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The box says 60 to 120 minutes. That is technically true in the same way that “some assembly required” is technically true on a flat-pack wardrobe. Technically correct. Not the whole picture. So, How Long Does a Game of Catan Actually Take? We’ve played Catan in 45 minutes with the right group. We’ve also played … Read more
In 2025, CMYK released two chaotic racing games within a few months of each other. One involves betting on off-brand mascots and screaming. The other involves drafting broken fantasy characters and watching a Banana cause a pile-up. Both are brilliant. Both cost roughly the same. And if you are standing in a game shop wondering … Read more
The Zoo Game That Earns Every Inch of Table Space The Quick Summary – TL;DR Ark Nova looks like a spreadsheet fell off a desk. It covers your entire table, takes the better part of an evening, and has a card pool so large that no two games feel the same. And yet the core … Read more
Every good holiday has a moment where the day’s activities are done, the evening is open, and someone says “so what do we do now?” The best travel games turn that into the best memory of the trip. The wrong ones turn it into a passive-aggressive debate about whose idea it was to bring Monopoly. … Read more
The mascot betting game that turns everyone in the room into a screaming sports fan for twenty minutes, whether they like it or not. First Impressions I was not expecting to like Hot Streak as much as I do. The pitch sounds thin: bet on a race between four rubbish mascots, watch chaos unfold, collect … Read more
Welcome to Three Game Thursday, a regular feature on Let’s Play Games where I pick three games around a shared theme and make a case for each of them. This month the theme chose itself: these are the three games that got played the most at my table in April. Not the newest, not the … Read more
Is the Automa Worth Playing? Most board games tack on a solo mode as an afterthought. A set of rules buried in the back of the manual, a borrowed app, or a vague instruction to just play two hands and see who wins. Wingspan is not most board games. The Automa system in Wingspan is … Read more
The worst thing you can do when someone asks to try board games is hand them Monopoly. I say this as someone who has been handed Monopoly. Two hours later, one player has all the money, everyone else is just waiting to lose, and the newcomer decides this hobby is not for them and the … Read more
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
At our table, we own a cat. Her name is not relevant to this post but she has sat on Wingspan cards, knocked over a Catan water hex, and once ate a Codenames word card so thoroughly we had to write the replacement in biro. So when someone brings a cat-themed game to the table, … Read more
