changed over the years. “There are a number of elements that are similar [between Second Edition and Starfinder], because we looked at them and said: ‘This is just a better way to do this,’” Bulmahn says. “There are other elements that we looked at for Starfinder and said, ‘We can’t do this

could’ve done more. I wish we could’ve changed this.’ The design of a game is never really done. I think you eventually come to a point where you just have to kind of go, ‘Well, it has to go now, so this is as good as we can make it.’ Because you can always work to make a game better. You can always spend more time iterating. You can spend more time creating a better ruleset and testing it and refining it. “So, for Second Edition, for the Pathfinder playtest, we really started taking notes almost that first day, because there was a lot of things about Pathfinder that we felt we kind of couldn’t change – that it was a bridge too far. That it was too radical. But over ten years, we’ve added so much to the game. We’ve created entire rule systems, we’ve kind of upended the way a lot of things work and over time it became kind of clear that we really were pushing into new territory. We really were creating a game that wasn’t the same. We had added

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ABOVE Goblins are now a fully playable race, inviting players to take control of the bloodthirsty creatures for the first time

for Starfinder because it’s too far away from the core of Pathfinder, but we can do it for the Pathfinder playtest.’ Conversely, there are some things that we did to Starfinder that we said: ‘Y’know, this makes more sense for a science-fiction game and doesn’t make more sense for a fantasy game, so we won’t change it for the other one.’ So they informed each other to some extent – there are elements of the two of them that are similar, there are other elements that are drastically different. Some of that has to do with [the fact] they need to be different games; Starfinder is a science-fantasy game and has very different needs than a just pure fantasy world. That’s kind of it. I think neither one is the parent of the other, they’re both the children of Pathfinder: First Edition – they just went in different directions.”

The one thing we don’t want to do is make a fundamentally different game – we want to make the best Pathfinder we can.

More fundamentally, Second Edition was faced with the question of whether to stay true to its legacy of being a direct evolution of D&D 3.5 – now 15 years old and counting – or to break even further away from the limitations of the venerable ruleset, potentially jeopardising the very vision that had first cemented its popularity. “It’s a delicate balance,” admits Bulmahn. “There’s a lot about 3.5 that harkens all the way back to the earliest roots of fantasy tabletop roleplaying games. And there’s a lot of that that we want to keep. Y’know, the concept of: there is a group of adventurers, they go on quests, they kill monsters, they get treasure, they get more powerful. Some of that is at the heart of the narrative underpinnings that everybody comes to these games with. Even people who haven’t played roleplaying games, they’ve played enough video games that are all based off that that they still come to it with that expectation. It’s amazing to me how this ecosystem feeds that sort of gameplay mechanic. So, for us, we look at that and go: ‘Well, we’re not changing that.’ Right? If we change that, we’re fundamentally making a different game. When it comes to a new version of Pathfinder, the one thing we don’t want to do is make a fundamentally different game – we want to make a game that’s better, we want to make the best Pathfinder we can make. So there are things that we look at and go: ‘Well, that’s not really critical to the core of the game experience. That’s a minor thing.’” In some cases, this doesn’t necessary mean removing things from the game completely, Bulmahn quickly adds, but instead taking a kind of ownership

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PAT H F I N D E R

over them: “Making more Pathfinder and, in other cases, making them more kind of ours or trying different things.” He gives the example of Golarion goblins, which Pathfinder’s first edition established as far more devious and dangerous (not to mention darkly comic) than their low-INT sword-fodder cousins in other RPGs. In Second Edition, players can create a goblin character for the first time, becoming one of the game’s playable races – which have been newly redubbed ‘ancestries’ and adjusted to allow players to gain racespecific feats as they level up, allowing them to fully explore their character’s cultural heritage. “So there are things that we look at and go, ‘That might be a spot where we can innovate, where we can evolve,’” Bulmahn presses, before admitting: “Then there are other things that are just legacy kind of hallmarks that, to be honest, I’m probably too sentimental to change; Magic Missile is still called Magic Missile, it still hits automatically.”

CRUNCHY BUT SMOOTH In the years since Pathfinder’s hefty tome first slammed onto tables, roleplaying has given rise to a wave of slim micro-RPGs and one-shots that, in some cases, have rules that take up little some than a single side of A4. What they lack in depth or longevity, these tastes of roleplaying make up for with a friendly approachability – they can be taught and played by friends in a single evening with little preparation, often leading those previously put off by complex calculations and the pressure of creating a highly detailed character to discover a craving for meatier RPGs. Bulmahn says that finding a way to be both welcoming introduction and long-term fixation was central to Pathfinder’s latest iteration. “One of the things that we looked at, especially with a lot of more modern game designs, is that a lot of the games are pushing for a bit of a simpler system expression,” he explains. “But that’s not quite our bread and butter. I think people come to Pathfinder because they look at it as a game with a very deep variety of options. There’s a lot of different ways you can take the game, you can kind of make whatever you want. But that variety comes at such a price. There’s so much you have to learn, there’s so many things you have to kind of navigate. So, when we started with the new edition, I think one of our big goals was to find a way to make learning and understanding the game quite a bit more straightforward, but still keeping a lot of those options, keeping that depth that people kind of come to know us from.” Combat has been completely revisited in Second Edition, doing away with the sometimes overwhelming separation of actions into move, standard, immediate and swift types in favour of a simplified system of three actions and one reaction each turn. “If we just made it a simple system of, like, well you can open up a door, swing a sword or try and disarm

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a trap or something – if we just narrowed that down to something really, really basic, then I think we would end up with a system that just had no variety to it; it would have no depth of strategy,” Bulmahn says. “But what we’ve tried to do is make sure that all the characters have different components of their class, of their ancestry, of their spells, of their magic items, that give them interesting tactical choices, so that it’s really easy to say: ‘Hey, you get three actions on your turn.’ That’s not a hard thing to figure out but, when you dig into your character, your character has a depth of options as to what you do with those three actions. You end up with interesting choices, like: do I attack for the third time or, instead of attacking, do I spend that third action to raise my shield and increase my defence? So you end up having to weigh the choices. “I think very frequently with Pathfinder: First Edition, there was always a kind of right answer for most situations. It was like: ‘Oh, that’s clearly the best thing to do.’ We wanted to step back from that and make it a little bit more strategic. So where we simplified in one area, we added meaningful choice and complexity to another area. “I’ve taught the new version of this game now to dozens of players and all of them kind of approach as, like, ‘Oh, that sounds really simple and easy.’ And then when they dig into it, they go: ‘Oh, I can do this or that or this other thing. And, depending on the situation or the circumstance, one might be better than the other, but it might not be, so I have to make the right choice here and live with the consequences.’ That makes for a much more exciting play experience than just kind of, like, ‘I run up and keep swinging until he dies.’ So, yeah, it’s deceptively simple to learn but difficult to master, which was our goal.” The new way combat is handled is coupled with a fresh balancing of class abilities, addressing the gripe of some players over the relatively restricted skillset of fighters and other martial characters compared to their magic-using companions. “What we tried to do is ensure that spellcasting characters have their role to play in a fight, and that role varies depending on what type of character it is,” Bulmahn says. “The martial characters have a role to play. Everybody kind of has their thing that they are supposed to do. We call it ‘niche protection’, and what we basically tried to do is make sure that the wizard can’t be a better rogue than the rogue, right? It’s kind of a two-sided approach.” Bulmahn gives the specific example of the First Edition spell Knock, which allowed a magical character to pick a lock – making the nimble fingers of the rogue redundant. “That’s no longer the case,” he reassures. “Knock gives you a bonus on your ability to pick a lock, but if you don’t have any ability at it, you’re still pretty terrible at it. It’s almost better for the wizard to cast Knock on the thing and then let the rogue pick the lock than it is for the wizard to try and do it

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PAT H F I N D E R

themselves, because it doesn’t just make it so that it automatically happens.” On the battlefield, Bulmahn says that spells that could “automatically win the fight” in First Edition have been pared back down, while martial characters have been gifted with a greater ability to control the “flow and feel” of an encounter by pushing enemies around, applying negative conditions and use reactions to do more than just dish out damage. “Fighters can be very good at scaring folks, they can be very intimidating in a fight, and they have a number of abilities that make them even better at doing that if they decide to build that kind of character,” he explains. “We kind of make it so that you get to choose how you want to contribute. And, assuming everyone’s working together, they’re not all picking the same thing. If the wizard’s picking a whole bunch of fear things and the fighter’s picking a whole bunch of fear things they’re going to overlap quite a bit. But it’s a group game, so we kind of assume that most people work together.” All of this means a more approachable, smoother Pathfinder experience, without taking away from the game’s signature crunch for those wanting to dig their

A game that’s easier for everyone to grasp and explore makes for a game that’s better to stream.

teeth in. Bulmahn emphasises that Second Edition is still very much Pathfinder – but with a lighter touch. “If you come to the new version of Pathfinder and you learn how to make a character, you don’t have to relearn that process just because you’re making a cleric instead of a barbarian,” he suggests. “There’s a few things you need to pick up, but it’s not an entirely different class. There is a chassis that a lot of these things are built off of. So you kind of learn the process once and then you can repeat the process and kind of build entirely different characters. So the goal really is to make sure that the people who come to our game still get the game they expect, but we don’t want new players to have to jump through quite so many hoops to get there.” The designer reveals that part of the renewed focus on taking the hard work out of Pathfinder has been inspired by the rise in players broadcasting their campaigns as online video over the last ten years. This includes Critical Role, the all-star web series featuring voice actors that began as a Pathfinder campaign in private before being converted to D&D: Fifth Edition as a result of the latter game’s streamfriendly simplicity. “I think a lot of the goals overlap in interesting ways,” Bulmahn says. “Making a game that’s kind of easier for everyone to grasp and explore makes for a game that’s better to stream. Creating a game system that has more narrative kind of gameplay mechanics that are not only more engaging for the players, but it’s also far more interesting to watch people do that on a stream, right? “We have a number of Actual Play podcasts that play various parts of Pathfinder and it’s interesting how their play style influences the way we think about the game and how kind of everybody thinks about games. The rise of people watching other people play tabletop roleplaying games has really changed some opinions about how some things should probably work. Giving the GM more agency, giving the players more control over how the world affects their characters: things like that kind of make for a more engaging play experience. Even without that, though, a lot of that’s our goal anyway, right? We want everybody to be invested in telling their story, telling the tale of their adventuring group as they traverse the dangerous world in search of fame and glory, so we want them to be engaged on that anyway. It’s fortuitous, a lot of the goals overlap.”

WORLD IN MOTION As Pathfinder moves onwards, so too does its setting. In fact, Golarion has been continually advancing since Pathfinder’s first Adventure Path, Rise of the Runelords, debuted in 2007. At the time, the team decided to lock step with reality, progressing their fantasy world at the rate of one Golarion year for every Earth year – but began in the year of 4707, matching

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He laughs. “There’s a bunch of really exciting things coming up in the next year, but if I spoil them people will run out of the office right now and stab me, so I’m not going to do it.”

FIND THE WAY

the last two digits of our calendar to make it easily memorable. Monthly Adventure Path chapters – each six forming a connected campaign – have kept the clock running since. Second Edition leaps the timeline forward by a couple of hundred years, to 4919, and officially marks the completion of past storylines in the world, opening up new room to explore Pathfinder’s world and inhabitants. “The thing that we haven’t done up to this point with that [passage of time] is we have all these Adventure Paths with these random storylines,” Bulmahn says. “We haven’t updated the timeline to account for those. Until now. “We’ll be advancing the plotline and saying, ‘This is what happened to our world, this is how the world has changed.’ I don’t think anyone who is familiar with Golarion is going to come to it and go: ‘Oh my god, everything is so different, I don’t recognise anything.’ But a lot of those big storylines are going to play out and come to fruition. So we’ll see how it goes.”

ABOVE Martial characters are able to better control the battlefield OPPOSITE Combat has been streamlined into a system of three actions

Pathfinder’s second edition brings together a decade’s worth of its creators’ ambitions and players’ wishes. It’s still taking form: this month’s playtest is expected to last for around four months, with Bulmahn and his team working to polish and tweak the final release in response to feedback before its 2019 launch. “After that, it’s off to the races,” he says. “I have calendars and plans that stretch out with numbers like 2022 on them, so we’re looking way into the future about what we want to make for this game and what exciting directions we think it can take.” Even so, the designer knows that, just as with the game’s first edition, this incarnation is both a move away from the past and a step towards the future for Pathfinder – with Bulmahn forever chasing the next improvement, the next story to tell. “Whenever you create a game like this, part of the process of making it is more than just setting down where it is right now, it’s also setting down the skeleton of where you want to go,” he accepts. “In our meetings, I say we need to make sure that we build the design space for ourselves. So we don’t want to fill in all the holes. We don’t want to plug all the gaps. We want to leave ourselves room that says, ‘Hey, this is a really cool new mechanic.’” While total perfection might remain just out of reach for its creators, the new Pathfinder will doubtless inherit its predecessor’s legacy as the revolutionary introduction to roleplaying for thousands of new players – as well as continuing to be the definitive RPG for those who remain enthralled, all these years later. There’s room for everyone to become part of the game’s history, and it’s still just beginning. “We’re excited to move forward and create kind of a fresh start for a lot of new people to be able to access the game, but we also want to make sure that the people who have been with us this whole time still come to the game and find it to be the game they know and love,” Bulmahn says. “Just looking at the way we’ve designed [ancestries], it leaves all of this room for us to build more of them in the future for you to use in your game. Or to expand the ones we have! Before, there was no design space there at all, other than just make a new race and then you’re just done with it. The choice was made precisely once. Now it’s kind of a more living, breathing part of Pathfinder. So those sorts of decisions give us the opportunity to build a future for Pathfinder that is kind of robust and rich. Deciding – not to be too cliché – what path we’re going to take is half the fun.”

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August 2018

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE

Western Legends gives you the chance to step into the boots of history’s greatest gunslingers and carve your own legend in its open world. Saddle up and enjoy the ride of the ultimate Wild West sandbox Words by Matt Jarvis

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WESTERN LEGENDS

LEFT Western Legends presents a sandbox for players to explore BELOW Travis R. Chance worked with first-time designer Hervé Lemaître

ddie Izzard once joked that if French filmmakers had put their continental spin on cowboy movies instead of the Italian influence led by Sergio Leone, the wave of revolutionary westerns released in the 1960s wouldn’t have been ‘spaghetti’ but ‘baguetti’. That horse has long since bolted the stable onscreen, but board games may be about to go through their own ‘baguetti’ moment at the hands of Hervé Lemaître, the French first-time designer behind the ambitious, visionary Western Legends. Despite being Lemaître’s tabletop debut, Western Legends is a confident, complex creation: part board game, part RPG, part historical simulation. Rather than give players a single strand of the Old West – the gunfights of Bang!, the cattle-driving of

August 2018

Great Western Trail, the questionable trading standards of Snake Oil – Lemaître has sewn together a tapestry of western life and death in the form of a sprawling open world that encompasses everything from gambling and prospecting to peacekeeping and robbing. “It’s not like a lot of board games where, okay, it’s like: ‘I score victory points by doing this’, ‘I score victory points just by winning fights’ or ‘I score victory points by turning in resources’,” says Kolossal Games president Travis R. Chance, who took on the task of publishing Lemaître’s grand design. “In this game, you have so many possible options for how you can convert those decisions into a potential victory, and in a way that I don’t feel is as mired and confusing as people would expect for what type of game it is. Because there’s a lot

of sandbox games – there’s some games that claim to have a ‘sandbox feel’ – but this is very much: ‘You’ve got three actions, what do you want to do? Do you wanna rob a bank? Do you wanna beat up a bandit? Do you wanna go drive cattle? Do you wanna mine gold? Do you wanna sell gold? Do you wanna play poker?’ You can, literally – we have rules for our own house version of Texas hold ‘em within the game itself.” Chance adds that one of the reasons he was attracted to Western Legends is that, despite its ambitions to replicate such a huge range of experiences, Lemaître proved he had the substance to make his lofty ideas actually work on the table. “I am actually quite fond of working with first-time designers because they’re really enthusiastic,” says Chance. “They’re usually very humble, they want to learn the process and they’re willing to do the work. I think after the micro-game kind of boom happened, that, coupled with crowdfunding, allowed a lot of people who sort of just had concepts and not really games to start getting into the industry, and then they were pitching games to publishers and then the publisher ended up finishing the design. I’m very against that; I’m not interested in looking at concepts, I’m interested in looking at designs.”

Even though it’s a sandbox game – you have an incredible matrix of options – it’s really quite simple.

A GAME UNCHAINED Western Legends thrives on being able to let its players wander off the beaten track and carve out a piece of the world in whatever way they please. To make every route worth exploring, it sets this innovative level of freedom inside a familiar overarching structure: the first player to a set amount of victory points – here rechristened as ‘legendary points’ – wins. “The design has a couple of failsafes in it,” Chance reassures. “When I say failsafes, I mean more like there’s a little bit of directed play, but it’s not forced. “Really what the game to me is about is action optimisation: how do I take those cards that I get, or the money that I get, and the three actions that I have, and how do I turn that into the most amount of possible points or set myself up? The game has this really nice kind of pace to it, where you’re almost always scoring points on your turn, but you can set yourself up for really meaningful turns. “You’re almost always going to use an action to move, because you interact with the board a lot, or players. There’s kind of this constant feeling of being mobile in the game.” Certain decisions will shift a player’s standing with the law, earning them renown as a crime-fighting marshal or notoriety as an infamous outlaw. Both paths can reap their own rewards. “Every character starts asymmetrically insomuch as they start with a different advantage,” Chance explains. “So one character might have more poker cards in their hand, one character might start with more money, one character might start with a better weapon, one character might start with a mule, one character might start wanted or as a marshal – that’s a really big crux in the game, that helps you out of the gate. “The marshal track is this very simple Eurogame concept of ‘when I gain marshal points I move up the track and I get the reward; I’m rewarded for playing the good guy’. Whereas there’s the wanted track, which in appearances looks exactly like the marshal track, but it’s different insomuch as you have more options as a wanted player – so I can rob the bank, I can rob other players. Rustling cattle, which is the polar opposite version of driving the cattle, is a much easier path than it is for the marshals who have to wrangle the cattle and take them down to this rail station in the middle of the board and then have to traverse back. So there’s kind of implied strategies with the moral code of the game.” There is an exhaustive list of ways for players to rack up legendary points, each reflected

by unique gameplay – you might roll a die to prospect for gold one turn, pick up and deliver cattle tokens the next, and follow that with a card-battle shootout. “The game, even though it’s a sandbox game – you have an incredible matrix of options – it’s really quite simple,” promises Chance. “The rulebook is like a very big rulebook, but it’s one of those where when you sit down and you teach the game, it’s like a 15-, 20-minute explanation of all the options. The first round players will be like, ‘Well, I’m going to move and then I’ll do this,’ and by the second or third turn the turns are like maybe two minutes long. I mean, the game plays incredibly fast. It’s intuitive, y’know – you always have opportunity to make really interesting and cool decisions.” These decisions are guided somewhat by story cards, a deck of event cards on which players can fulfil certain conditions and earn bonus rewards later on – but without locking their choices to a rail. “What those do is they are general enough that there’s lots of ways to satisfy the conditions,” Chance says. “For example, the ‘get two or more LP on your turn’ – if I get two or more LP, what are the ways I can do that? Well, I can duel another player. That has nothing to do with being wanted or being a marshal. I’m walking up to someone and saying, ‘I challenge you to a duel, if you win, you’re going to get two LP.’ If I’m wearing a ten-gallon hat and I go play poker, I can get two LP. If I deliver gold to the bank, two or more gold nuggets, I can get two LP. If I go and spend the money I have at the cabaret and throw a party, if I spend at least $60 I can get two LP. So, like there, there’s some very different options in the game that all can be rewarded in the same exact way without constraining the players to a narrow decision point. “There’s all these like really subtle ways of letting a player get benefits and rewards without forcing them to be something.”

POKER FACE-OFF Rather than use a separate deck for each and every possible action, Western Legends combines many of its gameplay mechanics into a single pack of 52 playing cards. Chance admits the genre cliché. “There’s always a [western] game that has poker cards in it in some form,” he confesses. “So does Western Legends, but the thing that makes Western Legends different is there’s more than just, ‘Here’s a deck of poker cards that do something else.’ “That was part of the initial design. We obviously over time developed and designed

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WESTERN LEGENDS

some different cards that were better suited for what the game was becoming throughout the development process, but from the onset that was there. He adds: “I’ll be honest, when I first saw the game, one of the very first things I said was: ‘Oh yes, there’s a poker deck.’ Then I looked. The thing is, the game doesn’t live and die on the poker deck. It’s integral to what you do, it gives you all these options, it modifies how things happen, it adds tension to the game, but you could never play a poker card and still run around the board and do a lot of things.” One of the cards’ key uses is to swiftly resolve duels between players and non-player characters. Each side places a card facedown and reveals them simultaneously; the highest card is the quickest draw. It’s as fast as a gunshot, with flexing trigger fingers and squinting stares replaced by eyeing up your opponent’s lacklustre selection of options – or, in the case of the NPCs, trying your luck against the suitless fight deck. “The game is very interactive, so there is conflict,” Chance says. “It’s not necessarily hyper– it’s not just conflict. It’s not like Blood Rage or something, where you’re just crushing the other person’s dreams and soul on a repeated basis. If you fight, you’re gonna have to play the poker cards.

August 2018

“You can fight NPCs in the game such as the bandits, if the sheriff is hunting you and he moves into your space you’ll fight him, and if you rob the bank you’ll fight a guard. The guard doesn’t have a miniature like the sheriff or the bandits; nevertheless, they all use a similar mechanism. One thing that I think is really neat about the game is that if someone interacts with those NPCs, the player to their right portrays that character; they make the decisions for that character.” Deepening the strategy is the cards’ secondary function as action, bonus or reaction abilities, able to be triggered at will to sprint further across the dusty plains before obtaining a steed or gain the upper hand in a gunfight – assuming your opponent doesn’t have their own trick up their sleeve. “There’s a card called Stick ‘em Up, which you use to modify fight results – you can lower another person’s card value,” Chance explains excitedly. “That creates some interesting tension: ‘Oh, you’re beating me, I’m going to lower your card,’ and suddenly they’re like ‘Oh, guess what? I have one too! I’m going to lower your card.’ It all comes together in this really simple way, a simple execution which I think is really interesting. You blow through cards really quickly.”

THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY Western Legends’ central quest for legendary points is somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy: players begin the game as any one of a roster of real-life icons of the West, stepping into the boots of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, Wyatt Earp and more. “When Hervé originally showed me the game, he had half the characters historical and then his friends were made-up characters in the game,” Chance recalls. “What I thought was the historical thing was pretty interesting. I had actually never made a game that was non-fiction, as it was. So I was like, ‘Okay, this is interesting and this gives us some design constraints’, right?” While players can take the historical figures in any direction they want, even playing against reality – “You want Billy the Kid to be the best marshal that ever lived? You can do that!” Chance eagerly encourages – their repute helps to give some direction and grounding to players who might otherwise feel overwhelmed by being set loose in the sprawling sandbox. “It’s really easy to be like, ‘Here’s Fat Jim, some made-up guy. What does Fat Jim do? I dunno, whatever, he’s good at gambling,’ versus Billy the Kid – he’s wanted, when a lot of people think famous outlaws they think Billy the Kid, Jesse James, so how can we convey that through

mechanics, through mechanisms? How can we make him true to life?” Chance says. “On top of that, there was something that for me – and not to wax nostalgic here – was the actual process of doing research on these people and then making sure that we not only portrayed them correctly but that we made the mechanisms match up with who they are. So even their goal cards are reflective of the types of exploits they did in their actual life. I wanted to use the goal cards, the ability that’s on the character, their starting setup, all to be kind of a personification through mechanisms of who they were in actual life. Which I thought was pretty neat, and I think we did a really fantastic job of accomplishing that.” Partially as a result of the time period that it depicts, the western genre has long been one mired by the presence of sexism and racism. It is a troubled legacy that Chance opted to confront head-on. “I didn’t want to shy away from those parts of the western history, which I think a lot of games do,” he staunchly declares. “They romanticise the good guys, the bad guys. “We didn’t go with all of the super obvious [characters]. We wanted to be inclusive, so we had a couple Native Americans, a number of African Americans. To be completely honest with you, I had no idea who some of these people were at all; I had no idea who Isom Dart was, I had no idea

We took history but kind of had a blank canvas for the character to run around in. who Stagecoach Mary Fields was. Through the process of research, we discovered these people and they were, like, super incredible. It’s frankly kind of sad they’re not as known as Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday – everybody knows those, but who’s Bass Reeves? A lot of people don’t know who Bass Reeves is, he’s this incredible man with this incredible story. [He] was born into slavery and ends up becoming to this day one of the most successful US marshals in history, and this guy was given this massive territory in a time where within his lifetime he was a slave and then wasn’t a slave.”

OPPOSITE The miniatures from the game, including real-life historical icons BELOW Players can gain items that round out their character’s own talents

Even with the conscious effort to subvert the typical shortcomings of westerns, Chance acknowledges that giving players an open world to explore with real people introduced several extra challenges that using fictional characters would’ve avoided – but insists that the more difficult option was the right decision. “It’s a tricky genre to navigate,” he says. “The first thing when I decided to do this, I said to Hervé – Hervé is French – he had Sitting Bull in the game, I was like: ‘I don’t think this is super respectful, this guy’s known for being a pacifist and having him run around and kill people and then play cards and stuff is not something I think we should do.’ “It’s always easier to just make things up, right? It’s just easier to say ‘here’s Ragnar the Barbarian’ or ‘here’s Captain Starface, the Captain Kirk analogue’. People just eat that stuff with a spoon without question. A lot of these people never even met in life. Their lives were within that century. Some of them were dead when other people were active. And the towns that they’re in are completely fictitious. We did this interesting thing where we took history but kind of had a blank canvas for the character to run around in. That was by design, that was what I wanted to see happen – I wanted for people to be able to be able to have these really memorable characters, if they wanted to they could go do research or maybe it’s someone they love.”

THE LEGEND CONTINUES With its sandbox world and careful meshing of reality and fiction, Western Legends marks a fresh approach not just to the Wild West, but to interactive storytelling in games as a whole. With few limits on their ambitions and the momentum of a successful Kickstarter behind them, it’s maybe no surprise its creators already have the next chapter of their own story in mind. “It’s very likely that you’ll see, 12 months from now, another campaign come up for an expansion that would be a standalone experience,” Chance suggests. “We’ve made jokes, of course – ‘‘Eastern Legends’ and, y’know, you could take it and very easily move it into a different sci-fi or cyberpunk or something like that. Oh, maybe it would be cool if you had like a cyberpunk noir where you’re a detective or something running around in a futuristic city trying to solve cases. “But, out of the gate, I feel like Western Legends is a big game and there’s still opportunity there. So what I’d like to do is really fully explore what Western Legends can be before moving onto another product in a similar kind of design.”

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H AV E Y O U P L AY E D ?

MILLENNIUM BLADES

It’s an ingenious game within a game, a loving celebration of collectible card games and it even makes paper money fun! Crack a booster, fine-tune your deck and take your skills to the world championships in this brilliantly ambitious CCG sim Words by Matt Jarvis

August 2018

nyone who’s ever been entranced by the foil-tearing ecstasy of collecting Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh! or any one of the many collectible card games out there will tell you that it’s a deep hole to fall into. The relentless release cycle, endless hunt for rares in randomised packs and constantly shifting metagame required to keep up in the competitive scene means that money and time quickly vanishes in a blur of constantly building your collection and then ensuring that your hundreds or thousands of cards are properly sleeved, sorted and stored. Often, playing the game becomes secondary to living the game. Millennium Blades gets it. D. Brad Talton’s magnum opus is as ridiculously ambitious as it is unbelievably in-tune with the feel of being a CCG fan. It’s not just a game; it’s a game about games, and the people that play them. Millennium Blades is a card game that simulates not just the act of playing card games, but the collecting, sorting, selling, trading and community of card games, too.

While it simulates collectible card games, importantly, Millennium Blades is not a CCG. Well, the Millennium Blades we play isn’t a CCG, despite sharing its name with the fictional CCG that rules its anime-inspired in-game universe. The box comes with a ready-made collection of hundreds of cards split into sets that parody and pay homage to the classics of the genre, as well as various other bits of pop culture, and are mixed in a seemingly limitless number of combinations before each match. And yet, Millennium Blades starts in a way that will be familiar to anyone who has found themselves teetering on the edge of the CCG cliff-edge, starting down into the void with a core set under their arm. Each player begins with a modest starter deck, and must build it up into a carefully-crafted collection by acquiring new cards. Get ready to fall in headfirst.

HOW DO YOU PLAY? Although Millennium Blades does feature simple tournaments in which the cards are played and their actions are executed, sending players eventually spiralling from region competitions up to the world stage by earning ranking points, they’re not the focus of the game. The heart of Millennium Blades is a real-time rush to buy the right cards and trade away those you no longer need, purchasing cards from a central store, selling them through the aftermarket or bartering with other players – an act that can earn you valuable ‘friendship’ as well as decent cards. This all takes place in a 20-minute timed round broken into three sections. Players complete a matching set to cash in as a ‘collection’, while also working to create the perfect deck by following the metagame (which shifts, forcing them to readjust) and store cards in their binder for later use. It’s intense and there’s

little room for error, but the ticking clock means that someone will inevitably make a mistake – learning to think on your feet (or bums, as the game can take several hours to finish) is part of the challenge, and part of the fun. Millennium Blades knows that it’s all for fun, too. It’s why its cards poke fun at the games its players and creators adore; it’s why the collection and building phase is a manic panic instead of a slow, pensive act of perfectionism; and it’s why the game’s currency is delightfully tactile paper money. Not just your bog standard Monopoly notes, either – the rulebook encourages you to bind wads of the bills together when you first open the box, letting players slap down fat stacks of cash in exchange for the most valuable cards on the market. It’s as silly and satisfying as it sounds.

WHY SHOULD YOU PLAY IT? Millennium Blades manages to be just as captivating as the collectible classics it takes as its inspiration, with the benefit of being able to experience the whole gamut of CCG obsession in just a couple of hours – and for a one-off price. Its commitment to simulating the world of CCGs is more than just a gimmick, too; there’s a wealth of detail and depth in its excellently realised gameplay, with the healthy stock of cards and array of different gameplay variants in the rulebook providing an overwhelming amount to explore and master for those who find it their latest fixation. Few games do as good a job of making you realise why games have the power to keep us entertained and engrossed for hours, months and years. Millennium Blades is a perfect example of a game made for people who love games by people who clearly love games, a fitting tribute to this wonderful hobby wrapped up in a seriously smart package. When it even manages to get paper money right, you know it’s doing something special.

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Cthulhu ah nog, ahor ymg' h' mggoka'ai? Mind-bending cosmic horror sounds will envelop your gaming table in an atmosphere of unease, suspense and dread with Call of Cthulhu’s first official soundtrack from the award-winning Syrinscape app. Install Syrinscape today and play the legendary Call of Cthulhu RPG like never before!

Cthulhu is Coming, Can You Hear Him?

syrinscape.com/CallofCthulhu

KICKSTARTING FROM S CR AT CH

Their first crowdfunding campaign successfully finished, Holly Gramazio reveals five big things the Art Deck team learnt: from nailing stretch goals to grabbing attention

90% of what matters is the stuff you’ve already done.

August 2018

ell. We’ve finished our Kickstarter. After months and months of (admittedly intermittent) planning, and four weeks of repeatedly refreshing our Kickstarter page, it’s over. And we’re just delighted with how it went. We hit our target in two days, which meant we could relax just a little bit for the rest of the month; and then steady pledges with a last-minute surge took us to £19,000, a lot more than our initial ask of £7,000. Of course, there were dispiriting moments: a regular light scatter of people cancelling their pledges, the traditional mid-campaign lull where a week or two went by without our numbers budging much. But overall, we’re so happy that we get to make Art Deck for real, that we hit our target so quickly, that so many people want to get hold of our game. That said, though: here are the Top Five Things We’d Definitely Do Differently Next Time. 1. We’d be better-prepared with potential stretch goals. We weren’t quite expecting to hit our target so quickly – which, you know, I definitely don’t want to complain, but the speed of the first couple of days meant that, although we had stretch goals in mind, we didn’t have them written out and perfectly costed up in advance. 2. We spent a lot of time both before and during the Kickstarter sending out press releases – and not one of them led to any coverage. Not within the board games

world, not within the arts and crafts world, not within the world of wholesome family fun. When people did ask us to come on a podcast or reach out to find out more about the game, it was always because they’d encountered it some other way: Twitter, Facebook, an event, even this column. I probably wouldn’t send out a press release next time unless I was working on a game with a particularly newsworthy angle. 3. We’d run the game at even more events. We reached a load of possible players at UK Games Expo, but the smaller events were important too. Sure, events can be exhausting, or you can find yourself sitting for hours in an almost-empty basement while nobody plays, but, when they work, live events are amazing for spreading the word about your game, especially for something like Art Deck where you can play a round in ten minutes or understand the game in one. 4. We’d aim to get hold of our final prototypes earlier. We really wanted to be live during UK Games Expo, and to run early enough that we could confidently promise delivery by Christmas, but that meant there wasn’t enough time between getting hold of our final prototypes to send out advance review copies or find board game events in the months preceding the launch. Of course, we knew that getting the game into the hands of actual reviewers would be really helpful if we could manage it – but we thought if we sent out press releases a couple of weeks in advance and offered review copies, someone might take us up on it. Nope! So if we did it again, we’d make sure to have a longer lead-in time with final prototypes in hand, and we’d seek out way more reviewers at events in advance. 5. Finally, we’d go to the pub on launch night. Just to have a sit. Sure, Kickstarters are stressful while they’re happening – but 90% of what matters is the stuff you’ve already done, the work you’ve put in in advance. Once you’ve pressed that launch button, there’s only so much you can do to affect the campaign’s outcome. So you might as well take an evening out, have a sit and a chat, and close your eyes in the sun.

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HOW WE MADE

CAPTAIN SONAR

Roberto Fraga and Yohan Lemonnier took the tension of Battleship and transformed it into a direct hit of exhilaration in their team party game. Prepare for the deepest of dives

Words by Owen Duffy

August 2018

eleased in 2016, Captain Sonar is a tense and frantic game of submarine warfare that casts players as rival teams of mariners hunting one another through the ocean’s depths. Inspired by films like The Hunt for Red October, it’s a captivating battle of co-ordination, risk and cunning. We spoke to its creators to discover the story behind this breathtakingly original game of naval warfare, and how the experience of real-life military service inspired its innovative design.

RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP

Captain Sonar was partly inspired by co-creator Roberto Fraga’s own time at sea as part of the French navy and coast guard

Captain Sonar is the product of a partnership between designers Roberto Fraga and Yohan Lemonnier, both of whom discovered games at an early age. While they’ve become known as board game creators, they first encountered the tabletop hobby through other means. “I started playing roleplaying games at the age of 11,” says Lemonnier. “I haven’t stopped playing since, and now I’m 45. “Over the years I’ve played Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu, a bit of AD&D, Vampire: The Masquerade, Star Wars d6. The main attraction has always been the fact that you could open a dimensional door in your bedroom and cross through it with friends to travel in imaginary lands. It’s been an incredible tool to discover myself and to learn how to interact with others. In my opinion, it’s such a powerful tool to bond with others that it should be mandatory in schools.” Fraga, on the other hand, first got into gaming through tabletop battle games. “I started to create my first science-fiction wargames when I was 14,” he says, “and I’ve just never stopped creating games. Obviously I love to play them as well, but I’m more of a game designer than a player. My parents only really played some traditional Spanish card games when I was growing up, so I was alone in my passion.” Both men eventually discovered modern board games; for Lemonnier, the experience was particularly memorable. “I rediscovered board games in the year 2000 with a few friends during New Year’s Eve,” he recalls. “We were in Alsace, in France, near the German border. Our car broke down, so we were trapped at our friends’ house playing Kahuna and Ticket to Ride with fan-made translated rules. “It was like a new beginning for me. I discovered that there were other ways to play. Kahuna was an excellent two-player game, and I still play Ticket to Ride for the sensation

of building tension over the course of the game. That’s something I also enjoyed about Splendor. I really enjoyed Claustrophobia, a two-player dungeon-crawling adventure game. Emotionally it felt almost like some of my RPGs, when the destiny of your character depended on a roll of a die. I discovered so many other games, too many to list them all. “When I moved from Paris to Brittany I started a game group, and that gave me the opportunity to try to create a few games based on ideas that I’d had over the years. I think when you play RPGs, particularly when you’re a dungeon master or game master, it’s a natural move to start making your own world and scenarios, and designing games was the next step from that. I started to show my creations to publishers, and I had my first game released with CMON in 2015: The World of Smog: On Her Majesty’s Service.” For his part, Fraga’s design career stretches back to the year 2000, and his credits include the madcap family game Dancing Eggs and 2015 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner Spinderella. Along the way he also worked as an officer in the French navy and as the captain of a coast guard boat – eventually, his twin careers at sea and in gaming were destined to meet.

UP PERISCOPE At first glance, Captain Sonar looks a little like the mass-market Battleship. Players sit poring over square-grid maps, attempting to locate and destroy their opponents’ sub. A giant screen runs the length of the table, obscuring the opposing team’s position. But that’s where the similarity ends; Captain Sonar incorporates a host of innovative elements that make it a far more nuanced and tactical game. Players launch drones to help pinpoint their enemies’ location. They make repairs to critical systems to keep their vessels operational. They periodically surface for air, briefly giving away their position before diving and escaping to safer locales. They use mines and torpedoes to blast their rivals to a watery grave. Each player finds themselves in a different role with their own set of responsibilities – captain, engineer, first mate or radio operator – and co-operating effectively in the heat of battle is key to claiming victory. But the most striking thing about the game is that both teams attempt to balance all of these tasks at the same time; rather than taking turns to manoeuvre, evade and attack, each team carries out actions as fast as they can issue and execute their orders.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

HOW WE MADE C A P T A I N S O N A R

The crews track their course – and the suspected position of their enemy – using laminated maps

It’s a recipe for chaos and miscommunication, and a brilliant representation of the clamour and confusion of combat at sea. So it’s surprising to find that the designers originally had a different theme in mind. “We wanted a game of communication, and our first idea was about two SWAT teams fighting in a warehouse,” Lemonnier reveals. “We had players sitting on either side of the table separated by a screen, as in Captain Sonar, with their commanding officers standing on the side giving them orders. “That game didn’t work, but the idea was there. We wanted people to talk to their

August 2018

teammates, and it had to be intense; they had to be under pressure. But we found that while the officers were having fun, the soldiers on both sides of the screen weren’t.” To remedy the situation, the designers turned to Fraga’s experience at sea. He says his service in the navy and coast guard had provided a source of inspiration for the game. “Everything I have done in my life has helped me create games,” he says. “When I was radio operator on board of an aircraft carrier, I was working on the best part: the bridge, where all the decisions are taken. We did an exercise where we were trying to fight

the enemy Orange Force, which represented the Russian fleet. There were 16 people simultaneously on the bridge shouting orders, and a part of the inspiration comes from that.” Fraga adds that his naval career even influenced the game’s physical components. One member of each team is responsible for listening in on the other team’s communications, trying to glean any information that could give away their location. To help with their deductions, they use a see-through plastic sheet layered over the game’s map – a process lifted directly from real-world naval operations. “The idea of the radio operator in Captain Sonar comes directly from the bridge,” he explains. “Back in 1981 we had old radars with the rotating beam on the screen, showing the adversary’s radar echoes. Sometimes the captain would ask us to calculate the routes of enemy ships, and we used transparent screens and special pens to chart their vectors. So you can easily see where the idea for the transparent surfaces in the game comes from.” In other respects, though, the pair deliberately attempted to avoid emulating life at sea. “We studied the chain of command aboard a ship,” Lemonnier says. “We also watched a lot of movies, like The Hunt For Red October. We wanted to respect the idea of a chain of command but, at the same time, we didn’t want one player to take the lead. Players had to be equals. “We designed the roles so that people with different personalities could play together: the one who speaks loudly, the silent and focused player, the shy player. The first mate, for example, is often described as the least interesting, but nothing could be more wrong. We designed it to be adaptable. It’s perfect for a shy player, or someone who doesn’t know the game and still wants to play with a veteran crew. But you can also fully play your role if

you want. The first mate is allowed to trigger the detection systems, and they are also the channel of communication of the whole crew, to help the captain take decisions.” Designing players’ roles and balancing their responsibilities was a painstaking process, he adds. “The whole process took three years: six months to validate the core mechanic of the captain and the radio operator, six more months to balance that with the first mate, and two whole fracking years to stabilise the engineer! At first we had sheets and markers for everyone, except for the engineer. They had very special gameplay based on dice and cards. But at some point it became obvious that we had to unify everything, and it’s been a long road.” Perfecting the game’s different roles was one challenge, but another was ensuring that the its real-time mechanisms flowed smoothly and didn’t disintegrate into a chaotic mess as both teams planned, communicated and made their moves at the same time. For Lemonnier, though, the effort was easily worthwhile. “The real-time element is the heart of the game,” he says. “It adds a sense of emergency, it brings tension, stress, and it’s the main element that creates the experience. “At first, we wanted a fully real-time game. But the triggering of the systems like weapons and drones was too messy, so we switched to a ‘pause’ mode for those moments. Whenever a team uses one of those elements, the action stops for a moment until they resolve it. That created a very pleasant sinusoidal curve of sensations during the game, periods of calm in the middle of the tempest. So what we considered a problem at first turned out to be a very important part in the tempo and the overall feeling of the game.” The designers also included a turn-based variant. Initially intended as a tutorial mode for new players, it met with a positive response from some people who preferred it to the more stressful main game. “Playing turn-by-turn is more strategic, but gives less sensations,” Lemonnier says. “Realtime is more chaotic, but the emotions are stronger. People can pick their favourite.”

Lemonnier says. “Once the engineer’s role was stabilised, we were pretty sure we had what we wanted and we didn’t make very many modifications after that. “That said, we were still surprised to see that players took liberties with the game and home-ruled it to meet their needs. And that’s great. It proves that the game can handle some tweaks without losing its power.” French publisher Matagot brought the game to players in 2016, and it met with a positive response from fans and critics, winning praise for its originality and tense, competitive atmosphere.

“Prior to its release, some publishers told us that they would buy it and play it once published, but that they would never take the risk of publishing it themselves,” Lemonnier says. “It was too original and different to fit in any category. But the good reviews are the proof that there’s room for everything, even for an unusual game like Captain Sonar. We are always thrilled and grateful to hear people say: ‘Hey guys, we had a fantastic time playing your game, it gave us crazy sensations.’ That was always our goal, and we are proud and grateful to Matagot, who dared launched that torpedo with us.”

The real-time element is the heart of the game. It adds a sense of emergency, it brings tension, stress, and it’s the main element that creates the experience. Captain Sonar designers Roberto Fraga (left) and Yohan Lemonnier (right)

SINK OR SWIM With their design almost complete, Fraga and Lemonnier ran through their final playtesting sessions before releasing it to the world. “We tested a lot both with newcomers to the game and with veterans to ensure that both audiences would enjoy the experience,”

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HOW WE MADE C A P T A I N S O N A R

The designers’ greatest sense of achievement, though, comes from the emotional response their game has sparked in players. “There’s nothing better than RPGs for me, but board games can still try to approach those kinds of sensations; the impression that you are immersed in a universe, that your are almost living the adventure ‘for real,’” Lemonnier says. “It was the cornerstone of the project for both of us. We wanted players to forget about their problems at work, their taxes and everything like that while playing the game. It had to be tense, hectic. We wanted players to be tired after a game or two. And by setting the game on a submarine, you’re putting them into a very a claustrophobic universe. “It’s a game of cat and mouse, also a deduction game, a puzzle-ish game. The tempo and the rhythm are central to the experience. A good crew knows when to wait, and when to rush. And the moments of calm put an emphasis on the moments of excitement. We

tried to balance it like a movie, with moments of silent tension and moments of shouting and difficult decisions. It forces people to talk, plan and even argue with each other, just like in the films we take some of our inspiration from.” Lemonnier attributes much of that thematic success to his design partnership with Fraga. He argues that working together resulted in a better game than either creator might have come up with alone. “We clearly ended up with a better game,” he says. “During the initial brainstorming, we threw in everything we had in mind. Then we made choices together: what needed to be kept in the game? Countermeasures? Threedimensional simulation with subs at different depths? After that, it was a back-and-forth process. Meetings every month to validate the development, testing sessions in Saint-Malo and in Paimpol. “Roberto is a perfect partner in design. My wife and I are junior game designers, and he

is kind of our ‘father in gaming.’ He’s always open to suggestions, and if he says ‘no’ to something, 90% of the time there is a good reason. Working with him is very stimulating and fruitful.” Fraga echoes the sentiment. “It’s not so common for me to work with a partner because I’m really very difficult,” he laughs. “But finally I think I have found the perfect one. “Last week I was at the Captain Sonar tournament at the Paris Est Ludique game festival. The finalists played using the Arctic map, and it was a really great game. After the awards ceremony I asked the winning team to tell me the story of their victory, and they explained it to me as if they were telling me about a great movie they had just seen at the cinema. They told me it was a great experience, and that was the objective in designing the game: for players to live incredible experiences.”

Players each have a unique role to play in their team, from captain to engineer

August 2018

the independent shelf CATACOMBS CONQUEST

Armed with a handful of cards and some other new tricks, this compact introduction to the dexterity dungeon-crawler is finger flickin’ good

n 2010 dexterity game-cum-dungeon crawl Catacombs was a big deal. It was a small press release from a group of fellows under the banner of publisher Elzra. The design’s primary achievement was proving that flicking could be more than just flicking. The game coupled the comfortable dungeon-crawl format with an easygoing mechanism of caroming your piece across the board. It was nothing short of brilliant. Fast forward to 2018: Catacombs is on its third edition and has spawned multiple spin-offs. Catacombs Conquest is the latest in the line of these dungeon-flicking offshoots. While the original design was an expected one-versus-many setup, this new child is a straight-up head-to-head bout. It’s more of a direct brawl and less of a carefully fought war of attrition. The design feels like a miniatures skirmish game. A player or two take a faction and field a couple of heroes against opponents doing the same. Activations bounce back and forth between sides as

Words and photographs by Charlie Theel well as heroes, with everyone getting a single go each round. That to-and-fro dynamic gives a strong weight to the tension in positioning, as you need to carefully weigh your placement to limit possible approach vectors. There’s also a fantastic new element of hand management. In previous iterations of this system your character had a set of moves you could perform that were static. Here, you draw manoeuvres from a deck and play these cards for one-off power shots. This provides variety and drama at the cost of asymmetric characterisation. It ultimately proves effective at establishing a distinct and satisfying play style, as the decisions regarding timing and hand management are crucial to success. The other shiny new mechanism is dynamic terrain. After completing your move, you may then flick one of the large crystal obstruction discs on the map. This allows for all kinds of quirky tactical plays, such as trying to isolate yourself or possibly obstruct your opponent and pin them in the corner. The knowledge of which character is activating next will inform your approach

and capitalising on this phase of the game requires skill and decisiveness. This appears a subtle change overall, but it adds a tremendous amount of personality and manages to push this design farther away from the scope of its peers. Your first impression of Catacombs Conquest is likely of a heavily pared-down version of its antecedent, its claws and tendrils cut away to provide a decent enough 15-minute slice of a larger tapestry of design. While this is inherently true, it minimises some of the clever alterations and twists found within. This is not merely a product to satisfy a diminished play time or wider customer base; rather, it’s a piece of tabletop design that manages a surprising stroke of novelty. While Conquest will not supplant the glory of the full Catacombs experience, it’s a very solid and interesting dexterity game that has little competition in its carved-out space. It’s one of those games that easily leaps off the shelf and never manages to accrue much dust.

Conquest adds a new hand-management element that adds an extra layer of strategy and timing to flicking discs around the board

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THE LONDON SHOW YOU

SEE IT, BUY IT, PLAY IT AT...

29–30th September 2018 Alexandra Palace

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T O D AY

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• A chance to play your new games with friends • Seminars and Q&A panels with designers, experts and more! • Workshops and competitions

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THE WEST HALL

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Try loads of different games including: • Gaslands • Starfinder • Pathfinder • RuneQuest • HeroQuest • Call of Cthulhu PLUS LOADS MORE!

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THROUGH THE AGES

EXPANDABLE CARD GAMES You know exactly what you’re getting with these offspring of CCGs – that’s the point. From Blue Moon to Android: Netrunner, here’s why ECGs have only continued to grow

Words by Sam Desatoff

n June, Fantasy Flight announced the end of Android: Netrunner, its highly successful and popular living card game. The announcement took the Netrunner community by surprise, and has spawned several groups dedicated to keeping the game alive. There even exists an online petition – signed by nearly 600 people as of this writing – imploring Fantasy Flight to cease Netrunner’s discontinuation. A fandom this enthusiastic did not crop up overnight, and neither did the popularity of the living card game series. In fact, there is an entire legacy of card games to which Netrunner owes its success. The term ‘living card game’ is sometimes used to describe many properties across many publishers, but it’s actually a trademarked phrase owned by Fantasy Flight, and thus the only true LCGs are designed and published by the studio. Conceptually, however, ‘customisable’ or ‘expandable’ card games have been around before Fantasy Flight picked up its trademark. Having originated in the early 2000s, the concept of the expandable card game is a fairly recent relative to its older sibling, the collectible card game. Unlike games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon, ECGs forgo the randomness found in booster packs. Instead, new cards are released in pre-determined packs so that players know exactly what they’re getting. 2004’s Blue Moon by Reiner Knizia is generally accepted as being the first example of an expandable card game. It was published by Kosmos and, fittingly, Fantasy Flight. The base game includes two decks representing two factions at war in the titular world, while several other

2004

August 2018

2005

factions became available in the following years. In total, nine expansions were released between 2004 and 2007; in 2015, Fantasy Flight collected everything into one box for Blue Moon Legends. In 2005, The History Channel teamed up with publisher TriKing to release Anachronism, a customisable card game that pits historical figures from throughout history against one another. After an initial base release containing cards for Greek, Roman, Norse and Japanese factions, Anachronism eventually grew to include a number of cultures. Anachronism is somewhat unique in the card game space in that each ‘deck’ only contains a handful of cards that are laid out facedown before a match and revealed slowly over the course of the game. In 2008, Fantasy Flight released the first LCG proper. Call of Cthulhu: The Card Game is a thematic struggle for two players set in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Each player builds a deck out of cards from the game’s eight factions and then competes for control of the game’s story cards. Fantasy Flight supported Call of Cthulhu: TCG for seven years – the game also served as a test bed for distribution and marketing strategies for future LCGs. Those strategies were implemented in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game. The original version released in 2002 was a collectible card game, complete with waves of new cards called ‘blocks’ that included random booster packs released at regular intervals. In 2007, it was announced that Fantasy Flight would be converting A Game of Thrones to its new line of living card games. In 2015 the A Game of Thrones LCG was relaunched with a second edition that allowed Fantasy Flight a clean slate without the CCG baggage.

2008

In 2009, Plaid Hat Games threw its (plaid) hat into the ECG ring in the form of Summoner Wars, a card game that added miniatures-like movement to the mix. Typical fantasy factions like elves and goblins are present, and many new factions were released as fixed expansion decks through 2016. Plaid Hat followed up Summoner Wars in 2015 with Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn and again in 2018 with Crystal Clans. In 2016, Fantasy Flight expanded on the cooperative format of its 2011 Lord of the Rings LCG with Arkham Horror: The Card Game. Set in the same universe as Call of Cthulhu: TCG, Arkham Horror: TCG sees players working together in scenario-based adventures. The game has been massively popular and Fantasy Flight continues to support it with new scenarios. Fantasy Flight’s most recent LCG is 2017’s Legend of the Five Rings, a reimagining of the CCG from 1995. Here, players take on the role of clans fighting for dominance in the fantasy world of Rokugan. Although it’s a fairly recent release, there exists an already thriving tournament scene, with many fans of the original game making the leap across to its reincarnation. There has been an abundance of expandable card games over the years but, for all their differences, one thing remains constant: flexibility to build the decks you want. Much like that core conceit, the expandable card game genre has morphed and changed to account for any taste. Netrunner may be ending this October, but it is sure to be replaced by something new. After all, they’re called living card games for a reason.

2012

2015

A GAMER’S

TRAVEL

GUIDE Jetting off on your summer holidays soon? Chuck that airport book in the sea and bring your favourite tabletop home comforts along for the trip Words by Chad Wilkinson Main illustration by Kit Buss

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G A M I N G O N H O L I D AY

was packing for a trip to Turkey last summer, and took advantage of a key equation; more sun means less clothing, equals more board games. Unfortunately, Great Western Trail proved to be a stubborn adversary to my rucksack’s ageing zip and so, undefeated, I looked to my collection of smallbox games. Like an obscure retheming of Patchwork, I jammed these trusty party games and streamlined, barebones fillers into the gaps of my luggage and anticipated the quiet satisfaction of seeing the X-ray image of my accomplishment upon reaching the airport’s luggage scanners. It needn’t have been such a struggle. In truth, you could be sent on an Arctic expedition, bags stuffed with survival gear, and still squeeze Ultra Tiny Epic Kingdoms under your hat. But size isn’t everything. After all, one of the most important aspects of travel is meeting new people. It can be hard introducing strangers to the world of board games. You may have even made the mistake of plonking down Caverna in front of a group, only to see them promptly vacate the table, leaving you pondering Uwe Rosenberg’s unique talent

for providing enough components to feed the world’s termites. Fortunately, there’s a wealth of options for games promising satisfying depth within small, portable, less intimidating packages. But there are a few other factors to consider if you want to travel light and not scare away that nice couple you met by the pool.

GRAB THEIR ATTENTION Choose games with eye-catching design. Artwork in games is getting better and better, with so many talented artists creating a variety of styles catering to all tastes. You may love the beautifully detailed boards of Michael Menzel, but when trying to entice others it can be good to stick to bright, bold colours, and simple but quirky design. Games like Sushi Go! or Game of Thrones: Hand of the King illustrate this simplicity nicely. Busy art on boards and cards may at first impress people used to the flat and simple art design used on games like Monopoly but, to your average non-gamer, it could also suggest complexity. Fortunately, there seems to be a recent trend in games featuring minimalist art styles. Slick images on plain backgrounds can really pop, and suggest elegance and

simplicity. This is certainly the case in Justin Blaske’s sleek and stylish worker-placement game Mint Works. Of course, the game may be deceivingly tactical, but your guests can find that out for themselves. Although, if you’re really set on showing off great artwork but in a small package, the Timeline series of games could be perfect for you, combining hundreds of unique illustrations with simple, addictive gameplay.

GO EASY ON THE TEXT Similarly, choose games with minimal text. Lots of people love to read on holiday, but they read books. Showering a stranger with walls of cryptic text from ten separate decks of cards is likely not their preferred means of literary escapism. Instead, use games with simple key words, numbers or even just symbolism, such as Kingdomino, Dobble or Arboretum. Your guidance and familiarity with the game combined with easy-to-follow iconography or text should be enough to keep things running smoothly. Furthermore, a game with little to no language dependency is ideal when travelling to places where the people you meet may not share your own language.

Packing lists ON THE PL ANE  Tides of Madness  Mint Works  Ultra Tiny Epic Kingdoms

 Timeline  The Castles of Burgundy: The Dice Game

August 2018



BY THE POOL  Get Bit  Spot It! Splash  Uno: H2O to Go  Hive Pocket



 Zombie Dice

PACK SMALL AND LIGHT

SAVE SPACE, USE DECK BOXES

Stick to abstract games or light, humorous themes. Perhaps you want to demonstrate that tabletop gaming isn’t all about high fantasy, epic sci-fi or wheat, wood and stone. In that case, maybe try Elevenses. Elevenses defies predictable tropes and instead offers players the chance to host an elaborate tea party. The art is clean but evocative and the light theme means it should be accessible to anyone. Alternatively, if you’re feeling a bit more ridiculous, why not challenge some strangers to navigate a cape-wearing rhino up a tall building? Enter Rhino Hero. An easy-toteach dexterity game with a ludicrous theme guaranteed to draw interest. Bear in mind that not all small games are made equal. A casual glance at the unassuming box for Stefan Feld’s The Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game could hint at a sleek, scaled down version of its older sibling, perhaps perfect for playing on the train. But looks can be deceiving; whilst capturing the essence of The Castles of Burgundy excellently with just a deck of cards, The Card Game demands a decent amount of table space, arguably even more than the original.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, games like Machi Koro and Splendor have notoriously large boxes considering their contents. If you don’t consider transporting your games in something other than their own boxes a blasphemy, perhaps invest in some cheap deck boxes – or make your own. Both titles are great gateway games, and their portability should be recognised. Similarly, if you’re a fan of Carcassonne, consider purchasing the Princess & the Dragon expansion. Not only is this a great addition to the game with an adorable dragon meeple, but its compact box can quite comfortably fit the base game and a few extra expansions. Leave the score tracking board and settle for one of the several scoring apps or just pen and paper, and you have an excellent and accessible game perfect for chucking in your backpack. Another bonus to using alternate means of storage such as deck boxes is the added protection. The sturdy but flexible material of your average plastic deck box will keep your precious cardstock safe from stray spills or splashes from the bar or the pool, and you could even go one step further by sleeving your cards.

Sleeving is common practice for gamers hoping to diminish the gradual wear and tear of their favourite games. In the holiday setting though, sleeves add that little extra protection when gaming poolside. Now, I still wouldn’t recommend a game of Sushi Go! perched precariously on a lilo, but your cards will be much safer from soggy hands and splashes. If you really feel the need to experience a bit of aquatic gaming then you could source out copies of Uno: H2O to Go or Spot It! Splash Both games feature waterproof plastic cards designed for use by the pool – or even in it! Spot It! also comes with a waterproof drawstring bag, ideal for hanging around your wrist or tying to your swimwear as you dive down for some deep-sea Dobble.

HAPPY TRAVELS So next time you’re on your travels, be it just to see family or somewhere further afield, remember to pack wisely. Finding space in the smallest of luggage allowances shouldn’t be a problem but finding fellow board gamers other than your travel companions can be. Stick to accessible, eye-catching and interesting games and you’ll have a trip to remember – and possibly recruit some new gamer friends along the way.

IN THE BAR



 Skull  Love Letter  Rhino Hero  Sushi Go!

er  Cockroach Pok

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SMALL WONDER

After falling in love with Scythe, Hoby Chou and his five-year-old daughter Vienna made a family-friendly version of the strategy smash hit, set in the world of My Little Pony, to play at home. What happened next was magical Words by Matt Jarvis

n June 2016, Hoby Chou became the first person in Canada to collect Scythe’s Kickstarted Collector’s Edition. “In hindsight that may have been a North American first,” he suggests cheerily. He took Jamey Stegmaier’s mech-battling masterpiece home, teaching it to his young daughter, Vienna, who quickly got to grips with the tight strategy game. “Early the following year, my daughter – who was only still five at the time – became proficient enough with Scythe to actually outplay me during one of her turns,” Hoby recalls. “My heart stopped, being filled with shock and pride altogether. Many of you know this is the biggest turning point a gamer parent can experience, and it opened my eyes to what kids are truly capable of.” Having inherited what her father describes as his “love affair” with Scythe, Vienna tried to introduce her new favourite game to her friends. “They’d naturally understand the rules and have a great time right?” Hoby says. “Not so

August 2018

much. We didn’t get past the rules before they reached for Connect Four. “Naturally, Vienna felt a little disheartened and began to question the appropriateness of gaming for kids, and especially girls.” Unable to share the experience with her friends, Vienna continued to play with her father, utterly enraptured by Scythe. One day, she was playing with her My Little Pony toys when Hoby heard her using the language of the game: “move”, “build”, “enlist”. The father-daughter pair had a revelation. “This got us started with some early brainstorming about what a My Little Pony game could look like,” Hoby says. “We walked over to my computer to draft some ideas and we fell in love with the idea of reimagining Scythe together. We just kept going until we reached our first-ever prototype.”

CUTS LIKE A SCYTHE Hoby and Vienna’s deconstruction began with Scythe’s player boards, the main stage for the

game’s refined action-selection gameplay. Hoby studied playthroughs, gradually identifying which parts of the game players enjoyed and which, as the designer says, “they felt hostage to”. “This was an attempt to evaluate how streamlined they were and whether a younger or casual gamer could appreciate their value,” he explains. “When you strip it down to its core, it’s easy to love Scythe’s simple and beautiful elegance. We wanted players to appreciate this best part of the game even quicker and more easily by removing, replacing and often consolidating non-core steps and mechanics.” My Little Scythe, as the mash-up was dubbed, preserved the original’s use of resources spent directly from boards, as well as its dynamic flow of choosing alternating actions each round. Other echoes of Scythe remained, too – albeit in a friendlier form befitting its bright and joyful world, a universe and rainbow colour palette away from the alt-history dieselpunk 1920s of Stegmaier’s setting. The crunching metal of mech-on-mech

combat became pie fights with magic spells, while players sought friendship instead of popularity. A smaller world and the two characters of each kingdom – embodying elements of the workers, characters and mechs of Scythe – brought the game’s length down to under an hour. “Besides some of the obvious differences in the miniatures and map, one of the most important differences is pace,” Hoby says. “In Scythe there is a meticulous build-up as you construct your engine and eventually expand beyond your starting area. There is not much direct interaction between players early in the game, and sometimes even throughout the rest of the game. In My Little Scythe, you get into interactive situations almost immediately and must make quick decisions to achieve four trophies as quickly and as efficiently as possible.” Even with the dramatic trimmings, the first redesign remained too complex, skewing toward children aged around 10. Hoby and Vienna continued to condense, aiming for a Scythe that was suitable for children half that age. “As our prototypes evolved, we often found that certain things weren’t a good fit for where the game was heading,” Hoby says. “One of the designs that we dropped from early testing was Scythe’s produce action; we studied the steps and turns required to produce something and felt that

it was a little too long for our players’ liking so instead we came up with something completely different. Production of resources was replaced with a discovery mechanic – seek, which almost plays out as its own metagame. We were delighted to discover that the playtesters loved it.” After months of work, Hoby and Vienna released My Little Scythe online as a free print-and-play design in June 2017. Its smartly-streamlined gameplay and enchanting theme quickly sent it viral, attracting the attention of over 10,000 people.

FROM PNP TO PUBLISHED One of the many to express their admiration of the project was Stegmaier himself, who said he was “incredibly impressed” by the pair’s work. “Due to my utmost respect for Jamey’s work and his dedication to his fans, this project really rested on how Jamey reacted to the PnP,” Hoby says. “Had he been unsupportive or even agnostic, we likely wouldn’t have gone this far. Instead he has always been classy and supportive, even while busy with Charterstone.” The designer wrote to Hoby and asked to try a prototype, collecting it in person at Gen Con 50. “Not long afterwards I received a photo of Jamey and Alan Stone [co-founder of Stonemaier Games] playing the game saying how much they loved it. I was ecstatic,” Hoby says, joking: “The bottle of Canadian maple syrup I included may have helped win them over, too.” Stegmaier offered to give the homemade makeover a full release, going so far as to discuss the rights to use My Little Pony’s Pony world of Equestria

with Hasbro, but was told “they weren’t interested”. The game relocated to the Kingdom of Pomme, a fantasy land filled with animal inhabitants, but otherwise stuck closely to the Chous’ vision. “A lot has changed since the original PnP, but we did not add anything new unless it was demonstrated an improvement to the gaming experience,” Hoby says. “Overall the game’s strategic depth has increased, making the game a lot more satisfying while maintaining its accessibility. In addition to the new seek mechanic, managing friendship is even more important now and options for movement and deliveries are even more intriguing with the addition of portals to the map. We’ve also added personality cards and action upgrades to make every play unique with just a touch of asymmetry.” My Little Scythe’s release this summer doesn’t mark the end of Hoby and Vienna’s desire to champion games that bridge the gap between generations – when we speak, Hoby mentions that he and Vienna have been playing Splendor, Azul and Mechs vs Minions together. Their remarkable creation isn’t just the Happily Ever After of their father-daughter love affair with Scythe – it’s the first page of an entirely new love affair altogether. “In the future I would love to turn adventure and dungeon-crawling games on their head,” Hoby says. “I think there is ample opportunity here to really disrupt this genre. “There is so much to love about this hobby and I strive to make it more accessible for all sorts of gamers – and gamers-to-be – without sacrificing the challenge and interesting decisions that make hobby gaming unique.”

It’s easy to love Scythe’s simple and beautiful elegance. We wanted players to appreciate this best part of the game even quicker and more easily. MAIN Vienna’s friends found the original Scythe too complex to enjoy LEFT Vienna and Hoby Chou with the fully published My Little Scythe

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August 2018

It’s alive! Some games create artificial intelligence out of little more than cards, cardboard and clever rules. Take a peek at the inner workings of the cy-board

The connection of AI and tabletop games is long established, dating back to Alan Turing’s work on chess in the early 1950s – a time when computers themselves were analogue. Recent milestones in this history include Garry Kasparov’s famous defeat at the hands of IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997, IBM Watson’s $1 million win on the TV quiz show Jeopardy! in 2011 and Google’s AlphaGo beating a Chinese grand master at the ancient board game Go in 2017. To consider the role and potential of paper AI, let’s look briefly at Games Workshop’s dungeoncrawler Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, a game that can be played both solo and co-operatively and which provides its players orth ngw Illi Sam Doctors Paul Wake and with an adversary, the Gaunt Summoner, that is entirely “controlled” by the game’s ruleset. The nalogue AI” is a term, along twisting pathways of the Silver Tower are randomly with “paper AI”, that crops generated by an exploration deck, with players up from time to time in instructed to roll on a series of tables to generate the discussions of tabletop games denizens of the Summoner’s lair. In this, the game – particularly those offering enjoys the kinds of benefits associated with the co-op and solo play – and one that invites procedurally-generated spaces of video games; further investigation. Artificial intelligence – namely, extracting large amounts of content from surely that’s to do with digital stuff, right? a relatively small deck of cards (file size) and So, what is AI? According to the Engineering the creation of a fairly random (and therefore and Physical Science Research Council: “Artificial replayable) environment. Intelligence technologies aim to reproduce or Alongside this, the game’s adversaries act surpass abilities (in computational systems) according to race-specific ‘behaviour tables’, with that would require ‘intelligence’ if humans players executing those actions on the game were to perform them. These include: learning board. For example, a group of Tzaangors (beaky and adaptation; sensory understanding and devil-birds) might “Challenge the Mighty” – an interaction; reasoning and planning; optimisation of procedures and parameters; autonomy; creativity; and extracting knowledge and predictions from large, diverse digital data.” While discussions of AI do tend towards the digital, there is nothing in this definition that specifically excludes analogue technologies; ‘computational systems’ does not mean computers in the most popular sense of the word and certainly there are aspects of this definition that might prove useful to those of us seeking to discuss (or design) tabletop games.

action that sees them move towards, and then attack, the least wounded hero if they are within range. As such, there is a clear program to execute: 1. Identify least wounded hero (LWH). Go to 2. 2. Is LWH within reach? If yes, go to 3. If no, go to 4. 3. Move towards LWH. Attack LWH. End turn. 4. Identify second least wounded hero. Go to 5. 5. Is SLWH within reach? If yes go to 6. If no, go to 7. 6. Move towards SLWH. Attack SLWH. End turn. 7. Identify third least wounded hero… (etc.) Pre-programmed instructions such as these might be represented graphically as branching behaviour trees. Behaviour trees, relatively simple in Silver Tower, can rapidly become complex, effectively tasking the player with running subprograms, and better mimicking the learning that is often associated with AI. This increased complexity can be seen in legacy and campaign games such as SeaFall and Gloomhaven – although, ironically, in ripping up cards, opening cardboard chests and affixing stickers to a gameboard, it is perhaps the role of the human that becomes more apparent. In managing the subprograms and behaviour trees of games, we are both players of games and what Sebastian Deterding has described as “game executors”. Afforded the chance to see the algorithms we execute we are truly able to play the game, making in-game decisions based on a granular understanding of the impact of each and every action. This, perhaps, is one of the most powerful affordances of analogue AI – our exposure to the underlying rules of the games we play.

Paul Wake and Sam Illingworth are Manchester Metropolitan University academics and co-directors of the Games Research Network Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower’s enemies demonstrate analogue AI

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COLOURS IN SPACE Richard Borg has taken his wargaming series from ancient history to modern conflict, but Commands & Colors is about to embark on its greatest leap yet Words by Matt Jarvis

August 2018

t seems a tad ironic that a man who shares his last name with one of the most iconic and enduringly memorable alien races in popular culture has only come into contact with science-fiction a handful of times during his lengthy career. And yet, outside of a few fleeting diversions into the depths of space – and occasionally to fantasy worlds another universe away – Richard Borg has primarily kept his feet firmly planted on Earth, preferring to travel vast distances in time. His journey to mine the rich vein of history has taken the designer from the dawn of military history through the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars to both World Wars of the 20th century. While the combatants, their armaments and the fields on which they fight and perish have changed, they remain linked by the thread of Borg’s streamlined approach to wargaming as the Commands & Colors series.

Debuting in Battle Cry, Borg’s 2000 recreation of the American Civil War, the Commands & Colors system cut back on the complexity of conventional wargames. At its heart was a deck of command cards divided into ‘sections’ and ‘tactics’ that effectively generated a fog of war, dictating in which areas of the hex map players could order their troops and any special abilities available to them. Combat was swiftly resolved with a handful of custom battle dice, meaning that any one of the game’s various historical scenarios could be completed in under an hour. Battle Cry’s innovative design earned Borg a nomination at the prestigious Charles S. Roberts Awards – he would later be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2010 for his contribution to the wargaming hobby. Jumping forward to World War II in 2004’s acclaimed Memoir ’44, then centuries backward to simulate battles from 3000 BC through to the Middle Ages in the ambitiously expansive Commands & Colors: Ancients

two years later, Borg collided history with fantasy in 2006’s BattleLore, an imaginative retelling of the Hundred Years’ War where French and English troops fought alongside goblins, dwarves, giant spiders and elemental beings. The mash-up showed that Commands & Colors could be more than an accessible window into history, but it was a promise that wouldn’t be explored further for over a decade – the next trio of instalments in the series took the resolutely true-to-life settings of feudal Japan, the Napoleonic Wars and World War I as their inspiration.

It is different and yet, at the same time, players will recognise many game elements.

STAR WAR Enter Red Alert Alert, the next Commands & Colors chapter, which punches the series up to warp speed. Set in the distant future, it’s the most dramatic departure yet from the historical roots of the wargame saga; there’s not even a battlefield. “By design Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare does not have the same feel as playing Battle Cry, Memoir ’44, The

Great War or any of the games with Commands & Colors in their title,” Borg says. “It is different and yet, at the same time, players will recognise many game elements. “I guess if I had to compare Red Alert to another one of my games as far as how the game flows and game complexity, it would be Memoir ’44.” The vast abyss of space, dotted only by the shining hulls of interplanetary cruisers, is a galaxy away – literally – from the hoofand heel-churned mud of ground warfare, tactical advantages offered by terrain, and often close-quarters combat recreated by the previous games. Still, Borg believed that the existing Commands & Colors framework could be ably reshaped to suit the sci-fi setting, rather than requiring him to create a new system from scratch. “Funny thing is that the title of the prototype game as I originally submitted was Battle & Debris: Space Fleet Warfare,” he recalls. “The guys at [publisher] PSC and their playtest group kept calling it Red Alert and the name stuck. The actual game’s full title is Red Alert: Space Fleet Warfare.”

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RED ALERT

RIGHT Players can customise their fleet before a battle BELOW Some of the cards that drive Red Alert’s tactical conflicts

PROBE LEFT WING TASK FORCE

AMBUSH

2 Play this card after opponent declares a close quarters combat, but before the dice are rolled. Your defending unit will battle first with 1 additional die. If the attacking unit is not eliminated or forced to retire, it may then combat as originally ordered. Your unit may not battle back against this unit’s attack.

Issue 1 order to 2 units on the Left Wing.

“Actually, before we really even got serious about looking at venturing into space, I already had a large file full of notes and thoughts of what a space fleet battle game should encompass. Adding these thoughts to the proven guidelines of what makes a Commands & Colors game fun and successful just seemed like a logical starting point: the rules need to be logical and not overly complex, players should not be burdened with a lot of minor details, players should enjoy battling their opponent not the rules, a scenario should set up and play to a conclusion in about an hour. “One other major reason for using the basics of the Commands & Colors system

COLORS SPECTRUM

August 2018

FLAGSHIP X1

BATTLESHIP X1

CRUISER X2

DESTROYER X2

FIGHTER X3

+2 points support

is that if a player has experienced another Commands & Colors game, he or she is already about 60% familiar with the game’s mechanics. A player with this experience that is first coming to Red Alert just has to pick up the new features of the game and, in this case, the new features of space fleet warfare.” In this way, Borg gradually built on the tried and tested chassis of his wargame, maintaining the iconic dice-driven battle resolution and command deck, albeit now filled with flagships, battleships, destroyers, fighters and cruisers in the place of archers, cavalry and infantry. Players would manoeuvre their fleet around the starfield, earning the points required for victory with every unit destroyed.

2000

Battle Cry

2004

Memoir ’44

“We attempted to follow in the footsteps of success and not mess with any of the basics of the Commands & Colors system,” Borg insists. “The play of command cards drives the game action and creates a ‘fog of war’, while the battle dice resolve combat quickly and efficiently. “The fun and design challenge was therefore to add to these basics and give Red Alert players the opportunity and feeling that they are in command of a fleet of starships.” To do so, Borg introduced a new deck of combat cards created to capture the unique ballet of space battles, which players could execute by spending star tokens, and ‘red alert’ tokens to heighten the sci-fi action’s drama. These non-fatal crises could have come straight of Star Trek or Star Wars: shields going down, engineering problems, collateral damage. “The action on a combat card may hinder the opposition forces, enhance a player’s units, or instantly change the course of a battle,” Borg explains. “Players will be challenged to maintain their star token reserves to power their combat cards at a key moment and through the entire course of a battle. “The battles showcased in Red Alert focus on the deployment of rival starship fleets and important space features that are encountered in scale with the game system. A deck of combat cards will add an element of suspense.”

2006

Commands & Colors: Ancients

2006

BattleLore

SPACE TO PLAY While the far-flung future lacks the historical grounding of the other Commands & Colors games, Red Alert still sticks closely to the series’ reliance on scenarios. Instead of telling it as it happened, Red Alert lets players tell it as they want it to happen, allowing them to customise their fleet and deploy their units with a greater degree of freedom than the textbook-true rigidity of its historical predecessors. Borg says that the game’s sense of scale – helped by the dozens of ship models in the box – is something rarely seen on the tabletop. “The main feature that sets it apart from other titles is that Red Alert is a true fleet action battle game,” he says. “There are 90plus spaceship miniatures in the core game and the scope of all of its scenarios feature mass fleet action. “Although not unique, but certainly something new for one of my designs, is the assortment of task force cards player can choose and the player’s ability to augment and customise their fleets with the purchase of a number of support vessels before each battle.” Red Alert’s more versatile gameplay and limitless setting suggests a game completely unbound from historical and realistic ties for the better, but Borg admits that even space comes with its own confines. “Although at its surface a sci-fi space game would seem to be more open and that anything would go, in reality, however, this

2010

Commands & Colors: Napoleonics

2012

Samurai Battles

is not actually the case; because we all have been exposed to facts and fictional space ventures, there are some notions that cannot be overridden or put out of mind,” he says. “This fact was very evident during our playtest sessions. Basically, the guys during our playtesting were using the miniature ships and building their fleets from iconic movies, TV shows and other space games like Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Flash Gordon, Star Frontiers, Battlefleet Gothic, Silent Death, Firestorm Armada, etc. In one memorable session, an entire fleet of different-size Star Destroyers, representing different unit classes, took on an opposing fleet from Star Frontiers. Red Alert in reality does not bare any resemblance to any of these, but the game certainly was influenced by all of the above and more.”

STAR FLEET COMMANDS The warping of Borg’s magnum opus to the solar system of tabletop sci-fi is one small step for players, but a giant leap for its creator, now assured that his underlying foundation is strong enough to support such a radical change. “The Commands & Colors system did indeed debut with Battle Cry, but many of the historical titles were all being developed around the same time as Battle Cry,” Borg says. “It just has taken many years for companies to share and believe in the game system, as much as the guys that have been

2015

The Great War

helping me playtest and develop all the different versions through two decades.” Although he remains tightlipped on whether the Commands & Colors galaxy will be filled with any other space-set instalments in the future, Borg reveals that Red Alert will continue to seek out new corners of the universe, with a number of escalation pack expansions already designed and ready to take Red Alert’s starter box even further, as well two additional fleets of ships waiting to be launched. “Because the Red Alert core game has so many variables, including a variety of task force cards to choose from, the ability for a player to purchase a force of unique support vessels and control of where units are deployed during setup, there is an almost endless amount of replay value with just the core game,” he insists. “However, our group was always pushing for more and more, so even with all these unique opportunities and endless hours of entertainment in the core game, there is still more to come!” As for Commands & Colors, it’s clear that exploring the distant past, far-flung future, and battlefields on Earth and beyond hasn’t left Borg short of fresh shades to apply to his next canvas. “I am a very lucky guy to have a great group of guys in the Orlando area that are willing to take time to share in my dreams and make them a reality,” Borg says. “It has been fun to see how the system has grown and I look forward to its future.”

2017

Commands & Colors Tricorne: The American Revolution

2018

Commands & Colors: Medieval

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THIS WAR OF MINE

++YEAR 3126++INCOMING TRANSMISSION++ found sector a43: pastime x17 – board game – “this_war_of_mine” Message intercepted by Robert Florence

he war is over, and the research continues. During the hostilities, as we retrieved and incinerated the corpses of the Gast Walkers, we had the opportunity to search through many locations that were previously unavailable to us. We found a great many Late Oil Humanity games, and I will be introducing you to them in the months and years ahead. This transmission, my first in a few years, will cover a game called “This War of Mine”. What better way to resume our studies after this brutal period than with a game that attempts to explain the punishing effects of war? Here is a game that puts its player, or players, in control of the destiny of a group of survivors in a city under siege. Perhaps it is a game that might illuminate us to the plight of the many units stranded in those cities overwhelmed by the Gast Walkers’ uprising. Late Oil Humanity never did experience a true period of peace. When the human

August 2018

race walked this planet, war was always being waged somewhere. Any peace was an illusion. A human might live and die in a nation without ever experiencing warfare, but their governing body would be engaged in hostility regardless – selling arms and influencing outcomes. Blood was on every human hand. “This War of Mine” seems to be designed to wake those sleeping humans up. There are decisions to be made and dice to be rolled, but this is not an experience built for fun or pleasure. The survivors whose lives you try to influence are tumbling into despair, and the struggle to save them from starvation, depression and addiction is its own tiny, terrible war. The game runs according to a strict day/ night cycle. In day, the survivors can carry out actions in the shell of a house they are hiding in; rubble can be cleared, equipment can be built, rooms can be searched. These actions are limited, and every choice made becomes crucial to survival. Good fortune is necessary too. As we now understand, after the fall of

Terdum 3, war is chaos – there will be times when the universe must shine on us if we are to survive at all. In night, the characters must rest. They simply must. But they simply can’t. Someone must guard the door in case of intruders. Someone must embark on a scavenger hunt. The game takes the player, and the game’s characters, on an exploration of its unforgiving world. The player works through a deck of cards, handling obstacles and enemies, trying to remain silent. Awful events occur. When instructed, the player must open a book – “The Book of Scripts” – and find encounters that challenge the player’s moral code. Children are left to die. Beggars are shot dead. Women beg for mercy. The characters’ misery increases, and the misery of the player increases alongside them. When the characters return home, their personal issues kick in. Their mood drops further. They are exhausted, stricken with illness, distraught. The following day, the player might try to turn things around for the characters, but it is hugely difficult because now the characters can do less. They are losing their fight. This War of Mine is a remarkable board game. It is a game in name only. It is more like an art piece – an experimental, experiential thing. My research team played it in the hope that it would be somewhat therapeutic after the disasters of the past few years. But it was the opposite. It is a cursed game, shrouded in death. It is the violent teacher, holding a cardboard knife to your throat.

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GAMING’S FATAL ATTRACTION As environmental concerns and eco-friendly alternatives continue to grow, do players need a sea change in attitude when it comes to the ubiquitous and versatile material? Words by Joshua King

RIGHT Some of the examples of plastic used in different games, including cellophane wrap and miniatures OPPOSITE Photosynthesis’ box and components – including its 3D trees – are manufactured from recycled cardboard

ou watch albatrosses unwittingly feed plastic to their starving chicks. A hawksbill turtle struggles tangled in a plastic sack. Most distressingly of all, you are stunned by footage of a pilot whale clinging to her dead calf as you learn the gentle giant may have been poisoned by its own mother’s contaminated milk. This vision of our oceans comes not from some apocalyptic board game but rather reality, as seen on our television screens. The BBC’s Blue Planet II, narrated by David Attenborough, was a wake-up call to a nation captivated by the beauty and fragility of our waters. The series was the most watched on British television last year and prompted a rapid shift in consumer attitudes towards plastic and its environmental impact. Elsewhere, the government has banned microbeads from soaps and cleansers and is targeting single-use plastics with new legislation. The 5p plastic bag tax has changed the way many people transport their groceries. But while Attenborough warns that humanity holds the “fate of the planet in its hands”, is the tabletop industry – which relies so heavily on plastic – doing its part?

THE PRICE OF A BOX Unlike many retail products, board games and their plastic pieces are rarely single-use. In fact, many people keep their copies for a lifetime. But tabletop games are not immune to the excessive

August 2018

packaging that plagues other industries; boxes are wrapped in cellophane, individual components packed into one-use polythene bags. Every gamer knows the joy of unboxing a new title comes with a hefty amount of waste. The fashion for legacy games that evolve as they are played brings with it extra rubbish, and as plastic miniatures become increasingly intricate so does the plastic trimming used to create and package them. Fiona Nicholls, Greenpeace UK’s ocean plastics campaigner, reveals that a “truck-worth of plastic” enters the ocean every 60 seconds. “There isn’t time to waste,” she urges. “We’ve produced a whopping 8.3 billion metric tonnes of plastic since the 1950s and plastic production is set to quadruple by 2050. There is an urgent need to do something about it.” Greenpeace UK is campaigning for a reduction in unnecessary plastics, such as the wrapping given to fruit and vegetables. The average plastic bag, for instance, has a useable life of just 12 minutes. “Last year Sir David Attenborough came into our living rooms and shone a huge, great, unmissable spotlight on the issue,” Nicholls continues. “Scenes of animals feeling the impact of plastic pollution made this something government and business couldn’t ignore.”

New research has revealed microplastic pollution on beaches could be affecting the sex of baby turtles while they develop in their eggs. A recent study found microplastics present in 100% of wild mussels from locations around the UK coast. “Plastic is everywhere,” Nicholls says. “Whilst it’s almost impossible to avoid there is loads you can do to be a champion for reusable

Terry still offers advice on her blog to others looking to make a change. Her tip? If you cannot find the eco-friendly games you want, “buy secondhand”. You avoid plastic pollution but publishers avoid profit. Last year, Blue Orange Games released the beautifully abstract environmental strategy title Photosynthesis. Shortlisted for a host of industry awards, the game was praised for its deceptively simple mechanics and elegant threedimensional forest pieces. The arboreal theme that met with such acclaim reflected another design decision – the board, pieces and box inserts were made using recycled cardboard. “Blue Orange’s baseline is ‘hot games, cool planet’,” says the publisher’s Céline Casel. “We include in that social and environment issues. All through the year we do our best to reduce our environmental impact. Obviously Photosynthesis’ theme naturally led us to have environmentally-friendly components. “It would have been contradictory to have plastic in the boxes. Nature is the mechanic of the game, so we decided to use recycled cardboard.” The firm – which also published last year’s Spiel des Jahres winner Kingdomino – recently signed a commitment to plant two trees in Ecuador’s Amazonian rainforest for every one tree used in production. The result? Blue Orange will plant almost 2,400 trees this year.

Plastic production is set to quadruple by 2050. There is an urgent need to do something. alternatives and reduce throwaway plastic. But we also need businesses and retailers to cut down on the plastic they’re producing.”

TREE-RIFFIC More than a decade ago Californian accountant Beth Terry set out to ditch plastic from her life altogether. The My Plastic-Free Life blog which grew out of the project and subsequent smash-hit book Plastic-Free were some of the first outlets for people to reconsider their shopping habits.

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E C O - F R I E N D LY G A M I N G

Casel tells me: “We really often see plastic trays in board games and one easy possibility is to change it for cardboard. Using less plastic pushes us to find solutions, to choose materials carefully and think about other ways to complete a project. “Besides being bad for the environment, plastic doesn’t have the same quality as other materials. Open a box and see how it feels to discover wooden pieces, cardboard tokens or even metal.”

A NEW PERSPECTIVE Tabletop games attract innovation from all corners. The majority of new publishers are spearheaded not by business-minded entrepreneurs but passionate game designers. Monetary gain is rarely a driving factor behind launching the latest title. As a result, costly ethical design decisions can be make-or-break for first-timers. Often it is a choice between the cheapest materials available or not going to market at all. Unfortunately, many publishers – big and small – have found that plastic remains the cheapest option. Mark Pearson runs the London Board Games Company, the studio behind The Football Game. A small family team, the Pearsons turned – as so many new designers do – to crowdfunding to back their game. Pearson says: “There are things in the manufacturing process that we don’t have control of – for instance, the plastic gloss that’s added to our boxes. It’s up to the manufacturers to find costeffective solutions rather than something we have direct control of.

Kickstarter you get trendy badges for things like ‘Ships to Australia’. These affect people’s decision to back and play games. Perhaps not ‘plastic-free’ but ‘plastic-conscious’ could be a badge that would prove popular.” The Football Game is advertised as colourblindfriendly. It’s an increasingly common example of a small decision that makes a product more accessible and therefore more marketable. Pearson views ‘plastic-conscious’ in the same mould. “It would be a selling point; it could get a game recognised on BoardGameGeek’s lists of environmentally-friendly games, for instance. But it’s a barrier for small publishers – as a first-time publisher we were far more financially restricted about who and where the manufacturers were. “That’s not to say that a small publisher can’t advertise that they’ve been as environmentallyconscious as they could have been, though.”

BIG MINI PROBLEM One of the biggest challenges facing gamers that want to reduce their environmental impact is the seemingly unstoppable popularity of plastic miniatures. As games grow in scope and scale, designers are increasingly including a greater number of intricate plastic figures. Entire production companies for minis accompanying RPG systems have emerged and the inclusion of miniatures is a popular crowdfunding stretch goal While few gamers are tossing their minis out in the same manner as the cellophane that protects the boxes, the production of plastic in the first place has a terrible environmental cost. To put it in context, plastics amount to 8% of the world’s oil production. That’s the same as the entire aviation industry. And plastic production is set to explode exponentially over the next 30 years. The extraction of oil from the ground and seabed has been linked to air pollution, acid rain and human cancer, as well as disrupting animal migratory patterns. That says nothing of the most visually immediate of all the dangers: oil spills. When the Exxon Valdez tanker collided with Prince William Sound’s Bligh Reef in 1989 it poured nearly 11 million US gallons of oil into the Pacific, killing between 100,000 and 250,000 seabirds. The Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 leaked a staggering 210 million US gallons into the Gulf

If there’s a trade-off of doing the right thing or making a profit, guess which one is chosen. “In The Football Game, it was more of a practical decision. We didn’t use one-use bags; we chose cardboard boxes for pieces and cards. That is a cost-effective alternative we chose which also reduces plastic.” Pearson predicts that as consumers generally become more aware of the environmental impact of games, designers and manufacturers will cotton on and improve their process. “I think it could help a crowdfunded campaign stand out,” he says. “If we launched a new game I would certainly look at it. On

August 2018

Like many wargames, Twilight Struggle uses cardboard counters (Scott Mansfield)

of Mexico. The environmental impact has been described as immeasurable. Those who defend the use of plastic in games have highlighted that the production of cardboard uses significantly more energy than the production of plastic. Whilst true, this ignores the broader dangers, as well as the fact that the environmental impact of cardboard ceases as soon as it hits the shelves; it is recyclable, biodegradable and does not trap and kill marine life. If the solution to weaning the tabletop industry off plastic is finding a suitable alternative then perhaps we need not look any further than cardboard – a material already at the heart of the hobby. Photosynthesis utilises cardboard inserts rather than plastic. The Football Game did away with baggies it replaced with small boxes. One of the most acclaimed studios in the world has never given in to the allure of petroleum products. GMT Games, the publisher behind Dominant Species, Labyrinth: War on Terror and critical juggernaut Twilight Struggle, revels in the use of hundreds of cardboard counters. Co-founder and game designer Gene Billingsley says: “I wish I could say that we are particularly groundbreaking or forward-thinking in our approach to counters. I think the truth is that we just grew up in a corner of the gaming industry

– wargaming – that pretty much used cardboard counters and hex grids from the beginning. “So, at first, we didn’t really know any other way.” As GMT’s game line has broadened, Billingsley and his team have added new components. “We’ve found that larger, thicker, well-illustrated cardboard playing pieces are well accepted by gamers in lieu of plastic pieces. “When a stand-up piece is required, we tend to use wooden blocks with stickers rather than plastic.” GMT’s success with cardboard is a ray of hope for the industry – particularly for the wargaming genre in which plastic minis are so popular.

IN YOUR HANDS Perhaps the biggest drive in shifting attitudes must come from gamers. With designers, publishers and manufacturers operating on such fine profit margins, a change in demand can prompt a change in production. James Davis and his wife Sheila hold an astounding 14,000 games in their collection – one of the largest in the world. The Colorado couple’s storeroom charts the history of modern tabletop gaming. “We are both environmentally conscious,” James says. “So it is strange that I’ve never thought about this subject before. That leads me to believe that it isn’t on the mind of most other gamers – I definitely welcome the debate. “In general most games over the years have not gotten worse with creating waste. The packaging

has been fairly standard: shrink-wrapped cards, cellophane over the boxes. In fact, recently I’ve seen publishers include ziplock bags for the components. That eliminates a good portion of waste because they can be reused.” James suggests even publishers who focus on cardboard tokens can do more to reduce the excess waste that is thrown out once chits are punched through the sheets. “I do think companies should do more, but I also realise they are running a business,” he adds. “And if there’s a trade-off of doing the right thing or making a profit, guess which one is chosen. “But if a way can be found to use greener materials and create less waste without raising prices too much then I think gamers should start to push the game companies to comply.” Sadly the Davis’ attitude is not universal among the tabletop community. For a group that generally prides itself on forward-thinking attitudes I was astounded by the negative reaction I received during my research into ecofriendly options. At the beginning of this journey I asked a simple question online: are there any ecofriendly publishers? I expected a conversation – not a backlash. I was variously accused of “virtue signalling” – seemingly showing off my high morals – as well as asking a “silly” or “counterproductive” question and wasting everyone’s time when there are bigger problems in the world. Moderators actually had to step in to quell the row.

By 2050 it is estimated that the total weight of plastic in our oceans will overtake the weight of all fish. There are already 500 times more pieces of microplastic in the sea than stars in our galaxy. We are faced with a crisis – whether the entire tabletop community is ready to accept it or not. Producers like Blue Orange are making a change and putting the environment higher up their list of priorities. Smaller studios like the London Board Games Company hope to seize the initiative and use the appeal of plastic-conscious products to win the backing of gamers. Others, like GMT, have shown that plastic alternatives do not just work but excel. A failure to adapt to changing consumer demands is not just a threat to the environment but to the tabletop industry itself. The mantra ‘reuse, repurpose, recycle’ encourages people to eliminate waste from their lives. If gamers move away from buying new plastic-heavy games in a bid to be eco-friendly the alternatives are to buy secondhand, swap or pay to play at club nights and board game cafés. The ultimate result is that small publishers will fold and big companies may be faced with thinning their product lines to only the most popular titles. If the tabletop industry wants to win this particular game it will require a sea change in behaviour from all gamers. For once, the attitudes of a community which claims to represent progressive thinking is being left behind by society as a whole, floundering in an ocean of plastic.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

Turn your tabletop into a real battlefield! Ready to play, painted and assembled terrain and battle mats. We ship worldwide. Purchases can be made in GBP, USD or EUR at www.gamemat.eu

PLAYED

64 WARHAMMER: AGE OF SIGMAR – SOUL WARS

74 LUCIDITY: SIX-SIDED NIGHTMARES

65 STARSHIP SAMURAI

75 A TALE OF PIRATES

66 MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP

76 MICROPOLIS

67 LOWLANDS

77 HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR

68 BLACK ORCHESTRA

78 WHEN IN ROME

69 GRETCHINZ!

78 STAR WARS: HAN SOLO CARD GAME

70 RAIDS 71 THE GRIMM FOREST

79 GENESYS: REALMS OF TERRINOTH

72 PRINCESS JING

80 MARVEL CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS: BATTLEREALM

72 ENDLESS PASS: A VIKING SAGA 73 BANQUET ROYAL

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81 ROBIT RIDDLE: STORYBOOK ADVENTURES

tabletopgaming.co.uk

P L AY E D WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗ 52 push-fit

miniatures

◗ Getting Started booklet ◗ 320-page hardback

core book

◗ 32-page Battle of

Glymmsforge booklet

◗ 13 warscroll

unit cards

◗ 12 dice ◗ Range ruler ◗ Decal transfer sheet

O R'S C H OI

WARHAMMER: AGE OF SIGMAR – SOUL WARS Nagash and Sigmar clash as the fantasy miniatures classic enters a new era Designer: Games Workshop team | Artist: Games Workshop team

n 2015 Warhammer’s Old World came to an end. It was a huge shock to many of us who cut our gnarled teeth in Marienburg or Kislev. Games Workshop reimagined its house fantasy setting and Age of Sigmar was unleashed, eventually garnering much acclaim. More change is coming. Age of Sigmar 2.0 is here and the Old World seems like a distant dream. The new edition has arrived courtesy of the glorious Soul Wars boxed set. Mimicking the absolutely deluxe form of Warhammer 40,000’s recent Dark Imperium, this release is a beauty. The presentation is akin to fine dining as Games Workshop clearly looks to compete with the direction its crowdfunded competitors have taken. Make no mistake – this feels every bit as opulent as what we’ve seen with Kingdom Death: Monster and its ilk. The most significant surprise is that every included miniature is push-fit. As evidenced by recent Shadespire output, there is nary a loss in quality despite

August 2018

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angling towards accessibility. Among the plastic models are the familiar Stormcast Eternals taking on an entirely new set of foes in Nagash’s terrifying Nighthaunts. These wonderful sculpts feature floating spectres and fiendish horrors with a suite of dynamic poses. Stepping in parallel with the progression of miniature quality is the momentum behind the Age of Sigmar ruleset. Since its inception this has been a system angled towards fast play and colourful drama. The second edition has included a small amount of additional complexity as it looks to align more closely to its sci-fi sibling. It has not completely forgotten its vow to velocity and tension, but the primary criticism one could levy at this new era is the subtle nudge towards a more heavy and encompassing experience. One notable change is the introduction of Warhammer 40,000’s command point mechanism. You can now use a resource pool to trigger special

12+

£95

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… WARHAMMER 40,000: DARK IMPERIUM

The rulesets are now more unified than ever and this offers a nice departure from your sci-fi eternal war.

abilities, but in this case they are tied to heroes and commanders instead of force structure. The biggest benefit of this system is that it incentivises dramatic play while reinforcing setting elements. This is slick and handled well overall. A more significant shift is the overhaul of magic. Magic forms the single unique personality element that separates fantasy from science-fiction in the world of wargaming, and it’s appropriate that it takes centre stage. The most radical move is found in the new Malign Sorcery expansion box. This thing is magnificent. Players are now able to enact endless spells that persist on the battlefield. These magical effects stomp around and lay waste to the endless souls taking up arms; however, they can also be commanded by the opponent. Control is fleeting with these external elements and there is nothing quite as beautiful as a wall of flame or plague devouring its previous master. It’s even better when those supernatural elements are represented by a gorgeous miniature. This focus on awe-inspiring moments of chaos highlights the fact that Age of Sigmar is still focused on its roots of spectacle. New modes of play offering narrative or competitive vectors allow players to tailor this exhibition to their particular tastes. Those desiring a stronger story or setting element will eat up the customised rules for the eight Mortal Realms. Battlefields possess unique atmosphere and environs for your warriors to break their backs upon. You can take to the sky and engage in bouts entirely focused on aerial combat. You can even engage in different campaign structures focused on growth and evolution. There’s a world to explore and Sigmar will take you by the hand. Soul Wars as a product is fantastic. It offers a bevy of exceptional miniatures and delivers the new era of the strongest fantasy system currently available. This neatly-tied package is outstanding and a treat for veterans and fans alike. If the Age of Sigmar was not upon us before, it certainly is now. CHARLIE THEEL

WE SAY A fantastic boxed set delivers the next evolution in Warhammer’s signature fantasy line. It digs its hook deep with elegant packaging and a slick new ruleset, offering new vistas to war over and souls to claim.

STARSHIP SAMURAI A strategy game that will mecha you smile Designer: Isaac Vega | Artist: Gunship Revolution

f you haven’t already guessed by the name, Starship Samurai is a game that’s not trying to hide much. It has starships and it has samurai: here, massive sword-wielding mecha represented by miniatures that absolutely capture the glee of watching and playing with Gundam and Transformers. Its dependable gameplay, too, offers up few big surprises – but it’s still easy to be won over by the results of its reliable blend if you don’t expect a game about robots in space to be the most mindblowing thing you’ve ever played. The mecha may be the stars of the show, but it’s the planets they are fighting over that set the stage for Starship Samurai’s action. A deck of location cards presents a fresh spread of worlds to try and rule each round, racking up ‘honour’ (read: victory points) for claiming a card, with the added spice of extra points for collecting a set of different planet types (quite uninspiringly denoted by different amounts of pips, rather than actual categories) by the end of the game. The pool of player actions is small: move units, draw cards, gain wealth or influence one of the lesser clans. The narrow selection is given a welcome depth by the order tokens placed to execute each command, which determine the relative strength of the

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ Alliance board ◗ Four location boards ◗ Four player boards ◗ 48 action cards ◗ 16 unit cards ◗ 16 location cards ◗ Eight samurai

mech figures

◗ 32 fighter

ship figures

◗ Four carrier

ship figures

◗ 44 wealth tokens ◗ First Player token ◗ Four player

score markers

◗ 16 order markers ◗ Eight clan markers

60-90m

action, from one to four. Orders can be repeated, but the importance of timing remains critical – do you warp your fleet to a planet immediately and try to hold off multiple rounds of attacks, or instead bide your time and utilise card powers, risking the limited number of unit spaces in each location filling up in the meantime? The tight territories and bonuses gained for dominating a location at the beginning of your turn encourage aggressive play – destroyed units reappear the following round and losing fleets remain where they are, making even a loss a potentially effective way to claim the location next time around. Battles are as fast and fierce as the single-stroke slash of a samurai sword. It’s a numbers game: the most power wins. The samurai mechs’ abilities and one battle card potentially played on either side of the clash can suddenly swing things, making the simultaneous reveal of cards an entertainingly decisive moment. With two unique mechs – plus identical universal fighter and carrier ships – attached to each faction, the asymmetry is enough to invite decent variety without weighing the light feeling of the area-control competition down.

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Behind the spectacle of mechs scrapping for planetary control and taking down fleets of spaceships is a background battle for political domination, represented by the lesser clans that can be influenced on the game’s central board. Pulling the tokens up your faction’s branch in reward for further victory points – or pushing them down and out of your rivals’ control – makes Starship Samurai more than a game of just throwing big armies at each other in head-to-head fights, encouraging a more diverse scoring approach. The political back-and-forth is hardly deep, but it’s just enough to stretch the edges of the gameplay and keep things engaging and constantly shifting for the hour or so each playthrough takes. Starship Samurai’s gameplay can edge towards feeling a little inconsequential compared to the more substantial strategy experiences out there – most notably Eric Lang’s crowdpleasing ‘dudes on a map’ games, such as Rising Sun – but its breakneck speed, comfortable rules and undeniably stylish theme make spending a couple of hours in its universe an enjoyable ride all the same. There’s more than enough interesting gameplay here to justify the eye-catching visuals, becoming a game that favours pure fun and spectacle over complexity, but without being completely surface. It turns out that smashing giant robots against each other in space is a pretty good time – who would’ve thought it? MATT JARVIS

WE SAY What Starship Samurai lacks in originality and depth, it makes up for with a killer theme and gameplay that’s as solid as it is quick. It’s a crowdpleaser, through and through.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… RISING SUN

Starship Samurai swaps mythical creatures for giant robots, and condenses some of the feeling of Epic Lang’s epic battle for control of feudal Japan into a shorter and faster experience.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

WE SAY

There’s a reason why so many doomed investigators have thrown themselves into Masks of Nyarlathotep over the past 30 years, and this update is the ideal way for modern players to see what all the fuss is about.

O R'S C H OI

MASKS OF NYARLATHOTEP Go mad for the classic campaign all over again

Designer: Larry DiTillio, Mike Mason, Paul Fricker, Lynne Hardy, Scott Dorward, Lynn Willis

ith its wide array of frothing cultists, ancient ruins and apocalyptic drama, Masks of Nyarlathotep has helped to define the tone and feel of Call of Cthulhu for almost three decades. Thanks to this highly polished update, it looks set to keep chewing through hapless investigators years to come. ‘Update’ may not be quite the right word for what this is, however. Make no mistake: this is something far beyond the comparatively minor changes that have come with the new editions rolled out on a regular basis since the 1984 original. Despite this, it’s certainly still the same campaign that has consigned so many parties to gibbering madness, which begins with a bizarre murder in a New York hotel and ends with a battle for the sake of reality as we know it. Most of the changes are subtle and carefully considered, with a bit of historical detail added here and tighter phrasing there, but the team handling the new version weren’t afraid to make major alterations where they felt it was needed. Where the traditional opening threw the party into the deep end with the vague hope they’d be able to swim, this fresh take on Masks kicks off with a new prologue chapter set in the highlands of Peru. It’s a modest, self-contained adventure that should last for a couple of

August 2018

sessions and serves as a mini-campaign of sorts, introducing the characters to the game and allowing them to get to know Jackson Elias – an NPC whose gory death triggers the main campaign. This sets the tone for many of the other changes in the new book, which aim to smooth out some of the rockier areas of the original; as well as giving the players a guaranteed motivation to uncover the secrets behind Elias’ murder, a real effort has been made to eliminate or downplay some of the more uncomfortable racial stereotypes that pervaded earlier editions. In this same vein, the team behind the book took the decision to tone down the lethality of the campaign by a notch or two. While this may seem like heresy to dyed-in-the wool Masks fans, it’s fair to say that the classic version tended towards the psychotic in places. The tweaks introduced manage to preserve the looming sense of danger that is an iconic aspect of the campaign – and, indeed, Call of Cthuhlu as a whole – while avoiding the risk of having players cycle through a long list of investigators with increasingly tenuous connections to the overall story. Alongside this, plenty of effort has been made to simplify campaigns using systems other than the basic Call of Cthulhu. The text is stuffed with sidebars explaining how the adventures can be

665

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adapted for the swashbuckling antics of the Pulp Cthulhu system, cutting down on the legwork needed by GMs. Admittedly, that still doesn’t make running Masks a simple endeavour, no matter which system you’re using. The book weighs in at well over 600 pages, and if there are any downsides to the campaign they lie in the amount it demands from the GM; there are dozens of plot threads and weaving trails of clues and contacts running throughout the book, as well as a thick stack of handouts that need to be printed off or sent out to the group in advance. Indeed, the players themselves will also need to be on their toes if they want to have a good time with Masks. The campaign is based around investigations and problem-solving rather than rolling dice and blasting away at enemies – if your group is more inclined towards scoring loot and racking up kills than interviewing contacts and tailing suspects, this may not be the wisest of investments. If you have a year or so to devote to a single campaign, as well as a group of friends you can trust to treat it with a little respect, Masks of Nyarlathotep won’t disappoint. Just maybe try not to get too attached to the first set of characters you roll up. RICHARD JANSENPARKES

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… TALES FROM THE LOOP: OUR FRIENDS THE MACHINES & OTHER MYSTERIES The wide-eyed excitement of Tales couldn’t be further from the dark and dangerous world of Lovecraftian horror shown in Masks, but both share a love of uncovering mysteries and a free-form approach to investigation.

P L AY E D

LOWLANDS

Wave goodbye to your typical Eurogame Designer: Claudia Partenheimer, Ralf Partenheimer | Artist: Andrea Boekhoff

50-100m

WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗ Main board ◗ Two sheep

market boards

urogames and agriculture. They go together like a pig and mud, like cattle and cud, and like, well, two sheep during Agricola’s breeding phase. At first glance, Lowlands appears to be cut from the same well-worn, soil-splattered cloth as its pastoral ilk; there are boards on which you’ll arrange pastures and their grazing inhabitants, workers you’ll place for maximum pointharvesting efficiency, basic resources for you to collect and invest in action- or point-boosting buildings. Raise your eyes from the idyllic green fields of your farm, though, and you’ll spot the swirling foam-tipped waves that lap against the top of the game’s central board, eroding and rearranging the foundations that lay underneath the seemingly untouched appearance. These waves represent, literally and figuratively, the sea change at the centre of Lowlands. The water threatens the sheep farms of the players, spurring them to invest their resources and time in building a dike to hold back the rising flood. Both the sea and the dike holding it back are represented by wooden pieces that are stacked on top of each other as the water and barrier rise; it’s a simple trick, but one that makes for a stunningly visual spectacle across the board. It’s not quite as simple as working together to do what Canute could not,

however. You’re still trying to ensure your sheep farm prospers ahead of your rivals’ – something that pouring all your resources and workers’ time into building a dike makes difficult. Ignore the dike, though, and your co-operative neighbours will be rewarded at your expense. If the dike breaks, you might even find your flock washed away, which is as devastating as it sounds. Lowlands’ shifting value marker carefully balances its collaborative and competitive gameplay, both reflecting the changing value of sheep in the community and inviting players to help just as much as they need to – and no more. This ‘just enough’ mantra is reinforced by the mandatory requirement to ask another player to freely contribute to building the dike after you do, making the act of waiting to see how long you can leave it before the water starts lapping at your toes and you’re forced to spend your own action a master class in passiveaggressive collaboration. Outside of its crowning semico-op subversion, Lowlands is a far more familiar affair with which fans of Uwe Rosenberg will feel especially at home; in fact, Lowlands’

◗ Three resource markers ◗ 85 sheep ◗ Six three-sheep tokens ◗ 12 flood cards ◗ 66 resource cards ◗ First Player marker ◗ Phase marker ◗ 64 fences ◗ 36 flood pieces ◗ 13 dike segments ◗ Five progress tokens ◗ Value marker ◗ 30 dike breach tokens ◗ Scorepad ◗ Four farmer +2 tokens ◗ 53 coins ◗ Sticker sheet ◗ 16 facility tiles ◗ 30 building tiles ◗ Four farmyard boards ◗ Four income boards ◗ Four reference sheets ◗ Four dike point markers ◗ 12 farmers ◗ 16 building markers ◗ Eight labourers

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£65

rulebook proudly proclaims that Rosenberg himself contributed to its development, with a stamp signifying its place in the ‘Uwe Rosenberg Collection’ and the designer’s personal recommendation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the action away from the excitement of the rising tide feels distinctly less groundbreaking, not wandering far from the fields that Rosenberg himself has tilled. The management of workers and labourers to create pastures and expand your farm will likely feel like second nature to seasoned Agricola fans, who may find that the focus on the coastline leaves the land a little too shallow to properly dig into. Lowlands often feels like the rising sea that courses along its board. Rather than completely washing away the familiar and starting anew, its pure originality is kept at bay by recognisable gameplay that is reshaped just enough by the fresh blend of collaborative and competitive to feel unique. Its gameplay flows as effortlessly as waves lapping back and forth, and its impeccable integration of the new and old makes it an extremely enjoyable and comfortable experience to recommend. But, at the same time, it feels like we’re just seeing the edge of an entire ocean of creativity and innovation just beyond the barrier – and part of us would like to see what would come flooding in if it broke. MATT JARVIS

WE SAY A familiar theme and gameplay hide a highly original twist on the classic agricultural Eurogame. There’s no doubt Lowlands is immaculately designed and a joy to play – we just wish it went even further with its innovation when the results are this good.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… AGRICOLA

When a Eurogame is recommended by Rosenberg himself, you know you’re in for something special.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

P L AY E D

BLACK ORCHESTRA

How do you think we should be killing Mr. Hitler? Designer: Philip duBarry | Artist: Dann May, Cody Jones, Lucas Soriano

60-90m

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ Game board ◗ 10 custom dice ◗ Five player pawns ◗ 13 tracking cubes ◗ 12 plot cards ◗ 84 event cards ◗ 54 conspirator cards ◗ 24 interrogation cards ◗ Five deputy tokens ◗ Hitler token ◗ 24 item tiles ◗ Three difficulty tiles ◗ Nine conspirator sheets

ow we know how Tom Cruise must have felt when his agent first called him to offer the lead role in 2008 thriller Valkyrie: “You want me to play… a Nazi?” For that is the first thought that must cross anyone’s mind when asked to play American designer Philip duBarry’s Black Orchestra. Like Cruise in the movie based on the exact same historical events, this ‘30s/‘40s-set co-op casts its participants as senior members of the Third Reich – including Cruise’s character, Wehrmacht Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. It’s a prickly prospect, especially when presented by components which don’t exactly flinch from their subject matter, being decorated with swastikas and other Nazi regalia. Still, the offending iconography is largely incorporated as sensitively as possible and this is, after all, history. Well, mostly. The game’s original title, Hitler Must Die, tells you all you need to know about its big, counter-factual twist. Whether you’re playing Stauffenberg or one of the eight other real-life

August 2018

conspirators (all men) who formed the titular cabal, your aim here is to hatch a plot to kill the Führer: by derailing his train, perhaps, or sniping him, or poison-gassing him. The primary mechanism is action management, with a baseline of only three actions per turn (though risking a ‘conspire’ dice roll could grant you more) and a long but intuitive menu of options. You must move your pawns around Germany – and later, as the game works through its seven event-deck phases, Nazi-occupied Europe – uncovering and picking up items at locations, drawing from the conspirator deck in search of plots (which require certain configurations of items to increase your potential plot dice pool) and handy bonus-ability cards for your dossier. All the while, you must increase your character’s motivation, as you can’t attempt an assassination until you’re ‘committed’ or ‘reckless’, and your special ability is only unlocked

1-5

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£60

once you’re ‘motivated’. Plus, you must keep both your suspicion level and Hitler’s military support as low as possible. Because, when the time comes to pull off a plot, the latter sets the target for a crucial dice roll – the higher the tougher – while suspicion increases the chance of failure through discovery. It all snaps together smoothly, offering an intense, well-paced and engrossing co-op experience in which every player must constantly keep their eye on the ultimate objective, judging the best time to go for it and roll those dice. There are no shortterm mini-obstacles to surpass here; it’s all about offing that hated dictator. The historical context is, for the most part, incorporated well, with event cards (drawn at the end of each player’s turn) depicting real historical incidents. However, there are some awkward moments. One card’s photograph of real persecuted Jewish families can’t but feel inappropriate, while it’s discomfiting that each gradual revelation of Hitler’s horrific Final Solution rewards the players with motivation – a good thing in game terms – even if it makes mechanical sense. Finally, an invitation to post a pic of a victory card boasting “We killed Hitler!” on social media feels a tad tin-eared, trivialising what is otherwise largely a smart experience. One that provides an interesting, thrilling – and timely – immersion in one of history’s darkest periods. DAN JOLIN

WE SAY A superbly calibrated and thematically evocative co-op treat which suffers only from the occasional tonal blip.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… PANDEMIC Though it seems too obvious to compare any co-op to Matt Leacock’s game-changer, Black Orchestra earns it thanks to a savvy matching of thrilling theme and spot-on mechanisms.

GRETCHINZ!

Fast cars and big guns in this madcap Warhammer 40,000 racer Designers: Roberto Fraga, Johan Lemonnier | Artist: Albert Monteys

s anyone who grew up playing Warhammer 40,000 knows, life isn’t easy for the Gretchin. The smaller, weaker cousins of the marauding Orks, these diminutive creatures usually find themselves stuck with the most demeaning and dangerous jobs in the 41st millennium. Whether it’s operating unreliable weapons or making suicidal assaults on Space Marine strongholds, they’re the ultimate expendable troops. This new game in the 40,000 universe looks beyond the battlefield, though, handing players control of rickety, rocket-fuelled racing buggies. Designed by the creators of the brilliant submarine combat sim Captain Sonar, it pits players against one another in a contest of speed and cunning that feels like an ultra-violent tabletop take on Mario Kart. The game gleefully embraces chaos, and its anarchic spirit makes itself known from your very first turn. Each round sees you and your opponents simultaneously rolling handfuls of dice to determine the actions available for you to take: manoeuvring your vehicle, firing your oversized cannons or performing some cunning tricks to gain an edge over your competition. You can re-roll your

dice as many times as you like, but as soon as one player is happy with their results, they give an intimidating Ork war cry (“Waaaaaagh!”) signalling that everyone has to stop, making the best use of whatever dice they have at their disposal. With the frantic dice-chucking out of the way, you’ll enact your results on a racetrack built from randomlydrawn terrain cards. Different types of terrain trigger different effects when you drive onto them and, with new cards constantly added to the course, it’s impossible to anticipate the dangers you’ll face, compounding the general sense of unpredictability. If you can’t match your rivals’ speed, you’ll also have the perfectly sporting option of blowing up their karts with your vehicle-mounted machine guns, and it’s here that Gretchinz! reveals one of its cleverest elements. Its terrain cards are double-sided, with their reverse face showing symbols representing hits, misses and catastrophic explosions. You’ll hold a handful of them, Hanabistyle, with the combat side

30m

2-4

£27

facing away from you, visible only to your opponents. Whenever you attempt to attack a competitor, you’ll choose two cards from your hand and turn them over to discover whether you’ve successfully damaged their buggy. It means your rivals need to keep a stone-cold poker face to avoid giving you any hints as to what’s in your hand, and it makes for some stomach-churning moments as you launch an attack only for your weapons to spectacularly backfire. Unfortunately though, this also leads to the game’s major weak point. Accumulate enough damage, and you’ll skip your next turn while you perform some impromptu repairs. It’s deeply unsatisfying sitting out of a round while your opponents race ahead. There’s also the fact that taking the lead in the race automatically makes you the prime target for your opponents’ aggression, and you’ll quickly find yourself under a concentrated barrage as your fellow players attempt to halt your progress. It feels a bit like bullying and, while it might be appropriate to the source material, it undeniably sours the game’s frenetic sense of fun. OWEN DUFFY

WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗ Four three-

dimensional racing buggies ◗ 95 terrain/ attack cards ◗ 15 crater cards ◗ Seven player panels ◗ Four buggy counters ◗ 12 flame counters ◗ 12 dice

WE SAY Gretchinz! combines frantic dice-chucking, an unpredictable environment and risky card-based combat; if you can grab at the fleeting moments of control amid the chaos, though, you can pull yourself ahead of your rivals. It’s silly, competitive fun – it’s just a shame that it suffers from miss-a-turn mechanisms and a tendency towards leader-bashing.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… GORKAMORKA If you have fond memories of the speed-obsessed miniatures battle game, Gretchinz! might be for you.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

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RAIDS

The longboats that rocked Designer: Brett J. Gilbert, Matthew Dunstan | Artist: Biboun

40m

2-4

10+

£35

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ World board ◗ Four longship boards ◗ Four longship markers ◗ 40 wooden

Viking pawns

◗ 20 metal coins ◗ Nine harbour tiles ◗ 64 voyage tiles

O R'S C H OI

f popular culture’s taught us anything, it’s that Vikings get everywhere. And also, that they really love a good, bloody bit of conquest. So it’s proven on the tabletop, where it’s starting to feel like every other new game released has a Viking theme (see also: Endless Pass, on page 72). Not that that should be a turn-off. Not only is it a flexible and fun milieu, it’s also one that easily fits a limitless variety of mechanisms – far beyond games which involve, well, a bloody bit of conquest. Here, then, Elysium designer duo Brett J. Gilbert and Matthew Dunstan focus on the Norse seafarers’ predilection for voyaging: charging about in their longboats, trading, raiding and fighting dragons and giant squid. (Disclaimer: this game may not be entirely historically accurate.) On the surface – and what a crisply gorgeous surface it is, thanks to artist Biboun (Chimere, Dice Forge) – it looks like a race game, with a track circling around a ‘world’ of fjords and islands, punctuated by locations where randomly-placed tiles offer different rewards: goods, runes, coins (made of actual metal!), etc. But,

August 2018

even though the first of the game’s four rounds does indeed reward the swiftest lap, it’s by no means as straightforward as that. In a Tokaido-ish twist, players take their turn only when they are the last longboat on the track – and whenever they do so, they must remove all the tiles between them and the next closest player. In other words, they must catch up before they can proceed, stopping them from hogging all the turns. Even so, racing ahead to the end – you can lap the world in a single go, if you want – is rarely an advisable tactic, as it means you’ll miss out on things to fill up your longboat (represented by a player board which only has space for seven tiles at a time), and spend ages waiting for your next go. The trick is to always be looking at the board as a whole, taking in the placement of the tiles you feel you most need and aiming for those – without making it too obvious to the other players what you’re chasing, as players can challenge each other for a track placement through dice/cardfree attrition-driven combat (which is why it’s never smart to have too few Vikings on your longboat).

The aim, naturally, is to earn the most glory points, and you can bag those in several different ways. Collecting sets of runes, for example; or picking up a port tile which enables you to cash in goods; or gathering Mjöllnirs, which each give points according to the number of little Hägars you have on your longboat at the game’s end. Defeating monsters also earns bonus points; if you don’t sacrifice a Viking to dodge round them and leave them for someone else to deal with, you simply kill it by throwing out as many of your crew as the creature has strength points, reducing that by one for each weapon you have on board. Furthermore, each round the victory conditions change, earning you points for different achievements like having the most goods or sail tiles at the journey’s end. There is a saga’s worth of variety within this compactly-constructed game, which is only mildly marred by an inferior two-player mode that requires a neutral, placementblocking ‘ghost ship’. That aside, it’s a true joy to play. Even if you’re not, for some crazy reason, into Vikings. DAN JOLIN

WE SAY An enduringly enjoyable title which should satisfy everyone from gateway gamers to tabletop vets. Including those who aren’t into horned helmets.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… JAMAICA

With its colourful board and nautical theme, Raids is definitely one for those who dug the pirate-racing game – even though there’s no action cards or dice, and it’s not really about racing.

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ Four player boards ◗ Four gather locations ◗ 45 house sections ◗ Four pig miniatures ◗ Six monster miniatures ◗ 75 resource tokens ◗ 56 fable cards ◗ 25 friend cards ◗ 20 other cards ◗ Three first

builder tokens

◗ Starting player token ◗ Die

THE GRIMM FOREST If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big… box Designer: Tim Eisner | Artist: Mr. Cuddington

he Grimm Forest is a simple worker-placement game set in the world of fairytales, specifically the world of The Three Little Pigs. The original pigs have grown old and idle, so when the king institutes an aggressive building programme it is their younger relatives who answer the call – that’s you. Having learned nothing from your uncles and aunts, you must gather straw, wood and bricks to build houses all over the kingdom’s pastoral idyll; the first to three wins. I have to declare an interest: I designed a fairly well-known game about fairytales. That doesn’t make me biased, but it does mean I’ve spent a lot of time thinking

40-60m

2-4

about this subject. Fairytales and folklore are an amazingly flexible and robust setting for a game; the characters and situations are recognisable and you can mix and match them. But you can shovel in too many, and without some sense of purpose the whole thing can fall flat. The box for The Grimm Forest is anything but flat. This is one of the best-presented games I’ve ever seen. The minis are large and expressive, from pigs to giants and big bad wolves. The artwork is gorgeous, there are components for everything and I’ve never felt the need to praise box inserts before. It’s a lovely package; I wish I could say the same about the gameplay.

10+

£48

On each turn you simultaneously reveal the location from which you’re going to gather straw, wood or bricks, as well as an optional fable card that can introduce new conditions, bonuses and penalties, depending on where everyone is gathering. Then there’s a buying phase, where you get fable cards and purchase building parts (floors, walls and roofs, in that order), followed by a building phase. If you build a wall you get a friend card: someone from the realms of fairytales to grant you extra powers. The fables and friends bring the complexity and fun to the game. Fables tend to be single-use, friends are more powerful and stick around but you can only have one in play at a time – and new ones automatically bump old ones, so you can’t hang on to a strong companion for too long. The art is beautiful, the mood is well judged and they bring a bit of magic to the game board. First player with three finished houses wins, and that’s the game. It’s not sophisticated or long, it’s hard to not do well and luck plays a large part. The core of the game is choosing where to gather resources and predicting where others will choose – it’s a mechanic that’s familiar and not terribly interesting. The Grimm Forest doesn’t do anything with its storytelling elements. You’re building empty houses for a greedy king, and the one who builds the most wins. That’s not very fable-ish. The game uses the tropes of folklore, beautifully illustrated, to tell a story of commercial exploitation. It feels like you’re a Shrek villain. The trouble with The Grimm Forest is that it’s a £25 game in a £50 package. The lovely components don’t add much; you don’t need a huge troll mini if it’s only going to be on the board for a few seconds. This is a beautiful masterclass in presentation. It’s a shame that there isn’t more gameplay to it. JAMES WALLIS

WE SAY Lovely art and minis can’t disguise thin, repetitive gameplay. The box says it’s for ages 14-plus, but this may be one just for the kids.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… FAIRY TALE

Another game based on handfuls of archetypes from fables, with simultaneous reveals and good art.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

P L AY E D

PRINCESS JING Designer: Roberto Fraga | Artist: Naïade

fter reinventing Battleship as the brilliantly tense team party game Captain Sonar, Roberto Fraga’s latest puts a similarly innovative spin on another classic: military bluffing showdown Stratego. Fraga’s inventive touch this time is introducing real mirrors to a mazelike grid of screens, which hide a princess attempting to cross the board to reunite with her lover and a maid easily mistaken for the princess with too brief a glance. The extreme brevity of rules means the strategy is pure, keeping players’ minds focused on tracking their opponents’ past moves and analysing

25m

where the princess could be – a correct guess sends her back to the edge of the board. There’s a good amount of opportunity to confuse and mislead by swapping empty screens, carefully positioning mirror holders and guiding rival characters away from your princess’ route. But the game also has a looseness that undermines its pleasing backto-basics scheming. The mirrors can easily be exploited – accidentally or otherwise – to keep tabs on several spaces at once, and the height of the characters hidden behind can lead to game-ruining glimpses or fingertip brushes. Even when care is taken, the game’s simplicity and

£37

occasional slack means its brainburning never heats up as much as you’d like. Two different ways of playing are detailed in the rules, although one essentially serves as a tutorial of the basic gameplay and is a little barebones alone – the second ‘expert’ variant, in which each player must track down two animals in the maze to identify which of three lovers they need to meet, has far more staying power and interesting decisions to mull over. With three-dimensional screens, real mirrors and sumptuous colours, Princess Jing will turn heads, but won’t necessarily send sparks coursing through the grey matter inside. It’s a game that’s easy to admire, harder to fall in love with. MATT JARVIS

ENDLESS PASS: A VIKING SAGA Designer: Núria Casellas | Artist: Craig Petersen

his debut title from Spanish designer Núria Casellas takes a familiar theme (Vikings! Glory! Valhalla!) and gives it a fresh spin in the shape of a small but perfectly-formed card game. It’s so good, it’s almost hard to recommend it as a game night warm-up; after a few rounds your group will likely want to stick with it right through to the wee hours. The setting is deceptively straightforward: each player is a Viking, tasked with running a gauntlet infested by Midgard Serpent-spawned, xenomorph-ish nasties known as the Endless, hoping to win the most glory in combat. Each turn, you draw as many cards from the pass deck as your speed stat allows (three in the basic version of the game), keeping any goodies you might find and contending with the onslaught of the Endless using your small but easily refreshable hand of action cards (again, three in the basic game). You could kill them with attack cards (or an offensive item like Greek

August 2018

30m

2-6

14+

£20

Fire, or a rare Storm Hammer) to earn glory, or evade or defend them, which sends them skittering clockwise around the table for the next player to deal with. On top of that, you can also just straight-out attack your opponents in the hope of stealing health or glory – perhaps lobbing a Greek Fire and praying they don’t play a defend, which would bounce it right back to you and make it literally blow up in your face. While it’s possible to win via the ever-dreaded player elimination as the last Viking standing, this rarely occurs because the constant backand-forth, luck-pressing take-thatting is so well implemented, everyone should lock straight into the tactics. So much so that we recommend diving straight in with the advanced rules, where each player can choose a character with varied speed and action stats and its own unique special ability. This adds more flavour to each play and will make you want

to keep going just to try them all out. In addition, we’d also advise shuffling the nasty Nine into the pass deck: spiky boss monsters who each have a different card or ability immunity. The tougher it gets, the more fun it is. Endless Pass is quite simply a small-box triumph, one which showers Casellas in glory and makes us eager to see what she comes up with next. DAN JOLIN

BANQUET ROYAL A visual feast that leaves you hungry Designer: Alain Rivollet | Artist: Vincent Joubert

f Banquet Royal teaches us anything, it’s that royals, even if imaginary, eat simple foods: burgers, salads, fruit and – to bring some fancy into the equation – trifles. However, what they lack in originality when it comes to choosing dishes, they make up for with quantity and presentation. Although players are cooks in the game, rushing to fulfil the orders of capricious royals, the only time the game itself makes players work is right at the start, when all the dishes need to be popped out of cardboard and assembled together. This effort pays off as the dishes start populating the game board, creating a beautiful colourful three-dimensional forest and filling the entire spread by the end of the game. Look a little closer, though, and it isn’t hard to see where the artwork came off the cardboard through popping or pieces are just a little bit too wobbly.

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ Double-sided board ◗ 36 menu cards ◗ 40 3D dishes ◗ Eight 3D torques ◗ Eight 3D cloches ◗ 10 royal order tokens ◗ Four reminder tokens ◗ Two reward tokens

20m

2-4

£23

Once all the pieces have been assembled, Banquet Royal never overstays its welcome or feels arduous to play. Unfortunately, it is also a dish that lacks that certain special sauce and contains some outof-place ingredients. Throughout the game, players place different dishes on trays to create an alignment of three foods that correspond to menu cards dealt at the beginning. Completing a card rewards players with points; there are different levels of difficulty of cards to spice things up. The beginning of the game is especially treacherous, as players try to place dishes on the board without setting up the next player for scoring a card – especially hard to do in a four-player game. Following that

it becomes pretty easy to score a card per turn until the very end of the game, when the free spaces become limited. Sometimes there is nothing else to do but attempt to block your opponent, as there are no opportunities to score yourself, or thoughtlessly place any dish on the board to bring the game closer to an end. There is another action players can do that feels at odds with the rest of the game. Random dish tokens are redistributed on certain trays and hidden under the cloches. (The fact that tokens slot neatly with the cloches is a nice touch.) At the beginning of the game, players are given a chance to memorise which dishes are under which cloches and later attempt to guess for a bonus victory point. This mechanic feels like it is from a completely different game and, frankly, Banquet Royal may have benefited from more rules that fit better with the core concept of building an alignment of particular dishes. One of them, for example, could be to allow players to score multiple cards on their turn, raising the stakes and making the gameplay more challenging and competitive. Although there is a dedicated ‘gourmet’ mode in Banquet Royal for more experienced players, it feels inessential. The royals may end up satisfied with their feast but, as players, it is hard to leave the table feeling comfortably full. There is a certain joy in simplicity and straightforwardness of the gameplay that only lasts 20 minutes, but it also lacks a challenge. Scoring feels a little too easy and effortless, and the repetitiveness of going through the same motions each turn takes the fun out of it. ALEX SONECHKINA

WE SAY The colourful vibrancy of Banquet Royal’s components and design unfortunately does not translate into its gameplay, the main virtue of which is its shortness.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… AZUL

Unlike Banquet Royal, Azul is incredibly pretty and has exciting, challenging gameplay. However, both may attract lovers of pattern-making games.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

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LUCIDITY: SIX-SIDED NIGHTMARES Will the dice-roller give you bad dreams, or send you to sleep? Designer: Shannon Kelly | Artist: William Webb

ream-themed games have become an entire subgenre in the last few years, from the haunted whodunit of Mysterium to dreamy dungeon-cruncher The Shared Dream and the blindfolded surrealism of When I Dream. Lucidity is the latest addition to the club: an Australian-designed, Kickstarterfunded, dice-based tiptoe between dream and nightmare through a Morpheustic netherworld of… dice. Lots of dice. In Lucidity you are a lucid dreamer travelling into the realm of nightmares to draw power from them. At least, that’s the theory. In practice, you’ll be drawing dice from a bag, rolling them and putting them on the relevant spaces on your player mat, depending on what you rolled. You’re hoping for power symbols to add to your stash, because 15 of them wins you the game. Too many exhaust symbols will lose you power,

too many hunts will knock you out of the game and each shadow you roll triggers an effect based on the colour of that die. Mostly they’re bad, and if you collect too many shadows of a particular colour then you’ll turn into a nightmare. It turns out being a nightmare is not as interesting as 1990s comic books made it look. Becoming one doesn’t prevent you from winning the game; in fact, it gives you extra actions if other players roll shadow symbols of your colour, but otherwise limits your actual choices and ability to do things. Lucidity is a simple push-your-luck dice game, bolstered by having lots of dice to push. Each turn you choose how many to roll and, once you’ve done that and put them on your sheet, you can roll more or pass. Beyond that, it’s about lining up the dice on your mat until one of the lines is full. While rolling handfuls of dice is always fun, the dice themselves are a

20-30m

1-4

bit small and lacking in heft. If you’re creating a game that’s mostly about rolling dice then the dice should be nice to roll. The game’s graphics are atmospheric and intriguing, the rules presented well and easily understood, but, despite that, Lucidity never fulfills the promise of its theme. It doesn’t feel like exploring a realm of dark visions and nightmares, or taking increasing risks to draw their power. There’s no tension or sense of journeying into danger. The mechanics hold together but aren’t engaging; that – plus the chance of being knocked out early – suggests that, despite some nice ideas, this is a design that needed more time in playtest. There’s a little player interaction, particularly once the nightmares arrive, but if you’re looking for tactics or interesting decisions, dream on. JAMES WALLIS

14+

£30

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ 80 acrylic dice ◗ Nine cards ◗ Four player mats ◗ Four glass markers ◗ Bag

WE SAY Most dream-themed games dwell on evoking the imagery and stories of night visions. The only symbology you’ll find in Lucidity are the ones printed on the dice.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… ESCAPE THE DARK CASTLE If you like dicebased games that hark back to an earlier age, with an old-school feel to the mechanics, heavy reliance on randomness and light on tactics, this is a good fit.

August 2018

A TALE OF PIRATES

O R'S C H OI

Riding high on seas and sandtimers Designer: Harding Granerud, Skjold Pedersen, Tascini | Artist: Audia

y goodness, that ship. If you want a good idea of how A Tale of Pirates feels to play, just take a look at its magnificent 3D centrepiece, a lofty crow’s nest towering above a cardboard hull as it rides the waves of your imagination. Listen: you can even hear the water sloshing against the planks and seagulls calling overhead. Oh, wait, that’s the soundtrack of the companion app. Even so, you’ll find yourself yarrr-ing commands at your shipmates as your sandtimer crew hop between their responsibilities on the deck. For pirates, they’re a patient lot – or maybe lazy bilge rats – waiting half a minute before loading the cannons, adjusting the sails, scanning the horizon or adjusting the ship’s course to a new sector of the compass it floats upon. Even with a skeleton crew, there’s enough time to grab a quick breather and discuss your next move as you watch the grains tick away – enough time to be strategic instead of chaotic, although the constant countdown and ability to ramp up the difficulty in-app never quite turns your voyage into a cruise.

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ 3D ship ◗ Six sea sectors ◗ Four sandtimers ◗ Three corks ◗ Die ◗ 14 damage tokens ◗ Four cannonballs ◗ 10 chapter envelopes ◗ Five life points

30m

2-4

£45

Sea legs come quickly, settling comfortably into the rise-and-fall rhythm of dropping timers into the deck’s generous holes (sometimes a little too generous, requiring drunkenly-slanted sailors to be pulled back to their feet or the fragile crow’s nest to be hastily reconstructed after catching a timer’s edge), watching them drain away and then getting the exciting splash of rolling the attack die, unplugging a damaged section or revealing one of the event cards that wait to be explored around the compass’ edge. Just as you feel you’ve conquered the waves, you sail smoothly into the next chapter of the game’s tenpart campaign, the sense of fresh discovery and anticipation warming you like rum. Along the way, your ship – Ellen, the generous – bears the record of your journey, the vessel adapting to the ever-changing waters it navigates.

All the while, the app has you wondering how much more fearsome Blackbeard would have been with an iPad, given how intuitive and wellpresented A Tale of Pirates’ digital peg leg – on which it has no choice but to stand – is. Each new arrival in the deck is explained concisely, never costing valuable seconds to check when the sand is flowing. The recorded high scores and star ratings invite multiple playthroughs of the story, too – a reassuring inclusion, given its relatively brief length. The filling selection of features and options is topped with a polished visual style, completing the game’s visual lushness on and off the table. Squawk! The app’s own timer, drizzling virtual sand like vinaigrette on top of this marvellous concoction of real-time strategy and immersive staging, begins to run low. The ship unleashes a barrage of cannon fire – its last, for now – and sends a circling brigantine to the depths. The sailor at the helm tries to spin the ship to reveal the final unexplored sector, but the lookout was too busy watching for hull-cracking rocks and the sails were hoisted high to power through a passage, sacrificing manoeuvrability for speed. You hope that no ships appear from the unknown distance, a guaranteed cannon strike in their sights. A Tale of Pirates is a vague, forgettable name for a game brimming with such memorable character, but its ambiguity gestures at something bigger. This isn’t so much a tale of pirates as it is a tale of friends around a table, a tale of last-minute wins or unlucky losses, a tale of right calls and wrong decisions, a tale of hilarity and good times. Whatever tale you make it, it’s one you won’t forget in a hurry. MATT JARVIS

WE SAY A Tale of Pirates skims swiftly along on outstanding presentation, fantastic app integration and gameplay that’ll keep you excited for every new adventure. With times like these out on the seas, you’ll never want to dock again.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… KITCHEN RUSH

Pirates excels in visuals and production where Kitchen Rush lacked polish, but it’s also a slower, less chaotic rush – and you’ll need the app.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

P L AY E D

MICROPOLIS Run-of-the-anthill

Designer: Bruno Cathala, Charles Chevallier | Artist: Camille Chaussy

runo Cathala, creator of many notable board games including Kingdomino, 7 Wonders Duel and Imaginarium, has teamed up once again with his Kanagawa and Abyss co-designer Charles Chevallier for a tile-drafting game about building an anthill called Micropolis. Micropolis effortlessly nails the balance between offering easy, approachable gameplay and multiple strategic paths to victory. It is a perfect gateway game, where tabletop newcomers will not struggle with understanding the rules while veteran players will still find enough to sink their teeth into. While this makes Micropolis a really enjoyable game it also lacks in originality, making it hard to compete on the same level as games in the same wheelhouse, such as Majesty: For the Realm. Majesty and Micropolis share very similar DNA and, unfortunately for

August 2018

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ 61 anthill tiles ◗ Six foundation tiles ◗ 45 soldiers ◗ Red army token ◗ Two architect tokens ◗ Scoring pad

30m

2-6

£25

the latter, this does not work in its favour. In both games, all players start with identical bases and then proceed to draft cards or tiles – in case of Micropolis, to trigger abilities and earn victory points. The drafting also works in a similar manner, with the first card in the line-up being free to pick up but, in order to gain cards further down the line, players are required to leave meeples or red ants on the preceding cards. While powers, activated by specialist ants, work well in Micropolis and are nicely integrated with the theme, special abilities are just more varied and fun in Majesty. Having said that, Micropolis still has some, if not completely unique, interesting mechanics that help to give it its own character. The anthill

is composed of tiles that create a complete circle around the central base core. There is a certain spatial awareness that is required of players to figure out which tiles to connect together to build tunnels with ants. The scoring in part is dependent on how all tunnels are connected and what ants or fruit are located within it. The artwork, like the theme, is adorable and the game has a lot of details that make it really aesthetically pleasing. The little ant miniatures, in themselves quite detailed, fit perfectly into a chunky central base, around which all the tiles align perfectly. When the whole anthill is complete, it looks really nice on the table. The game box has been specifically designed to fit all of the components perfectly, making setup and pack-up seamless. What really soured my impression of otherwise a very good game was a little note inside the rulebook about the decision to use male pronouns only. Unfortunately, while this is hardly unusual, if there is enough space in the rulebook to add a note that attempts to justify the choice, then there is definitely enough space in there to use ‘him/her’ or ‘their’ instead. Let’s finally let go of the false pretences that exclusively male pronouns are used for clarity – particularly laughable when the rulebook contains typos. Micropolis, unfortunately, suffers from coming out in an incredibly busy board game market. While it is a really enjoyable game, with sound mechanics that work perfectly well together and even its components have clearly been designed with care and attention to detail, its unoriginality makes it easy to forget and allows other, similar games to outshine it. Ultimately, it’s more of a drone than a queen. ALEX SONECHKINA

WE SAY Micropolis is a perfect gateway game that, despite its many virtues, falls just short of impressing. However, its attention to component design can only be applauded.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… MAJESTY: FOR THE REALM If you enjoy quick-flowing, strategic drafting games, Micropolis will tick a lot of the same boxes as the kingdom-building delight.

HANNIBAL & HAMILCAR

The wargaming classic returns bigger – but is it better? Designer: Simonitch, Andruszkiewicz | Artist: Jędrzejewski, Kaczmarczyk, Szymanski, Słaby

f there’s a beauty to historical warfare – the fascination of reliving the taut strategising of virtuosic commanders across a sweeping battlefield – it’s to be found in Hannibal, Mark Simonitch’s 1996 historical recreation of the clashes between Rome and Carthage. This, a 20th anniversary edition that packs in a revised and expanded version of that original game – plus a new mechanically similar but more naval-focused prequel, Hamilcar – is a fittingly gorgeous tribute to Simonitch’s politically-led simulation, with handsome artwork and the option to use plastic miniatures in the place of the cardboard tokens representing the generals of each side. (Though, it has to be said, we still prefer the tokens for clarity.) The design remains just as beautiful. The action is built around an engrossing card-driven system that would go on to influence the mighty Twilight Struggle a decade later, offering a similarly accessible but head-scratchingly strategic back-and-forth of using cards either to trigger events or as generic points with which armies can be commanded around the map. This simplicity becomes the foundation for layer after layer of historical atmosphere that effectively captures the Roman domination of the seas, for example, or the hardy attrition of winter that gradually saps troop numbers – most of which only require a die roll and relatively quick table consultation. The decisions and consequences may often be weighty, but the gameplay that supports them is rarely so. The focus here is firstly on immersion, as the staggeringly asymmetric setup for some of the historically faithful scenarios attests. Each is a slow burn of carefully manoeuvring forces, claiming regions to widen your political influence and avoiding conflict until necessary, inviting you to breathe in the Mediterranean air of the era. When battles do occur – the ability to intercept nearby enemy troops and dodge approaching armies provides welcome tactical freedom – they are

WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗ Double-sided board (Hannibal one side, Hamilcar the other) ◗ Two player aid charts ◗ Reference map/2007 edition tables ◗ 14 plastic Roman general figures ◗ 10 plastic Carthaginian general figures ◗ 65 classic Hannibal strategy cards ◗ 10 additional Hannibal strategy cards ◗ 17 multi-use strategy cards ◗ 19 Hamilcar strategy cards ◗ 48 land battle cards ◗ 18 naval tactics cards ◗ 28 Roman general cards ◗ 15 Carthaginian general cards ◗ 110 political control markers ◗ 66 combat units ◗ 23 general markers ◗ 10 walled city markers ◗ Five large walled city markers ◗ 11 tribe markers ◗ Five siege markers ◗ Four siege train markers ◗ 10 Roman ships counters ◗ 10 Carthaginian ships counters ◗ Naval supremacy marker ◗ Corvus marker ◗ Proconsul marker ◗ Dictator marker ◗ Turn/truce marker ◗ 15 supply markers ◗ Archimedes engines marker ◗ Citadel marker ◗ Forgotten tactics marker ◗ Six-sided classic die ◗ Six-sided naval die ◗ Two six-sided siege dice ◗ Two six-sided retreat dice

fast and brutal. What appears a simple numbers game at first (players draw up to 20 cards and match their attackers’ plays until they can’t, and lose) gives way to a more carefully considered strategic edge, with the option to deliberately concede battles to minimise losses and regroup. It’s an effective way to make you feel like a general at the head of an army, and it works a treat. Unfortunately, the joy of Hannibal & Hamilcar’s central gameplay and ambiance is smothered by the game’s terrible trio of rulebooks. Ostensibly designed to make learning the game easier for complete newcomers unfamiliar with the original, the tutorial-like ‘Playbook’ serves only to convolute and confuse during a series of poorly-explained scenarios – the first three of which are single-player only, requiring both players to either play them separately or one person to passively watch before playing for real. The main rulebook helps clear some things up, but overwhelms with subclauses, lacklustre referencing and the need to search for further clarification in multiple instances.

60m+

14+

£96

The wall-of-text player aids help somewhat to cut the chaff, but despite their visual density still manage to miss out certain details, meaning you’ll have to return to the books at points until you memorise every last specificity. You wouldn’t believe it from the rulebooks, but Hannibal & Hamilcar’s gameplay in motion actually skews towards the more approachable end of the wargaming scale – it’s a crying shame that the exhausting drag of such fundamentals means players may very well miss the chance to experience an otherwise brilliantly devised and lavishly presented historical epic. Instead, you’ll feel like you’ve already spent years fighting your way across Europe before the game even begins. MATT JARVIS

WE SAY A design that continues to impress decades on returns in a beautiful new set but, if you’re looking to enjoy Hannibal for the first time (or the first time in a while), be prepared to suffer through the painful approach to learning the basics.

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… TWILIGHT STRUGGLE Both card-driven wargames are wonderfully evocative of the vastly different eras they depict, with relatively simple gameplay giving way to complex and engrossing decisions.

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WHEN IN ROME

Designer: George Buckenham, Alex Fleetwood | Artist: Steve Bachmayer

fter so effectively making the case for iPads at the table with its charming tabletconnected stacking game Beasts of Balance, UK studio Sensible Object has turned its attention to inviting another piece of home tech to join in with the fun and games.

30-120m

When In Rome is the first in the Voice Originals series of games designed to be played with the assistance of Amazon’s smart speaker AI Alexa, who here serves as quizmaster during a globehopping travel trivia game. There is a physical board and pieces to track the teams’ current locations and the ‘friends’ they’ve made by correctly answering questions, as well as upgrade cards activated by speaking certain commands (which opt for using amusing triggers such as “Fetch the flamethrower” rather than the dull keywords you might expect), but they're largely unnecessary: Alexa gives detailed tips on where each team can fly next, meaning you could easily do away with the physical layout, as attractive and well-produced as it is. It is Alexa who shines here, with lively and genuinely entertaining writing that belies her robotic nature. Questions are read by real-life inhabitants of the

STAR WARS: HAN SOLO CARD GAME Designer: Hasbro team | Artist: Hasbro team

rom its uninspiring name to the heavily photoshopped artwork featuring the Hollywood stars of its source material, the Han Solo Card Game is a game that oozes the word ‘tie-in’ from every one of its cardboard pores. But being based on a popular movie and being a good game aren’t necessarily independent of each other, especially nowadays, so: is it actually any good? The Han Solo Card Game is very loosely inspired by the fictional gambling game of sabaac played in the Star Wars universe (this is far from a one-for-one recreation). In essence, it’s a variant of blackjack where the target is zero instead of 21 and cards can be positive or negative numbers – the main decision is whether to draw extra cards (and potentially discard one of those you hold) or stay. That would be fine, if bland, by itself. To try and make it feel like more of an

August 2018

15-30m

2-4

10+

£20

exciting taste of a galaxy far, far away, the Han Solo Card Game throws in a dice roll at the end of each of three rounds, with the dice featuring random vaguely alienish symbols. Because it’s Star Wars, obviously. Two matching results means everyone replaces their current hand with an equal number of freshly-drawn cards. At random. This even happens before the final reveal and scoring, essentially undermining any semblance of strategy. It’s luck on top of luck. The winners claim tokens featuring a selection of Star Wars miscellanea: ships, stormtrooper helmets and the

2-8

13+

£25

cities and go beyond worn-out clichés; we eagerly soaked up knowledge about local foodstuffs in Mumbai and myths in Hong Kong. Each answer is given a good amount of explanation – and wrong guesses are met with friendly, natural jabs. Though Alexa can occasionally be a little too over-wordy, she is easily hurried along with the right phrase – a single playthrough never feels exhaustingly drawn-out. When In Rome is a promising next step for the idea of tech on the tabletop, but it’s better approached as a passing curio than a game to be captivated by. Unlike Beasts of Balance, which remained rooted in the physical experience, the components and gameplay here feel overshadowed by their digital counterpart. That said, the virtual experience is top-notch – when Alexa shows a little more love to the analogue side of things, we won’t hesitate to invite her back to our game night. MATT JARVIS

most valuable prize, the Millennium Falcon. These all have different values and are also drawn at random, meaning that a decent hand can mean very little if you happen to claim a naff top prize that round anyway. Oh, and if you do get the Falcon, someone can steal it off you with the right set of prizes. More luck. On the positive side, it at least moves quickly and, if everyone knows what they’re in for, can distract for a few minutes. Don’t expect to easily take it with you, though: the box is ridiculously inflated (in every regard) for a small deck of extremely thin cards, two dice and some cardboard strips. If you’re desperate for a prop for your Star Wars-themed game night (though the whopping logo on the back of the cards breaks the immersion somewhat) or have to own literally every piece of memorabilia going, the Han Solo Card Game might find a place in your home. For everyone else, buy a standard pack of cards (and two dice, if you really want to play this variant, though it’s not recommended) and spend the rest of the money on another trip to the cinema to remember how Star Wars should be experienced. MATT JARVIS

GENESYS: REALMS OF TERRINOTH

Solid, generic fantasy for a solid, generic system Designer: Tim Cox, Tim Huckelbery, Katrina Ostrander | Artist: Various

ne of the selling points of the Genesys system was that it allowed you to play in any weird and wonderful world you desired. While it may seem as though a setting book like Realms of Terrinoth would limit this freedom, the new options, rules and ideas it offers just expand the GM’s toolbox. Make no mistake, Terrinoth – home to several existing Fantasy Flight games – isn’t exactly the most exciting or original setting out there. It’s a world of fire-breathing dragons, noble heroes and scheming wizards that will feel instantly familiar to anyone who’s dabbled in D&D or sunk a few months into World of Warcraft, with no shock twist or unique gimmick pushing us out of our comfort zones. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The generic nature of the world means that you can bend the ruleset to fit your wild and wacky campaign about sky-pirates, subterranean spiderwarriors or immortal champions and still make use of almost everything in the book. At the same time, if you want to run something a little more conventional, there are plenty of story threads and fantastical locations already set out for you to play around with. A vital part of playing in a fantasy world is creating your own noble heroes and heroines, and most of the new mechanics introduced in Realms of Terrinoth offer new options to characters.

261

These include the chance to play as orcs, elves and even catfolk, plus a whole set of setting-appropriate careers – the rough equivalent of classes – that replace those found in the core rulebook. One welcome addition, when compared to many other games, is that not all the careers on offer are combat-focused, so a scholar or diplomat can offer just as much to the party as a warrior or mage. Beyond this, the new options continue the trend of easy customisability found in the basic version of Genesys. Within the space of only a dozen or so pages you can find rules for modifying weapons and armour, brewing alchemical potions and working with magical runes, while another section lays out the benefits that a wand fashioned from bone will offer over one carved from willow. None of these minor rule updates or options are particularly deep or complicated, but they provide so many little ways to tweak how a character feels and plays. With a little imagination, the correct combination of talents, skills and equipment can allow players to create virtually any kind of adventurer they can imagine. This broad-but-not-too-deep trend continues with the array of stat blocks included for new allies and enemies alike. These are grouped up according to region, with the desert-based assassins appearing alongside djinn while elven archers sit with evil fae. While this doesn’t always make it easy to find the specific

13+

£38

creature you’re looking for in the heat of an encounter, it works well for throwing things together on the fly based upon the adventure your party is embroiled in. The difficulty of navigating the book may in fact be its greatest flaw, as much of the vital information you would need to consult on a regular basis is all kept in one chapter right in the middle of its 260-something pages. This isn’t anything that can’t be solved with a bookmark or a well-placed thumb, but it is perhaps a sign that Realms of Terrinoth is absolutely stuffed with lore and history. For some people this will be a wonderful excuse to sit down and plough through the background of this competently-crafted fantasy world, but for the rest of us the sheer quantity of lore on offer is a little bit overwhelming. Perhaps that’s an unfair criticism of a setting book, where the world it sets out is one of the selling points, but it’s hard to see what too many gaming groups will be able to get from the details of Eleanor II’s role in the Great Goblin Uprising of 997, for example. If you’ve ever wanted to play around in the world of Runebound, Runewars or the recent Legacy of Dragonholt, this should be an instant purchase. However, even if you don’t have any existing connection to the world of Terrinoth and are looking for an alternative to the big boys of the heroic fantasy market, you could do much worse than picking this up alongside a copy of Genesys. RICHARD JANSENPARKES

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… LEGACY OF DRAGONHOLT Realms of Terrnioth is set in the same world as the RPG-lite, and allows the party to head out on a near-infinite range of adventures rather than just those prescribed by the book.

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MARVEL CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS: BATTLEREALM More Fantastic Flop than Fantastic Four Designer: Carmen Bellaire

ne of the best things about the analogue gaming hobby is the number of great releases based on pop-culture hits. Whether you’re a fan of Star Wars, Firefly or Game of Thrones, you’ll find a huge array of games that let you dive into your favourite movies and TV shows. And, while video games might suffer from an abundance of cynical licensed cashins, tabletop game creators generally treat their source material with more respect. Designers go to extraordinary lengths to capture the spirit and atmosphere of beloved fictional universes in cardboard and plastic. That’s what makes Marvel Contest of Champions: Battlerealm such an unutterable disappointment. Based on the acclaimed mobile app (nope, me neither), this dicechucking game of superhero combat promises to throw some of the mightiest characters in comics against one another in a battle of strength, cunning and tactics. In reality, it’s a rip-off of King of Tokyo. Those might seem like strong words, especially when game design

August 2018

30-45m

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ 13 character boards ◗ 14 cardboard

character standees

◗ Six custom dice ◗ 40 location cards ◗ 52 special

power cards

◗ Six player

reference cards

relies so heavily on designers building and riffing on games that have come before. But stop me when this starts feeling too close for comfort: you and your friends each take control of a character in a multiplayer scrap for supremacy. You’ll each choose a cardboard standee and a corresponding player board with a spinning life counter, and you’ll win by being the last monst– erm, hero left standing, or by amassing a set number of victory points. On each turn you’ll roll a handful of black custom dice, with different symbols letting you inflict damage on your opponents or reclaim some of your own lost health. You’ll re-roll unwanted results up to three times along the way. To be fair, Battlerealm adds some new ideas to the mix. The trouble is that they’re all bad ones. Rather than gaining new powers over the course of the game, you’ll start out with special abilities that

2-6

12+

£39

kinda-sorta represent your character. But many seem thematically out of place. Take Black Panther’s ‘King of Wakanda’ power, which lets him add a combat symbol to his dice roll. I’m not sure how that’s meant to represent the burden of status and responsibility so deftly explored in the original comics. Then there are the times when player abilities seem at odds with the core premise of the game. You’re supposed to be jumping through different locations across the Marvel universe, positioning your heroes in places where they’ll have an edge over their rivals and exploiting different environments to your advantage. So why is there a player power which eliminates almost all locations from the game, reducing it to a boring dicerolling contest? And then there’s the jewel in the crown, the Crystal Prison – a location you’ll be confined to whenever you have a particularly unlucky result on your dice rolls. While incarcerated, you won’t be able to damage your rivals or be on the receiving end of their attacks. You’re out of the game until you manage to escape. Do not pass Go, do not collect £200. With artwork based on its smartphone predecessor, there isn’t even a nice comic-book aesthetic to distract from the misery. OWEN DUFFY

WE SAY Marvel Contest of Champions: Battlerealm falls flat on multiple levels. Its gameplay is painfully derivative. Its variable player powers often feel unconnected to the characters they purport to represent. Its artwork has none of the punch and flair of superhero comics. The cherry on the cake? It even comes with a Monopoly-style ‘Go to Jail’ mechanism. Excelsi-urgh!

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… KING OF TOKYO

But only if you’re some sort of masochist. If you prefer your dice-battling with a light tactical marinade, go for King of New York instead.

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

ROBIT RIDDLE: STORYBOOK ADVENTURES A mechanical tale with a human heart Designer: Kevin Craine | Artist: John Ariosa

ith the popularity of Westworld and Blade Runner 2049, dark, complex tales of robots and androids are returning to the centre of the current cultural zeitgeist. Robit Riddle is not that kind of story. It has possibly one of the sweetest premises in sci-fi: robots going on an adventure to solve a mystery of their lost pets, robits. A mixture between choose-your-ownadventure and roleplaying game, Robit Riddle is a gateway into both genres, but it won’t sustain players for very long. This is mainly because it tries to do quite a lot, but must make some sacrifices to fit itself into the boundaries it creates. Players begin by choosing a character and sharing their backstory with the group. Then, the leader would choose one of the three storybooks and begin reading. Occasionally, there will be straightforward choices to make, such as which location to go to next. There are also decisions that require players to roll dice to progress. If they fail to gain the desired number of successful outcomes, it then introduces a mechanic that bridges into the basics of storytelling. Every player has a number of story cue cards, and can gain more throughout the duration of the game. Integrating these cues into the current setup of the story earns a success but costs a little gear token. If they run out, players can’t use stories as means to succeed during an encounter. The stories can

be as simple or as complex and layered as the players decide but, beyond allowing them to progress further in an already predetermined narrative, they contribute very little overall. This feels especially oversimplified compared to games such as Stuffed Fables, which managed to integrate player agency within the story itself. The comparison to Stuffed Fables immediately brings to mind how intelligently that game uses its dice, mixing luck elements with tactics. This is something Robit Riddle avoids completely. Although players can choose which skill to use in order to have the most chance of success, the resolution is still tied to the luck of the roll. This simpler approach would make sense if Robit Riddle were aiming for a younger audience than Stuffed Fables, yet they both suggest suitability for children aged around eight and up. Robit Riddle attempts to integrate a multiplayer experience into one storybook. The only real player cooperation comes when attempting to pass an encounter through story cues. Otherwise, the storybook occasionally gets handed from one player to another, where the reader makes all the story choices. Therefore, it simply feels like waiting for your chance to read with very little participation. This is especially a shame since two-player choose-yourown-adventures are hardly a novelty; the

5-45m

1-6

£42

Fighting Fantasy gamebook Clash of the Princes managed to integrate two-player gameplay that was consistent with the spirit of the books, whereas Robit Riddle settles for a simple pass-and-play. Undeniably Robit Riddle creates an intriguing universe. The biggest joy of the game is meeting its secondary characters, like Eek Energy, Jingle Jabber and Ohm Oomph, learning more about them and finding out what makes them tick. This is supported by gorgeous artwork, which in itself tells stories. Every character is unique and, through their art, players can begin to discover if they are good or bad, hints about their backstory and where they live. Beautiful and incredibly sweet, Robit Riddle: Storybook Adventures aspires to be a first stepping-stone towards interactive storytelling. It definitely takes some steps in that direction, even if it ends up trying to do too much at the same time. If nothing else, you’ll stick around long enough to see those adorable robot pets reunited with their owners. ALEX SONECHKINA

◗ Three storybooks ◗ Six character cards ◗ Four location cards ◗ 18 Encounter cards ◗ 45 story cue cards ◗ 30 initial cue cards ◗ 15 story tokens ◗ Five encounter dice ◗ Story die ◗ Bookmark ◗ Three ending trackers ◗ Six player aids

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… CLASH OF THE PRINCES Fans of Fighting Fantasy or any other choose-yourown-adventure gamebooks will instantly recognise the structure of Robit Riddle. However, the latter may feel slightly disappointing if played after the classics of the genre.

WE SAY Not exactly an RPG or choose-your-own adventure but something in-between, Robit Riddle’s story will soften every steel heart. That said, those who would like to play it in a bigger group may be disappointed by the awkward integration of the multiplayer experience.

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February 2018

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of 132 pages

Legend of the Five Rings expands with an excellent area control spin-off. Or are we just bluffing? Designer: Molly Glover, Tom Jolly |

Artist: Mathias Kollros, Francesca

Baerald, Nele Diel, ShenFei

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BATTLE FOR ROKUGAN

ot on the heels of its recent living card game revival, Legend of the Five Rings’ next major franchise instalment is Battle for Rokugan – a taut area control board game that stands alone as a truly fantastic experience. If you’re already a fan of Legend of the Five Rings, you’ll find rough sketches of the seven competing clans’ broad strategies in their slightly asymmetrical special abilities and pools of combat tokens used for wresting control of the map’s various provinces – and the victory-sealing honour that comes with them. It’s just enough to root the conflict in a wider world that feels more believable and vibrant, without throwing off the careful gameplay balance or leaving total newcomers feeling lost. Learning the ropes is easy, with combat largely coming down to a straight battle of numbers – attack with more strength than your opponent has defence, and you’ll claim that province. Each type of combat token has slightly different rules – armies must attack over land, naval tokens operate only along coasts, the rarer shinobi can strike anywhere and so on – and is placed facedown to signify its intent, before all players’ tokens are revealed and resolved simultaneously. This is where Battle for Rokugan’s real joy comes into play, as where – and,

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

◗ Game board ◗ 22 territory cards ◗ 10 initiative cards ◗ Seven daimyō screens ◗ 12 secret

objective cards

◗ First player card ◗ 189 combat tokens ◗ Five shugenja cards ◗ 10 scout cards ◗ 210 control tokens ◗ Four honour

bonus tokens

◗ Four defence

bonus tokens

◗ Shrine token ◗ Harbour token ◗ Battlefield token ◗ 15 peace tokens ◗ 15 scorched

earth tokens ◗ Round track token

O R'

REVIEWS OF THE LATEST RELEASES BEFORE ANYONE ELSE

S TA R T R E K A D V E N T U R E S

PAINTS & TECHNIQUES

I S CHO

90m

2-5

14+

£40

safeguarding it from future attacks but potentially sacrificing a tactical advantage during future battles. Taking over an entire territory can grant a huge advantage, as each collection of lands unlocks a single-use power for the controlling player to use. The abilities feel fittingly formidable and satisfying to execute, but are only held onto as long as that player has total control – meaning waiting to use them to their full advantage can be very risky. Each player also starts with a very limited supply of scouts and shugenja that let them spy on some of their opponents’ tokens, plus a secret objective that’s revealed during endgame scoring for a potential last twist in the final standings. Funnily enough for a spin-off to a living card game, the cardplay is kept to a bare minimum, leaving the focus on the placement of tokens, but the small number, restricted use and great power of the cards means that every one lands with a huge impact. The combination of straightforward basics, the chance for deceptive mind games, and just a smidge of luck and asymmetry works an absolute charm: Battle for Rokugan is 90 or so minutes of exhilarating Oh My God!-ness, air-punching triumph and head-inhands regret (with laughter) as traps Games are sprung, plans go astray and bigaren’t just fun – they can also you moments pop off in every help round. boost your brainpowe Professors r. That’s no bluff. and students tell us about the cranium-c MATT JARVIS ramming

crucially, when – you put your tokens down becomes a tense standoff and clash of wits between players. Could the token attacking your province be a powerful army needing to be fought off with ample defence? Or could it simply be a distraction to draw your forces away from a surprise attack elsewhere during the final placement? You’ll need to constantly guess and second-guess your rivals, especially as every player always has a blank bluffing token hidden with the rest of their ‘hand’ behind their screen, presenting a constant opportunity to mislead and deceive. It’s a tight, thrilling experience that keeps up the pressure throughout its very reasonable running time and gets especially explosive during the fifth benefits of Darwinian delight and final round, as players unleash Evolution WE SAY Words by Anna Blackwell a last-ditch effort to take over entire There’s no need to already be a Legend territories or block their rivals’ control. of the Five Rings fan to enjoy Battle Particularly brutal are the rare raid for Rokugan as a brilliant game of tokens, which completely decimate planning, deception and strategy. The easy-to-grasp gameplay means the an area for the rest of the game riveting showdowns between players and remove all combat and control get to shine, while the tight play time tokens, while the equally uncommon and differences between the clans and diplomacy tokens permanently forbid territory powers leave plenty of reasons all combat in – or out – of a region, to come back time and time again.

LEARNI EVOLVENG D

TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… GAME OF THRONES: THE BOARD GAME

Want a game that lets you conquer the world as you trick and outwit your friends? Battle for Rokugan lets you do it all in under a couple of hours.

February 2018

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ARKHAM HORROR FILES INVESTIGATORS

Whether exploring the haunted rooms of Mansions of Madness or confronting the global threat of Eldritch Horror, give these heroes some colour in a dark world

Words and photographs by Andy Leighton

nce again we return to the Lovecraftian world of Arkham Horror Files – but instead of the lurking monsters we’ve covered in past, this time we’ll be looking at how to paint up the intrepid investigators confronting the nightmares. The miniatures we’ve used in this guide are included in the Mansions of Madness: Second Edition box, but represent some of the many recurring investigators of the connected Arkham Horror Files universe who also pop up in Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror, meaning they can be used freely in those board games once you’ve given them a makeover. Like the monsters before them, the Mansions characters don’t really wow out the box, feeling fairly generic and lacking definition. Still, they are great for painting, allowing a little colour and some careful highlights to add what the sculpt lacks. Much like the monsters guide, I wanted to approach the models in a slightly different fashion in order to enhance the gothic, spooky element integral to the games’ setting. I chose to continue this with the characters to help tie the whole set together and further reinforce the dark atmosphere of the game.

August 2018

PAINTS & TECHNIQUES PAINTS YOU WILL NEED: Abaddon Black Agrax Earthshade Aliatoc Blue Averland Sunset Biel-tan Green Blue Horror Cadian Fleshtone Ceramite White Dark Reaper Dawnstone Doombull Brown Dorn Yellow Drakenhof Nightshade Druchii Violet Fenrisian Grey Karak Stone Kislev Flesh Lamenters Yellow Mechanicus Standard Grey Mephiston Red Nuln Oil Pallid Wych Flesh Rhinox Hide Russ Grey Steel Legion Drab Sycorax Bronze Temple Guard Blue Ulthuan Grey Wazdakka Red Xereus Purple XV-88 Yriel Yellow Zandri Dust

ZENITHAL HIGHLIGHTING

Zenithal highlighting at its core is a much more complicated process than what I am going to show you in this guide. I will show a basic version that helps apply a simplified version of highlighting. This begins at the basecoating stage, whilst preparing the model for the later stages. Begin by basecoating the miniature black. This is easiest with a black spray paint. Once the black is dry, apply a light spray of white from the top around the model. This will create a light element of highlighting and shading straight off the bat, that will either provide shading and highlighting in later stages or a guide as to where they should be applied.

STAGES

Each character is split up into four stages, each with a list of colours and the corresponding paint that was used for it. Each stage uses a different technique to achieve a similar effect on each element but with different colours. Stage 1 is base colours. Base colours are applied using a mix of glazes and flat colours. On some investigators this stage asks you to apply a thinneddown coat – this is achieved with a mix of one part paint to three parts water. Stage 2 is applying shading and layering. In this stage we use various washes and glazes to add an element of shading to the models – where this is not required we add a layer over the previous applications, only leaving the recesses showing the original colour. Stage 3 is highlighting. This stage involves applying a line of your colour along the hard edges and ridges of the area. I would recommend using a fine brush and adding a tiny dash of water to your paints. If you find yourself unsure of where to apply the highlights or spot highlights, look over the images alongside the guide and compare that stage to the last.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

A R K H A M H O R R O R F I L E S I N V E S T I G AT O R S

PRESTON FAIRMONT BASE COLOURS

RITA YOUNG BASE COLOURS

Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a thin layer to the skin. XV-88: Apply a thin layer to the suit. Rhinox Hide: Apply a thin layer to the hair, cane and shoes.

Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a thin layer to the skin. Abaddon Black: Apply a thin layer to the hair. Ulthuan Grey: Apply a thin layer to the dress, socks and shoes.

SHADING & LAYERING

Drakenhof Nightshade: Apply a wash to the underside of the skin and a light coat to the shirt and tie. Nuln Oil: Apply a wash to the lower half of each section of the suit.

HIGHLIGHTING

Kislev Flesh: Apply several thin layers over the skin, focusing on the upper half. XV-88: Apply a highlight to the hair and cane. Ulthuan Grey: Apply a highlight of the shirt and tie. Karak Stone: Apply a highlight to the suit.

August 2018

Drakenhof Nightshade: Apply a very light wash to the bottom of the skirt, shoes and socks, and underside of the sleeves. Also, apply a wash to the underside of the skin.

HIGHLIGHTING

Kislev Flesh: Apply several thin layers over the skin, focusing on the top half. Ceramite White: Apply several thin layers to the dress, shoes and socks, building to a white highlight. Aliatoc Blue: Apply in lines to the socks and dress. Dark Reaper: Apply a highlight to the hair.

AGATHA CRANE

MINH THI PHAN

BASE COLOURS

Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a thin layer to the skin. Doombull Brown: Apply a thin layer to the suit and shoes. Ulthuan Grey: Apply a thin layer to the hair and lab coat. Sycorax Bronze: Apply a layer to the pendant and buttons.

Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a thin layer to the skin. Abaddon Black: Apply a thin layer to the hair and shoes. Temple Guard Blue: Apply a thin layer to the dress, avoiding the collar and belt. Averland Sunset: Apply a thin layer to the books.

SHADING & LAYERING

Drakenhof Nightshade: Apply a very light wash to the bottom of the lab coat and underside of the sleeves. Also, apply a wash to the underside of the skin and hair. Druchii Violet: Apply a wash to the lower half of each section of the suit and the shoes. Biel-tan Green: Apply a wash to the medallion.

HIGHLIGHTING

Kislev Flesh: Apply several thin layers over the skin, focusing on the top half. Ceramite White: Apply several thin layers to the lab coat and hair, building to a white highlight. Wazdakka Red: Apply a highlight to the suit and shoes.

Drakenhof Nightshade: Apply a wash to the underside of the skin and the lower half of each section of the dress. Nuln Oil: Apply a wash to the book.

HIGHLIGHTING

Pallid Wych Flesh: Apply several thin layers over the skin, focusing on the top half. Blue Horror: Apply a highlight to the dress. Ceramite White: Apply a highlight to the collar, belt and glasses. Dorn Yellow: Apply an edge highlight to the book. Dawnstone: Apply a line highlight to the hair and shoes.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

A R K H A M H O R R O R F I L E S I N V E S T I G AT O R S

FATHER MATEO

CARSON SINCLAIR

BASE COLOURS

Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a thin layer to the skin. Abaddon Black: Apply a thin layer over the robes, shoes and hair. Once dry, add a further thin layer to the bottom half of the robes and sleeves. Mephiston Red: Apply a thin layer to the sash. Sycorax Bronze: Apply a layer to the cross.

Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a thin layer to the skin. Abaddon Black: Apply a thin layer to the upper body of the suit and the shoes. Mechanicus Standard Grey: Apply a thin layer to the trousers. Sycorax Bronze: Apply a layer to the buttons. Ulthuan Grey: Apply a thin layer to the hair, shirt and tie.

SHADING & LAYERING

Drakenhof Nightshade: Apply a wash to the underside of the skin. Druchii Violet: Apply a wash to the bottom half and recesses of the sash. Biel-tan Green: Apply a wash to the cross.

HIGHLIGHTING

Pallid Wych Flesh: Apply several thin layers over the skin, focusing on the top half. Wazdakka Red: Apply a highlight to the sash. Russ Grey: Apply a highlight to the robes and hair. Ceramite White: Apply a coat to the dog collar.

August 2018

Drakenhof Nightshade: Apply a wash to the underside of the skin and the shaded areas of the trousers, shirt, tie and hair.

HIGHLIGHTING

Pallid Wych Flesh: Apply several thin layers over the skin, focusing on the top half. Russ Grey: Apply a highlight to the jacket and shoes. Ceramite White: Apply a highlight to the shirt, tie and hair. Fenrisian Grey: Apply a light highlight to the trousers.

WENDY ADAMS

WILLIAM YORICK

BASE COLOURS

Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a thin layer to the skin. Doombull Brown: Apply a thin layer to the hair. Abaddon Black: Apply a thin layer to the neck scarf and shoes. Sycorax Bronze: Apply a layer to the candlestick and amulet. Xereus Purple: Apply a thin layer to the waistcoat and skirt. Karak Stone: Apply a thin layer to the candle, shoulders, apron and hem. Dawnstone: Apply a thin layer to the sleeves.

Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a thin layer to the skin. Steel Legion Drab: Apply a layer to the upper-body clothes. Dark Reaper: Apply a thin layer to the trousers, shovel head, buttons and belt buckle. Doombull Brown: Apply a thin layer to the boots, hair, shirt and shovel handle. Karak Stone: Apply a thin layer to the skull.

SHADING & LAYERING

Drakenhof Nightshade: Apply a wash to the underside of the skin. Nuln Oil: Apply a wash to the areas furthest from the candle, creating a circle around the candle unwashed. Biel-tan Green: Apply a wash to the amulet and candlestick.

HIGHLIGHTING

Pallid Wych Flesh: Apply several thin layers over the skin, focusing on the half closest to the candle. Also apply a highlight to the arm closest to the candle, and the top left of the apron. Wazdakka Red: Apply a highlight to the half of the hair closest to the candle. Yriel Yellow: Apply a highlight to the top of the candle. Lamenters Yellow: Apply lightly over the ‘circle’ around the candle, building in intensity towards the flame.

Drakenhof Nightshade: Apply a wash to the underside of the skin. Nuln Oil: Apply a wash to the lower half of each section of the jacket, shirt, trousers, shovel and hair. Agrax Earthshade: Apply a wash to the lower half of the skull.

HIGHLIGHTING

Pallid Wych Flesh: Apply several thin layers over the skin, focusing on the top half. Russ Grey: Apply a highlight to the trousers and shovel head. Karak Stone: Apply a highlight to the jacket and skull. Zandri Dust: Apply a highlight to the hair, handle and shirt.

EYES

Abaddon Black: Paint ovals over the eyes. Ceramite White: Paint another oval within the first, leaving a faint outline. Abaddon Black: Add a small dot to the top centre of the eye.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

T H E D U N G E O N M A S T E R ’ S G U I D E T O R O L E P L AY I N G

SETTING BOUNDARIES Endless imagination often means that little is off-limits in the worlds of roleplaying games. Still, there are certain subjects that require careful handling if you want your group to enjoy every moment at the table

Words by Richard Jansen-Parkes

ne of the most impressive things about tabletop RPGs is the ease with which players become utterly invested in characters conjured up from raw imagination and half-remembered fantasy novels. Usually this is a blessing – getting a friend or family member to shed a tear over a fallen ally is often the proudest moment of a GM’s career – but, if handled poorly, it can amplify the consequences of bad decisions and moments of poor taste. Watching a film or reading a book with upsetting content and themes can be horrible, but at least you aren’t having to actively participate in it. This is something that our group had to navigate carefully when the player behind

August 2018

the party’s sorceress idly wondered if there might be any long-term consequences to the week she’d spent relaxing with her boyfriend, a captain in the Queen’s Guard who’d been elevated from nameless NPC cannon-fodder to stalwart ally after a series of spectacular combat rolls. It was late in the night and we were in a cheerful sort of mood, so, without really thinking of the implications for the campaign, I had them roll for it. Whatever mysterious force that guide dice rolls seems to have a strange sense of humour about these things, so naturally the tiny chunk of plastic bounced off a wine glass and came down as a 20. And just like that, Criella the Sorceress was pregnant.

Tales from the Loop protects its young characters from serious harm and death

Once the wave of immature giggling had died down, we realised that we’d accidentally introduced a new story thread to the game – one that had the potential to be deeply upsetting if we handled it clumsily. Characters dying off or being badly injured in combat was an important part of the game, but none of us were comfortable with those stakes extending to an unborn child. So, as a group, we agreed that we’d find a reason for Criella to split off from the rest of the group for a while – not because she was any less effective at her role, but because plot armour doesn’t mesh very well with the rules of the game – and work out what her player wanted to do a few months down the line. Most importantly, we agreed that any medical drama or danger surrounding the pregnancy was off-limits. There weren’t going to be any edgy twists or sudden shock revelations that pressed back on the borders of what was acceptable. We were here to have fun, after all.

TOO DARK FOR A DARK WORLD In some ways, the decision to force the world to bend to the will of the group in order to avoid something we would find upsetting can seem a little out of place, or even hypocritical. After all, when you take a step back and think about it, most of the RPGs we play are stuffed to the gills with all kind of horrors and darkness; it’s rare that most adventurers manage to wander between dungeons without being obliged to hack a wandering ogre into bloody lumps, while evil cults sacrificing innocents seem to be lurking in every other basement. So why are some kinds of depravity staples of the hobby while others are kept under lock and key? Why do we clap and cheer when the bounty hunter rolls a critical hit and blasts the imperial commander’s head clean off, but shy away from more mundane horrors? Perhaps the biggest factor is that, for the most part, we as players remain safely insulated by the more conventional kinds of nastiness going down in the game world. While RPG combat can be bloody, it’s usually the same kind of fantastical fare we munch popcorn to in the cinema: an exciting clash of foes that has – for the vast majority of us – as much relation to our day-to-day lives as the magic spells our wizards cast. As horrible as the chaos-worshipping nutters we confront may be, they aren’t exactly the kind of thing we need to worry about in real life. Hopefully. This means that their evil excites and unsettles us, but doesn’t upset us. Other kinds of horror… well, they strike a little closer to home.

TRIGGER WARNING From sexual violence to stereotyped portrayals of mental illness, there’s a lengthy list of topics that can make the folks gathered around the table feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. Some of these might be obvious while others may not be so readily apparent but, unless there’s a very, very good reason for including them, most of the time these are probably best left on the cutting room floor. Of course, what is and isn’t appropriate can’t always be set in stone and can vary with both the group and the system they’re playing. Games like Tails of Equestria probably have an even longer list of things to avoid than most conventional games. Heck, if you’re running the wonderful Tales from the Loop according to the rules, the children you play as aren’t even able to be seriously hurt, let alone killed. On the other side of the coin there are intentionally dark and disturbing titles like Vampire: The Masquerade and Lamentations of the Flame Princess, where genuine, unapologetic evil is a core part of the experience. Even then, of course, there is a difference between pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable and driving players away from the table, especially if people aren’t made completely aware of the kind of games they are before sitting down to play.

HAPPY & SAFE No doubt, there are plenty of people out there who don’t really agree with me. For some folks, placing limits on what kind of subject matter can come up at the table is babying your players at best – and edging close to censorship at worst. Likewise, I’m sure that there are plenty of stories out there about the time an arc packed with overt racism turned into a great real-world discussion, or where a question of whether the heroes should slay the children of their monstrous foes led to incredible character development. If you only take away one thing from this piece, however, let it be that introducing controversial topics to a game isn’t something to be done casually or on a whim. There’s room for having characters make tough decisions, and for placing them in difficult situations where there isn’t a clear division between right and wrong, but not for making the players themselves feel so uncomfortable that the game becomes something to endure rather than enjoy. After all: if we aren’t enjoying ourselves, why are we playing? tabletopgaming.co.uk

UPCOMING EVENTS GRAND TRIBUNAL

Friday August 17th to Sunday 19th Gas Green Community Centre, Cheltenham roleplaying, freeform and boardgame convention dedicated to the games and settings of Atlas games, such as Ars Magica, Unknown Armies, Over the Edge and Rune. Features some freeform LARP, plus a large Ars Magica game suitable for everyone. grandtribunal.org

GAMESCON

Saturday September 1st Emsworth Community Centre, Emsworth

A new convention for board gamers and roleplayers. gamescon.co.uk

TABLETOP SCOTLAND

September Saturday 1st to Sunday 2nd Dewars Centre, Perth

EVENT REPORT

BORDON GAMESFEST

Pastor and player Dominic Clarke talks us through the inaugural Hampshire event and its plans for years to come Interview by Matt Jarvis This year’s Gamesfest is the first! Why did you decide to start a convention? First and foremost, I am a lifelong tabletop and RPG enthusiast. My mates and I have been meeting up monthly to play games and I have always dreamed of establishing a proper club and running a really exciting event like Gamesfest. My overall ambition is just to promote this type of gaming as a hobby, because I love it. I work in the community – I’m actually the pastor of a local church – and so am always looking for events and activities that bring people together in a positive way. Tabletop gaming is a great way to do that, and so it is really important to us that we put the event on and offer free entry to everyone. What were you surprised by as you planned the event? The real challenge is knowing how many people are going to show up! We have a really excellent but contained space at the Phoenix Theatre and Arts Centre and are taking over the whole building with games going on in several different rooms. Bringing everything together is a challenge but lots of fun. The best bit about organising the event is how helpful and keen everyone is. What makes Bordon the right place to hold a gaming meet-up like Gamesfest? Bordon is currently the site of one of the biggest urban regeneration projects in the UK at the moment. It is a really exciting place with new people, especially families, moving in. There are lots of exciting things going on and Gamesfest will complement it all nicely.

August 2018

Bordon is also home to two big companies in the board gaming world, GamesQuest and Asmodee, and both are supporting the event fully. The Phoenix Theatre also describes itself as “Hampshire’s friendliest venue”. We have good connections across the south of England and are not far from London. What’s unique about Gamesfest versus other gaming get-togethers? Gamesfest’s focus is definitely going to be about introducing people to new games, or even introducing them to board gaming itself as a hobby. It is also a totally family-friendly event. That’s not to say that we won’t welcome seasoned gamers – we are planning to keep one room aside for the more complicated ‘hardcore’ gamers, and are hoping to offer an after-hours gaming session at the end of the day for real pros. Our venue is homely, comfortable and very friendly, and in the auditorium we are going to be able to put on some of the more visual and interactive games that people can enjoy watching, like When I Dream. Will the event be all about board games, or do you have plans for RPGs and miniatures, too? This year we are going to focus more on board and card games of all types. I really hope that Gamesfest will become an annual event and that we will also be able to launch a games club off the back of it too. So, future events can always branch out into RPGs. I would personally love that, having spent an awful lot of the 1980s playing Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu and Star Trek RPGs!

Held in the heart of Scotland and open to all forms of gaming. Roleplayers can enjoy a Dungeons & Dragons Epic Adventure. tabletopscotland.co.uk

HEREWARD WARGAMES SHOW Sunday September 2nd The Cresset, Peterborough

Back for a third year, this wargaming show features a good mix of traders, plus tournaments and participation games. hereward-wargames.co.uk

CONCRETE COW

Sunday September 15th The Old Bath House, Milton Keynes

The Milton Keynes RPG Club returns for its regular one-day event open to any RPG. mk-rpg.org.uk/Concrete_Cow

GNOMECON

Friday September 21th to Sunday 23rd Holiday Inn Bolton Centre, Bolton

All in the name of charity, this north-west show includes a large bring-and-buy and raffle. gnomeboardgamers.com/upcoming-events

THE OWLBEAR AND THE WIZARD’S STAFF

Saturday September 22nd The Band Factory, Leamington Spa

A one-day roleplaying event offering sessions morning and afternoon, with a lunch break and pub trip at the end of the day. bit.ly/2zm7cSe

RAIDERS OF THE GAME CUPBOARD Saturday September 22nd Waterside Community Centre, Burton upon Trent A friendly day event that’s open to every one and every type of game, from RPGs to minis. raidersofthegamecupboard.co.uk

TABLETOP GAMING LIVE

Saturday September 29th to Sunday 30th Alexandra Palace, London Play the latest from the creators of your favourite games in London’s beautiful Alexandra Palace! Featuring the latest from Gen Con and early looks at Essen releases, spanning board games, miniatures, RPGs and more. Plus participation games, tournaments and seminars – it’s an unmissable weekend! ttgami.ng/ttglive18 tabletopgaming.co.uk

CLUB DIRECTORY ABERDEENSHIRE

ABERDEEN WARGAMES CLUB Aberdeen, AB15 4YQ OLDMELDRUM WARGAMES GROUP Inverurie, AB51 0AA

ANGUS

KIRRIEMUIR WARGAMES CLUB Kirriemuir, DD8 4HN

AYRSHIRE

NORTH AYRSHIRE WARGAMES CLUB Irvine, KA12 0BA

BEDFORDSHIRE

BASEMENT GAMING CLUB Luton, LU3 3AN BEDFORD BOARD GAMING Bedford, MK40 2SX BEDFORD GLADIATORS Bedford, MK41 7TW BOARD GAMES IN BEDFORD Bedford, MK41 0TU LEIGHTON BUZZARD GAMING CLUB Leighton Buzzard, LU7 1ES SAXON GAMES & CRAFTS Bedford, MK40 4FU

BERKSHIRE

BROAD STREET GAMERS Wokingham, RG40 3AQ NEWBURY & READING WARGAMES ASSOCIATION Newbury, RG14 2RA NEWBURY & READING WARGAMES ASSOCIATION Newbury, RG1 4PS THATCHAM TABLETOPS Reading, RG7 6QH WARFIELD BOARD GAMERS Bracknell, RG42 2DD WARGAMES ASSOCIATION OF READING Wokingham, RG41 5DU

BIRMINGHAM

BIRMINGHAM WARGAMES AND BOARDGAMES CLUB AKA DRAGOON’S DEN Birmingham, B13 9EA

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

MILTON KEYNES WARGAMES SOCIETY Milton Keynes, MK11 1JQ

THE CHATTERIS WARLORDS GAMES CLUB Chatteris, PE16 6NA THE GAMES TABLE Cambridge, CB24 4RP

CARMARTHENSHIRE

CARMARTHEN OLD GUARD Carmarthen, SA31 3AD

TOWY VALLEY TYRANTS (TVT) Carmarthen, SA31 2JE

CHESHIRE

ALTRINCHAM WARGAMING CLUB Altrincham, WA14 4PG CHEADLE BOARD ROOM Cheadle, SK8 1DW CHESHIRE GAMERS Crewe, CW1 4NJ CONGLETON AND DISTRICT LIGHT BOARD GAMES GROUP Congleton, CW12 1AH ELEMENT GAMES NORTH WEST GAMING CENTRE Stockport, SK2 6PT GUARDIANS OF THE GAMES (TABLETOP GROUP) Macclesfield, SK11 6UB MUG AND GAME Congleton, CW12 1PG

EASTBOURNE ELEMENTAL Eastbourne, BN21 3XQ

COUNTY TYRONE

FAMOUS COLLECTABLES Bexhill-on-Sea, TN40 1DU

OMAGH WARGAMES CLUB Omagh, BT78 1HL

DERBYSHIRE

CONSORTIUM GAMES CLUB @GHQ Chesterfield, S40 1JW DERBY ON BOARD GAMES Derby, DE1 1QH GROWN UP’S GAMES NIGHT Matlock, DE4 3FQ SUNDAY NIGHT BOARD GAMING AT THE OLD KINGS HEAD BELPER Belper, DE56 1NP

DEVON

BARNSTAPLE SLAYERS GAMING CLUB Barnstaple, EX32 8LS CULLOMPTON BOARD GAMES GROUP Cullompton, EX15 1JX DARK STAR GAMING Plymouth, PL4 0AL EAST DEVON TABLETOP & RPG GROUP Honiton, EX14 1HR

GAME NIGHT @ CARPE Plymouth, PL4 8EU

WARRINGTON BOARD GAMES CLUB Warrington, WA1 2SX

NEO TIVERTON GAMING CLUB Tiverton, EX16 5JJ

CLEVELAND

HARTLEPOOL WARGAMES SOCIETY Hartlepool, TS24 7DH REDCAR IRONBEARDS Redcar, TS10 1RH

PLYMOUTH ASSOCIATION OF WARGAMERS Plymouth, PL3 5TB TORQUAY BOARD GAME CLUB Torquay, TQ2 7AD

DORSET

SOUTHBOURNE TABLETOP & BOARDGAMERS Bournemouth, BH6 3AA

UCKFIELD TABLETOP GAMERS Uckfield, TN22 5DT

EAST YORKSHIRE

GREATER MANCHESTER

HEMEL HEMPSTEAD WARGAMING CLUB Hemel Hempstead, HP1 1LD

GWENT

HERTFORD BEER & BOARDGAMES Hertford, SG14 1HH

TABLETOP MANCHESTER Cheadle Hulme, M15 4ST

GWENT REAVERS TABLETOP GAMING CLUB Abertillery, NP13 3DJ

GWYNEDD

CONWY WARGAMES CLUB Llandudno, LL30 3LB

HAMPSHIRE

HITCHIN HERETICS Hitchin, SG5 1XL NORTH HERTFORDSHIRE WARGAMES CLUB Hitchin, SG5 1XL

WOLDS WARGAMERS Driffield, YO25 6SS

ARBBL Andover, SP10 1DQ

NORTH LONDON WARGAMES CLUB Waltham Cross, EN8 9AJ

ESSEX

BLACK HOLE WARGAMERS Petersfield, GU32 3HS

POTTERS BAR GAMES CLUB Potters Bar, EN6 5BT

CHINEHAM BOARD GAMERS Basingstoke, RG24 8LT

ST. ALBANS BOARD GAME CLUB St. Albans, AL3 5PE

DARK WORLDS GAMING SOCIETY Fareham, PO15 6TL

THOR’S HAMMER GAMING CLUB Borehamwood, WD6 5PR

BASILDON WARBOYZ Basildon, SS16 4NW COLCHESTER WARGAMES ASSOCIATION Colchester, CO3 5RH ESSEX WARRIORS Chelmsford, CM1 3DU GBCON QUARTERLY GAMING DAY Loughton, IG10 4LF

FARNBOROUGH WARGAME SOCIETY Farnborough, GU14 7LE

LOUGHTON STRIKE FORCE Loughton, IG10 1LH

FIRESTORM CARDS OPEN GAMING NIGHT Basingstoke, RG24 8FB

SOUTHEND-ON-SEA ROLEPLAYING SOCIETY Southend-on-Sea, SS1 1BD

FORDINGBRIDGE GAMING CLUB Fordingbridge, SP6 1AS

THE HORNCHURCH WARGAMES CLUB Romford, RM3 9LB THE OVERLORDS Dagenham, RM8 2HQ THE PHOENIX GAMES CLUB London, E13 0AD

FIFE

DUNFERMLINE WARGAMING AND ROLEPLAYING FELLOWSHIP Dunfermline, KY12 7DS EAST NEUK TABLETOP GAMES Anstruther, KY10 3DJ KIRKCALDY MEEPLE CLUB Kirkcaldy, KY2 6LF

FLINTSHIRE

DEESIDE DEFENDERS Chester, CH4 0DR

GARY DONALDSON Waterlooville, PO8 8RG PORTSMOUTH ON BOARD Portsmouth, PO1 1PT RINGWOOD ASSOCIATION OF WARGAMERS Ringwood, BH24 1DW SOLENT WARGAMERS CLUB Portsmouth, PO1 1PT SOUTHAMPTON SLUGGAZ Southampton, SO17 2JZ THE SOUTHAMPTON GUILD OF ROLEPLAYERS Southampton, SO14 0LH THE THIRD COALITION WARGAMES CLUB New Milton, BH25 5BT WATERLOO TABLE TOP GAMERS Waterlooville, PO8 8RG

TRING WARGAMES CLUB Tring, HP23 6BA WARLORDS WARGAMING ST. ALBANS St. Albans, AL3 4DJ WATFORD WARGAMES CLUB Watford, WD17 4PN WELWYN WARGAMERS Welwyn Garden City, AL8 6PS

INVERNESS-SHIRE

INVERNESS TABLETOP GAMERS Inverness, IV1 1LU

ISLE OF MAN

KB TABLETOP GAMING - ISLE OF MAN Isle of Man, IM4 4LA

KENT

ALL AROUND THE BOARD Westgate-on-Sea, CT8 8RE ASHFORD (KENT) BOARDGAMES CLUB Ashford, TN24 9AJ BEXLEY REAPERS WARGAMING CLUB Bexley, DA5 1AA CANTERBURY CRUSADERS Canterbury, CT1 1RT GRAVESHAM WARGAMING AND TABLETOP GAMING CLUB Gravesend, DA11 9EU

WESSEX WYVERNS WARGAMES CLUB Ferndown, BH22 9AN

FGC FLINTSHIRE GAMING CLUB Mold, CH7 6SZ

WEYMOUTH LEVELLERS CLUB Weymouth, DT4 0AR

ANTONINE BOARD GAMERS Glasgow, G64 4EN

CO CORK

WORLDS AWAY Bournemouth, BH2 5RQ

GLASGOW GAMES ROOM Glasgow, G20 7QE

ANNAN GAMING CLUB Annan, DG12 6EF

DUMFRIESSHIRE

UNPLUGGED GAMES CLUB Glasgow, G41 3AB

DICE AND DECKS Ross-on-Wye, HR9 5HR

MEDWAY AREA BOARDGAMERS Maidstone, ME14 1ED

THE FIVE ARCHES GAMING CLUB Dumfries, DG1 3JR

GLOUCESTERSHIRE GAMES BUNKER Cheltenham, GL51 4XA

GLOUCESTERSHIRE

HEREFORDSHIRE BOARDGAMERS Hereford, HR4 9EA

MERRYCHEST CAFE GAMING CLUB Dartford, DA2 8AH

IWARPUK Gloucester, GL2 9EB

BISHOP’S STORTFORD TABLETOP Bishop’s Stortford, CM23 3BQ

DURHAM

LECHLADE BOARD GAMES CLUB Lechlade, GL7 3HA

DYFED

LINCOMBE BARN WARGAMES SOCIETY Bristol, BS16 2RW

BLACK WOLF WARGAMES CLUB Hitchin, SG5 1XL

CO ANTRIM

DRAGONSLAYERS Belfast, BT7 1NN

WYCOMBE WARBAND Beaconsfield, HP9 1LG

BRETHREN WARGAMING CLUB West Cork, T23 F577

CAITHNESS

CO DURHAM

DARLINGTON’S DOGS OF WAR Darlington, DL3 7LX

2D6 LODGE Cambridge, CB1 8NN

DURHAM RAIDERS Croxdale, DH6 5HJ

FENLAND RPG CLUB Ely, CB7 5NG

GAMERS@HART Hartlepool, TS26 9DE

NEWMARKET KNIGHTS GAMES CLUB Ely, CB7 5HS

THE SIEGE BUNKER Londonderry, BT48 7JL

PETERBOROUGH WARGAMES CLUB Peterborough, PE1 1NA

SMIPHEES GAMES CLUB Callington, PL17 7AN

August 2018

WEDNESDAY NIGHT GAMING Redruth, TR15 3QY

VARIABLE MAGERS Stockport, SK4 3BS

QUB DRAGONSLAYERS Belfast, BT7 1NN

CAMBRIDGESHIRE

1066 WARGAMING CLUB St. Leonards-on-Sea, TN38 8BL

EXMOUTH IMPERIAL WARGAMES CLUB Exmouth, EX8 4SW

WINSFORD WARHAWKS WARGAMING CLUB Winsford, CW7 4AT

EAST SUSSEX

THE DICE AND DAGGER GAMING CLUB Bude, EX23 9BL

POYNTON BOARD GAME DAY Stockport, SK12 1RB

NEWPORT PAGNELL BOARD GAMES CLUB Newport Pagnell, MK16 8AN

NORTHERN KNIGHTS WARGAMES Thurso, KW14 8HN

ROLL WITH IT! Huntingdon, PE29 3TF

CO LONDONDERRY CORNWALL

DUNBARTONSHIRE

DUMBARTON WARGAMES CLUB Dumbarton, G82 1QQ DWG Durham, DH1 1QG

WELSH WEYR GAMING GROUP Ammanford, SA18 1DX

GLASGOW

PORK CHOP GAMING Cheltenham, GL50 3HA

WESSEX WARGAMES WINCHESTER Winchester, SO22 4QB WESSEX WYVERNS GAMING CLUB Ringwood, BH24 2NP

HEREFORDSHIRE

HERTFORDSHIRE

GREENWICH & BLACKHEATH BOARD GAMES AND BEER CLUB London, SE3 7JQ MAIDSTONE WARGAMES SOCIETY Maidstone, ME17 4AW

MILTON HUNDRED WARGAMES CLUB Sittingbourne, ME10 4BX SEVENOAKS & TONBRIDGE ASSOCIATION OF GAMERS (STAG) Sevenoaks, TN15 9HA

CALAMITY COMICS HATFIELD Hatfield, AL10 0JJ

TUNBRIDGE WELLS WARGAMES SOCIETY Tunbridge Wells, TN3 0PR

FINCHLEY GAMES CLUB London, N12 7JE

WHITSTABLETOP Whitstable, CT5 1DA

List your club for free and see full club details

tabletopgaming.co.uk/clubs LANARKSHIRE

CARLUKE WARGAMES CLUB Carluke, ML8 5JQ LANARKSHIRE GAMERS Motherwell, ML1 1BS ML2 GAMERS Hamilton, ML3 6BU

LANCASHIRE

BLACK TOWER WARGAMING Blackpool, FY4 4ND BOLTON GNOME’S Bolton, BL1 5QD BURNLEY BOARD GAMERS Burnley, BB10 3LF BURNLEY WARGAMES CLUB Burnley, BB10 3EU DECKS & DICE Manchester, M25 1AY

GRIMSBY WARGAMES SOCIETY Grimsby, DN32 9HT LINCOLN BOARD GAME GROUP Lincoln, LN1 3BJ LOUTH STRATEGY GAMES CLUB Louth, LN11 8DB

LONDON

CROSS GAMING CLUB London, SE1 1DX SELWG London, SE6 2TS TANELORN WAR GAMING CLUB London, E11 3DB

BATTLEFIELD HOBBIES Daventry, NN11 8RB

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

WESTON WARGAMERS CLUB Weston-super-Mare, BS23 1NF

DESBOROUGH ROLEPLAYING AND WARGAMES CLUB Kettering, NN14 2NQ

WSM BOARD GAMING CLUB Weston-super-Mare, BS22 8PD

PHOENIX GAMING CLUB Rushden, NN10 9YE THE BRACKLEY & DISTRICT GAMERS Brackley, NN13 6LF THE PIT GAMING CLUB Wellingborough, NN9 5TU

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

THE ROLE PLAY HAVEN (STRATFORD) London, E15 2HU

K.I.A GAMES CLUB Nottingham, NG17 8LA

THE ROLE PLAY HAVEN (LEWISHAM) London, SE13 6LH

NOTTINGHAM BOARD & WARGAMES CLUB Nottingham, NG2 1NB

MERSEYSIDE

DICED TEA Oldham, OL1 2DB

FORGEMASTERS GAMING CLUB Wirral, CH63 6HD

THE CLUB WITH NO NAME Nottingham, NG2 1NB

DUNGEONS & FLAGONS Manchester, M1 7HL

LIVERPOOL LION BOARDGAMERS Liverpool, L3 9NS

WAR & PEACE GAMES CLUB Nottingham, NG10 5BD

ELWA: EAST LANCASHIRE WARGAMES ASSOCIATION Blackburn, BB6 7DD

MUTANT DICE GAMES GAMING GROUP St. Helens, WA9 4TR

WILDSIDE GAMING Newark, NG24 1ER

FAN BOY THREE BOARDGAME NIGHT Manchester, M1 1EL

SOUTHPORT BOARD GAMES GROUP Southport, PR8 1NH

ABINGDON WARGAMES CLUB Abingdon, OX14 5AG

GECKO GAMES CLUB Accrington, BB5 3QW

ST. HELENS BOARDGAMES, ROLEPLAYING GAMES (B.O.R.G.) St. Helens, WA10 5BF

AMBROSDEN GAMING CLUB Bicester, OX25 2LZ

HARLEQUINS BLACKPOOL Blackpool, FY1 3QA HOUSE LANCASTER GAMING GROUP Lancaster, LA1 1EE PRESTON’S GAMERS GUILD Preston, PR1 7DP SALFORD AND MANCHESTER GAMING HAVEN Salford, M8 0TW THE HUNGRY DRAGON GAMES NIGHT Manchester, M21 0AE THE LIVERPOOL WARGAMES ASSOCIATION (LWA) Liverpool, L1 6HB THURSDAY SCYTHE BOARD GAMERS Liverpool, L3 8HE

LEICESTERSHIRE

CHARNWOOD ROLE PLAYERS GAMING CLUB Loughborough, LE12 8DT LEICESTER ALL SCARS Leicester, LE1 3JR

MID GLAMORGAN

CAERPHILLY BOARD GAMERS Caerphilly, CF83 1AP CASTLE GAMERS BRIDGEND Bridgend, CF35 6AU

MIDDLESEX

BATTLEUX WARGAMES CLUB Uxbridge, UB10 0RY DICE CLUB Uxbridge, UB10 0RY HESTON AND EALING WARGAMERS London, W13 9SS TABLETOP TUESDAYS London, N16 8BX THE GAMES CLUB London, NW1 2JU

MIDLOTHIAN

EDINBURGH LEAGUE OF GAMERS Edinburgh, EH7 5EA SOUTH EAST SCOTLAND WARGAMES CLUB Edinburgh, EH7 4EW

NORFOLK

LEICESTER PHAT KATZ Leicester, LE3 0QY

AFTERMATH GAMING CLUB Norwich, NR3 4HX

SECTION 31 Leicester, LE1 1PA

KINGS LYNN RPG & WARGAMES CLUB King’s Lynn, PE30 4DN

SONS OF SIMON DE MONTFORT Loughborough, LE12 8TX THE LEICESTER WARGAMES AND FANTASY GROUP Leicester, LE3 0QU

LINCOLNSHIRE

NORWICH BOARD GAMERS Norwich, NR2 4AL TAS GAMING CLUB King’s Lynn, PE34 4SJ

NORTH YORKSHIRE

OXFORDSHIRE

BICESTER BOARD GAMERS Bicester, OX26 3HA NORTH OXFORDSHIRE WARGAMING CLUB Banbury, OX16 9AF OXFORD GAMING CLUB Oxford, OX2 7DP OXFORD ON BOARD Oxford, OX4 1EA OXFORD OUTRIDERS Oxford, OX1 4AG

SOUTH HUMBERSIDE

SOUTH YORKSHIRE

REIGATE WARGAMES GROUP Reigate, RH2 0NA

BROTHERHOOD OF THE DICE Barnsley, S75 1JR

MID SOMERSET WARGAMES CLUB Wells, BA5 2PU PIGMAR WARGAMING CLUB Bath, BA1 6AB THE FROME BOARD GAMES CLUB Frome, BA11 1PU

BOSTON TABLETOP GAMERS Boston, PE21 6QQ

SCARBOROUGH GAMES SOCIETY Scarborough, YO12 7BY

TRINITY WARGAMING CLUB Taunton, TA1 3JG

GRANTHAM FRIENDLY GAMERS Grantham, NG31 6LJ

YORK GARRISON WARGAMING CLUB York, YO32 4AQ

WARGAMING @ RADSTOCK Radstock, BA3 4BD

SOUTH DOWNS SIEGEBREAKERS Pulborough, RH20 4DR

WEST YORKSHIRE

BOARD IN THE VILLAGE Bradford, BD14 6RE

GAMING CLUB BRADFORD Bradford, BD1 2DX

ROTHERHAM WARGAMES SOCIETY Rotherham, S60 1JE

STAY ON TARGET Woking, GU21 5BG

KEIGHLEY TABLETOP COMBAT Keighley, BD20 6EB

SURREY GIRL GAMERS Woking, GU21 4AL

OTLEY BOARD GAMERS Otley, LS21 2AU

STEEL CITY WARGAMING Sheffield, S13 7LL ZONE OUT GAMES CLUB Doncaster, DN1 2PX

STAFFORDSHIRE

ALL ABOARD GAMING CLUB Stoke-on-Trent, ST4 1JB CHASE WARGAMES CLUB Burntwood, WS7 0JL LICHFIELD GAMERS AND RPG Lichfield, WS13 6EB STAFFORDSHIRE WARGAMING GUILD Stone, ST15 8TG TAMWORTH GAMES CLUB Tamworth, B79 7DJ TAMWORTH LIBERATORS GAMING CLUB Tamworth, B77 3AE THE VINE INN GAMERS Rugeley, WS15 2AT TRITEX GAMES Stafford, ST16 1BG

STIRLINGSHIRE

STIRLING WARGAMERS Stirling, FK8 1QJ

SOMERSET

MID SUSSEX MEEPLES Burgess Hill, RH15 8DX

STAINES WARGAMES ASSOCIATION Egham, TW20 0QT

E-COLLECTICA GAMES Shrewsbury, SY1 2DT

BATH GAMING GROUP Bath, BA2 6AA

DUNGEON CRAWL-EY GAMES CLUB Crawley, RH11 7QG

ROTHERHAM WARGAMES CLUB Rotherham, S60 1JE

FALKIRK DISTRICT WARGAMES CLUB Grangemouth, FK3 8QR

TELFORD BOARDGAMERS CLUB Telford, TF1 2BW

HAMPTON COURT GAMES CLUB East Molesey, KT8 0BT KINGSTON GAMES GROUP Kingston upon Thames, KT2 6LN

SHROPSHIRE

STAGS TELFORD WARGAMING SOCIETY Telford, TF1 1LU

EAGLE GAMING CLUB London, SW18 2PT

SCUNTHORPE TABLETOP GAMERS Scunthorpe, DN16 1DQ

BIG ORBIT GAMES SHREWSBURY Shrewsbury, SY1 1PH

GAMES @THE BIRD Shrewsbury, SY1 2DT

CROYDON BOARD GAMERS Croydon, CR0 1DP

SUFFOLK

SUTTON GAMES CLUB Sutton, SM1 1DT SWIGGERS London, SE1 2TF

HALIFAX BOARD GAMERS Halifax, HX1 1SJ

WILTSHIRE

BOSCOMBE DOWN & AMESBURY WARGAMES CLUB Salisbury, SP4 7LN

THE SOUTH LONDON WARLORDS London, SE21 7BT

CHIPPENHAM BOARD GAMES CLUB Chippenham, SN15 3WL

THE WOKING WEIRD BOYZ Woking, GU22 7TA

DEVIZES & DISTRICT WARGAMES GROUP Devizes, SN10 5AD

TOLWORTH 1ST FOUNDING Chessington, KT9 1PF

SUSSEX

BRIGHTON WARLORDS Brighton, BN1 1UB

WARWICKSHIRE

WEDNESDAY KNIGHT GAMERS Salisbury, SP1 3TA

WORCESTERSHIRE

BROMSGROVE BOARD GAMERS Bromsgrove, B60 2DZ

AFTERNOON PLAY Birmingham, B15 1AY

PERSHORE GAMING Pershore, WR10 1EQ

BOARD GAME CAFE SUMMERFIELD Birmingham, B16 0EZ

POSTAL ORDER GEEK MEET Worcester, WR1 1DN

BRAVO ONE GAMING Birmingham, B1 1QP

REDDITCH WARGAMING SOCIETY Redditch, B97 5YE

DREAMDEALERS GAMING CLUB Coventry, CV6 4FE

WORCESTER BOARD GAMERS (WOBOG) Worcester, WR1 2DP

GRANGE LIVE GAMING Birmingham, B1 1QP

WYRE FOREST GAMERS Kidderminster, DY10 1RP

NUNEATON ALTERNATIVE GAMES ASSOCIATION Nuneaton, CV10 8LJ

YORKSHIRE

AIREBOROUGH COMMUNITY GAMERS Leeds, LS19 6AS

BURY ST. EDMUNDS BOARD GAMING GROUP Bury St. Edmunds, IP30 9LH

OCTOBER WARGAMES ASSOCIATION Birmingham, B16 8SY

HAVERHILL AREA BOARD GAME GROUP Haverhill, CB9 8AU

SCIMITAR WARGAMES GROUP Coventry, CV3 5GT

HEADINGLEY GAMES CLUB Leeds, LS6 3HN

HAVERHILL WAR GAMES CLUB Haverhill, CB9 9JE

BIRMINGHAM WARGAMES AND BOARDGAMES CLUB AKA DRAGOON’S DEN Birmingham, B13 9EA

WEST MIDLANDS

HOLMFIRTH GAMING CENTRE Holmfirth, HD9 7HP

IPSWICH BOARD GAMERS Ipswich, IP3 0FS IPSWICH COUNTY LIBRARY BOARD GAMES LIBRARY Ipswich, IP1 3DE

LEEDS GAMING Leeds, LS1 3DL

WEST SUSSEX

LEEDS NIGHT OWLS Leeds, LS6 1LJ

BOGNOR REGIS GAMING ASSOCIATION Bognor Regis, PO21 5EU

WHITE EAGLES WARGAMES CLUB Ipswich, IP2 0RG

BOGNOR REGIS MILITARY MODELLING AND WARGAMING SOCIETY Bognor Regis, PO21 5SB

CROSS GAMING CLUB London, SE1 7RW

HULL’S ANGELS Hull, HU1 3HG

PLAY MORE GAMES! Solihull, B90 3GG

MID SUFFOLK GAMING CLUB Stowmarket, IP14 4SH

SURREY

BEYOND MONOPOLY York, YO24 1AQ

CRAWLEY GAMING CLUB Crawley, RH10 5DF

SHEFFIELD AND ROTHERHAM WARGAMES CLUB Sheffield, S2 2TP SHEFFIELD BOARD GAMES Sheffield, S3 7HG SHEFFIELD WARGAMES SOCIETY Sheffield, S8 0PS

tabletopgaming.co.uk

Hereward IV A New Hope Peterborough’s own wargames show, now in its fourth year!

Sponsored by The Cresset, Bretton Centre, Peterborough, PE3 8DX Sunday 2nd September 2018 10am-4pm Admission £3 in advance/£5 on door www.hereward-wargames.co.uk Participation games! Traders including: Mantic, Sarissa, Col. Bills, Lesley’s Bits Box, PE2 Collectables and many more!

Tournaments including:

At Christmas time we did a ‘Make Your Own Game’ workshop, where – with permission – we recreated Shadows in the Forest, which involves 3D trees and a tealight candle that was played in the dark with a Christmas spin. Recently we did a stargazing and games evening which was a lot of fun, even if it was a bit cloudy! We are always thinking of new events and hope to do lots more.

SHOP SPOTLIGHT

READY STEADY ROLL What began as a pop-up gaming café has turned into a fully-fledged hub for local gamers, as the Bedford store’s Darrell Cannon explains Interview by Matt Jarvis Ready Steady Roll started as a pop-up café and monthly event before becoming a fully-fledged shop. Why was opening a fixed store the right next step and how did it change things for you? Opening a brick-and-mortar store was always a dream of ours since starting Ready Steady Roll. Running the pop-up board game café was great fun and allowed us to meet loads of fellow gamers and get others into the hobby, but they were intense! Having our own shop allows us much greater freedom and a better foundation to build upon rather than using a public venue each month. Having a permanent location has changed everything; we are open more, have increased our game selection – I no longer need to transport them around all the time! – and have a much nicer environment to play games and eat cake in. As well as being a shop, you’re also a café. How did that change the way that you offered board games for folks to play? At first it was a worry, combining food, drink and board games, but, for the most part, most people are really respectful and do their best to keep them apart. We’ve had a few spillages, especially on our Bring Your Own Booze nights, but they are quickly cleaned up with minimal damage. The one game that causes the most trouble is Jungle Speed, so I always make sure to remove any breakables/spillables when I recommend it – we learnt the hard, broken-glass way! Do you have a favourite combo of board game, drink and snack? Our homemade cakes are where we shine, so I would say a slice of our salted caramel and

August 2018

spiced apple cake and a camomile tea followed by a ruthless, cut-throat game of Survive: Escape from Atlantis! How has Ready Steady Roll changed since it first opened? Loads! What started as a personal addiction to board games grew into a monthly event, which then grew into working with schools and other local businesses and then the opportunity for our own permanent location came up in a beautiful location so we jumped at the chance. It’s been a steady growth which has allowed us to expand on a shoestring budget, we are still constantly upgrading our board game café – it feels like an engine-building board game sometimes! You host game workshops for local schools. Why is this so important to you? Having three children myself, I knew that board games can be amazing educational tools, genuinely combining fun and loads of skills like maths, strategic thinking and even things like empathy. Schools have asked us to do maths workshops, wellbeing clubs and take part in art and culture weeks, and they have all been loads of fun! It can be a hard sell to some schools though – many can only imagine us coming in and playing endless games of Monopoly rather than the plethora of great games available.

Which games have been proving most popular with your customers recently? We always offer recommendations and explain the rules if people want us to – which most do! – so we have a lot of influence on what our customers play, especially those who haven’t played many games before. For newcomers, I always recommend a quick game of Dobble to get everyone warmed up and to show them that games don’t have to be long and monotonous! Almost everyone loves Dobble! Some popular games that spring to mind include Incan Gold – which is slowly getting replaced with Troll & Dragon – Splendor and Potion Explosion. Loopin’ Louie is also insanely popular – it’s so much more fun that it has any right to be! What are you excited for during the rest of 2018? I’m excited about further expanding our games library, increasing the stock in our shop and looking towards running more event and tournaments in the near future. I’m also very excited about Christmas! Even though it’s very premature, I love Christmas and last Christmas we had only just opened so it was all a bit mad. Looking forward to a Christmas in our café now that we are settled down and can really make the most of spreading the Christmas spirit! What’s next for Ready Steady Roll? We hope to keep on improving our board game café as best we can based on feedback from customers and ‘unlocking’ new features for our customers. I would personally love to create our very own board game as, like most board gamers, I have a million ideas in my head – but now I have a captive audience to test them on!

Do you run any other events for gamers in the area? We host ‘Bring Your Own Booze’ game nights, for an affordable night of games with friends – and we even did a Valentine’s event which went down a storm!

tabletopgaming.co.uk

Durhamʻs Premier Board Game Shop

stʼs We tu h st ! So rge op The la el sh d mo

www.fromemodelcentre.com E: [emailprotected]

Visit us online at:

www.meeplegames.uk 5% discount on any orders placed in August! Use Code TTG21 at checkout

Independent, family run model shop. Years of experience and the most diverse model collection all under one roof! Next day mail service available on all in stock products!

• T: 01373 465295 • F: 01373 451468 1-2 Catherine Street, Frome, Somerset, BA11 1DA

30 Roneo Corner, Hornchurch Essex, RM12 4TN • Tel: 01708 475051 • Email: [emailprotected]

All your wargaming needs available through us! GW, Flames of War, Malifaux, X-Wing, Warmachine/ Hordes, Warlord Games, Army Painter, Vallejo, KR Multicase, Battlefoam, Mantic Games, Magic: The Gathering, Frostgrave, 4 Ground, Knight’s Models, Scribor, Guild Ball, Bushido, Board Games & Living Card Games, Chessex Dice, Perry Miniatures, Micro Art Studio’s, Quality Neodymium Magnets, Airbrushes, Tools, Scenery, Resin bases plus many more brands and products.

Mail order available • Free demos • Gaming club

www.tolehaven .co.uk

GUERNSEY

A new and exciting centre for many different types of gaming in Guernsey. Come and discover for yourself what’s in store and join in many events and activities!

www.gamerznexus.com Check out our SINGLES for Star Wars Destiny, Dicemasters & MTG!

Stockists of Board, Card, Computer, RPG & Video Games. Unit 5, The Albany, St. Peter Port, Guernsey, GY1 1AE Tel: 01481 712240 Facebook: Facebook.com/JustGamesGsy

We also offer a great selection of brand new Board Games, Card Games, RPG’s, Miniatures, Dice, Paints & Accessories

www.justgamesgsy.co.uk

HERTFORDSHIRE

ONLINE

COUNTY DURHAM

ONLINE

Join the fun at..... Store open from , 10am-5pm k wee 7 days a

ONLINE

Family friendly hobby ga me store & event venue

Scotland’s leading online retailer of speciality games. We offer a range of board games, collectable card games, miniature games & other gaming products.

Huge range of Board Games, Pokémon, Magic, Warhammer, X-Wing, Legion, Yu-Gi-Oh! and much more with an amazing 6000ft2 of gaming space!

Buy online and book events at

www.beaniegames.co.uk

FIND US AT:

Red Dice Games @RedDiceGames reddicegames

Gaming sessions every weekend from 10am - 6pm plus evening sessions on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays until 10pm

01642 918911

12 Buckwell Street, Plymouth, PL1 2DA Phone: 01752 604414 Facebook: G.I. Games Email: [emailprotected] • Board games • Roleplaying • Tabletop Battle games • CCGs • Miniatures • Paints • D & D • Conan • Cthulhu • Savage Core • Star Wars X-Wing • Catan • Walking Dead • and much more ...

reddicegames.com

26 Bishopton Lane, Stockton-on-Tees, TS18 2AA

ONLINE

tabletopgaming.co.uk

Games

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ATEST THE GRE

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and roleplaying by you! board, card, decidedd 150 best – as decide down the ever made We counttures games minia

NEW FLASH GORDON RPG | ARCHITECTS OF THE WEST KINGDOM FIREBALL ISLAND REMAKE | REVIEWS OF CRYSTAL CLANS & MORE THE MAKING OF TIGRIS & EUPHRATES | JOHN KOVALIC INTERVIEW

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June 2018

SHOP DIRECTORY

ONLINE

11 10

8 7

QUIRKS

f you ever played the 2008 computer game Spore and thought it would make a great board game then this one is definitely for you. Quirks is a game released in 1980 by Eon Products – perhaps more famous for its debut, Cosmic Encounter, but also responsible for producing Hoax, Ruins and Borderlands. It experimented briefly with digital games as Eon Software Inc. by producing Lords of Conquest in 1986, a game loosely based on the Borderlands board game. Quirks is a game in which players create new organisms by combining several collected traits; becoming the dominant species is the aim of the game. The tagline for Quirks is “The game of unnatural selection!”, which sums it up well. You select different traits and the outcomes are often fairly unnatural-looking. The plants and animals created are often quite amusing and the artwork brings even the most unlikely combinations together. The artwork for Quirks is fantastic – right from the start the box design is striking and colourful. The content’s artwork is also nice and bright, with trait cards being well-drawn and carefully planned to form connected species. The game itself has some interesting play and the aim is to have the dominant quirk in all three categories: plant, herbivore and carnivore. To start, players are dealt a random but complete quirk in each category. Each turn, a set of fate cards or a d6 is used to select a choice between three fates: plant, herbivore or carnivore. If the fate matches your dominant quirk then you can mutate this quirk, otherwise you can mutate a lower quirk in the hope of becoming dominant. To gain supremacy you will have to fight the currently dominant quirk. If you lose then your quirk becomes extinct; harsh, but that’s life! This is the basis of the game but, each turn, the climate also changes. A climate tracker is progressed by each player on their turn and you can also choose to move this faster, or slower, depending on the cards you have – this can be used to your advantage or to bring down your opponent. This adds an element of strategy. There is a lot of luck involved in Quirks as the drawing of traits is

August 2018

random, but the strategic elements keep you playing and advancing your skills. A nice touch is that Quirks comes with four different sets of rules. One aimed at children aged seven to 11, called ‘Quirklings’, which is simple but entertaining due to the unusual animals created. Then a normal set, an advanced set and a solo ruleset which provides an interesting puzzle game. There were also expansion packs released that contained extra trait cards in all categories. It’s a game that grows on you as you play and was very likely the inspiration for Spore – so if that’s your cup of tea, or you just like the idea of playing an evolution-based game, you should give Quirks a try.

Words Phil Robinson Phil Robinson is a game

historian and the founder of the Museum of Gaming, an organisation that explores and documents the history of gaming through its collections, exhibitions and research.

tabletopgaming.co.uk

IN SEPTEMBER’S ISSUE

O N S AL E AUG US T 3 1 S T

X-WING 2.0 The Force awakens in the second edition of the Star Wars miniatures game. Its creators reveal how they plan to stay on target with brand new gameplay – and an app!

SHOW PREVIEW

HOLDING ON

Discovering the serious and tragic story behind The Troubled Life of Billy Kerr

PRINT + PLAY Everything you need to know about London’s hottest new convention

How you can make your own board games at home for (almost) nothing

ABOUT TURN

Go beyond the back-and-forth with a look at how designers are reinventing the way we take turns

FREE BOARD GAME INSIDE C R E AT E D B Y L E G E N D A R Y D E S I G N E R J A M E S E R N E S T F O R T T G