Auto Battlers Assemble

Up until last year, I never really knew what an "auto battler" card game was. Sure, I've played TCGs like Magic: The Gathering and Flesh and Blood, or card battlers like Compile and Radlands, but those games require careful strategy and meticulous timing to come out victorious.

At last year’s Gen Con, I was introduced to Tag Team, my first auto battler, and I was immediately enthralled by how fun and straightforward the concept was. Essentially, you draft cards, arrange them in a specific order, and let the battle play out. There's no strenuous bookkeeping or agonizing over every move. Just compare values, resolve effects, and move on.

Super Auto Pets Card Battle is the tabletop adaptation of the popular video game that somehow flew under my radar. Though I've never played the digital version (and I definitely will now), I've been told the card game is a faithful adaptation in all the best ways.

My appetite for auto battlers is starting to grow, and this one fell into my lap at just the right time. Besides, who couldn't be wooed by adorable animals duking it out on colorful cards?

Pet Friendly

Super Auto Pets Card Battle plays over six rounds,…

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There's something weirdly satisfying about watching a plan fall apart. You carefully chose a card, after considering what has already been played. You convinced yourself that everything will be fine, until everyone reveals their cards and the numbers fall into place. Suddenly you're collecting a whole bunch of negative points. It's simple, but a lot of fun. All you have to remember is that 6 Nimmt! by Wolfgang Kramer from Amigo, with art by Franz Vohwinkel.

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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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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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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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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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At Basgiath War College, ambition is as dangerous as the skies. You face trials where strength alone will not secure your place among the dragon riders. Allies matter, but so does knowing when to press an advantage and when to hold back. Every challenge tests your nerve, every decision risks your standing, and every rival is a potential threat. You must seize opportunities, outmanoeuvre your opponents, and prove you have what it takes to lead. The stakes could hardly be higher, for you are no ordinary cadet. You are part of the Fourth Wing: Rise of the Wingleader by Dexter Stevens from Goliath Games.

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Czech Games Edition rolled the dice back in 2022 with the release of Deal with the Devil. It was the most shocking thing I played from a major publisher that year by a country mile. A strictly four-player-only, hidden role, app-driven board game from the people who gave us Codenames? It wasn’t just a departure…it was the biggest creative swing CGE has ever taken with a major release.

Deal with the Devil (and its fantastically twisted box cover art) was a big swing…but also, a big miss. You can find copies of the game online for less than $20 all the time now. The critical reception was a decidedly mixed bag. But I still stand behind CGE for that release, because I am so happy that CGE took the risk.

CGE could make a safe bet every year with their releases, but Deal with the Devil (and releases like their upcoming video game-to-board-game adaptation, Kingdom Come: Deliverance—The Board Game) prove that CGE are willing to take real chances with their biggest productions.

Courtroom: The Noir Trilogy is the newest release under the Mindclash Games’ “Play” line, the publisher’s lighter line of games that pushes a release directly to retail every fall. The previous Mindclash Play games include last fall’s Emberheart and their first release in…

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The early morning air is filled with birdsong. Colourful feathers catch the first rays of sunlight, while movement in the undergrowth reveals birds searching for food, possibly for the early worm. As a patient observer, you see a world of remarkable diversity, where every bird adds something unique to the landscape. Your trusty guide helps you identify every bird you see and every song you hear. It's like having a Wingspan Pocket by Elizabeth Hargrave from Stonemaier Games, with art by Ana Maria Martinez Jaramillo and Natalia Rojas.

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Dogfight 1917 (2025, Arcane Wonders) has a lot going for it…as long as you play it as a free-for-all variant with a full complement of four players. There are cool biplane (and in the case of the Red Baron, a triplane!) miniatures, play time is speedy and mechanics are simple: fly at the other fighters to maneuver into the best positions to damage enemies just enough to make them run out of action cards, a deck which also serves as a player’s health meter.

20 action cards is all a player gets for the entire game to fly, maneuver in and out of harm’s way, and put bullets into the rear of a bad guy. Two of those 20 cards are single-use, meaning they are removed completely from the game after being played. (Those two cards are the same for each player’s deck, but other cards come with slight nuances that make each fighter’s deck unique.) With limited options to add cards back into each deck, a game of Dogfight 1917 might only last for 20-30 minutes.

Tactical tokens can be acquired through those single-use cards, via die roll bonuses on other action cards, or by finishing turns on certain spaces of the very small map representing the skies of World War I. You’ve got real-life pilots, ways to…

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Man, I love doing demo plays of games at shows. I love them because I get to play with random strangers to take in differing opinions on games I’m about to review.

Warp 99 is a new card game from Bezier, a publisher quickly becoming a major distributor of card games in the US. Over the last three years, Bezier has brought so many titles to the market that I had to go to their website to remember them all: Xylotar, Cat in the Box, Seers Catalog, Sandbag, and the best of the bunch, Rebel Princess Deluxe Edition.

A couple of those are now at the top of my all-time favorite trick-taking games, so now I will table anything from Bezier to see if they’ve struck gold. Warp 99 has its moments, and when the player count stays low, there’s something here. In the wrong hands, Warp 99’s biggest issue is its playtime; 30 minutes is too long for a game that is a simple race to get to 99 points before other players.

Warp Speed?

Warp 99 is a hand management game for 2-4 players. While it is not a traditional shedding game, Warp 99 is a game about emptying your hand, then…

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Gudnak has a great name, and maybe that’ll be enough to overcome the gigantic obstacle that the genre of games that are trying to become lifestyles struggle with.

That obstacle: gluttony. Customizable competitive card games are the definition of an oversaturated market. Step into any local game store, and you’ll see the locus of competition for space and time on full display.

Gudnak has a lot of things going for it, but it also struggles with a few usability issues. I also imagine it will have a market visibility problem going forward, but that’s not for me to decide.

What’s a Gudnak?

Gudnak is an ambigram, which the back of the box helpfully tells you, meaning a symbol that can be flipped and retains its shape. The game is played on a grid of different sizes depending on player count, with square cards functioning as units and spells. You have a 20-card deck that serves as your game timer/health bar (reminiscent of my beloved Ortus Regni). If the other player occupies your gates (the square in front of your stronghold/deck) at the start of your turn, you discard a card. No cards? You lose.

Gameplay is reminiscent of

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The mountain was bare in places, green in others, but it was slowly filling with life. Small plants pushed through the soil, adventurously spreading across the lower slopes before taller growth began reaching upwards. Every new plant was different. While some thrived in sun, others lived in dappled shade. Rebuilding the mountain fauna was never going to be easy, but it was time to Reforest by Sébastien Bernier-Wong from Firestarter Games with art by Janine van Fram.

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Gosh, poker is hot right now. It’s not animal characters hot, and it’s not trick-taking games hot, but it’s still pretty hot.

It’s so hot, that it is hot as hell…and, Hell of a Deal (2026, Smirk & Dagger Games) was so hot that it was the rare Gen Con title that sold out not once, but twice during the same show.

Poker-themed board games? The Gang was on my top ten list of 2024, and it is still in the rotation during my Wednesday night game action with friends in Chicago. When I need a taste of solo or two-player co-op, Ace of Spades still lands. I could play Balatro on my Xbox if I really want, and at a game night a couple weeks ago, that same Wednesday group decided to just straight up play Texas Hold ‘Em with real money, not just the facade of poker chips standing in for cash.

As I strolled the expo hall at this year’s show, Smirk & Dagger’s Gen Con booth was packed throughout the show. I spoke with Smirk & Dagger’s owner, Curt Covert, late in the show and he was able to throw a review copy of Hell of a Deal my way. After doing a four-player demo, I got to work with plays…

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After doing two plays of the 2025 family-weight card title Mooki Island (one play with my 12-year-old, then a play with my 9-year-old), I’m very sure of one thing: the artwork is the main reason for checking out the title.

That’s because the game itself is barely a game at all. The box hints at this as well, given that it believes it is “perfect for ages 4-10”; now that I’ve done plays, I absolutely recommend Mooki Island for a four- or five-year old child to play with an adult.

Here’s the entire game: a deck of 36 double-sided tarot cards is shuffled and split in half, creating two draw piles. There are five suits of Mookies (Sun, Moon, Fossil, Leaf, and Seashell), and there are also seven spiders in the deck. There are also five “legendary” mookies in the deck, one per suit, for the 72 total options spread across the deck.

On a turn, a player takes one of the two face-up cards, looks at both sides, then decides how to place it into their single personal scoring pile. If a spider is drawn and played, it must be played on an…

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  The special sauce in Echoes of Time is how the cards you play usually only take effect in the future. Every player has a player board that is divided into five time slots. You have tiles on your player board representing the passing of time. When you play a card, it is usually placed on one of these tiles. All the tiles slide right at the start of every round. Cards come

Surplus of Sloths (2026, Weird Giraffe Games) isn’t bad.

It’s a card drafting game where players try to build a hand of ascending card runs across five different suits of sloths. A market wipe mechanic pushes one leftover market card into a “surplus net” after each round, and players can view and gauge whether it is worth trying to score a suit at the end of the game.

I just gave you 75% of the rules, and designer Charlie McCarron (Skyrockets, the Kites riff I quite enjoyed) has given us a game so quick that my 12-year-old and I played it twice within a 15-minute stretch. Even winning one of those two games didn’t impress the 12-year-old, who shrugged their shoulders before admitting that the game was “only OK” before heading off to their room.

You’re right; that’s not an endorsement. My review crew joined me for a four-player game the following day, and the winner of that game also shrugged their shoulders and landed in the same rating range I landed on for this review.

Surplus of Sloths isn’t bad because its scoring mechanic is interesting. In an ideal world, you want to build up a run of three, four, maybe even five low cards of…

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To design a meaningfully thematic trick-taker is no small accomplishment. Other than Traveluencer, Daniel Newman’s Gachapon Trick is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head. In Traveluencer, the players are social media stars, and the cards they play represent both their posts and their view count. The trump suit is whatever topic is trending. The winner gains likes as points. It’s good. It’s thorough.

Mechanically, designers Ryo Nakamura, Zhonghao Yang, and Kai Zu have drawn from an unlikely source: Taiki Shinzawa’s 2019 charmer Inflation!. In both Inflation! and Traveluencer, you can play as many cards into the trick as you want, chaining them to create a single high number. If I play a blue 2, 5, and 7, I’ve played 257. There’s no limit to how many cards you can chain, but you do want to avoid both running out of cards too early and having any cards left at the end of the hand. Tricks missed due to a lack of cards represent periods of inactivity, death itself in the world of social media.

The risk of you running out of cards is minimal. Almost non-existent. There is no…

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