A Forest at War with Itself The Short Version – Tl;Dr Root is the most ambitious board game on my shelf, and also the one most likely to cause someone to quietly fold their arms and say ‘actually, I don’t think this is for me.’ It puts 2–4 players in control of rival factions fighting … Read more
Onitama is the game I describe as chess for people who find chess intimidating, and chess players usually agree it holds up. It is a two-player abstract played on a five-by-five grid, where both players move their pieces using a rotating set of movement cards. No memorising piece types. No decades-long theory to study. Just … Read more
The Egyptian mythology area control game that rewards aggression and punishes patience. One of The Most Aggressive Euros Game You Will Find Kemet is an area control game for 2 to 5 players in 90 to 120 minutes. You are an Egyptian civilisation competing to reach 8 victory points by attacking temples, recruiting mythological creatures, … Read more
Is it Spicy enough for you? Dune: Imperium is the game that convinced several people in my regular group that deck-building was actually interesting. It does something clever: it takes the card-acquisition loop of a deckbuilder and fuses it with a worker placement layer, so the cards you buy determine what your workers can do. … Read more
The tile-laying classic where the landscape is different every single game Carcassonne is a tile-laying game for 2 to 5 players in 35 to 45 minutes. Each turn you draw a tile and place it to extend the medieval landscape, then optionally place a meeple on a road, city, monastery, or farm to claim it. … Read more
Cyclades is an area control game for 2 to 5 players where bidding for divine favour replaces standard action selection. Each round, the five Greek gods go up for auction. Win Ares and you can fight. Win Poseidon and you can sail. Win neither and you spend a round generating income and hoping everyone else … Read more
The Area Control Game That Is Actually Fun. It’s The area control game that works for people who think they hate area control. Not to be confused with the ride at Disneyland. What Is Small World? Small World is the area control game I recommend to people who bounced off Risk or heard the words … Read more
