This is my fourth Nucleum article.

If you’ve followed my thoughts on the three other Nucleum products I’ve covered—the base game, Nucleum: Australia, and Nucleum: Energy Research Institute–it’s pretty clear that I think Nucleum is the second-best route/network building gaming system in my collection after the Brass games.

And, in a world where I already love Nucleum, Nucleum: Gibraltar might be the system’s best content. It combines the things I love about the base game, adds juicy new building tiles to the mix alongside new contracts and special powers, and then does what I didn’t think would be possible: Gibraltar’s map is the best combination of Nucluem’s design powers all in one place.

“I think this is the best map now,” said two players who joined me for separate plays, players who have extensive experience with both the base map as well as Australia. I was pretty sure that was my feeling as well after my first play, but winner’s bias set in and I wanted to try again to make sure that’s where I really landed.

The answer? Yep. Nucleum: Gibraltar is the system’s best map!

The Middle is a Warzone

There are three new elements on display in Nucleum: Gibraltar: the new map,…

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Last Light is a 4X game designed by Roy Cannaday and published by Grey Fox Games. The premise is simple: the last sun in the universe is dying, and it’s your job to harvest the most Light. Be the first to collect 20 pieces of Light and you’re the winner.

The Board & Setup

Last Light is likely to be one of the most impressive-looking games you’re going to see for a while. Seeing it on a table at Tantrum Con for the first time, I immediately felt drawn to it. Rotating circles of outer space, small plastic spaceships in three sizes (the game being set up was an upper-tier Kickstarter edition with 3D ships and Resource tokens; my review copy is the standard, cardboard-only release) and the planets.

The marble-like 3D planets, each rising from the board on its own stand and featuring swirls of colors, made me willing to sit down for a teach and a quick few rounds. Had the setup just featured flat cardboard with drawings of planets, I would have kept walking.

[caption id="attachment_332390" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] The standard edition of Last Light, with lollypop-like planets rising off the board.[/caption]

The board itself comes in…

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Normally, when I’m sitting in meetings with our publishing partners at shows like Gen Con or SPIEL Essen, I ask about the games that are on the horizon. And, normally, we buzz through that part of the conversation with ease, since there’s not much in the way of real, earth-shattering news: another expansion for that popular title from a year or two ago is underway, or a new animal-themed trick-taker is set to hit the following summer. My brain says “ho, hum” and I quietly move through my meeting schedule.

But during the Board&Dice meeting at SPIEL last fall, it was hard to believe how many perfect-for-Justin products I saw on their 2026 dance card. Nucleum: Gibraltar, with the game’s third map and more goodies in a game system that I have fallen for over the last couple years. The crowdfunding campaign for The Voyages of Marco Polo, a classic game I’ll be backing whenever the project goes live. One of the designers of the Rats of Wistar-adjacent game ANTS, Andrea Robbiani, had a new title on the way called Maestro.

Board&Dice shared one other 2026 release. That game was Entropy, a new strategy title co-designed by three of the foremost game designers of our time: Tommaso Battista, Simone Luciani, and Nestore Mangone. Between the three…

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Hello and welcome to ‘Focused on Feld’. In this series of reviews, I am working my way backwards through Stefan Feld’s entire catalogue. Over the years, I have hunted down and collected every title he has ever put out. Needless to say, I’m a fan of his work. I’m such a fan, in fact, that when I noticed that there were no active Stefan Feld fan groups active on Facebook, I created one of my own.

Today we’re going to talk about Civolution: Acceptance Letter, the much anticipated expansion for 2024’s Civolution, his 41st game.

This expansion includes three modules that can be added together or used separately. I’m not going to explain how the base game is played. This review assumes you already know. If not, you can check out my review of the Civolution base game.

Instead, we’re going to explore the new modules and discuss how they work and what I think about them. It is also my fervent hope that I’ll be able to answer the question you’ve asked yourself that, no doubt, led you here: is this an expansion that I need in my collection?

Module 1: Starting Attribute Chips

Civolution: Acceptance Letter includes six Starting Attribute chips. During setup, whether by random assignment or by drafting them, each player will…

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From time to time, I use my meetings with publishers at conventions to intentionally pick up older games from their catalog. I usually need them for the new tabletop release doldrums of spring. That’s because publishers hit all of us hard with new titles in “Convention Season”, which for my money starts at Gen Con, peaks at SPIEL Essen, and stays warm through PAX Unplugged. (Shows like UK Games Expo and the Tokyo Game Market have new releases, but the noise level is a bit more muted.)

At last year’s Gen Con, I picked up a couple games from the team at CrowD, including City of the Great Machine, released in 2023. I had heard good things about it, and I liked the idea of its “one versus many” gameplay. Spring has arrived, and I pushed City of the Great Machine to the table for a couple plays.

My Spidey Sense was on point. City of the Great Machine—at least, its multiplayer version—rocks. (Solo is another story, which we’ll get to.)

Steampunk, Anyone?

City of the Great Machine, depending on player choices and headcount, is a hand management, hidden movement game for 1-4 players. It can be played solo, cooperatively with up to three players, or competitively with…

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A new Earthborne Rangers campaign? You don’t have to tell me twice. It is hard to get me to play the same game more than a few times, but I will drop any and everything to spend more time in—or, in this case, under—the Valley.

While the base game of Earthborne Rangers—one of the greatest gaming experiences of my life, and an experience with which this review will assume you are familiar—takes place across a wide range of beautiful landscapes, Legacy of the Ancestors sends players into the depths of the Arcology, the ruins of a lost civilization that used to inhabit the Valley. This is the sensible choice, a natural development coming out of the first game. The first campaign leaves the Arcology, a consistent splash of harder sci-fi tech in a sea of solarpunk, barely explained, and the underground tunnels are as strong a contrast in setting as it’s possible to have. No more sweeping vistas for you, no no. Best you can hope for is a spot of bioluminescence.

“We Got Distracted by the Ooze”

The cornerstones of what make Earthborne Rangers great are still here. The caverns of the Arcology teem with life and discoveries. There…

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No upcoming expansion had me more excited than the arrival of Shackleton Base: Below. Within. Above., the first expansion for one of the five best games I played in 2024, Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon.

“Shack Town”, as it is known in my circles, has hit my tables a whole lot since the late summer of 2024, thanks to receiving an advance copy from the team at Sorry We Are French (from overseas, no less, in the Before Tariff Times). The medium-weight Euro is a crowded field, and Shackleton Base stood out because it does a lot of things right, thanks in part to the seven different corporations included in the base game.

Almost any number of extra corporations would spice up the base game for me. I’m not exhausted with any of the base game corporations yet, but the mix can always get sweeter with more set-up options that shake up the meta.

Let’s talk about the new stuff. (For anyone new to Shack Town, you can check out my review of the base game to learn more.) Also, please note: the new stuff barely—and I mean, barely—fits in the base game box, assuming you keep the cute tuckboxes that make setting up the game a cinch.

[caption id="attachment_331255" align="alignnone" width="1024"]

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Several years ago, my friend Nathan introduced our group to Tyrants of the Underdark, a deck-building game that used Dungeons & Dragons lore for its setting. My initial response was dubious, as often happens with licensed product. The art, which Nathan had warned us about in advance, didn’t help. Dozens of artists are credited on the game, and many of their illustrations are not…good. The hodgepodge of styles did not promise a robust play experience.

Fortunately, first impressions can be wrong. Tyrants of the Underdark is an excellent, taut marriage of deck-building and area-control. It is wonderfully interactive, encouraging players to step on one another’s toes at every turn. The modular deck system, which changes the cards in play from game to game, ensures a good amount of variety. The game is both immediate in its pleasures and rewards deeper exploration.

Tyrants of the Underdark is exactly the kind of game that I would expect to be a cornerstone of The Hobby™. And yet. Despite the quality of its reputation amongst those who’ve played, Tyrants remains somewhat obscure. I can’t even tell if it’s currently in print or not. It is often hard to find. It begs for expansions, but it only has one, which is both long out of print and heinously expensive. For a game that threatens…

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Tabling Tableaus

I once asked W. Eric Martin at GAMA Expo, “What’s your favorite game?” He replied instantly: Innovation. I hadn’t heard of it at the time, but I quickly tracked down a copy and have since played that wild tableau-building civilization card game many, many times. It has shot up to become one of my favorite games, so keep an eye out for my review of Innovation Ultimate in the near future.

But this isn’t Innovation—though it’s close in some very interesting ways. I was handed this review copy by fellow mountaineer Justin Bell at Gen Con last year, and I went in with absolutely no context for what to expect.

To my surprise, there’s a lot here that feels reminiscent of Innovation (and even Dominion), but with enough twists to make Citizens of the Spark one of my favorite new-to-me games of 2026.

Regular readers may know that tableau building is one of my favorite mechanisms, so when a game is built around that idea, I’m already interested.

Spark Plugs

Citizens of the Spark includes 30 different citizen sets, with 7 to 10 used in a given game depending on player count. Players collect sparks, which serve as points, and the game…

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The toughest games to review are the ones that are right on the line. They are generally not bad, maybe even a hair better than that, and don’t really stand out. Often, games like this end with one or more players being asked what they thought, and those players doing an exaggerated shoulder shrug, as if to say “yeah, it was…good? Well, I mean, it was…alright? I’d play it again, but only if you wanted to. What are we playing next?”

Cytress, designed by Sean Lee and published in 2025 by Good Games, broadly fits this description. Cytress is a cyberpunk-themed, engine-building worker placement game. You’ll build an engine using cards that can be purchased at one of four locations to increase your income or make trading deals progressively sexier. You’ll place a worker—either a Leader token or one of your three cute, futuristic-looking cardboard car tokens—on a space to trigger an effect. With the car spaces, any other player can also use the action, so there’s no worry or tension tied to opponents blocking the space you want.

When players buy cards and add those to the engine, they also place a crew member on a mini-map, representing the area below the great city of Stratos. This placement…

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