Destruction of your enemies is hardly a new concept in board games. Monopoly can only end if you bankrupt your opponents. Risk doesn't stop until you've wiped everyone else off the face of the Earth. Board gaming and zero-sum game design have been best buddies for decades, but to many, it's become a tired-out trope. This probably explains why so many publishers these days prefer games where player interaction is minimized, helping cement the term "multiplayer solitaire" into the industry lexicon.

Black Rose Wars: Rebirth does not care for any of this. It's a game that borderline ignores industry wisdom simply because it can. You're encouraged to mess with your opponents from turn one, and every move is designed to either help you at someone else's expense or straight-up hurt them.

Friendship Was Never an Option

Which makes perfect sense, given the whole theme going on here. You play as a powerful mage, and leading the Black Rose Lodge is the prize, much like a crazed motorcyclist yearning for the Isle of Man TT. The Lodge has seen better days, though, and with your magic, you might be able to restore some of its former glory, hence the "Rebirth" in the title. You're not the only one with this…

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(For reference, everything in this piece refers to the 1960 version of The Game of Life. This version is the version I had as a kid and re-bought when Winning Moves Games remade it. There have been many versions since, but I haven't played all of them. The ones I have played tweaked the formula and have failed to capture "life" laike the original.)

Sigh. I just finished another play-through of the newest life-simulation board game, Coming of Age. As a "gamer's game" it is okay, if a lot heavier than I anticipated. There is a lot to think about, manage, and optimize. Plenty of cubes, tracks and tokens, if that's your jam. It gave my brain a workout.

That's not the reason I bought it, however. I was (and still am) looking for a fun, "gamer's" life-simulation game to replace The Game of Life. I've tried almost all of the life-sim games out there. Pursuit of Happiness. CV. Adulthood. And now Coming of Age. They are good games, for the most part, but they lack the pure fun and whimsy of The Game of Life.  

As a kid, The Game of Life was just a blast. We'd put the pegs on the spinner and send…

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Whenever a game has a double-digit player count, there’s a 99.97% chance it involves social deduction. Now, I love social deduction games. They give you an excuse to break the social contract and lie to your friends and family, all in the name of fun. They’re also one of the few genres that let you discover just how good the people around you are at scheming and lying. Eventually, you start wondering if their name is even real. That said, I’m also kind of sick of every single large group game being dropped in the social deduction box.

Coalition: Council of the Republic sings a different tune here, focusing on negotiation rather than inevitable betrayal. Better yet, it’s team-based, with four teams competing for influence and potentially a few independents thrown in to make things even messier. Instead of simply figuring out who’s lying, you have to convince people to work with you, negotiate deals, cross your fingers while making promises, and figure out how long those lofty alliances will actually last. All of this in one hour.

Draft Laws, Not Friends

The story behind this is a little more complex than most. The country is suffering through political turmoil and demanding reform, so four teams are tasked with drafting new laws. Naturally, each team wants to push laws…

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In the wide world of board game themes and gameplay, ‘Alchemy’ feels like one of the most commonly represented. This might just be my own bias though, as it turns out I have quite a few alchemy focused games in my own collection. From the widely popular Flamecraft to the hit bagbuilder Quacks to marble mayhem favorite Potion Explosion and more, I’d somehow become an accidental alchemy aficionado.

Maybe that’s why when Meeple Mountain was provided with a review copy of Grimbrew from Lucky Omen Studios, I quickly (maybe subconsciously) volunteered to provide a review for it.

Even though Grimbrew thematically has a lot in common with other alchemy themed games, it also separates itself in some unique and interesting ways.

Collect & Brew

As you might have expected, in Grimbrew, two to five players compete to collect the most points by gathering ingredients and brewing potions. Turns are as simple as the premise of the game.

On a player’s turn, they can:

• Take an ingredient from a shared market
• Brew a potion
• Rekindle flames

Active flames are required in order for players to brew potions and refresh the market (more on this in a moment). When taking the ‘rekindle flames’ action, players flip two of their five flame tokens from inactive to active,…

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Around these parts I'm known as the RPG guy for my love of different systems and the opportunity to immerse myself in the theme of a game. Accidental Heroes, an upcoming app-driven adventure game designed by Wojciech Grajkowski and published by Lucky Duck Games, puts your hero on a topsy-turvy joyride through an ever-changing world bursting with familiar references. Let's hop on the tracks and see how it plays.

Accidental Heroes: The World is Your Oyster

I'll preface my discussion of Accidental Heroes by acknowledging that my experiences are based on a prototype copy that was limited in scope compared to what's expected in the complete game. At first I thought that the lack of content would be disappointing, but instead I was surprised by how many branching paths were available to my heroes as I played.

In Accidental Heroes, players assume the role of an "hero", a term surrounded by quotation marks because whether or not you live up to the moniker is up for you to decide. The object of the game is to pass two difficult Tests associated with Final Missions, acquiring a pair of Dragon Eggs before any other player is able to do so.

Heroes have three main attributes: brain, body, and combat. Each of these attributes is represented in an 'exquisite corpse' fashion…

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Imagine you are on the sea. The ocean before you is liberally dotted with various inhabited islands. The sea is calm and the wind is fair. You want to sail from your home island to another, some distance away. The journey will take some time, enough so that this beautiful dawn will have passed into dusk by the time you arrive. There are no pirates or shark-infested waters along your way, just a need to plot a proper course. And for that, all you need is a tall ship and a star to sail her by…

[caption id="attachment_334826" align="aligncenter" width="750"] There is a light side and a dark side to everything. Not just the force.[/caption]

Thomas Wells wrote a very good review of this game several years ago. His take (from my reading) is that this is more of an art-project, an activity, than truly a game. Some might see it that way. After exploring this little gem, I (and several in my group) see it as more a game than an art-project. Certainly not just an activity. Read on and let me know what you think.

Tranquility is not always Silent…

My wife loves cooperative games. On a recent weekend, our normal game group could not all…

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Spirits of the Wild: Awakening - Andrew Lynch

First released by Mattel back in 2018, Spirits of the Wild had a brief period in the sun before its publisher decided to pivot away from hobby games. It quickly became a cult favorite, fetching absurdly high prices on the secondary market. Fast forward eight years and Mattel is not only pivoting back to hobby games, they’re starting with a new edition of Nick Hayes’s game, this time called Spirits of the Wild: Awakening.

It was with some excitement that I sat down to, and vague dissatisfaction that I stood up from, my first game. Spirits of the Wild and its predecessor are equal parts set collection and tug-of-war, as two players try to fill out the gem slots on their different tiles. I do love the structure: pick an available action from your personal supply of actions, make it unavailable, perform the action, then on to the other player. Spirits shares the same tempo considerations as many of my favorite 30-minute two-player games.

What it lacks is any sense of intentionality. The game ends the moment five wild gems are drawn from the bag. This can happen any time, and it has never once felt satisfying. Across four or five…

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A Grand Expedition

In a year that's felt rather light on major Euro releases in the U.S., with publishers seemingly pivoting toward small-box card games, it hasn't been a great year for fans of "beige" games. Fortunately, there's still a trickle of titles making their way stateside, especially with Essen Spiel right around the corner.

As I get older, my tastes have shifted from grinding through three-to-four-hour heavyweight monsters (like Lacerda’s Speakeasy, On Mars, or Kanban EV) toward mid-weight Euros I can finish in under two hours. My brain still appreciates a good workout, just preferably without committing my entire afternoon to it.

Capstone Games has a solid track record when it comes to localizing European titles, and The Royal Society of Archeology, originally published by HUCH!, seems to fit that sweet spot nicely.

Surprisingly thematic for a Euro, players lead teams of explorers on expeditions around the world in search of scientific and cultural wonders, hoping to impress the Royal Society of Archeology at the dawn of the 20th century. Discovered relics are put on display in prestigious museums, all while balancing the high costs of exploration. After all, digging up ancient treasures doesn't come cheap!

A Little Knowledge Goes a Long Way

Using…

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Grinivil is what I want to see more of—ambitious design with thoughtful development decisions throughout. It’s not perfect, there’s the characteristic rough edges of a one-man show, but even the grumpiest player at my table was chuckling when someone would randomly say the game’s bizarre tagline: “You want to live here!”

This is a rondel house

Evoking my beloved Urban Sprawl, Grinivil is a game about building a town and using it to score points. But, it isn’t about that card-driven lifestyle, it’s about ~time~.

Grinivil’s disorganized rulebook buries the lede about what makes the game great: the TIME ACTION RING. Slightly reminiscent of Glen More’s square rondel/tile draft, there’s a ring of 20 tiles around the game’s resource market. Instead of drafting these tiles, you’re going to move your action pawn to any position on the ring, take the action, and then be forced to move forward a number of spaces listed on the tile. You can even fully circumnavigate the entire rondel and take the same action again. There’s a sort of “passing go” mechanism where you have to pay for your workers which discourages this, but it’s refreshingly open. The action ring also has 7 variable tiles each game, which add a wild texture to the experience—the tiles range from goofy crowdsourced auctions, forced trades, and…

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For most of the last two years, I have had an article in my draft folder titled “I Think I Hate Games Where I Have to Read a Lot of Card Text.” It started years ago with a deckbuilding game where I had to lean over the board’s card market to read every card that hit the conveyor belt.

Understanding not only the card’s cost, but its abilities, was critical to success in that game, but it also meant I had to read a lot of card text before making any decisions.

2025’s The Hunt (designed by Renaud Crocombette, Remi Laumonier, and Antoine Pham-Minh) might have pushed me over the edge. That’s because the game is essentially a recipe fulfillment game with fugitive cards. The Hunt is set in the espionage theaters of post World War II Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East, as players guide one of four unique agencies to chase Nazi war criminals down for capture. Taking 1-3 actions each turn, players will visit “investigation zones” to grab cards that match the requirements of the various criminals that must be hunted down during the game.

I typically enjoy games like this, and The Hunt does a great job of keeping the action speedy by forcing…

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Ever since I first played Tag Team with Meeple Mountain's Justin Bell at Gen Con 2025, I've racked up dozens of plays of the 2-player autobattler card game. I revel in its simplicity. After playing thoroughly with the entire stable of Fighters, I still craved more. Enter Tag Team: Arthur's Legacy, introducing six new Fighters from Arthurian myth, available to play standalone or combined with the base game.

Tag Team: Arthur's Legacy: By Merlin's Beard

Instead of rehashing the main mechanics of the original game, I'll let Andrew's Tag Team review speak to that. Tag Team: Arthur's Legacy uses that same core gameplay loop, so instead I'll focus on the six new Fighters and the shenanigans they bring to the (round) table.

First up is Excalibur, the fabled sword gifted to Arthur by the Lady in the Lake, or the sword that he pulled from the stone, depending on the tale you follow as canon. Excalibur enhances your partner, typically offering benefits like increased power. If Excalibur's HP goes to 0, the game isn't over like it normally would. Instead, the card gets flipped over to its Broken side and those positive abilities on Excalibur's deck become accompanied by a negative effect.

Morgan places a Crow…

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“So, normal trick-taking rules, must follow, there’s a single trump. But THIS time,...”

Trick-taking games are becoming very difficult to review, because an ocean of new trick-takers get released every week. (If you had told me the “best” part of the tariff backlash is that more companies are producing more cheap-to-make card games with a trick-taking element, I might have retired from games right on the spot. I like trick-taking, but I don’t need it to survive.)

The hardest part of the trick-taking deluge is that you have to both learn each game as if it is new, and you have to try to leverage your years of playing other trick-taking games to account for how to win tricks, or avoid them, or win some to set up losing all the rest, etc. The first sentence of this article is uttered at almost every game night I host now, because I picked up about 20 different trick-taking games at Gen Con or through the mail!

Trickarus (originally released in 2024, but now published by Smirk & Dagger Games in the US) is a must-follow trick-taking game. There’s a trump suit. But THIS time, there is a mechanic where players have cards that have a day half, and a night…

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My man Andy Matthews wrote a review of the Mountain Goats base game a few months ago. After trying the base game on Board Game Arena, I mostly agree with his summary. Mountain Goats is a very simple dice chucker with just enough strategy to warrant your attention when it is your turn. You roll four dice, then use the pips on each six-sided die to move goats in your player color up one of six different mountain tracks to score points. Only one player can have a goat at the top of a mountain; when another player’s goat arrives, your goat moves to the bottom of that hill, and it might take a couple turns to crest again later.

The base game takes about 20 minutes to play. Mountain Goats: Legacy is the new version of the game, and it has ten chapters, a very family-friendly Storybook that is used to provide just enough flavor text to get players from one chapter to the next, a couple of main characters to follow through a story, and almost the exact same gameplay experience offered by the base game.

And, that’s the problem.

For this review, I completed six of the ten chapters; five with my nine-year-old son,…

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By almost every metric, the latest Unmatched Adventures set, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is an improvement on its predecessor.

Now, that’s quite some feat, given Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze's impressive achievement. It turned the competitive Unmatched system into a cooperative experience and did it with style. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars just a few months ago, and I stand by that score.

But Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the better game and the better experience. I’m going to use Tales to Amaze as a comparison throughout this review, not because it’s lacking, but to show how this new version builds on it.

Raise some shell

For the record, I am fairly indifferent to the cowabunga-ing Turtles. My 9-year old son recently asked me who has what weapon and I had to shrug and promise we’d look it up when we got home. They like pizza, they hang about with people whose names are months, and they wear colourful masks. (Why do they need masks, how many other humanoid turtles are wandering about New York?) Both their teacher and their villain are named after processes of making small fragments, but I couldn’t tell you which was the good one.

My praise for this…

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The Telepathic Rat Incident

Things were tense. The dreaded countdown clock was getting closer to doomsday. Several shady characters had been taking actions all over the space station that threatened to unleash chaos even earlier, in the form of deploying an antimatter device or unleashing the mysterious Project X. The Doctor was making a mad dash for the escape pods, and the Boarder wasn’t having it. Some players lamented the Doctor’s proximity to the escape. “Don’t worry, I’m going to blow him up with a missile,” threatened the Boarder.

Desperate to get out, the Doctor made a shrewd deal with the space station’s resident sentient AI. He would escape with a copy of the AI’s data on him, allowing the AI to spread to the far reaches of the universe. After all, that’s how the AI’s player scored the most points at the end of the game: having enough people escape the doomed space station with his data on board. But how could the rogue AI stop the Boarder from bombing the escape pod?

“Oh, I know! You can use the Telepathic Rat to force the Boarder to use his own gun to shoot himself in the face!”

There was a moment of brief silence as the table processed what was just said, and realized… yes, that could work!…

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Stack Nabbit - Justin Bell

Stack Nabbit, another quick card game from the folks who gave us Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, is so light on theme and setting that there’s no backstory regarding what players are doing here at all. Drawing cards to determine which point cards you’ll keep, and which cards you might steal from a neighbor, comprises most of the rules here, as players try to bank as many cards as possible before the draw deck runs out.

What is Stack Nabbit? It’s not quite a push-your-luck game, although there is a hint of that when players try to draw a card that matches one of the cards already in their play area. And the rules around stealing only affect the players to one’s immediate left or right…so, in a three-player game, everyone can rob everyone else, but in a five-player game, you can’t do much at all against a player sitting across the table. The rules are simple enough to teach to a grandparent, and we did just that for two, quick back-to-back plays that totaled about 25 minutes. But even that grandparent, who won the second play, didn’t seem that interested in playing it again. Taco Cat Games has pushed out some of our favorite rules-light…

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There’s some version or another of Peter Pan that has Captain Hook deliver a quick monologue to Pan just before the good captain is vanquished. “You’ve defeated my men, taken my ship,” that sort of thing. While I cannot find this monologue in any edition of the script, I remember it very clearly from the summer camp production in which I played Captain Hook. I’d think I hallucinated it, but my prop hook was broken during the fight and I improvised a tidy, “broken my hook,” to cover the malfunction. You don’t forget that kind of triumph.

Hook isn’t yet defeated in the moment when he makes that speech. Well. He may be defeated, but he doesn’t feel it. He uses the line to lure Pan closer, to take one final lunge at the buoyant brat. Down, but not out. Lying to himself until the last moment that he has a chance. From the characteristically superb historical ephemera included with Fort Circle Games’s new release Hunt for Blackbeard, it seems to me that Blackbeard was in a similar position in 1718, as Virginia Colony and the Royal Navy closed in on his position.

“Down, but not out” just about sums up Blackbeard’s situation perfectly in Hunt for Blackbeard. The great terror of the Caribbean—or at least that’s how the…

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Friendly Fishing, a feather-light set collection game, was one of my most anticipated GenCon releases. This tiny box, from publisher GameHead and designers Bruno Faidutti and Alex Randolph, caught my interest with artist A. Giroux’s charming cover. It held my attention thanks to the magic of shared incentives.

The lake is populated with fish, each part of a set that scores in one way or another. On your turn, you move the crushingly adorable boat token to any adjacent spot with a fish and add that fish to your collection. If at any point you find that you cannot collect a fish on your turn, you return the boat to the center island and choose a new path. The game ends when the boat is well and truly out of options. 

At that point, everyone scores up their fish, as you’d expect. What you may not expect, unless you’ve played the 2019 game Tonari on which this is based, is what puts the “Friendly” in Friendly Fishing: your final score is your own score plus the score of the person to your left.

Delightful. A tremendous idea, a clever way of inverting the usual dynamics of these games. Screwing over the player after you is second-nature, an assumed good. Not so in Friendly Fishing. In an ideal world, you’d…

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Scales of Fate is a strange beast, an uneasy marriage of strategy, bluffing, and deduction. It gets points for originality, ambition, and aesthetic, but I’m not sold on the whole. It’s like eating a cake in which you can taste the eggs separate from the flower and the sugar. Worse than that, none of the elements feel fully baked.

Each player is secretly assigned two Demigods out of a pool of nine. Your goal, over the course of the game, is to manipulate their Renown through clever use of the Quest and Action tiles on the board. You’re also trying to suss out your opponent’s two assignees, but we’ll come back to that.

Scales of Fate is hard to explain without a visual of the board, so let's get that out of the way:

The big X-shaped pieces are Quest Tiles. The smaller in-betweeny pieces are Action Tiles. Those golden pieces you see to the lower right of the photo are Servants. I usually shy away from foisting this kind of nomenclature on my readers, but here it’s necessary. As we begin this journey together, remember that everything in the…

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