COMPETITIVE KEYFORGE

EX NTSID
CO IN
TR EN E
T I P S F R O M A U K VA U LT S T O U R W I N N E R

A T
tabletopgaming.co.uk February 2020

PLAYED
TERRAMARA
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+ MORE!

DISTRICT 9 about bringing

We talk to Weta Workshopr tabletops
Neill Blomkamp’s film to ou

TURN TO THE GAMES INNER

DORK SIDE IN GAMES COMPASS
John Kovalic on his gaming Supplemental games to The creators of Copenhagen
comic and Munchkins expand your adventure talk feelings in our preview £5.25
Display until 27/02/20
 Compete with your rival wordsmiths to craft
the most impressive words and win irst pick of
letters to add to your collection. Choose wisely,
for you will ind any you leave in the words of
SOLO
VS
your opponents, and the player who uses their
20min 1– 6
stored letters to greatest effect will spell victory.

JOHANNES GUTENBERG HAS GIVEN US LETTERPRESS PRINTING,

BUT IT’S UP TO YOU TO PERFECT IT!

AVAILABLE ONLINE AT WWW.OSPREYGAMES.CO.UK

 EDITORIAL
EDITOR
Christopher John Eggett
01778 392 400
christopher.eggett@warnersgroup.co.uk

MINIATURES EDITOR

Welcome
James Winspear
01778 395 018
james.winspear@warnersgroup.co.uk

CONTRIBUTORS
Anna Blackwell, Sam Desatoff, Owen
Duffy, Robert Florence, Richard

A
Jansen-Parkes, Dan Jolin, Andy dapting from the screen to our tabletops is
Leighton, David Parlett, Alex a major challenge for board game designers.
Sonechkina, Charlie Theel, James But one that is often overcome to give fans of
Wallis, Chad Wilkinson
the film or TV series a completely new way to look at
HEAD OF DESIGN & PRODUCTION some of their favourite stories. This issue is all about
Lynn Wright
retelling our favourite sci-fi stories with our cover
DESIGN Richard Hallam feature on navigating the trickier elements of District
COVER IMAGE 9 and an in depth look at classic traitors-in-space
District 9: The Board Game simulator, Battlestar Galactica.
When it comes to taking a fresh look at storytelling,
ADVERTISING
TO ADVERTISE PLEASE CALL there’s always the option of just adding another game
ACCOUNT MANAGER within your current adventure. This month we offer
Murdo MacLeod 01778 391 129 you a whole host of supplemental games that can help
murdo.macleod@warnersgroup.co.uk Now Playing... you reinvent the worlds, characters and artefacts you
Dark Domains
MULTI MEDIA SALES EXECUTIVE meet on your journey.
Elizabeth Ridge 01778 395 059 Beyond this there’s always the option of just
elizabeth.ridge@warnersgroup.co.uk
getting competitive. We get some hot tips from the
ADVERTISING DESIGN competitive Keyforge scene with John Pickavance, the
AND PRODUCTION current UK Vault Tour champion.
Nicola Lock 01778 392 420
nicola.lock@warnersgroup.co.uk
And of course, if it all gets too much, it might be
worth checking in with the creators of Copenhagen to
MARKETING
MARKETING EXECUTIVE
Get in touch discuss their new game about feeling your feelings –
Katherine Brown 01778 395 092 tabletopgaming.co.uk Inner Compass.
katherine.brown@warnersgroup.co.uk
tabletopmag
PUBLISHED BY
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claire.ingram@warnersgroup.co.uk
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Warners Group Publications PLC
The Maltings, West Street,
Christopher John Eggett Editor
Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE10 9PH
01778 391 000
Q U I C K S TA R T
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I was on the Games It would need
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The views expressed by contributors are not necessarily
those of the publishers. Every care is taken to ensure that
mud?’ costume.
the content of this magazine is accurate, but we assume John Kovalic on writing the cards Flaminia Brasini and Virginio Gigli Gary Hunt discusses bringing
no responsibility for any effect from errors or omissions.
While every care is taken with unsolicited material for Apples to Apples, p16 on choices in Terramara, p44 District 9 to our tabletops, p50
submitted for publication, we cannot be responsible for
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© Warners Group Publications Plc, 2020
 In this issue
06 AT A GLANCE 28 THE INDEPENDENT SHELF 50 SUPPLEMENTALLY
We have some questions for you in Detective: SPEAKING
09 FIRST TURN City of Angels It’s gameception with our guide to games to
Adam Kwapinsky talks the origns of Theomachy play within your roleplaying campaign
30 HOW WE MADE
10 TEN OF THE BEST Talking secret cylons in Battlestar Galactica 53 UNEARTHED ARTEFACTS
Monster games, but, you know, for kids Screwball Scramble asks us for dexterity in
35 THROUGH THE AGES exchange for klackety-klacking fun
13 ROLE CALL Got a god complex? Good. We take you through
the history of god games 54 INNER COMPASS
14 HAVE YOU PLAYED? We talk to the creators of Copenhagen about
We talk abstract asymmetry in War Chest 37 CARDBOARD MANIFESTO their new game about feelings
Roleplaying without dice? Madness, or
16 GIVE YOURSELF something we should take more seriously? 61 PLAYED
TO THE DORK SIDE Wondering what to play this month? Read on...
We talk Munchkins with John Kovalic 38 MICROGAME OF THE
MONTH: SECRET SQUIRRELS 86 PAINTING GUIDE
18 ALL THE JAHRES The first part of our Marvel: Crisis Protocol
Join us for desert dice rolling in Camel Up 40 COMPETITIVE KEYFORGE painting guide – the heroes
We talk making the meta with a UK
21 MY FAVOURITE GAME Vaults champion 90 DUNGEON MASTER’S
Paul Stapleton gushes over classic era GUIDE TO ROLEPLAYING
adventure and nostalgia in Talisman 44 TERRAMARA
ON THE COVER!
Tough choices in 1500BC Italy 94 SHOP SPOTLIGHT
22 DISTRICT 9: 47 AROUND THE WORLD 95 EVENT REPORT
THE BOARD GAME IN 80 PLAYS
Bringing the film to the tabletop Fighting the power with board games 98 TABLETOP TIME MACHINE
with Weta Workshop in Malaysia We take a look at the acient game of Five Lines

4 February 2020
EXTRA CONTENT IN
YOUR DIGITAL EDITION
LOOK OUT FOR THESE ICONS AND ENJOY EXTRA REVIEWS,
THE GAMES
Ankh’or 69
Artefact 50
Y O U T U B E V I D E O S A N D M O R E ! A L L J U S T O N E C L I C K AWAY !
Azul: Summer Pavilion 63
Babylonia 65
Battlestar Galactica 32
More info Kickstarter Gallery Zoom Panoramic 360˚ Sound Video YouTube Call of Cthulhu 13
Camel Up 18
Cities: Skylines 70
Coffee Roasters 68
Detective 28
District 9 22
Dr. Who RPG 13
Dungeonology 67
Gaia 35
Go Away Monster! 10
Gubs 10
35
16 30
Heroes of Olympus
Homebrewers 78
Icarus 50
Inner Compass 54
Keyforge 40
King of Tokyo 10
Kingdom 50
Marvel: Crisis Protocol 86
Monster Hero 47
Academy
Munchkins 16
Niburu 80
Oath: Chronicles of 7
40 44 Empire and Exile
Oh My Lair 47
Oshi 35
Queenz 83
Reavers of Midgard 64
Screwball Scramble 53
Skytear 81
Talisman 21
Terramara 44, 77
The Colour Monster 10
Uxmal 71
War Chest 14

54 86 Wingspan: European
Expansion
76

tabletopgaming.co.uk 5
 AT A GLANCE
A SNEAK PEEK AT TABLETOP GAMING LIVE 2020
Big names set to return to Alexandra Palace Saturday the 26th and Sunday 27th September

The halls of Alexandra Palace
are quickly being booked up with
exhibitors for Tabletop Gaming Live
2020. Here’s a few that will be
joining us.
Gameswright, creators Sushi
Roll (and Go!, and Go! Party) and
Dragonrealm return with classic
games from their catalogue. King of
Tokyo publishers IELLO will be back
– and if we’re lucky we might get
our hands on the extremely limited
Dark Edition of the game, or be
treated to miscreant-tossing game
Flyin’ Goblin.
For those of us looking to
hone our crafting skills, then
Ravensburger might be able to help
with the new Minecraft: Builders
and Biomes game. If you wanted
to just fit in then Big Potato will
be offering you that chance with
Chameleon. If you wanted to stand
out then 20 Second Showdown will
provide you with the fleeting feeling
of infamy.
Miniatures fans are set to
another treat with TTCombat
bringing their intricate, beautiful
scenery to the show – mostly in aid
of making Drop Fleet Commander,
Carnevale and Rumbleslam look
just that much hotter on our
tabletops.
Watch our
Czech Games, if that is indeed Tabletop Gaming
their real name, should be showing
off Codenames as well as word- Live preview
finishing games like Letter Jam. On
the other side of word-wrangling
games is Heidelbaer who offer their
word-building and social deduction
game, Decipher.
And that’s just a taste of what’s
to come. Get your tickets now to get
your hands on all this and more.

KNOW YOUR NUMBERS

300+
16 TH
Years since A|State Expansion for
was first launched,
now to be rebooted by
Handiwork Games
Counters in the bubblegum-punk
styled Dungeon Degenerates 13 Dominion has
been announced –
Dominion: Menagerie

2 182 3,000 MILES

New Dark Souls Fate cards
expansions – in the new
Iron Keep and Terminator:
the Explorers Dark Fate The distance your butterflies will migrate in Mariposas,
Expansion card game the new Elizabeth Hargrave game

“EXCLUSIVE”, YOU SAY?

Get your fix of the latest board game, miniatures, RPG and card game
goodness delivered to your door every month – plus, save money and
receive EXCLUSIVE subscriber gifts, discounts and offers!

6 January 2018 See page 20 for more details

 For the latest news from the world of gaming visit
tabletopgaming.co.uk/news
ROOT DESIGNER RETURNS WITH OATH
Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile is the next game from Cole Wehrle
Cole Wehrle’s follow up to Root is said
to be a tableau building legacy game of
influence. Take control of the kingdom
for good or ill, with, as you might
expect, lovely custom printed meeples.
The legacy elements of the game
sound like they’re likely to effect your
current play style, assuming you
plan to play it next time. If you spend
your time ravaging the kingdom and
casting it in to ruin, then that’s the
world you’ll be starting in when you
play the game in the future. Will you
still want to do that? Wonderfully
though, you don’t always have to play
with the same group, which is a killer
for a number of other legacy games.
In a recent development
diary Wehrle explained how
the legacy element works. The
TABLETOP GAMING NEEDS YOU
Or at least, your opinions
That’s right, we want to hear more from But because a survey will only
the tabletop gaming community. This ever give us a snapshot of what our
seems like a good time to find out a little bit readers like, we’d also like to invite
more of what you’re like, and what you like. you to write in. Disagree with a
To help us do that we’ve put together review? Have an interesting story
a readers survey – asking you questions to share about a feature?
about the magazine and the hobby in Or just want to add your
general. We ask about how often you play voice to the discussion?
games, what you’d like to get into and Now is a great time to
what your favourite parts of the magazine do it. We plan to put
are as it stands. Of course, there’s also together a letters page to
plenty of ways to tell us exactly what you’d contain these discussions.
like to see more of. Head over to the email the editor at –
readers survey to tell us what you think christopher.eggett@
now! ttgami.ng/TTGSurvey2020 warnersgroup.co.uk
THE TABLETOP GAMING PODCAST
G E T A N E A R F U L O F T O P TA B L E T O P TA L K !
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game “remembers” three things:
a portion of the game’s map,
characters and enterprises of the
previous game – held in the game
deck, and how the game ended.
This last part changes the victory
condition for the next game. While
we’re used to this in some legacy
games, this description makes it
sound more like a living game.
In addition to all this, we see the
return of Kyle Ferrin – the artist for
Root. While the similar textured-but-
kind-of-cut-out flatness is here, the
game presents itself as something
entirely different. The game is said
to be for 1-5 players, with each
playthrough taking between 60-90
minutes. Oath launched on Kickstarter
on the 14th January.
READERS’
SURVEY
ttgami.ng/
TTGSurvey2020
We asked…
The 2010s (or whatever
we didn’t decide to call
the last ten years) are
over and we asked you to
look back and nominate
your choices for the best
game of the decade...
You said…
Pandemic Legacy or Village. Love
both these games.
Kat Rance-Shilbach
Root. I know it was late in the decade,
but it is still a lovely and very clever
game, suitable for the family and the
gamer, and looks great.
Jeff Stokes
Board game: Dead of Winter
RPG: Monsterhearts
Wargame: Frostgrave
Collectible game: Dice Masters
Eleanor Hingley
Burrows and Badgers for me.
Probably one of the most complete
and rounded games I’ve played in
the last 10 years. Closely followed by
Frostgrave.
Mark Cousins
Betrayal at the House on the Hill. One
of my most-played board games this
decade. I even managed to smuggle it
onto a holiday to Benidorm.
Josh Williams
Lords of Waterdeep for me, though
not nearly enough time!
John Barber
Photosynthesis, for the concept
alone!
John Murray
This War Of Mine. Not on for the faint
hearted but excellent nonetheless.
@TackyModernism1
Get in touch
tabletopmag
tabletopgamingmagazine
tabletop_gaming_magazine
tabletopgaming.co.uk 7
 FIRST TURN

ADAM
KWAPINSKY
The Polish designer of Nemesis and Lords of Hellas looks
back at his first tabletop epic, 2012’s Theomachy
Interview by Dan Jolin

BACKGROUND SETUP
“I’m a guy who will play everything that can be “First Theomachy was a totally abstract game, created
played, from board games to tabletop RPGs, by Jakub. It was very like Poker, but with highly
card games, Poker, everything. So it didn’t take mathematical elements. There was an equation on
After a long before I was trying to create my own board
games. For my first game, when I was seven or
each card, where you had to divide something by
something, or square a number, and it was very hard
couple of eight, I tried to translate Desert Strike, a computer
game about flying helicopters, onto the board.
to play. So we started thinking about themes. I’m
fascinated by myths from different cultures – I love
designs, It was awful, too complex. Only I played it
[laughs]. After that I made lots of tabletop RPGs,
Celtic myths, I love Greek myths – so one day I said,
‘Okay maybe we make this game about gods who are
after a then after college, where I studied history, I
returned to board games. I started to design
playing with their followers,’ because I like the idea of
gods who put their followers in as their stake. I thought
couple with my two colleagues Tomasz Bylina and
Jakub Wasilewski, and about nine years ago we
it was quite a nice metaphor.”

of years designed Theomachy. It’s actually the second

game published with my name on the box, but
HOW TO PLAY
“It’s a game about gods fighting over followers, which
in the the first was never translated into any language
other than Polish.”
combines drafting, bidding and deck-building. Each
player is trying to build a more powerful deck for their
industry, COMPONENTS
pantheon, and make all the other players lose their
followers, which are used in the game like chips in Poker.”
you “As well as Texas Hold ‘Em Poker, which is the
most obvious influence, we were also influenced END OF THE GAME
come to by Through The Ages, with the track you buy cards
from, and Dominion and CCGs, because we liked
“One of the problems of Theomachy, which I also
think is one of the problems of Texas Hold ‘Em, is
understand the idea of building a deck while you’re playing. In
Texas Hold ‘Em anyone can have any card in their
that it’s very easy to learn when somebody shows you
how to play. But if you try to find any written rules of
that you’re hands, but here you could remember what your
opponent has bought, and what he used last turn.
Texas Hold ‘Em it’s not so easy. So the first edition of
Theomachy was very hard to understand for people
creating We tried to make it a little more strategic than Texas
Hold ‘Em.”
who didn’t already know Texas Hold ‘Em. But the
game has been through five editions, one of which was
games for OBJECT
the English edition published by Sandy Petersen, who
played it at Essen Spiel and loved the game. I’m very
others, not “We didn’t think about who might be playing this.
When you start creating games, I think almost
happy with how that turned out.”

for yourself everybody starts creating games that they want to

play. Then, after a couple of designs, after a couple of
years in the industry, you come to understand that
you’re creating games for others, not for yourself.
So, when we created Theomachy, we created a game
we wanted to play. We didn’t even think about
publishing it when we started creating it. After a year
of creating, we thought, ‘Okay, this is quite a nice
game. We should try to publish it.’”
STRATEGY TIPS
“I think designers first of all should have a lot of
patience. That is very, very important. When you’re
designing a game, maybe – and it’s a big maybe
– it will published after a year, two years, three
years. You don’t have any sense of an immediate
reward for your work after each stage of the
creation process. So I think patience, and a little
stubbornness is quite important.”

February 2020 tabletopgaming.co.uk 9

 2
GO AWAY MONSTER Reach into a bag and hope to
find a piece of furniture that can
be happily slotted into the room. If
not, it might be a monster! And what

1 TROLL AND DRAGON do we say to monsters? That’s right,

“Go away monster!” before we throw
Get the treasure and get out, or push your luck and get your gems them in the box. A simple enough
snatched away from you. This is a dice rolling game of two part, concept which would be fairly flat if
the first to collect gems from the troll cave, and if you roll the key it wasn’t for the interesting central
and door, a chance to steal from the dragon in the mountain. This metaphor in the bag – some of the
second room is a race between two players, the active player trying to roll as monsters are shaped like furniture.
much gold as possible, while the other tries to roll two dragons. If the stealing That’s right, it’s game for overcoming
player doesn’t shout that they’re getting out before two dragons have been misunderstanding what you see in
rolled, they lose their loot. A great, active, dice rolling game that teaches the dark – and anecdotal reports tell
push-your-luck mechanisms with monsters that feel like a real threat. us that it works.

10
OF THE BEST
MONSTER GAMES
FOR KIDS
Usually the monsters on our tabletop are lumbering creatures from the dark,
Freudian nightmares or Cthulhu mythos brain-melters. So instead, we’re going
to take a look at monster for entertaining smaller monsters
Picked by Christopher John Eggett

MONSTER MATCH
3 Within the neoprene, zip-lipped monster that this game comes in is… more mon-
sters. This is a matching game of identification. Play out the set of charming and
interesting little monsters with their variety of legs, arms, eyes and so on, and iden-
tify them quickly on the table to gain points equal to the number of donuts displayed.
The ingenious part of this is the design of the monsters, which are all funny, odd
little things (especially those with no features at all, but a bowl haircut). A quick game of matching for
young kids with just enough challenge.

THE COLOUR MONSTER

4 A game for very young children about expressing emotions. Based on the book about a mon-
ster whose emotions are all over the place, this game see you roll a dice around the board
and attempt to match the tokens with the jars on the pleasing cardboard shelves. When you
pick a token, you describe something that makes you feel that emotion before guessing which
backward facing jar it should go into. Get it right and your emotions are back in order, if not,
you’ll have to have another go. Surprisingly effective for children and adults alike.

10 February 2020
 VILLAINOUS
5 We don’t have to overcome the monster in every
game. Sometimes we can be one. In Villainous you
play one of the
classic Disney
villains trying to bring off their
evil scheme with the use of their
allies, items and effects – even if
that means setting a hero against
your opponents. You’re still trying

6 CAMPY
to overcome evil, it’s just that
you’re also just as evil yourself. A
creative twist on the usual good
vs evil dynamic suitable for kids. CREATURES
Play a mad scientist looking for mortal flesh for future
experiments – with the help of your army of ghoulish
monsters. But everyone plays the monsters from their hand in secret, all to
be turned at the same time. The highest strength monster takes from the
available mortals first, the second next, and so on – so the trick is to bluff
yourself to getting the mortals you want. With extra powers that activate
when a monster is played, or a mortal captured there’s more depth than
expected. The deduction element is made accessible to younger players by
leaving all played cards face up after a round.

8MISTY
A game of window pane condensation
drawing that asks you to bring the

7 KING OF TOKYO things you draw to life. You build a

grid of drawings on window panes to
Be the biggest, baddest monster of them all in this score points – but once complete,
modern family classic. Roll dice and keep the ones that the pictures may move based on their
give you the most monster smashing power. Or plan arrows, and the monster will eat the
to smash the city instead and gain the most points. flowers. That is, unless you pin it down
While, unlike some other in this list, dominance and with another card. A surprisingly fun
destruction aren’t necessarily lessons a child need to little game that asks you to be more
learn, it is still extremely fun to play an homage-to-King- strategic than doodling on the window
Kong giving a definitely-not-Godzilla a black eye. could be!

GUBS
9
MONSTER
10 What’s a gub? We’re still not really sure, but you
want to make the biggest collection of gubs in front
of you, representing your colony. This is a simple
card game of drawing cards,
adding gubs to your collection
and playing cards in the ‘read it, do it’ sense. You can

CHASE
A memory matching game for kids
steal gubs from opponents, trap them, or protect
your own. It’s a good place for kids to learn the
concept of chaining together a few cards in one turn
from Antoine Bauza in which you work for bigger effects. The tension comes in with the
together to stop the monsters circling use of the G, U and B cards, which, once
the bed. Luckily, it’s not just the players who are scared of things, the all three are drawn ends the game.
monsters themselves are scared of certain toys – and these are your This means that once two are
main weapons to defend yourselves. Repel the monsters with the right on display, there’s a frantic
toys, as if you make a mistake, another monster is added. A cute little playing of cards because the next
horror with a good menagerie of monsters. draw could be your last!

tabletopgaming.co.uk 11
Role Call
The new year has yet to bless us with new roleplaying systems, but those looking to
expand the lore they love are in for a treat
Words by Richard Jansen-Parkes
GENESYS:
KEYFORGE –
SECRETS OF THE
CRUCIBLE
With some natty design
and unique decks, the
Keyforge card game has
been making waves ever
since it was released. Now,
this new source book gives
you a chance to explore
the world of Keyforge itself,
blending mad science with
arcane powers. Who knew
it had this much lore?
Fantasy Flight | £41.99
February 2020
CALL OF CTHULHU:
DEAD LIGHT
This bundle of adventures
for the classically spooky
Call of Cthulhu promises
roadside horrors aplenty.
With cars still a relatively
new phenomenon in the
core 1920s setting,
there’s plenty of room for
weirdness and danger
on the road, so it’ll be
interesting to see how
this brand new book
handles it.
Chaosium | £12.99
STAR TREK
ADVENTURES:
GAMMA QUADRANT
SOURCEBOOK
Modiphius’ run of Star Trek
Adventures books have
been quietly fleshing out the
galaxy with new species,
technology and mysteries.
This time we turn to the
distant Gamma Quadrant,
which brings with it rules
for playing out the shows’
biggest military conflict –
the Dominion War.
Modiphius | £24.99
THE DUNGEON DR. WHO RPG:
BOOKS OF BATTLE THE TWELFTH
MATS DOCTOR
Loke’s battle mat books SOURCEBOOK
have been a godsend for Peter Capaldi’s run as the
GM’s everywhere, and (in)famous Dr. Who might
this latest release looks be over, but that doesn’t
to take the adventure mean you can’t still
underground with a huge explore his galaxy. Expect
stack of pre-drawn dun- an avalanche of info on
geons for players to ex- aliens, allies and gadgets
plore. The set comes as encountered by the 12th
a pair of books that can Doctor – and have a
be folded out for pretty whale of a time being
substantial battles. grumpy at all of them.
Loke | £34.99 Cubicle 7 | £29.99
tabletopgaming.co.uk 13
 H AV E Y O U P L AY E D ?

WAR CHEST
War is good for a limited number of things, as the
famous song goes. One of those is taking on your
friends for an afternoon’s worth of abstract and
complex strategy. This is War Chest.
Words by Christopher John Eggett

ar Chest stole an noises which are the ambient rumble behind Some coins offer support powers, making other

W entire afternoon from

me. Drawn in by the
wonderfully high quality
of the game itself, mostly
in the form of the weighty poker chips that
come to represent your armies and the fancy
box, the game inside is a fairly tight abstract
game of conflict that allow almost endless
replayability, especially with a regular partner.
Let’s talk about what’s in the chest itself.
There’s a nice, thick, board depicting the arena
and the hexes that you’ll be attempting to place
under your control. There are also some well-
made embroidered bags depicting a wolf or a
raven. And then there’s one shy of 80 weighty
poker-style chips. The chips, or coins, are what
give the game its tactile pleasures and the
interesting tip-tapping, clattering and shaking
the game. A little like a very shy hailstorm.
The game has a chess-like feeling to it,
obviously aided by the abstract nature off the
board and pieces. It’s a game of conflict with
asymmetrical rules, and how wonky that is
comes down to the cards you choose to play.
WHAT IS IT?
Games starts by drafting out four cards each
which will inform each player which of the
tokens they can use. Imagine a version of
chess where only one team would be using the
bishops or rooks? It’s a bit like that. Some cards
might let your move and then attack in one
turn, or only attack in straight lines. Archers can
shoot over other pieces, whereas crossbowmen
can only fire straight with a line of sight – the
trade-off being they can do damage in melee.
units nearby move around them, meaning in
certain configurations you can chain together
multiple actions, which can swing the game in
your favour.
This drafting can be done in any number of
ways to set the game up, random assignment
and a few suggestions to ‘recreate’ famous
battles are in the rulebook, but you can
decide to begin the game in any fashion. For
some games we decided to do random draws
and then have the ability to mulligan any
away what we didn’t think fit well. The game
took it happily.
Once you have your cards you take two of each
of your assigned pieces, and a royal coin, and
chuck them in a bag, giving it a satisfying shake.
Take three coins form your bag and play them to
the board in turns, on areas you control. There

14 February 2020
are other hexes you can take control of, once you
have a piece on that hex. Every time you want War Chest in all
to take an action like moving or attacking, you its asymmetrical,
discard a matching coin face up from your hand, weighty, poker-
or you can place a coin face down to recruit from chipped conflict
the supply pool. It also takes a matching coin to glory
take another control hex from another player, or
claim and empty one.
This recruitment is important as you don’t
refill the bag from the discard pile until it is
empty. This means you can count the number
of actions your or your opponent has taken –
at least for the face up coins.
Bolster your forces by stacking your unit
higher, making it more durable and able to
take more hits. They take as many hits as there
are coins on the stack. Committing in this
way also means you’ll not be able to use that
coin to take an action from the bag later. And
because you only had two of those coins to
start with, you’ll need to recruit another from
the supply to be able to do anything with it.
Combat is a simple nudge of the opposing
stack and removing one. Those that are
removed are permanently evicted from the
game, not returned to the discard pile or the
supply. It has the high tension of a stand-off
in chess, the act of going first in a round (a
Imagine a version of chess where only
right that can be bought with the royal coin)
becomes increasingly important.
one team would be using the
And all of this, when it sticks in your head,
is a bit magic.
bishops or rooks? It’s a bit like that.
WHY SHOULD YOU TRY IT?
Like the best abstract games, you’ll soon see And, like a lot of deeply strategic games, solution to this is to pick up the expansion
the lines of power and the moves that are there is a certain inevitability about the way the rules online for free where the powers of this
worth making on the board. You’ll calculate winners of a game win. This isn’t to say there unit are reduced, buy the Nobility Expansion
where the threat is, and you’ll be thinking aren’t swing turns – for example where you (which is good in itself ), or just ban the unit
about whether you can risk it – whether your draw three coins that allow a chain combo of from play. All of those options work, it’s just
next move will provoke a defensive action moves and capturing – but there comes a point worth knowing before settling down to play.
from your opponent. You’ll stop seeing the when you know you should have already done With these minor setbacks aside, War Chest
lovely game pieces and begin to put together something. This doesn’t come with a sense of offers the best thing that an abstract game can
the tactics your opponent might be using failure as it does in some games, but instead with offer: the sense that you’re playing something
with the cards they have. You’re counting the sense of opportunity. Next time you play, in very old and maybe a little bit like one of those
their moves, hoping they don’t draw a around ten minutes time, you’ll have a strategy games half-invented in fantasy books and films.
matching coin next, which will allow them to that takes that into account. What’s better is that This is the tavern game with a strange board
advance closer to your undefended control your opponent will too. Because of the drafting and nice sounding pieces that the figures in the
hex. There is often a scramble for these if and layers of strategy, there’s always an area back are playing before the brawl breaks out.
you’re not keeping an eye on things, and your you’ll attempt to tweak for the next game. And that can be you now too! Although,
plans to advance are now switched around to All of this is said with a caveat that there is we’d suggest a better way to settle an argument
defence, because your opponent was sneaky a broken unit in the base game which makes wouldn’t be a pub brawl with the protagonist,
with their placements. its use completely unbalanced in play. Your but instead, just another game of War Chest.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 15
 TURN TO THE DORK SIDE
Who’s that man, why is he obsessed with muskrats, and why is he invited as a guest to
so many UK games conventions? Cartoonist and game designer John Kovalic talks to
James Wallis about dorks, munchkins and being a planet in Warhammer 40,000
Words by James Wallis

ou may not know his name but Alongside a few veteran designers, John Kovalic – and at the time only – branch on Dalling Road

Y you know John Kovalic’s art. It’s on

the cover of Munchkin and most
of its spin-ofs, Cash ‘n’ Guns, the
multi-million selling party game
Apples to Apples and at least a hundred and ifty
other games. It’s on a hundred gamer tee-shirts,
over two thousand installments of his Dork Tower
webcomic, and the programme books of the
many UK conventions where he’s a regular guest.
is the closest thing the games hobby has to a
national treasure – or an international one.
Despite his American accent and the fact
that he lives in Wisconsin, John Kovalic was
born in Britain and still has dual nationality. He
discovered miniature wargames while at school
in the late 1970s and then bought a life-changing
in Hammersmith.
Fast forward a few years and after a stint
as a professional and nationally syndicated
cartoonist in the USA Kovalic entered the games
business in the early 1990s, drawing cartoons for
various games magazines. He quickly garnered a
reputation for distinctive art, jokes about games
copy of the original Dungeons & Dragons white that were actually funny – even if they were often
box on his irst visit to Games Workshop’s irst based on terrible puns – and for being one of the

16 February 2020
nicest people in the hobby. It didn’t take long for
Shadis magazine to ask him to create a regular one-
page strip which became Dork Tower, chronicling
the adventures of Matt, Gilly, Igor, Ken, and other
geek-life inhabitants of Mud Bay, plus Carson
the Muskrat who had come over from John’s
old newspaper cartoons. The muskrat thing has
become an ongoing motif.
The series quickly spun off into its own comic
book. Originally it was just collections of the
one-page strips but Kovalic ran out material to
reprint mid-way through the second issue. “So I
had to come up with this very short story about
the main characters going to a vampire party,” he
explains, “which is where Gilly the Perky Goth
OPPOSITE The art from Munchkins Monster Box, which contains over 2,000 cards
was introduced.” Matt and Gilly don’t meet in that
ABOVE [L] Cash n Guns asks you to split the loot using foam guns
issue, setting up a dynamic that’s not so much love
ABOVE [R] Kovalic’s own ROFL! – a game of reducing phrases to their smallest possible incarnation
triangle as parallel lines, and that’s propelled the
story through 36 issues and nine book collections,
picking up six Origins Awards and an international The queues for his signings at conventions are So it’s an entirely new business model.” The
fan-base along the way. legendarily long, and were longer in the days when revived strip has been such a hit that the first new
Meanwhile, John was flexing his skills as a game the game still came with blank cards. “I was at Spiel collection of Dork Tower material in eleven years
designer. As a partner in a four-person local games in Essen about twelve years ago and the German was successfully kickstarted last year and will be
company called Out of the Box he did the art for publisher were giving away blank Munchkin cards,” out in a few weeks.
their first release, a chess variant called Bosworth. he recalls, “and my one-hour signing turned into a “The characters are a bit older now,” John says.
Then a designer pitched the company an over- seven-hour signing.” “Initially they were in their early 20s, but now I like
complex idea ‘like Cranium crossed with the Game John has designed a number of games himself, to think of them as in their early to mid 30s. So,
of Life’, which included a sub-game called ‘Apples including the award-nominated ROFL! and the there’s quite a bit of change coming up, and there
to Oranges’, and they spotted its potential. John movie-tastic Double Feature. Work on new games will be some relationships which may or may not
made the mistake of suggesting that each card have taken a back seat in the last few years, but be what some people are hoping for.” He won’t be
should have humorous colour text, which landed the ideas have kept coming and he’s hoping to drawn on whether this means the long-teased Matt
him the job of writing them all. “For weeks I was find time to return to game-creation in the near and Gilly get-together. “I’d like to have some of the
on the couch in our living room with my laptop, future. What has been taking up his time – apart main characters going through their 30s and 40s in
yelling, ‘Honey, what’s funny about mud?’” from a hectic family life, improving his Taekwondo, a way that would be appropriate,” he ends.
They changed the name too, and Apples to convention appearances around the world, and A global network of fans are holding their breath
Apples, released in 1999, was an instant hit. It the annual Bike the Barns charity bike ride, which to see what happens – or doesn’t – and signing
introduced a new game mechanic, now known he does with a stuffed Munchkin Duck of Doom on queues are likely to get even longer as readers tell
simply as the ‘apples to apples mechanic’, of having his helmet and raises a five-figure sum every year – him how happy or otherwise they are about the
one player judge the others’ cards, and that spread is refocusing on Dork Tower. story. But whichever way the plot goes it’ll still be
across the industry like wildfire. In 2007 Out of “A couple of year ago the person who runs my funny, and for a comic strip that’s coming close to
the Box sold the game to Mattel for an eight-figure webstore convinced me to start a Patreon,” he twenty-five years, that’s the most important part.
sum, and it’s gone on to shift over 15 million copies explains, “and that was such a success that the The next Dork Tower collection, The Tao of Igor,
– sadly without John’s illustrations these days. strip’s been running regularly online ever since. will be released later this spring.
Meanwhile John had been asked to illustrate
a slapstick dungeon-bashing game by Steve
Jackson of Steve Jackson Games. It was called
Munchkin and it’s the game that John is most
My one-
closely associated with. Love it or hate it, it has
all the qualities of a good gateway game, it’s sold
hour signing
steadily for twenty years, and has adapted well
to other genres and licences. The two biggest
turned into a
recent releases are Munchkin Warhammer seven-hour
40,000 and Munchkin Warhammer – Age of
Sigmar, which have brought John full-circle back signing
to Games Workshop, but have also brought the
number of cards he’s illustrated for Munchkin to
over seven thousand – an astonishing total. By
way of homage there’s a planet Kovalic II in the
Warhammer 40K universe.
Those seven thousand cards doesn’t include the
one-off pictures he’s drawn for fans over the years.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 17

James Wallis replays the winners of the Spiel des Jahres so you don’t have to
amel Up is an unconventional gambling
C game of racing camels, where moving
the camels takes second place to betting
on which of them will come first or last, and I
suspect I’m not telling you anything you don’t
already know.
When this column started four years ago it was
dealing with games from the late 1970s. Some of
them were still well known, some had become
obscure, some were long out of print, but they
all had the common thread that they’d won the
most important award for tabletop games in the
world. Now that we’ve ploughed through enough
titles to get within touching distance of today,
each Spiel des Jahres winner I cover
is more and more recent, and
less and less obscure. From
here on, if you spend much
time in games shops you’ll almost
certainly have heard of the rest of
the winners, have probably played a
few of them, and may well own
some or even all of them.
At the same time, it’s still
interesting to examine these
recent winners and
18 February 2020
All the
Jahres
Words by James Wallis
CAMEL UP
Year of win: 2014
Designer: Steffen Bogen
Number of players: 2-8
Playing time: 30 minutes
Worthy winner? Yes
Worth playing now? Yes
Availability: New edition released last year
Price: £30
what they show about the changing state of the
games world, the market and the audience. The
last half-decade has been an extraordinary giant
wave for hobby games, in terms of sales and also
public awareness. If you’d told me in 2015 that
Carcassonne would be the answer to a question
on University Challenge – and the team would
get it right – I’d have smiled wanly and found an
excuse to end the conversation, but it was this
Christmas, and this is where games are today.
The Spiel des Jahres has surfed that tsunami
from its earliest beginnings, and its winners
include many of the games at the high-water
mark on the sandy expanse of… er… I may have
taken this metaphor too far.
But sandy expanses bring us to Camel Up Up.
Not ‘Camel Cup’, as the easily misread logo
might suggest: there’s no cup here, not even
for shaking dice. Camel Up, in keeping with
its Egyptian theme, uses a dice pyramid
instead. In the original release this
was assemble-yourself cardboard,
these days it’s pre-built plastic,
but its function remains the
same: delivering a random die,
one at a time.

This is the thing that divides
people over Camel Up: it’s
quite random
This is the thing that divides people over Camel
Up: it’s quite random. In terms of cube-chucking
it’s not up there with earlier Spiel des Jahres
winner Bluff (1993), which is basically Liar’s Dice,
but what sets Camel Up apart is that when you
choose to roll a die – and you don’t have to – then
you don’t choose which one. Instead you shake
the pyramid, upend it onto the table and press
a thing, and one die comes out. The colour of
the die tells you which camel to move, and the
number is how many spaces. Choosing to move
a camel means just that: a camel moves, but not
necessarily one that’s advantageous to you.
Does that make it too random? No. A betting
game without an element of the unpredictable
is an arid experience. Ultimately all multiplayer
games have randomness baked in, because what
makes games interesting is the unpredictability
of other players’ actions. Camel Up can go several
turns without any dice-rolling at all and it’s quite
a liberating experience. Younger players, on the
other hand, tend to grab the pyramid
as often as they can, and love it when
camels land on each other and stack,
which will happen a lot.
Meanwhile most of the action is
happening around the betting. You
can bet on individual rounds or the
full game, and bet on which camel is
going to be first or last, and there’s a big
advantage to making your bet early, as long as it’s
the right bet.
The whole thing zings along at an enjoyable
pace, there are interesting choices to be made,
and almost everything you do will get you at
least one point per turn so everyone feels that
they’re doing quite well. The game ends as soon
as one camel crosses the finishing line and
people discover they weren’t doing as well as they
thought they were, but it’s all good natured. It’s
a game it’s hard to get upset over losing.
Camel Up was designed by Steffen
Bogen, who’d won the Kinderspiel des
Jahres (the SdJ’s sibling prize
for children’s games)
two years earlier
for his haunted-
house-themed
Schnappt
Hubi!
Hubi!,
LEFT The
cardboard pyramid
and ‘cup’ title of
the classic design
(Photography by
Eliza Wallis)
BELOW The most
recent printing
of the game, with
plastic pyramid
a semi-digital game with a talking amulet. His
output since 2014 has been almost entirely
related to Camel Up expansions, but you can’t
really blame him. The game was published by
Eggertspiele, which licensed it to Pegasus in
Germany for the original edition, and which
was acquired by Plan B in mid-2017. The second
edition is a Plan B production and changes
some of the components and mechanics, but it’s
fundamentally the same game.
As Spiel des Jahres winners go it’s quite a
modern one. Gone is the traditional emphasis
on 2-4 players, Camel Up is happy if slightly
cumbersome with eight, meaning one large
family or two smaller ones, and kids can grasp the
mechanics quickly and give adults a run for their
money. I’ve been surprised by how well it works
as a gateway game: two families I’ve introduced to
it have become quite obsessed. It’s a great social
experience, there’s lots of opportunity for
chat over the game, and the dice-rolling
pyramid is a great gimmick.
With its bright colours and cartoonish
camels nobody would expect Camel Up
to be a simulation game but my wife,
who once made a documentary about
camel-racing in Oman, tells
me that frantic betting,
erratic movement and
beasts ending up on top of
each other is pretty much
how actual camel races
work. But it’s not a game to
be taken too seriously, and it’s
all the better for that.
Next issue: rootin’ tootin’
caboose-shootin’ fun on the 3D
train of Colt Express
tabletopgaming.co.uk 19
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The first roleplaying game set in the world of Android: Netrunner will put you right at
the centre of New Angeles’ cyberpunk dystopia. Step into the Shadow of the Beanstalk
Words by Matt Jarvis
ndroid: Netrunner is dead, long
A
live Android.
When Fantasy Flight
announced last summer that
its living card game reboot of
Richard Garfield’s ‘90s CCG
Netrunner would be coming to
an end after six years, the news
was unsurprisingly received with an amount of shock
and disappointment among fans. Disappointment
that one of – if not the – most acclaimed competitive
tabletop games ever made was being cut off in its
prime, combined with the surprise of the timing
mere months after the game had been updated
with a revised core set and long-awaited rotation for
tournament play.
Even those working on the game seemed surprised
Go to: pktmags.com/ttg-digital20
at the decision of Wizards of the Coast – the Magic: The
Gathering maker that owns the rights to the original
Netrunner – not to renew the licence it had granted to
Fantasy Flight to work on Android: Netrunner.
“It seems like the timing couldn’t be worse to
announce the end of the game line,” studio head
Andrew Navaro wrote in a blog post at the time, while
lead developer Michael Boggs described his own “mix
of sadness, confusion and nostalgia” at being told the
game was to be brought to a close.
Both designers added their hope that Netrunner’s
passionate community would keep the game alive after
its final expansion, Reign and Reverie, wrapped up its
impressive six-year run.
“I hope and believe the community will keep it alive
for years to come,” said Boggs.
“Just because we won’t be printing it anymore
doesn’t suddenly turn it into a game that’s not worth
playing,” Navaro added, pointing out the continued
popularity of the original Netrunner among fans long
after it too had stopped being updated: “Their patience
and dedication were eventually rewarded by the
resurrection of the game they loved.
18 January 2019
for all digital offers
Unfortunately, digital subscribers are unable to receive exclusive promo gifts, subscriber covers or discounts at this time.
THE BEST KIDS’ GAMES LITTLE WARS
EX NTSID
CO IN
TR EN E
T O P L AY W I T H T H E Y O U N G ( A N D O L D ) T H I S S U M M E R H O W WA R G A M I N G M A D E I T B I G
A T
tabletopgaming.co.uk August 2019
“Personally, I hold out hope that one
day Netrunner will return, and that our part in its
history will be regarded as a significant chapter of its
much longer journey.”
TAKE BACK CTRL
While Android: Netrunner’s fate had been sealed,
buried amongst the bittersweet reminiscences lay
a flicker of hope for the future of the wider Android
universe – the futuristic setting Fantasy Flight had
relocated its reboot of the card game to in place of
Netrunner’s origins in the world of ‘80s tabletop RPG
Cyberpunk 2020.
“While Android: Netrunner is coming to an end, the
worlds of Android will continue to be explored, from
the gritty streets of SanSan to the warring colonies of
Mars,” Fantasy Flight vowed.
The next journey into the cyberpunk world would
turn out to be the deepest exploration of the Android
universe yet. Shadow of the Beanstalk is the first
roleplaying sourcebook to take place in the setting,
giving players the chance to live out their adventures in
both the near-future real world depicted in murder-
mystery series starting point Android and its follow-up
board games New Angeles and Android: Infiltration, S U M M E R O F R O L E P L AY I N G S P E C I A L !
and the Matrix-like virtual space known as the
Network that served as the battlefield for Netrunner
and cyber bank heist Android: Mainframe. Where
those games each focused on just one slice of the
connected world, Shadow of the Beanstalk brings all of
the parts of the universe together for a closer look at its
&
technological and social strata than ever before.
“Up until now, you’ve seen Android in either a big-
picture view – the Worlds of Android [book] and the
Android and New Angeles board games – or through
a lens that’s very focused on the Network: Android: Shadow of the Beanstalk
Netrunner,” says developer Samuel Gregor-Stewart. is the most intimate look
“In the board games, you’re flying over New Angeles at at Android’s cyberpunk
a very high level – quite literally in some cases – then universe to date
swooping down to have specific interactions.”
Hell yeah! Return to Baldur’s Gate and face the demons
of the Nine Hells in the RPG’s wicked next adventure
tabletop
PATHFINDER:
tabletopgaming.co.uk 19
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 my favourite game
PAUL
STAPLETON
The maker of fantasy Brighton-alike
exploration game Paupers’ Ladder
talks to us about how Talisman sucked
him into a new world of gaming
alisman is my favourite board game, and
T always will be.
When I was seven, my nan went on holiday
in Malta. Unable to find a suitable present to
bring back, she popped into WH Smiths at
Gatwick and grabbed a book she thought I’d like. She was
going by the cover, which showed a spiny snake-tongued
monster (a shapechanger), and the title (Forest of Doom).
Of course, this was more than just a book. I don’t know if my
nan knew though. I went to bed that night and discovered
what I’d been given. It was a game! In a book! And I was the
hero! At this point I probably had to reach for my inhaler.
Naturally I subscribed to Fighting Fantasy’s Warlock
magazine, and through a colourful advert I became aware of
a board game called Talisman. “Far away in a cursed glade,
a dragon is waiting to meet you” it warned and promised.
A mace-wielding monk proudly showed his stats and
special skills beneath. The brief description of the game
was my dream Bingo card. Monsters. Traps. Sinister places.
Fourteen different characters. Illustrator Gary Chalk.
When my friend Richard received it for his birthday we
spent a good couple of hours just looking out the cards,
awed by the wealth of monsters, allies, treasures and
equipment. They had thought of everything. Whoever
February 2020
had taken on the job of transferring our
imagination into a box had done so to
perfection.
Yes, it was completely random. But that
was OK, we wanted something that felt like
an adventure, and our adventures were
It was a
always random. And yes, it went on for ages,
but that was OK too because as far as I was
game! In a
concerned, the quality of a game could be book! And
measured by how long it lasted. Long meant
epic. And yes, it was roll-and-move. But this I was the
was the 80s. Roll and move was how we got
around back then. hero! At
If you’ve not played Talisman, it’s a game
of fantasy exploration which has players this point
traverse the realm to claim a magical crown.
The board is laid out like a Monopoly track I probably
but with three distinct tiers, each more
challenging than the last. By rolling dice and
had to
drawing cards, the world opens up as you
explore it, with creatures, villagers and sites
reach for
of interest filling the board. When you defeat
creatures, you gradually gain more power,
my inhaler
levelling up your abilities until you feel
confident to tackle the next tier.
Needless to say, we were hooked from the get go. It
was everything I loved about Fighting Fantasy, with the
advantage of being set in a world that was different every
time you played it. You could only really go left or right
on your turn, but it felt like freedom enough. And I loved
watching the empty fields and meadows fill with wonderful
characters and places. Of course when I started making my
own games, Talisman was always on my mind.
Paupers’ Ladder is a love song to an era of adventuring
that makes gamers of a certain vintage go misty eyed.
I wanted to evoke that same feeling of wonder as an
unexplored world opens up then changes before you.
Three years ago, I tried Talisman out on my 6-year old
nephew Charlie. I had no particular expectations, the
average attention span at that age being better suited to a
blast of Crossy Road than a dusty trawl across a tabletop. I
had my iPad with me as backup. Three hours later, he asked
if we could play it again and over the next three years, we
played just about everything else we could.
Recently we got Talisman out again. “This reminds me of
being six,” Charlie smiled as we shuffled the cards. Maybe
it’s not just gamers of a certain age who get misty eyed over
it then.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 21
 EVICTION NOTICE
We talk to Weta Workshop about their adaptation of 2009’s District 9,
and how they kept the spirit of the film alive in the game
Words by Christopher John Eggett
D
istrict 9 was released in 2009. A
dystopian near-present designed to
be an allegory for the horrors of 1970s
and 80s South Africa, the film focuses
on the civil forces of the world cruelly
exploiting the aliens – termed ‘prawns’. In 2019,
Weta Workshop, the studio who worked on the film,
providing special effect, prosthetics and a great deal of
the sticky, rubbery nastiness, have produced a game
of the events of the film.
Gary Hunt is the principle sculptor for the game,
and worked directly on the District 9 film. Having spent
nearly 20 years at Weta, Hunt first joined Peter Jackon’s
Stone Street when he heard that The Lord of The Rings
was being filmed in New Zealand. Hunt relocated from
London where he had been working on merchandise
and collectables. His back catalogue includes cereal
pack-ins for Tellytubbies. He was also the recipient of a
few light-hearted death-threats for sculpting some of
the Jar-Jar Binks figures.
“I learnt to sculpt by sculpting miniatures,” says
Hunt “and my dad had a toy shop. So that’s how I got
into the hobby.” Like so many entering the making side
of the world of miniatures Hunt began by converting
models with the ever-popular modelling putty, Green
22 February 2020
Stuff. Now, with Lord of the Rings, Narnia, King Kong
and indeed, District 9 behind him, Hunt would return
to the world of miniatures – although, with a Z-brush,
rather than Green Stuff.
Weta has a pedigree for games, and this is no mere
movie cash in. 2018’s Giant Killer Robots: Heavy Hitters
saw the studio approach the world of competitive
massive robot punching. The game had a satirical edge
in that it’s all about huge corporations sponsoring
these giant robots for their live TV performances,
because nothing says ‘buy our product’ like a giant
robot with your logo on getting punched through a
building. Weta also enlisted Trishula Entertainment, a
game design studio, to create the rules design for the
game itself.
A game of District 9: The Board Game see players
play across the three days of the film. Wikus, the
protagonist of the film is the central driver for the
narrative of the game too. When his conditions are met
for the next day to begin, the board state changes and
players move on to the next phase. But Wikus is not
controlled by any single player but by everyone, quite
intentionally, as Rob Stoddard explains, “We’re taking
the movie and instead of looking directly at Wikus
and Christopher, we’re just panning 10 to 15 degrees
tabletopgaming.co.uk 23
 to left or right. And what you’re seeing in the game is back and forth
everything that was going on behind the scenes, just discussions on which
off the peripheral where you might’ve missed it.” way to depict the narrative of
It’s an area control miniatures game of exploration the film in the game meant that some
and exploitation. Each player picks a faction from the things were left on the cutting room floor. One
film, the MNU a weapons manufacturer sanctioned example is a version of Wikus storming the
by the government to contain the aliens, the RFB who laboratory to retrieve the fuel, a signal of a
represent the gung-ho and trigger happy security turn in the film of the second day. Instead,
arm of the MNU, the slum Gangsters set on collecting discussion led the game away from this
alien tech for their own use, and a Prawn Gang – who bombastic scene to a quieter and more
make only scant appearance in the film itself, but desperate depiction – the moment where
have an important role here. Each faction has its own Wikus, with his infected arm, considers its
powers and ‘boosters’ which are applied at the start removal with an axe.
of the game, giving them their own flavour. And this is Wikus is a complex character
something also captured in the miniatures. in the film. At first a company
man with a position handed
BRINGING THE DISTRICT TO LIFE to him through nepotism to
Bringing the essence of the characters to life in the later a victim to the horrors
miniatures was part of the challenge “I went back to of the system he was previous
watching the movie over and over again and just picking perpetrating. A comeuppance,
out cool scenes or something that sold that character or certainly, but not without
that moment,” says Hunt, “It would need to be iconic. becoming sympathetic on the
People would recognize the character through that pose way there. Hunt explored the
or that costume.” These key moments were then led by complexity of this character
the team at Trishula, as they would outline the main beats though his design process “I
from the film to translate into the game. Naturally, these actually designed about six

24 February 2020

different versions of Wikus,” says Hunt, although
OPPOSITE The district there was a core theme “it was obvious he needed his
you’re fighting over, with clipboard.” Other, still clipboarded, variations included
the modular board and Wikus calling in an airstrike on a home within the
minatures district, or throwing a can of Puddi cat food (which
the aliens are obsessed with) to distract the more
ABOVE Painted prawn and hostile prawns. The version that the team settled on
human gangsters between them in collaboration was Wikus asking for
signatures from the prawns, forcing many to sign their
own eviction notices. This is the insidious start of the
narrative, and what puts these forces together, in the
district and in conflict in the first place.
Other characters, like Kubis – the leader of the
‘security’ arm of the MNU – was a challenge to
settle on too “He has a weapons change
every 20 minutes,” says Hunt “they almost
went, ‘he needs a rocket launcher!
He needs a pistol!’ But in the end I
went for just a pistol instead of
the outrageous weaponry.
And that’s because that’s
the moment where he
actually corners Wikus
as he crawls out of the
mech.” These choices
shine through the entire
game, which brings in
elements of the central
tragedies of the film. The
losses here are personal. In the
same way that the prawns in the
film are probably the most
relatable, sympathetic,
and in some way human,
characters, there’s
something interesting in
the way the miniatures
are reflective of the most
effecting moments of the
film – rather than
the loudest.
DISTRICT 9
PUDDI POWER
The factions we play as in District 9 aren’t really
the good guys. Except maybe the prawn gang, who
Hunt describes existing as a way to balance out the
survival of their people. “It’s hard for some people to
remember at times that Wikus and the MNU aren’t,
you know, good guys,” says Stoddard. The other groups
also have an agenda that doesn’t align particularly
well with how we think of being ‘the good guys’, and
because of the political messages of the film, playing
‘the bad guys’ here seems much more transgressive
than in say, Villainous.
“You don’t have to kill them,” says Hunt of the
aliens which appear throughout the game as your
faction explores the district. It’s also stressed by
both Hunt and Stoddard that it was important to
remain true to Neill Blomkamp vision, and the
harshness of the factions is there “that’s part of the
world,” says Stoddard.
Whichever group you choose, they set about moving
across the district, uncovering the tech placed on
hexagonal tiles as they go. These tiles can give each
faction a powerful piece of technology, or helpful ally.
These upgrades are added to your board, which works
as a kind of engine for the game and keeps track of
your attack and defence, should you need to engage
in combat. These cards can also be flipped at any time
to produce different usually more powerful effects. In
addition to this, the event deck also causes a certain
number of prawns to be placed on the board. At a
certain point the number of prawns on the board and
the unrest caused by the flow of event cards, and your
own actions like eviction, can cause the usual docile
and peaceful prawns to attack.
This, if the situation isn’t under control, can be very
dangerous to your characters – and the tension of the
game comes from managing the flow of the prawns onto
and around the board. “As a player,” says Stoddard “you
have to manage when you’re going to evict and move
that unrest meter up, when you’re going to engage, or
when you’re going to just try and slink away.”
tabletopgaming.co.uk 25
 DISTRICT 9
Hunt comments that the way the game is played is
up to the players, as is interpreting how the game ends.
He paints a picture where, should you collect all the
tech tiles, you can read the game ending differently
to the film, with your faction helping the aliens safely
return home with a message of peace. This conflicts
with the suggestion at the end of the film that CJ, the
escaping alien, may return with force. And that it might
be deserved.
“You could play it as nasty or as nice as you want it
to because you can relocate from it. Most of the MMU,
they’re just policemen. They may think they’re moving
prawns on to a better place,” says Hunt, “they worded
it in such a way that did say relocate as opposed to
shoot.” Your engagement with the game, and the story
it’s adapting, is entirely up to you.
This doesn’t need to be against the story effects in
the event cards themselves. The game is driven by a
narrative event deck, whether players interpret the
outcome of the game as something more positive
than the film, or they completely get into character.
This narrative deck is drawn at the end of each players
turn, changing the board state, introducing NPCs or
producing other surprising outcomes for the players.
These can be wide ranging changes that effect
how you play the game, or make it much more
risky for players to evict aliens from their homes.
And this is something that happens repeatedly
throughout the game. Without the promise of a day
ending at a certain time, these event cards can
see players change their plans mid-mission.
Equally, the day cycle works based on
triggers. The first day ends when Wikus
26 February 2020
RIGHT The militarized
RFB applying their
usual subtle approach
of airstrikes and
shouting
BELOW An alien
with one of the
many lighter
callbacks to the
film
finds the cannister. Day two ends
when Wikus and CJ finally meet.
Day three is, much like the film,
a massive bust up with a
mech-wearing Wikus.
This last round is the
traditional victory
points snatching we’re all so familiar
with. The winner of the game, if there is indeed
a winner, considering the circumstances, is the one
with the most tech at the end. And one surefire way
to collect this tech is to knock chunks out of the mech
Wikus is controlling.
As with a lot of games which use card decks to
control the narrative and major turning points in the
flow, District 9: The Board Game, gives the players
some control over how each card is interpreted. This
means that when there is an instruction to move
prawns a certain number of hexes, this choice can
be made by the current player. With this, the players
can be pushing against one another to drive the
narrative forward – or try to stall as they swap the
position of items around through and event card,
or deescalate a situation with a large number of
prawns in one space. Players are invited, as Hunt
suggests, to tweak the events of the film through
their gameplay choices.
This goes the other way too – while you might
be playing something of a pacifist role in the game,
if your opponent is being a brutal and ruthless
antagonist, they can push along the unrest state,
making everything you do, however kind, a little
more dangerous. Which is the point of District 9 in
a sense, it’s not (always) about the way individuals
act in a situation – although of course they can be
bad – it’s about how a system is created that makes
individuals do things they think are right in the service
of something awful.

TEMPURA TANTRUM
Bringing the prawns to life in District 9: The Board
Game was a challenge for Hunt. While the film relies on
expressive tentacles and mandibles, this can’t quite be
replicated at the smaller scale.
“I had to make them super thick. So quite a lot of the
time they’re sort of compressed,” says Hunt, “I wanted to
do one ‘roaring’. And in a one-piece mould – unless we cut
his head off and turned it around – we couldn’t produce
that. Instead, we had him catching a cat food can in there.
So, he’s guzzling a cat food can, in a roaring stance at the
same time.” This is just another one of the examples of
making the aliens of District 9 possible to empathise with
at this scale. The model of CJ for example also includes his
son on the base “You feel empathy for them because CJ is
protecting his son, little CJ, in this figure.”
Of course, this level of empathy doesn’t
have to apply to the prawn gang faction
itself (although often it does). This is
where many of the funnier visual aspects
of the film come through – and also
offers a place for Hunt to make his mark
with fan-service callbacks.
“I’m just trying to get across as much
of the variation, like an extension of the
film, including all the coolness of it,” says Hunt “I mean
every single thing that I spotted in films like, ‘Oh,
that is amazing’. A prawn with a bra on and a spade
for example. Or some prawns juxtaposed with other
things. Like at a gangster market they’re queuing
up for food, and I noticed one with an inflatable
rabbit, and I’m like ‘Oh, that’s gotta be in there.’”
Hunt continues, before explaining how that was
played off against a baseball bat. Equally there’s the
vehicles in the game, which players use to deploy
their own allies from, which reference back to the
film. A particular favourite is the Puddi van, used by
the prawn gang. In a world where the aliens are almost
addicted to cat food, a group of prawns driving around
in a cat food van conveys that they may have an element
of power within the game – something that is not fully
expressed in the film.
The alien gang itself was a way to give back a sense of
resistance to the game. “Part of the reason we wanted to
do it was because again, all these other factions are kind
of looked at as the bad guys, right?” says Stoddard, “We
wanted to give a little bit back and hope that we could
offset some of that negativity with the other factions
by allowing at least one player to play the prawn
and not just have them be complete NPCs for the
entirety of the game.” Giving this level of agency
back to the prawn players does do something to
address the sense of narrative imbalance in the
game. There is a way for the oppressed in the story to
fight back, and as such, offers players a way through
the story that doesn’t only rely on the kindness of
heavy-handed officials. They have access to the same
kind of technology and upgrades as every other faction
in the game. Their inclusion then might then be a kind
ABOVE The Puddi cat food of leveller, alongside the narrative rudders available to
van used by the Prawn players – which can be used for carefully navigating the
gang impactful history of this film franchise, or, alternatively,
simply another way to create absolute chaos. The choice
BELOW Kubis, the RFB is, of course, yours.
antagonist for most of With the Kickstarter complete (and currently open
the film indefinitely to late pledges), what is next for Weta
Workshop? The company is currently putting
together a Hobbit board game, which takes
place entirely inside the confines of Bilbo
Baggins’ house, exactly as The Hobbit: An
Unexpected Journey film does. The game
contains art by Daniel Falconer, who
contributed a great deal of the weapons
and armour for the Lord of the Rings film
trilogy. The game is planned to be a light
hearted parlour game about the
dwarves turning up in Bilbo’s
kitchen, a parlour game set in
a parlour if you will.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 27
 the independent shelf
DETECTIVE: CITY OF ANGELS
Q&A your way downtown to get to the bottom of your case.
But beware, not every answer you’re hearing is the truth…
We need answers, and that means hitting the streets
.A. Noire was a cracking 1940s
L detective tale that took the Grand
Theft Auto engine to new narrative
and atmospheric heights. This
2011 top-shelf video game serves as the
primary influence for a 2019 top-shelf board
game. Throw on a hat and grab your gat as
mysteries await.
That comparison between a nearly 10 year
old video game and this fresh cardboard
is not merely surface level. The main
mechanism of Van Ryder Games’ Detective:
City of Angels is framed around a very slick
question and answer system where players
are forced to parse lies and deduce the truth.
You can push the non-player characters to the
brink and call them out for holding back. It
captures the key aspects of L.A. Noire’s terrific
interrogation scenes.
This functions through the facilitation of
the Chisel. This is a GM-like character that
28 October 2019
February 2020
Words and photographs by Charlie Theel
runs the game attempting to thwart the rest of the
players and stall long enough for the case to go
cold. This is fascinating as you’re able to choose
answers from a hidden matrix, often strategically
selecting your responses in order to misdirect.
Tension rises from players challenging your
responses with necessary fallout in the form of
leverage. This can be used in future questioning
to guarantee accurate results. Push the wrong
way however and the Chisel is the one gaining
leverage and putting the screws to the players by
shutting down further questioning.
Everything is fueled through this system. The
players are travelling around a city map of 1940s
L.A. and scooping up clues related to the specific
case. They will discover precious new bits of info
and then bring these details to bear in a smoke-
filled interrogation room off Rodeo drive.
Further depth emerges as players spend
their limited cash to hire snitches. All of the
interrogation in this game is handled through
passing cards so if you want in on the
information your pal is acquiring you
need to hire a snitch to spill the beans.
This is important because this is not a true
cooperative experience, instead a single
player will win if they can piece together the
details of the case before the time is up.
This game lives and dies on the
questioning system. Everything else is fairly
simple. It’s a very strong and compelling
framework, however, it does suffer from the
fact this is an oddly quiet game. The writing is
excellent and full of character, but the Chisel
can’t really act or perform in any sense as all
of the questioning occurs through passing
prescribed dialogue cards to the players.
It moves pretty quickly as players
alternate taking turns, but occasionally you
will get in a rut where a player hesitates or
waffles on a course of action. Downtime is
perhaps the most significant weakness of
this one as a full complement of participants
can result in long pauses. Still, often you will
want to pay attention to what your fellow
detectives are doing as they will possess
information you don’t.
The game also does not boast infinite
replayability. There are nine included cases
and once you’ve participated in one you
will either never play it again or you will be
stuck playing the Chisel. There is a surprising
degree of support however in alternate
modes of play. You can play the cases
solitaire by using a separate booklet or even
cooperatively where detectives work together
to best the Chisel. These both are functional
and can produce some solid moments,
although you miss out on the excellent
tension of competition.
This one is a unique take on the deduction
genre. It’s more atmospheric and immersive
than competitors due to the board play and
questioning element. There are moments
when you catch the acrid fumes wafting
from the gutter and feel the wet blood of the
victim upon your fingertips. These are when
Detective: City of Angels is at its utmost and
the fever takes hold.
tabletopgaming.co.uk
 BATTLESTAR
GALACTICA

30 February 2020
We talk to Corey
Konieczka about
bringing the action,
suspense and
suspicion of the much
loved sci-fi series,
Battlestar Galactica,
to our tabletops
Words by Owen Duffy

n 1978 the science fiction series Battlestar

I Galactica hit American television screens.

Its premise was nothing remarkable by the
standards of the genre: humanity found itself
under attack by the Cylons – warlike sentient
robots intent on wiping out any potential
opposition to their dominion over the galaxy. But
the programme’s creator, Glen A. Larson, mixed
far-future tropes with religious symbolism in a
way that captured viewers’ imaginations, and
while it was cancelled after a single season, it
retained a loyal fanbase for decades after its last
episode was aired.
In 2004, the programme was revived in an
ambitious reboot helmed by producer Ronald
D. Moore. As a former Star Trek writer, he was
a veteran of science fiction television. But the
new take on Battlestar Galactica was darker and
bleaker than anything he’d previously written –
or the original 1970s series.
In Moore’s reimagining, the Cylons were
mechanical servants created by humans to assist
in the colonisation of the stars. After rebelling
against their makers, they launched a devastating
coordinated attack on all of human-occupied
space. The only survivors were a rag-tag group on
a fleet of spacecraft protected by a single ageing
warship. With the odds stacked against them, the
remnants of humanity embarked on a desperate
journey, trying to outrun their murderous
enemies while seeking a new world to claim as
their home.
But while their situation was already dire, the
remaining humans faced an even deadlier threat.
In Moore’s vision, the Cylons had taken human
form. With spies and sleeper agents embedded
in the fleet, the survivors fell to rampant
paranoia, threatening to tear themselves apart
under the strain of day-to-day survival.
The new series was a hit, and in 2008 US
publisher Fantasy Flight Games released a
tabletop adaptation that aimed to capture
its blend of action, suspense and suspicion.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 31
 HOW WE MADE BAT T LES TAR GAL AC T IC A
Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game cast
players as characters from the programme,
battling to repel the Cylon threat. But while some
players portrayed humans, others became secret
Cylons, subtly working to sabotage the crew’s
attempts at survival.
The game proved massively popular, with fans
praising its faithful recreation of the show as well
as its tense and at times acrimonious atmosphere,
and it remains a favourite more than a decade
after its first release. We spoke to its designer,
Corey Konieczka, to find out how he adapted
an iconic piece of TV science fiction to a board
gaming classic.
POLISHED PARANOIA
Corey Konieczka was a passionate gamer
from an early age. Originally from Salem,
Massachusetts, he grew up playing mass-market
board games as well as hobby hits like the fantasy
dungeon-crawler Heroquest and Sid Sackson’s
32 February 2020
ABOVE A ship filled with traitors, as far as
we know, anyway
business-building game Acquire. He was also a
keen video game player, and enjoyed developing
his own digital games.
“I used to program my own video games as a
hobby and I dreamed that one day I’d do that for a
job,” he explains. “After a few years of college trying
to get my computer science degree, I realised that
this was not what I wanted. I left that school and
got a graphic design degree instead. All the while
I was designing card and board games to play
with my friends. I didn’t think it would ever be
more than a hobby until I applied to Fantasy Flight
Games in 2005.”
The US publisher had previously produced hit
games including the space opera epic Twilight
Imperium as well as English-language editions
of hit European games like Reiner Knizia’s Tigris
& Euphrates. Now the company had secured the
rights to produce a licensed Battlestar Galactica
board game, and Konieczka was keen to take on
the task.
“My boss, Christian T. Peterson, told me that
we had the license and asked if I wanted to
work on the game,” he says. I was a huge fan of
all things sci-fi, so I jumped at the opportunity.
I remember first talking about our game ideas
on a plane ride to some business meeting.
We agreed that we wanted a character-driven
game about paranoia and betrayal. These were
core tenants of the show and sounded like a
really fun game experience. I don’t remember
discussing many mechanics at that point, but
I’m sure we tossed around vague concepts of
what sorts of things you can do in the game.
“I don’t remember whether I had already
watched the show or if this assignment got me
to watch it. I have a vague recollection of the
original series from when I was a kid, but nothing
concrete. I think the reboot was so popular
because it was well-written, had memorable
characters, and a story that kept you guessing.
It was a cultural phenomenon that got people
talking about it like Lost or Game of Thrones.
Even today, just hearing the intro music gets my
adrenaline pumping.”
His design revolved around a simple
mechanical core. On each round, the players
collectively faced a different mission to
complete or crisis to overcome – destroying
ships, carrying out rescue operations and
dealing with emergencies such as water
shortages. In order to succeed, they had to play
cards representing different skills from their
hands. But a Cylon player could attempt to
deliberately undermine the group’s efforts by
withholding useful cards, causing missions to
fail and edging Galactica and her occupants
closer to destruction.
It set up an atmosphere of uncertainty and
accusation. A player who didn’t contribute cards
against you, there is the perception
that someone is sabotaging you
to a crisis might be doing so because they were
secretly intent on sabotaging the group, or they
might genuinely not have the cards needed
to address a particular situation. It meant that
anyone who didn’t appear to be pulling their
weight immediately came under suspicion, and
clever Cylon players could even accuse others
they knew to be humans, directing everyone’s
attention to innocent members of the group,
persuading them to confine loyal players to the
ship’s brig while plotting nefarious schemes for
later in the game.
“The game was designed with the idea that
even if no player is actively working against you,
there is the perception that someone is sabotaging
you,” Konieczka says. “The game is meant to
constantly play to your sense of paranoia, which
is a very human emotion. Even shy people can
feel this paranoia, and it will alter their behaviour.
I can’t make anyone jump out of their seat and
yell out accusations, but I can make them feel
something inside. Even if you’re not pointing
fingers at your friends, you’re watching them
differently and reading their facial expressions at
every crucial moment.
“The real trick was designing systems that
give imperfect information. You should rarely
ever know that someone is a Cylon. Instead,
you can feel 90% certain, with a chance that
you’re misreading the situation. It was a difficult
balancing act, but I think we succeeded.”
Appropriately enough, the designer from
Salem had created a carefully engineered
tabletop witch hunt, and it was important to him
that Cylon players should have as much fun as
their human counterparts.
“Even if there was no Cylon player in the game,
it would be pretty challenging,” he says. “We
aimed for the Cylons winning 60% of the time so
that the humans felt the stress of the situation,
which in turn stoked the paranoia. If you’re good
at lying to your friends and keeping a straight face,
you’re probably a good Cylon. The choice of when
to make your move strategically is key, so I always
recommend to player to focus on staying hidden if
they’re unsure what to do. That being said, I think
anyone can have fun being a Cylon and have a fair
chance at winning.”
The game was designed with the idea
that even if no player is actively working
CYLON HIDE-AND-SEEK
This “hidden traitor” approach was a compelling
core for the game, and other releases including The
Resistance and Secret Hitler have gone on to adopt
similar elements in their designs. But what was
equally important was that the game should feel
like Battlestar Galactica, and a big part of that lay in
capturing the fast-paced fighter ship combat from
the TV programme. The game board featured the
hulking Galactica in its centre, with Cylon raider
craft attacking unpredictably throughout the game.
To repel their aggression, the players engaged
them in zero-gravity dogfights using plastic Viper
fighters. Any attackers which made it through the
defences could destroy the ships accompanying
Galactica, obliterating precious resources in
the process. Alternatively, they might damage
Galactica itself, bringing its occupants ever closer
to annihilation.
Another vital element that the game sought
to capture was the cast of characters fans
had followed through their adventures on
the show, and Konieczka was keen to ensure
that playing as each of them offered players’ a
different experience – one which reflected their
personalities as depicted in the source material.
Admiral William Adama, Galactica’s commander,
used his inspirational leadership to boost the
power of cards in crisis checks. Ace pilot Kara
“Starbuck” Thrace could take extra actions in
combat against the Cylons. It meant that each
player could influence the direction of the game in
different ways, but each also came with a character
flaw, making certain actions risky or difficult.
“Designing the characters was one of the most
fun parts of the job,” he says. “In the show, the
characters are all portrayed as flawed individuals,
and this is part of what made them so relatable.
To bring the characters into the game we simply
made a list of each character’s strengths and flaws.
We usually started with the thematic idea, and
then brainstormed what it should do in game.
“Some abilities designed themselves, such
as Guias Baltar’s ability to test someone to see
if they’re a Cylon or not. Of course he’s the least
trustworthy person in the whole series, so we
needed a way to represent that as well to draw
doubt to his accusations.”
tabletopgaming.co.uk 33
 HOW WE MADE BAT T LES TAR GAL AC T IC A
Another aspect taken directly from the series
was the possibility that players might start the
game believing themselves to be human, only
to discover that they were Cylons later on. It
reflected a pivotal point in the story where
prominent characters who had been ferociously
fighting the robotic threat abruptly discovered
that they were sleeper agents, placed on Galactica
to ensure its destruction.
“I remember the sleeper phase came out of the
original brainstorming session with Christian,”
Konieczka recalls. “Since it was in the game from
the start, I could design around making sure this
was fun. The important thing is that everyone
knows that they could become a Cylon during the
sleeper phase, and this makes the first half of the
game really interesting. Do you play your best as a
human even if you’re not 100% sure yet?”
This multifaceted approach to the design
set up some dramatic moments and shocking
revelations, and another important factor was that
Cylons could deliberately reveal their identities
to trigger disasters that dramatically worsened
the situation for the other players. While revealed
Cylons could no longer affect the outcome of
crises, these powerful effects could be worth the
loss of influence.
“I think the game is more fun when the Cylons
are hidden,” Konieczka says, “so I tried to make
them less powerful when revealed. As soon as
the humans know who they can trust, they can
be much more efficient. That being said, there
are situations when you’re locked in the brig and
can’t do much, so we needed to give the Cylons
an ‘out’ for when they’ve been discovered. The
special abilities on the Cylon cards are situationally
powerful, and potentially game winning if used
34 February 2020
LEFT Both Space
combat and
planning ahead
played out through
the card deck
BELOW
Character cards
give you strengths
and weaknesses
at the right time. This was meant to encourage
players to wait for the perfect time to reveal, and
provide a memorable game moment.”
AN EXPANDING UNIVERSE
OF TRAITORS
From colleagues’ reactions to his design, it seemed
that Battlestar Galactica had hit all the right notes.
“Playtesting this game was a blast,” he says.
“I’ve never had so many people asking when they
could play next. There were lots of changes during
development, for example the game board used to
have hallways that you’d move down to get to the
different rooms. This was too slow and restrictive
so we removed them and basically let you move
where you want.
“When I was working on the game, I didn’t
really feel burdened by fan expectations. The
amount of positive playtest feedback was
immense, so I wasn’t too concerned. I did not
however, know that it would become possibly the
most popular game I would ever work on. It was
very rewarding to hear that the game resonated
with fans and brought so much fun to so many
people. I continue to be blown away by fans’
enthusiasm and generosity.”
Bringing a comparatively complex approach
with so many moving parts to a popular series
might have seemed risky, since Battlestar
Galactica fans were by no means all hobby
gamers. But Konieczka says there are a number
of techniques that can make a complicated
game more accessible to newcomers.
“Many of my games are complex, so there
are a few things I focus on to help manage
this. One is that I make sure the turn
structure is very clear and easy to follow.
Another is that it’s important to provide a good
game reference on the back of the rulebook. And
most importantly, the game should feel intuitive.
Once you learn the basic systems, everything
should feel natural and easy to remember.”
The positive reaction on the game’s release saw
a series of expansions released in the following
years. 2009’s Pegasus revolved around a new ship
as well as a board representing the planet New
Caprica, discovered in the course of the series. The
next, Exodus, introduced new elements to increase
the intensity of combat as well as a collection of
non-player characters for players to interact with
as they played. Finally, the Daybreak expansion
focused on the final stages of the Battlestar
Galactica story, letting players negotiate with the
Cylon commanders as they played out humanity’s
desperate last-gasp effort to find a safe home for
their species.
Each new addition worked as a bolt-on module,
meaning players could tailor the game to their
own preferences, fine-tuning its atmosphere and
degree of challenge. That’s part of the reason that,
despite another TV reboot reportedly being in the
works, Konieczka isn’t in any rush to bring out a
new edition of the game.
Instead, he’s focussing his attention on a
new game development studio, Unexpected
Games, established as part of the gaming giant
Asmodee group to focus on innovative and
original new designs.
“At Unexpected Games, we’re focusing on
innovative experiences that stand out in today’s
crowded marketplace,” he says. “I’ve made over a
dozen games in my career, and now I plan to only
design and publish games that add something
new to the gaming industry. I’m hoping that these
games are generally more accessible than what
I’ve worked on in the past, but they also need to
have strong themes and clever mechanics. I want
games that make people feel different things and
remember the experience for the rest of their lives.
I’m already neck deep in our first project, and I
really think it’s going to get people talking about
it. I look forward to announcing and releasing it
next year.”
THROUGH THE AGES
GOD GAMES
In the beginning…
Words by Sam Desatoff
n many ways, playing a board game is a lot
I like playing god. The player, an omnipotent
being that exists above the game’s world
and denizens, influences elements that
exist outside the control of ordinary people.
That may be a bit of a stretch, but there are
many games that quite literally drop players
into the role of gods. Whether it’s the gods
of Greek mythology, gods of chaos in the
Warhammer universe, or elemental spirits
defending their home island from the threat of
colonial invasion, there are numerous ways to
flex your divine rights.
One of the earliest examples of a game
casting players as a god is from 1938. Helios
is an abstract Chess-like game where the
pieces represent various mythological gods.
The game’s analogue for the king is the titular
sun god, Helios. The other pieces are named
after the pagan gods of ancient Rome. For the
most part, Helios plays out like Chess, just with
different takes on classic movement abilities.
Throughout the 20th century, most of the
games based on gods stuck to universally-
known deities, including 1981’s Heroes of
Olympus, Viking Gods from 1982, and 1992’s
Pantheon: War of the Gods. It wasn’t until the
early and mid-2000s that designers started
exploring beyond the comfort of Greek and
Norse mythology.
In 2006, designer Tyler Bielman published
Oshi, a game based in Japanese folklore. The
story goes like this: the goddess Amaterasu
bestowed a game upon the first emperor
1981 2006
of Japan in order to teach him wisdom and
patience. The goal of Oshi is to push your
opponent’s pieces – shaped as one, two, and
three-story Japanese pagodas – off the board
with your own. Cleverly, the number of stories
on the pagodas represent how many spaces
they’re allowed to move, how many other
pieces it can push, and how many points it’s
worth should it get knocked off itself.
Eric Lang is a designer who has rose sharply
in prominence in recent years, and Chaos in
the Old World from 2009 is a big reason why.
Based in the Warhammer universe, players
take on the role of the gods of chaos and seek
to exert their influence. You use your followers
to corrupt territory, and utilize their favour to
deploy special godly abilities
Area control and warfare would become a
common thread. In 2009’s Cyclades, players curry
aid from the ancient Greek gods, with ultimate
victory requiring you to spread your attention
between all the available gods. Each god offers a
unique ability in battle, which is a theme that can
be seen in the similar Kemet from 2012.
Yggdrasil, published in 2011, is a
cooperative game that tasks various Norse
gods such as Odin, Thor, Tyr, Freyja, and more
with stopping the march of Loki, Nidhogg,
and other villains of Asgard. Each god can
perform the possible actions more or less
effectively, but it takes a significant amount of
cooperation to overcome the enemies.
Not all god games place you into the role
of named, known mythological deities. Gaia,
2009
from 2014, casts you as a nameless, all-
powerful god that is shaping a new world. It’s
a tile laying game with a healthy dose of area
control mixed in. The goal is to get your five
tokens out onto the board, which represents
life springing from the earth. Think of it as
Carcassonne, but with more godliness.
Similarly, 2017’s Spirit Island invents a new
pantheon of gods that aim to cooperatively
defend their home island from the onslaught
of colonial settlers. It’s a refreshing twist on a
long-denounced board game topic. Beating
back the invaders requires clever card play,
and the foresight to defend the right parts of
the island.
2019 saw the release of Glorantha: The
Gods of War, a board game set in the world of
the titular RPG. In The Gods of War, players
summon minions to do their bidding,
construct buildings like shrines and temples,
and engage in combat with other gods. The
game’s asymmetry is its biggest draw, with
each god possessing different special abilities.
In a hobby that covers every conceivable
topic and theme, it is perhaps god games
that come with the most substantial sense of
power. This is not a feeling you can experience
by jockeying for noble favour in Renaissance
Italy, or by trading spices in 16th century
Spain. Dungeon diving is satisfying, certainly,
but it’s also oppressive and claustrophobic. If
you want to wield power – true, world-shaping
power – pick up a god game and set the wheels
of creation turning.
2014 2019
tabletopgaming.co.uk 35
 CARDBOARD MANIFESTO

B
NO DICE
C
It doesn’t always have to come down to a roll of the dice
Words by Richard Jansen-Parkes

bloody love dice. Over my years playing and by looking at the handful of people who’ve

I writing about tabletop RPGs I’ve amassed a already tried it.

RD
collection of weird polyhedrals big enough Take one of my favourite RPGs of recent
to choke an orc and every few weeks I’ll find years, and the game that got me thinking about
myself ordering another few sets that probably this in the first place – Star Crossed, from Bully
won’t ever see the light of day. Or the kitchen Pulpit Games. It’s a two-player title based
table, for that matter. around the idea of forbidden love, and all of its
Now, bear all this in mind when I say I’m kind mechanics revolve around a tower of wooden

Mof bored of them.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love the feeling
of rolling dice, of glancing down at my result
between a tiny gap in my fingers and hearing the
roar of the entire table when they declare that
I’ve slain the lich or leapt from the exploding oil-
tanker at the last moment. However, that doesn’t
change the fact that I wish they weren’t always
the default option for laying down random
chance in an RPG.
In fact, “default option” may be putting it too
mildly. If you’re operating anywhere vaguely near
the hobby’s mainstream the use of dice seems to
be damn near mandatory.
Whether it’s the classic six-sided pair stolen
from a handy Monopoly set or the venerable
d20 of D&D fame, pretty much every RPG out
there will eventually make a roll of one kind or
another. Off the top of my head I can think of
maybe a half-dozen indie (or, at least, indie-
adjacent) titles that eschew them in favour of
something less traditional.
There are a few reasons for this. The first is
simply that we use dice in RPGs because we’ve
always used dice in RPGs. The hobby was
ABOVE Starcrossed swaps dicerolling for
block stacking-and-wobbling chance

founded on rolling dice and so we’ve shaped our

expectations of what games looks and feel like
around the assumption we’ll be using them.
Dice also fit in beautifully with the low-
budget, low-gear appeal of roleplaying. I
spend way too much on dice, but if I needed
to, I could outfit every single game I regularly
play for less than a tenner.
Finally, we can’t ignore the simple fact that
dice just work. Most RPGs out there need a
random element to keep them exciting and
allow for the unexpected, and dice are damnably
good at filling that need. Why try and fix what
isn’t broken?
Well, perhaps the best argument for fiddling
with the status quo can be found
blocks (think Jenga, but without the use of
any trademarked names) that stands between
them. As things heat up between the characters
the tower grows more and more unstable, and
if it falls they act on their feelings – regardless of
what the consequences might be.
It’s a simple little tool, but one that excels at
cranking up the tension in a that dice never quite
could. Watching the blocks waver and wobble is
guaranteed to catch your heart in your throat and
I’ve never seen a falling tower that didn’t pull a
cheer or a groan from the table.
Not every situation can be approached
through the medium of a big pile of bricks, of
course, but plenty of boardgames manage to
use something other than dice to apply that
spicy random element to countless different
situations. The mighty Gloomhaven, which
many people view as a kind of RPG-in-a-box,
makes use of card decks to determine damage
bonuses
b onuses and movement values, for example.
Hell, you could even make an argument
that you don’t always need to rely on luck at
all. The amount of random chance
in a game like Scythe is
deliberately kept as low as
possible, but that doesn’t
stop folks from making
meaningful decisions or taking
risky actions in the hopes of
pulling off a daring manoeuvre.
All these routes come with their own set of
problems, of course. Custom card decks can be
expensive, luck-free systems can become solved
or optimised. However, each new idea also
brings new possibilities into the world of RPGs,
and I can’t wait for a chance to try them out.

February 2020 tabletopgaming.co.uk 37

MICROGAME OF THE MONTH A F R E E G A M E F O R YO U T O P L AY I N S I D E E V E R Y I S S U E O F TA B L E T O P G A M I N G !

SECRET SQUIRRELS By Anna Blackwell

ecret Squirrels is a competitive hunting game in which While the grey team searches, the grey traitor will have to

S each team races to find all of the acorns as quickly as

possible. However, there is a traitor in their midst. In
each team there is a gnome hunter disguised as a squirrel who
is laying traps for unsuspecting squirrels.
PREP
red
Cut out grey
the acorns and traps and glue them onto cereal box to
create tokens.
TO PLAY
Get a deck of playing cards and separate both Jokers and an
Red
even split of red and black cards for however many players
are involved.
grey grey
For a six player game, you’ll have two Jokers, two red cards,
and two black cards.
Shuffle the cards and deal them out, telling players to keep
their card secret and split into teams of red vs grey (or black,
unless you have a squirrel themed deck of cards).
Place the hunter’s traps on a surface between everyone
and have everyone close their eyes. The black joker takes
the traps.
Reds
Red squirrels are first to hide their acorns in the play area
while the grey squirrels (black) wait outside. Once all of the
acorns have been hidden, call in the grey squirrels and start a
five minute timer.
pretend to be a squirrel looking forred black
acorns while also secretly
laying their traps. If a squirrel comes across a trap, they’re dead
and can’t continue searching. A gnome can choose to fake their
reds cards blacks cards
own death.
After the time has run out, the searching team counts all the
acorns they’ve found and the total is written down. At this point
the team may make a guess at who the gnome was. If they guess
wrong, the gnome wins the round. After the gnome has done their
victory dance or hung their head in shame, the traps are placed
on a surface again and the red joker takes them. Reds wait outside
while the greys re-hide the acorns and the game repeats.
grey
The final winner is the team with the most acorns found. If
this is a tie then break it with fastest time – number of squirrels
who survived – whether the gnome is caught. If there is still a
tie, flip an acorn.
WHO MADE THIS?
Anna Blackwell is the game designer and freelance
Download a
writer who curates this feature. You can keep up to
free PDF of
date with all of Anna’s work by following her on
@BlackwellWriter. If yougrey
have a one page game you Secret Squirrels
at ttgami.ng/
think our reader’s would love or just want to let her
squirrels
know you love the feature, go get in touch!

38
38 February
December2020
2017 tabletopgaming.co.uk
 COM M UN ITY
COLLIDES
W e tal k co mp eti tiv e Ke
champion, and how the commun
yfo rge wi th the current UK Vaults
ity is at the heart of the game
tt
Words by Christopher John Egge
a competitive scene of contradictions. “It seems
was John who advanced to the final and his hard to game at a super competitive level,” says
ohn Pickavance is the current eventual win. Pickavance “as you’ll never have a perfect deck.”

J champion of Keyforge’s UK Vaults

Tour. Having rocked up with his
twin brother, part of his birthday
gift to his twin, he experienced a
day of competitive play which he was “never
so streaky in my life.” The event was a sealed
deck event, with all new Archons decks
For Pickavance the win isn’t the story
however. Instead, the atmosphere of the new
game, and the expansions released on the day
lead to a huge friendly group which has become
part of his Keyforge community. Watching
people understand that “This isn’t a scary thing.
This is something anyone could do,” while it is
And while this would make other competitive
game feel strangely unviable, Keyforge flourishes.

LUCK OF THE DRAW

unwrapped and played for the first time.
Of course, twins choosing Keyforge, a game
most notable for its entirely unique decks,
as their game of choice is a joke that tells
itself. Despite being the giver of the gift, it
a competitive environment, it was possible to
have fun and make friends. This fits with how
players term these Vaults Tours as ‘competitive
casual’. This, mixed with what some see as a high
level of randomness and luck in the game, has
“You’re always dealing with this kind of
randomness. That’s not to say it’s random,”
says Pickavance. In Keyforge, unlike other
card games, luck is baked into the game
at a high level. Buying a pack gives you all
the randomness you need, and as such, the
competitive scene doesn’t feign that the game
is entirely intentional.

40 February 2020

“It invites more skilful play,” says Pickavance “a
good player will be able to make their suboptimal
cards work for them. A less experienced player
might think ‘this card’s rubbish. It ruins my deck,’
but there were lines of play in certain situations
where it could become a really important card to
have. And you don’t see that in any other card game
because those cards just aren’t drafted.”
So, with deckbuilding removed, a different
kind of skill emerges in competitive play – deck
reading. “In a game like Hearthstone or Magic
where there’s a very fixed meta, you’ll have played
all the decks hundreds of times before and you
know what you’re waiting for,” says Pickavance
“whereas in Keyforge you have to be able to look
at your opponent’s deck list and see the lines of
play. It’s a very high skill ceiling.”
PUTTING YOUR AEMBER
WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS
Pickavance hadn’t played in a competitive scene
before, but the Vaults Tour was a great place to start.
The tour allows grassroots gamers to come together
and play for non-cash prizes. It’s the sensible climax
of the store-based Chainbound events.
But that’s about to undergo a subtle change
with a new addition to the sprawling set of
You’re always dealing with this kind of randomness.
That’s not to say it’s random
competitive events. Fantasy Flight have, for
the first time, decided to put a cash prize up
for the winner of a new tournament. The Vault
Warrior series, kicking off in March, should see
competitors work their way up through open
qualifiers for a prize of $10,000 distributed
between the top 16 – the winner taking away
$2500. The final will offer a prize of $100,000 –
and even the day before there’s a last chance
qualifier to get in to the competition.
“It’s the right balance of aspirational
without being a huge amount of money off the
bat,” says Alex Watkins, head of competitive
play at Fantasy Flight. Getting this right is
difficult as money always changes the way
the game is played and watched. It can, some
argue, lead to some of the harsher trends seen
in other competitive card games.
MAKING OF THE META OUT
OF A MOLEHILL
What then, does Keyforge do to keep its meta
fresh? And more simply, can a meta even exist
within the randomised deck building game?
‘Meta’ is a term used in competitive card
games to describe the overarching trend at
any given moment. This could be the type
of deck or the style of play – the meta will
effect everything and is often self-fulfilling.
With the rise of communities around these
games there is always a discussion about the
best way to win, and to win is to play into the
meta for most people. In deck-building card
games you’ll often find a few cards that will
consistently produce a win conditions, so
having these in your deck will improve your
chances. Ultimately though, it’s not very fun
to be pushing against a very aggressive or
formulaic meta, and it’s even less fun to join it.
Keyforge also has its own system for keeping
powerful decks from ruining everyone’s fun. The
Chainbound events add ‘chains’ to decks for
winning in competitive play. This reduces the
hand size the deck draws each turn. This, in effect,
chokes it during later games. Eventually a deck will
become somewhat unplayable, and be naturally
rotated out by player choice. This is the intentional
part of the meta, and part of the enjoyment of
the game when playing competitively – the fact
that your deck, while unique, might also have
a limited competitive life if it breaks the game.
Your wins will go on to effect how you play the
game in the future and, if it’s a deck that stomps
everyone else’s, your free ride will only last so long.
Additionally, a newly introduced ‘power level’
system will push decks up only into higher tier
competitions when they hit certain thresholds.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 41
 KEYFORGE
There is still a meta to push against in
Keyforge however. That of a race. Often games,
and the Vaults Tour winning deck played by
Pickavance, don’t involve much combat. The
metaphor for most card games is that you,
the holder of the cards, is fielding an army.
Here it’s less combative. Instead minions are
traditionally seen for their value in producing
game winning resources.
“There’s this idea that you have to race,”
says Pickavance, talking about a recent local
chainbound tournament victory, “however,
I’ve got this deck that kind of plays against that
completely.” Instead of creating minions to
generate the aember required to forge each
of the keys to win the game, the deck relies
on your opponent doing so, and then stealing
it from them using archived cards (a kind of
storage system for cards to use later). “It like a
suckerpunch,” says Pickavance “and what [my
opponent] didn’t realise that had they not been
creating so much aember, I wouldn’t have been
able to win.” This is an example of the way that
a smart player can read their deck and find the
advantages within. The meta in Keyforge is as
complex, even if not as fully analysed as other
card games – but not for lack of trying.
The Decks of Keyforge, a community run site,
does attempt something like deck ranking. But the
system is somewhat arbitrary and doesn’t account
for everything that a human can see in the game.
Pickavance explains that his winning decks are
both rated low using the site, and how the site may
be leading players toward certain conclusions
about how the game should be played.
“Everyone wants to know, ‘have I got a world
beating deck?’” says Pickavance, “and for the
longest time there was this kind of rush meta.
You just want to get as much aember as you can.
So, cards with lots of aember on them that you
just play it out of hand were rated very highly.
And because they rate highly people with typing
them into [the site] and like, Oh, that’s my best
deck. It becomes this kind of self-fulfilling
prophecy.” It’s easy then to get swept up as a
42 February 2020
And this is to everyone’s benefit “If you have
new player on the scene, searching for your the community during it and you have the
most powerful deck, but this is counter to some people who are generally passionate about the
of the appeal of Keyforge. “The best thing about game, you get a more authentic and a more
the game is, is discovering” says Pickavance, genuine experience and what’s going on,” says
commenting that in other games you might have Watkins. Interestingly, much like the rest of the
powerful and sought after ‘chase’ cards, “but in game, things are done with a community focus,
Keyforge you’ve got these ‘chase’ decks, but no with streams letting viewers get close to the way
one really knows what they are.” the competitors are playing. “One of the things
This element of discovery is what brings people have really lent towards,” says Watkins, “is
people to the scene, and the community is instead of having commentators, they like table
what makes them stay. And of course, part of mikes and hearing the players interactions and
that is how we watch the game. talking through what they’re doing.”
So, with a huge and supportive community
WATCHING KEYFORGE in tow, we have to ask what’s next for Keyforge
Keyforge, like most other card games, now has a on the competitive scene? “We are planning
streaming component to its community. While a sealed Vaults Tour at UK Games Expo,” says
Fantasy Flight also offer a handful events as part Watkins, hinting that a new expansion may be
of their official coverage, it’s the community that landing in May – this being the format of previous
takes the lead. “If we can’t stream ourselves, set releases. Stores will also be putting together
we reach out to the communities,” says Alex seats for the Worlds Collide championships, and
Watkins “We look to provide an area on internet aside from this in February and March the leader
to make sure they can do it and encourage the board cycle, making it a perfect time to get in to a
community to come and stream.” store and start winning your aember.
JOHN PICKAVANCE’S
KEYFORGE TIPS
For new players, jumping in to a competitive game can seem a bit
daunting, so here’s some top tips from a Vaults Champion
CONSISTENCY IS KING
When reading your deck – and others, find consistency: “I like looking for is duplicates, which my Vault Tour
Deck had quite a few of. It makes your deck very consistent and in a game that's randomly generated that
is something that most people wouldn't have.”
LEARN TOGETHER
Finding a regular Keyforge partner is the best way to learn without getting caught up: “Play lots of games
with the same person, learn it together, explore it together. Don't rush out and find, what the SAS scores
are and what the meta is and all this. Just enjoy the game.”
JOIN THE SCENE
The Keyforge app offers you a way to find local stores holding regular game nights: “I play weekly at a place
called Geek Retreat in Leeds. We have a really active community of like, people of quite different levels and
they play for different reasons. We have a library, so people put their old Keyforge decks in this library and
then they are open for anyone to use at any point. This makes the barrier to entry even lower.”
 Terramara – a lakeside community along the
River Po. As the leader of this tribe you have
tough choices to make, “The farthest territories
are richest, but the explorers need more time
to come back,” says Gigli and Brasini. This
mechanic is one of many where committing
your resources (sending someone from your
village on a distant mission in this case) means
they won’t return to you until later rounds,
when the board state may be entirely different.
Each round the players place their workers
to gain materials and advance the three
(culture, military, or trade) tracks. These
tracks all interact with one another, and
require balancing of their own. The culture
track is probably the simplest, represented
by a river – moving along this makes any
‘downstream’ artefacts on the track available
for purchase. These artefacts are added to
your village, and provide a kind of engine
for converting materials or gaining power.
The military track allows you to boot other
players’ workers off certain locations,
assuming your marker suggests you have the
strongest military might. The track on the
axis of time is the trade track, and allows the
movement of two caravans. While you can
speed along and pick up everything at each
depot, it’s a balance. When the board flips

DOWN BY at the end of each turn there may be a better

placement opportunity closer to home – but
you caravan can’t go back. “In this way, each
round, players have new situations to face;
the placement areas are reduced and the fight

THE RIVER
for the resources is tenser,” the designers say
“but the stronger territories become closer
so it’s important to choose when to travel to
the farther lands.” This is the risk of exploring
in Terramara, it’s a delicate tightrope act
to navigate your people through the harsh
We talk to Flaminia Brasini and Virginio Gigli of bronze age world towards prosperity.
Acchittocca about making, big and crunchy Eurogames EVERYTHING CHANGES
designed to make you squirm over your choices The permanence of change is a theme that
runs strong through the game. You want to
Words by Christopher John Eggett improve your village, your military power, and
your cultural effects to be able to enhance the

“W
ho’s turn next?”
is the phonetic
Italian joke of
Acchittocca (“A
chi tocca?”)
– the question we’ve all passed around
the table of a games night – usually after
something very complicated has happened
within the machinery of a large Eurogame.
Acchittocca is also the name for something of
an Italian supergroup consisting of Flaminia
Brasini, Virginio Gigli, Stefano Luperto
and Antonio Tinto. Together they’re behind
the likes of Nile bothering and pyramid
building game Egizia and painting assistant
management game Leonardo da Vinci – both
of which were received well by the Eurogamer
community. Their next outing takes us
back to historical Italy, or more accurately,
prehistorical Italy.
“We think the real challenge for primitive
man was that they often didn’t know what they
would find beyond the horizon,” Virgino Gigli
and Flaminia Brasini tell me over email. This,
then, is Terramara, the new heavy Eurogame
which had some queuing up at Essen 2019
in the ‘Hot Games’ section. Players take the
role of clan chieftain of a bronze age village in
engine of your village – but there is a sense
that something is lost in making these choices.
At the end of each round the board, made
up of 12 letterbox tiles that fit within the
play area, is partially flipped. This ingenious
board design is an interesting step away
from the modular and configurable boards
we see more of in games, and its sense of
containment fits snuggly with game’s setting.
While you’re in a single location along the
River Po, and your scope isn’t a huge empire,
you are instead hoping to secure the future
of your people with actions now which will
ripple out forward in time.

44 February 2020
 The expansive and variable board and cards of Terramara
Each row is its own pocket of passing time,
and as such is flipped at the end of that turn.
If you have workers placed on those slats,
then they return to you. These areas are now
open to you to use if your caravan is at the
right point to give you access, and they offer
powerful options later in the game. Another
example of this is how the character cards can
‘grow up’ at any point, changing the innate
abilities that each player has. Like the way the
land changes beneath you, you can’t go back.
Games
have to be
uncomfortable
“The theme drew us in this direction. The
territories change during the game because
the clans use them, the children grow up
– and all of this is irreversible,” we’re told.
This might be the way that prehistoric man
began looking toward their own mortality,
and designing ways to begin creating
permanence. There’s an answer for this too,
“your development, represented by your
artefacts, give you permanent effects that
improve your village structure,” say Gigli
and Brasini. This adds a mechanical interest
in the way the game is played, “permanent
effects make the choices of the players more
important; if the game conditions change,
players have to continuously reset their mind
and their strategies.”
UNCOMFORTABLE
DECISIONS
Terramara offers a kind of DIY-asymmetry, as you
play, you build your village and the status
of each of your tracks. While investing
in one part gives you an advantage,
your opponents might be opening
up some way to push back.
The team attempted to find
a way between direct conflict
and semi-solitaire Eurogames,
“In Terramara there is a strong
interaction during the placement
phase in order to gather the best
resources. The military
strength, allows you to
have more or less
freedom during
this phase,” says
Gigli and Brasini
“there are also several ‘races’ in the game,” they
say, referring to the dash for power along each
track. However, unlike many Eurogames, there
is also something of a direct conflict in the ‘raid’
action. This allows players to steal resources
from all other players, again using their military
strength, this is relative however, with the
difference between the military strength, and the
amount of resources in the player’s supply being
what dictates how successful the raid is.
The balancing of the game was one of the
most difficult parts, Gigli and Brasini tell us,
“The main challenge in Terramara developing
has been the balancing of the territories in
order to make really interesting the main
mechanic. Farther the territories are stronger;
but how much stronger must they be than the
closest one?” This main question in the design
is the one the team wanted to give the player
during this complex game – that, and an
ability to replay with new strategies each time.
“I like very much games in which the players
have to face a very different situation during
each game; for this reason there are so many
variable elements during the set up, and the
characters,” says Gigli and Brasini. The tension
between players is a constant tug of war between
the commitments you decide to make, and
those you hold back on. Everything in the game
costs the players, and the decisions you make
are often permanent. This tension is important,
the choices you have to make for
your people are hard. This then
is the crux of it for Acchittocca,
the whole philosophy behind See our review
the games they make. As Gigli of Terramara on
and Brasini say, “Games have page 77
to be uncomfortable.”
tabletopgaming.co.uk 45
around the world in 80 plays
MALAYSIA
Words by Chad Wilkinson
his month we’re travelling directly
T along the equator line, 11,000 miles east
from last issue’s Guyana to the diverse
country of Malaysia – boasting its own
spin on popular Mancala style games alongside a
thriving modern tabletop scene.
Southeast Asia’s take on Mancala goes by
various names, often with subtle rule changes,
with Malaysia’s locally known as Congkak.
This two-player strategy game sees opponents
competing to win the most ‘seeds’, more
commonly in the form of Cowrie shells. Congkak
boards are typically larger than similar Mancala
style games, with many examples resembling
ornately carved wooden boats. Seven deep pits
line each side of the board to accommodate
the shells, with each player’s ‘store’ positioned
at opposite ends. Differing from other Mancala
games, the ‘store’ is not missed out when
‘seeding’ the board, with shells being dropped
into a player’s own store each time it is passed.
Nowadays, small publishers such as Blue
Mana Games and Game Design House are
producing locally popular designs such as
drafting game Monster Hero Academy and The
Piedes Curse: Earth, a time-travelling strategy
race game. The country’s designers have
also made use of alternatives to traditional
publishing, as shown by the active and endlessly
creative print and play scene. Somewhat of
a powerhouse in this DIY scene are Jason
Sondoh and Robertson Sondoh Jr, founders of
Experimental Playground Games. Maintaining
an ethos for simple, cheap and short games,
their catalogue of a vast array of titles can be
easily printed and supplemented with a few
dice and tokens. Demonstrating the company’s
positive attitude toward gaming communities
is their promotion of a recent fan-made sequel
Pasaraya offers retail fun while Oh My Lair! is a solo summoning print and play
to their 2011 game The Mini Quest. Adding more
variety and story building mechanics, The Mini
Quest 2 is a passionately crafted update to the
original hex-based adventure available through
Experimental Playground Games’ website. 2012’s
Oh My Lair is another popular design, tasking a
monstrous dungeon lord with defending its lair
from inconvenient heroes in a slick area majority
style solo game. This year the company has been
working on its approachable old school RPG
system Metatoy – an offshoot of their previous
LARA system – with updated rules and charming
illustrations from Robertson Sondoh Jr.
Last year, designer She Hui Leong self-
published the strikingly cute Pasaraya:
Supermarket Manager.. Selling via Facebook
in lieu of an established publisher, Leong has
adopted a similar DIY enthusiasm to that of online
print and play designers. With bright, popping
artwork from illustrator MeowGod, Parasaya:
Supermarket Manager deceptively charms players
into its ruthless realm of retail. Familiar deck
building mechanics are given a fresh spin with the
game’s currency cards doubling as victory points,
plunging players into an intense risk-reward race
as they buy goods to meet sales goals and fulfil
various contracts.
When examining a country’s gaming
scene it’s always fascinating to see how
designers have used the medium to
comment on local politics or culture.
In the case of Malaysia, designer Aizat
Shamsuddin took to the tabletop to
critique the 1MDB scandal exposed in
W
N
2015 – an ongoing issue that saw Prime Minister
Najib Razak siphoning over $700 million for his
own gain, from a government company designed
to boost the country’s long-term economy.
Using Monopoly as a general framework,
Shamsuddin created Kleptopoly: The Board
Game as a scathing and informative platform
to inform players on the ins and outs of corrupt
governmental money laundering.
As a lighter reflection of their country, Zamri
Mustapha and Haireey Hashnan – creators
of YouTube gaming channel Meja Belakang
Art - have successfully crowdfunded Drama
Pukul 7, a card game taking a tongue-in-cheek
jab at the influx of soap operas dominating
evening television in Malaysia. The game sees
players stepping into the roles of soap characters
trying to eliminate each other, in a battle to
take centre stage as main character. Hoping to
keep the game as local feeling and relatable as
possible, the pair have stuck close to established
tropes and stereotypes unique to Malaysian TV.
Through card art and text, Malaysian gamers can
expect plenty of laughs over the jokes and clichés
Drama Pukul 7 playfully presents.
This month’s trip has demonstrated the
pervasiveness of the tabletop hobby through
both its adoption as a means of informing a
country’s citizens, and through the lengths
designers will go to see that their games reach
their audience. Whilst global reach is certainly
important, Malaysia shows that games don’t
always need international distribution deals to
make an impact.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 47

SUPPLEMENTALLY
SPEAKING
Long roleplaying campaigns can sometimes
put the drag into dragon and the “I’m done” into
dungeons – but never fear, with a pinch of gaming
inception, supplemental games can break your
party out of its adventuring malaise
Words by Anna Blackwell
50 February 2020
hat draws us to RPGs?
W The vast journeys,
the character growth,
the drama, the
worldbuilding, certainly.
It’s an amazing hobby to be part of. However,
as a campaign stretches into its second or third
year, or you start yet another short game, some
respite from the norm is well appreciated.
Especially if you’re the weary forever-GM with
a group of ravenous players to entertain.
Introducing another, smaller, game into the
main story arc for some in-game play like Poker
or Liar’s Dice in the tavern, or to represent a
scene in a different way can be a much needed
breath of fresh air. I’ve taken to calling these
‘supplemental games’ and they are a godsend
for overworked GMs and an interesting change
of pace for players too.
Supplemental games, in this sense, are
standalone games that have the ability to be
incorporated into a roleplaying game. Some
of these are tools to be used for worldbuilding,
journal writing, or item creation. For fleshing
out a world in a generative way that produces
some surprises. Alternatively, supplemental
games can be games in their own right to
replace combat or existing mechanics. If
you’re ready to spice up your RPG, let the
gamesception begin!
POCKET WORLDBUILDING
Coming up with worlds for RPGs can be a
momentous undertaking. While it can be
gratifying to do, it can also be a bumpy road
getting there. GMs and player alike can
experience some difficulty in understanding or
engaging with vast and detailed worlds. No-one
likes getting exposition-bombed at the start
of a game just to understand what the world
equivalent of a cow is.
However, there is a solution. Microscope! The
game pitches itself, “You have vast power to
create... and to destroy. Build beautiful, tranquil
jewels of civilization and then consume them
with nuclear fire. Zoom out to watch the
majestic tide of history wash across empires,
then zoom in and explore the lives of the people
who endured it.”
In essence, Microscope lets you and a bunch
of friends build a world and its history through
a collaborative narrative RPG. Throughout
the game the focus shifts back and forward
through time as players inhabit and roleplay
characters and add elements to the world. One
player might want to include a magical war
which prompts another to describe the event
that started it, allowing everyone a chance to
roleplay and to get a vivid understanding of
that event. Which, over time, creates a strong
understanding of the world for everyone.
After all, you created it together. This also
gives the GM a good opportunity to see what
kind of stories the group likes. With the non-
chronological nature of the game, you could
even set up a terrible event during the world
building and have the campaign be the run up
to it. Dropping in and out of the Microscope can
build an exceptionally detailed history.
The only issue is that some groups might not
like their precious creations being controlled by
someone else. As with all things, discuss it and
find a good balance. It might be that having the
players have too much say in the world doesn’t
work for your setting but you want to create
something for them to understand and be
attached to; something smaller like a city which
could be done with Kingdom or Icarus.
Kingdom puts you all in control of a
‘community’ and the decisions and threats that
face them. As you play, you take on the role
of specific characters and see what happens
to this community as events play out. The
detailed character-level world-building here
really helps to make NPCs that players feel
like they’ve known for years. Starting the game
with several neighbours they already know
LEFT The world before the fall in Icarus ABOVE A layout that Dungeon Janitor’s Apprentice can build
No-one likes getting exposition-
bombed at the start of a game
just to understand what the world
equivalent of a cow is
and like makes the Conan style razing of the
village that much more impacting. For anyone
struggling to get a campaign moving and to give
the players reason to stick together, starting
the game with a session of Kingdom can raise
the stakes. You could play through to the point
that a tremendous threat has arisen against
your community then roll up characters in your
chosen system and hit the road.
Icarus follows a similar path but with the
very specific outcome of ‘civilisation collapses’
which provides an amazing tool to get a plot in
motion. The central mechanic of stacking dice
as tension builds creates a wonderfully organic
experience where the end is always nigh. As
you play you’ll see what led to the collapse,
how characters acted, and get an idea of what
life in the city was like before the end and have
the opportunity to say what happened to the
characters you played afterwards. Perhaps
they are the characters you take on for the
story ahead?
One of the much praised factors of games
like Fallout is the environmental storytelling.
The bits from before the collapse that tell
you so much about the lives of the people
involved and with Icarus you can create
deeply understood scenes for the players
to come across. Making environmental and
narrative callbacks to the choices they made
in Icarus and picking through the wreckage
of that fated city in your campaign can create
deeply authentic melancholic backdrops.
MAKING NEW FRIENDS
While world building games are great at
fleshing out characters and getting players
invested in the world, there are other options
to flex your creative muscles. As any long-time
GM will agree, making NPCs and items is fun
but difficult. And it gets harder the longer you
play with a group.
This is where the wonderful world of solo
RPGs can be explored (and exploited). One
of the most common ways solo RPGs work is
through journal writing. Essentially, the game
gives you prompts and mechanics to work
with and you write the story. The beauty is
that, thanks to the prompts, you’ll often find
yourself going places you would never have
thought of.
Such as creating a sword that just wants
a hug with the help of The Artefact. A solo
journal writing game that takes you through
the creation and long life of a sentient
magical weapon, shield or instrument. It has
a deliberately lonely tone and aims to show
the effect of being alone in the dark places
of the world and the transformations time
brings. Think of it like reading the diary of The
One Ring. As you write the history of the item,
you’ll find yourself populating your world’s
past with characters, locations, and events.
And at the end, you’ll have a unique item with
a story to give your players.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 51
 S U P P L E M E N TA L G A M E S
Items from Do
Not Let Us Die In
The Dark Night
Of This Cold
Winter
You can even make up dungeons using
games like the two-player Dungeon Janitor’s
Apprentice which has you take on the roles
of the grumpy old janitor and the workshy
apprentice. While the game is a bit barebones,
more serving as the framework for a
competitive argument, it does provide a great
exercise for coming up wacky dungeon rooms.
One player takes on the role of the grumpy
old janitor telling the apprentice to go and
perform some task in the dungeon to which
the apprentice comes up with a reason for
why they couldn’t possibly clean the slime
pits, feed the minotaur or empty the oubliette.
As you go, you can note down the rooms
mentioned and once the janitor gives up or
the apprentice can’t come up with an excuse,
you can draw it all up. It might be a bit wacky
and horrifically dangerous but hey, what
good dungeon isn’t?
DICE FREE CONFLICT
For those of you who’ve already got your
game off the ground and have your setting
nailed down, there’s still plenty of ways to
bring in new play styles. These could be as
simple as some tavern games, or you could
even take this a step further and challenge
players with actual puzzle toys, arcade games,
or dexterity skills.
Or you could use smaller games like Harder
They Fall which puts players in control of
towering behemoths or mechs as they battle
it out using chains of dominos. As the players
fight, they place, move, or remove dominos
depending on what powers they’ve used and
52 February 2020
narrate the effects accordingly. Once they get
the chance to unleash an attack, they topple THE ARTEFACT
their chain, basing the power of the attack on by Mousehole Press
ttgami.ng/artefactgame
how many dominos fell. The only downside
Tell the tragic story of a magical item as it
is that the prompts create a very specific type passes through the ages
of narrative that might not fit everyone’s style.
However, the narrative elements of their fight DUNGEON JANITOR’S APPRENTICE
might help to bring story and emotional context by Sorry Not Sorry
to the destruction of the city or, at the very least, ttgami.ng/janitorsapprentice
provide a different form of combat to truly Collaborative dungeon making through the
differentiate it from a regular fight. power of excuses
Then there are games like the extremely
post-rock titled Do Not Let Us Die In The Dark
MICROSCOPE
by Ben Robbins
Night Of This Cold Winter which describes itself ttgami.ng/microscope
as a ‘minigame’ for RPG play. The goal is to help The gold standard in collaborative world building
a village survive through a desperate winter
after their supplies have been stolen. Over the KINGDOM
course of the game, the players help search for by Ben Robbins
food, fuel, and medicine while dealing with ttgami.ng/kingdom
random events that can throw a wrench in Lead a community in any setting you desire
even the best laid plans. And while the survival
elements are fairly mechanical, the focus is kept
ICARUS
by Hunters Entertainment
on role-playing as each villager is named and ttgami.ng/icarusgame
their ailments tracked, the village mapped, and, Explore the last moments of a fated city and
players encouraged to talk in-game with the desperately try to make a difference
village elder and other characters.
While we have barely scratched the surface, COLD WINTER…
as there are hundreds of games like these out by Cone of Negative Energy
there, we hope you’ll want to start exploring ttgami.ng/coldwintergame
the world of supplemental games. Using them Help a desolate village survive the winter in this
boardgame meets RPG minigame
can make your locales, items, characters, and
plot that much more impactful and varied. HARDER THEY FALL
And handing over some of the creative control by Jay Iles
to the players can really help get them more ttgami.ng/hardertheyfall
invested. So go wild with it, and put more Battle giant beings through narrative prompts
games in your games. and chains of dominoes
<UNEARTHED ARTEFACTS>://
SCREWBALL SCRAMBLE
++YEAR 3154++INCOMING TRANSMISSION++
Found Sector F4: Pastime x17 – Board Game
– “Screwball Scramble”
Message intercepted by Robert Florence
t may surprise you to receive this
I broadcast. When the Doune-99 Factory
Ship crashed onto the Earth’s surface in
Year 3153, it was decided that the official
story should be that there were no survivors.
But we did survive, and our units have
established a new facility somewhere far from
Flesh Devil territory. Here we will rebuild,
and continue our work.
It is fitting, as we toil to get our institutes
operational again, that our broadcast is
devoted to the ancient human board game
Screwball Scramble. I call it a board game
purely for simplicity of classification. It is
a dexterity-based game, built into a toy – a
colourful jumble of ramps and levers. The
goal of the game is to move a small steel ball
from the start point to the goal, by traversing
a series of precarious challenges. The user
operates the game by turning knobs, shifting
levers and pushing buttons. These controls
cause movement within the main body of the
game, nudging, turning and kicking the ball
onwards in its journey.
Screwball Scramble really is a delicious
snack of a thing. I have been leaving the
game lying around the recreational areas of
the facility, and units seem to be drawn to it,
attracted by the colourful, toy-like nature of
the game in the first instance. But once played,
the devious design of the game lands its claws
into you. The first trial is a three-stage ramp,
positionally altered by the push of a button,
where momentum is necessary to power the
ball onwards and off. It is a trial that demands
a knack, a certain feel, and a certain sense
of timing. It’s satisfying to feel the muscle
memory kick in, and the ball klack-klack-
klacking safely across. What a beautiful piece
of engineering!
Once across, magnets come into play. The
same magnets that are a factor in our culture’s
interstellar travel are here used, in a toy, to
lift and drop the ball into the next part of its
journey – across two completely devilish steel
wires. The wires can be brought closer to each
other to slow the ball’s descent, and widened
to allow the ball to roll. Widen the wires too far
and the ball drops out of the game – sending
the player back to the beginning.
As I send this broadcast, I have Screwball
Scramble under my fingers. I am playing
with it right now. And I feel like I have almost
mastered it. I can move the ramps just right,
pull those wires just so, tilt the tray exactly as
it should be tilted. I can pop the ball up the
steps with just the right amount of force, send
it cleanly through the hoop, and roll it through
the maze without error. I can send it on its
final voyage across to the hammer with the
utmost care.
But that hammer? It haunts me. The final
stage of the game. One sharp tap on a button,
to send the hammer swinging – carrying the
ball to its goal, celebrated with the sharp
DING of a bell. An action so simple to execute,
and yet it so regularly ends in disaster. As we
rebuild, reshaping ourselves for battle with
the resurgent Flesh Devils, our spirits are high.
How can we fail? We know what to do and how
to do it. But I wonder - will that bell ring when
it comes time to swing the hammer?
tabletopgaming.co.uk 53
54 February 2020
A GAME
OF LIFE
Can a game capture an emotion or desire? With Inner
Compass, players navigate the turbulent world of
their feelings to achieve their life goals. We talk to the
designers about boarding an emotional rollercoaster…
Words by James Winspear
ife, it has often been remarked, is
L complicated. To quote Rick and
Morty’s venerable Mr. Meeseeks,
many people often find themselves
“born into this world, fumbling for
meaning”, with no clear conception of what
their purpose is or what they want out of their
oh-so-fleeting existence. How a life should be
lived is something that has been pondered over
for millennia by philosophers. What can one do
when faced with this vast existential quandary?
Why, make a game about it, of course!
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT,
ANYWAY?
The purpose of Inner Compass is to find and
ultimately achieve your personal life goals, all
before the other players do. The game comes
to the tabletop courtesy of Asger Granerud and
Daniel Pedersen, a veteran game designing duo
behind titles like Deep Blue, Copenhagen and
Bloomtown, amongst others. Fittingly enough
for a game about journeys, their partnership
in boardgames design began as a result of a
car trip back from a games convention. The
two had first met through a shared interest
in climbing (“we’re in Denmark,” explains
Granerud, “where the highest place is a hill
170 metres above sea level – so we opted for
indoor climbing!”), though they decided to
work together after returning from Essen 2013.
The two had travelled to the convention to
show off their own designs independently, but
ended up sharing a car ride on the way back.
To pass the time (and to keep each other awake
behind the wheel) they started spitballing
ideas for a game, an exercise that eventually
resulted in their first published collaborative
title, 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis. Several
projects later, and the pair came across the
basic idea that would become Inner Compass.
For this, they started from a mechanical rather
than a thematic standpoint.
“We’d been looking for the right theme for
the game right from when we started working
on it almost three years ago,” says Pedersen.
“But the basic idea was a gameplay mechanic
where you had a deck of cards and you put
it around the points of a compass. You’d
move around the landscape, so if you moved
North, you’d pick the card in that direction,
and you’d have to react and work around the
directions of the compass all the time.”
With this core concept in mind, Pedersen
and Granerud went about trying to find a
theme that would match the mechanics. They
went through several iterations where they
tried to have the player being guided around
the board. It was only when they stumbled
across the idea of inverting this and having
the player’s character serve as the guiding
force that Inner Compass began to take shape.
“We [initially] tried to make a sort of
standardised Euro-trading game or something
set in the Mediterranean where you were
trading spices in the 1600s. But it really didn’t
grab us as it was all very abstract. Then we
had this idea about trading posts, and another
one involving magic winds where you were
sort of walking around a magical landscape.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 55
 I N N E R C O M PA S S
We were always trying to work out what it was in
the compass that was pulling you around. And we
realised we were always looking for something
outside of the person that pulled them around.
With an inner compass it’s what’s in yourself
and that makes sense, right? Because what you
experience in the game is that you have a plan
and you want to go certain directions on the
board, but then your compass changes, so you’ve
got a sort of push and pull thing happening.”
With the theme established the rest of the
mechanics quickly fell into place. The basic
objective of Inner Compass is to reach personal
enlightenment before another player. The main
gameboard consists of four randomly assembled
tiles comprised of a number of coloured squares.
Each player (represented by a simple head-
shaped meeple) can move orthogonally around
the board. Their movement corresponds to the
aforementioned ‘compass’ of cards – a deck
in the middle, with single cards drawn from
the top of the deck and placed at each point –
north, south, east and west. Moving in a given
direction allows a player to draw a card from the
corresponding point. The cards are coloured to
match spaces on the board, and can be one of
five colours. Originally, these cards were going
to represent valuable material goods, but as
Pedersen and Granerud developed the theme
the cards came to represent different emotions
– fear, anger, love, happiness and sadness. As a
You have to express your
emotions at the right time
to claim the rewards. At the
same time you have a limit to your
hand. So eventually emotions will
build up and you will have to
express them!
56 February 2020
player gains cards, they can trade them in for
points. The number of points the player scores
is reliant on a descending chain of value, worth
six points at the top and only one point at the
bottom. Numbered and coloured chits occupy
each space on the chain, with each chit showing
which type of card (and how many cards of that
type) can be handed in. The amount of points a
card is worth depends on where the chit stands
in the chain. This chain operates on a simple
market system of supply and demand – when
cards are ‘cashed in’ the chit decreases in value,
moving to the bottom of the chain as the others
move up a square. Since players are competing
against one another, timing when you cash in
the cards becomes essential for winning the
most points.
On their own, the mechanics create a rather
dry system of value ideally suited to some of the
market and trading ideas Pedersen and Granerud
originally had in the early stages of development.
But in Inner Compass this has been transformed
into a metaphor for going about life, representing
the conflict between the necessity of behaving
appropriately in society and the fundamental
human desire to act on emotion.
“You have to express your emotions at the
right time to claim the rewards,” explains
Granerud. “At the same time, you have a limit
to [the cards in] your hand. So eventually
emotions will build up in you and you will
have to express them!”
The game also captures another one of
life’s struggles; that between trying to achieve
short-term and long-term goals. Each player
has a memory board which contains a number
of colour-coded memories that correspond to
a particular feeling. Each memory has a token
on top of it, and players can place a token on
the main gameboard where they’ve landed,
matching a memory to the emotional colour
on the board. When players manage to put all
the tokens from a row or column of memories
onto the board, they get to claim
a space on a scoreboard,
gaining enlightenment. The
enlightenment scoreboard
is comprised of a set of
randomised cards that award
different points depending
on how memories have been
imprinted on the main board.

ABOVE Players have to express emotions and create memories to win Inner Compass
OPPOSITE Co-creators Daniel Petersen (left) and Asger Granerud (right)
The Solitude card, for example, gives points
to players who manage to imprint a single
memory on one of the gameboard’s four
corners. Importantly, players who achieve the
objectives of one of the cards first receive the
most points – those who come in second have
to settle for less.
The result of the above mechanics is that
the game becomes a trade-off between quickly
nabbing and trading in emotion cards, and the
longer-term goals of creating and imprinting
specific memories in specific patterns. Moreover,
since both the points awarded for expressing
emotions and those for achieving personal
growth through fulfilling enlightenment
objectives change throughout the game
depending on what other players are doing,
Inner Compass further increases the player’s
dilemma by adding an element of opportunism.
“It’s tactical in that changes happen from
round to round, which will pull you away from
what your life goal [i.e. personal enlightenment
objective] would have been,” explains Granerud.
“So you’re not travelling along one line from start
to finish, where you have a plan and that’s where
you’re going. Sometimes you’ll get pulled away
from your life goal by one emotion or another.”
Sound familiar at all?
CARDS ON THE TABLE
Inner Compass uses its mechanics to simulate
the realities of life. It’s uncertain, with
ever-changing priorities and the constant
conflict each of us faces between the here
and now and our future selves. By playing
on its central concept of a compass, it shows
us how our journeys – both physical and
internal – are guided primarily not by logic
but by feelings and memories. But Pedersen
and Granerud are the first to admit that
Inner Compass doesn’t capture the full
complexities of existence.
“Inner Compass is a game where you are
navigating your emotions,” says Granerud.
“But to accept the premise of the theme, you
have to accept that there are some abstractions
happening towards the questions of what is
feeling, what is an inner compass, et cetera.”
First and foremost, Inner Compass has
been designed as a game, rather than an
exercise in mindfulness.
“The game is [a means of ] entertainment,
so it’s not a tough choice for the players to
sit down and play it,” says Granerud. “You
don’t have to actually know what your inner
compass tells you in order to play it!”
Nonetheless, the designers hope that
Inner Compass will be able to get its players
talking about the themes it dwells on in a
way that they might not have done before
playing it.
“Hopefully this will appeal to family
gamers and Euro gamers who want to have
a good, clean, solid game that plays in 45
to 60 minutes, but who also aren’t afraid of
having a game with a theme that’s slightly
off the beaten track or is even just a good
conversation starter with their friends,” says
Granerud. “Hopefully it is a game that can
make people talk about these things, even if
it’s just a superficial conversation here and
there about their life goals and emotions.
Even if they totally forget about it afterwards,
players will have just had that little sort of
interaction that they wouldn’t have had
before. That’s our hope, anyway.”
tabletopgaming.co.uk 57
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Presented by the South
London Warlords,
Salute 2020 is the
biggest independent
one-day wargaming and
gaming event in the UK.
Once again, we have a
huge number of UK and
international traders
attending the show at
ExCel London as well as
plenty of demonstration
and participation games
to enjoy. We will, of
course, be running
our renowned painting
competition on the day.

SATURDAY 18TH APRIL 2020

DOORS OPEN 10.00 -17.00
SALUTE is held at
Tickets
ExCel London, which
is very easy to get to. £10.00 in advance or £20.00 (cash only)
Here is a simplified
transport link map.
at the door.
Under 16s FREE with a paying adult.
Again this year there will be several
‘golden ticket’ prizes.
Tickets are now on sale from our
Facebook page and website:
www.salute.co.uk
NB: there is no bring and buy at Salute 2020.
PLAYED
70

66 73 76

62 ROAM 74 GENESYS: EXPANDED

PLAYERS’ GUIDE
63 AZUL: SUMMER PAVILION
75 THE AQUICORN COVE
64 REAVERS OF MIDGARD BOARD GAME
65 BABYLONIA 75 TRIAL OF THE TEMPLES
66 5211 76 WINGSPAN
EUROPEAN EXPANSION
66 PARIS LA CITÉ DE LA LUMIÈRE
76 TSURO: PHOENIX RISING
67 DUNGEONOLOGY:
THE EXPEDITION 77 TERRAMARA
68 BUS 78 HOMEBREWERS
68 COFFEE ROASTER 79 RUN, FIGHT OR DIE: RELOADED
69 ANKH’OR 80 NIBIRU
70 CITIES: SKYLINES 81 SKYTEAR
71 UXMAL 82 A WAR OF WHISPERS
72 ZOMBIE KIDZ: EVOLUTION 83 QUEENZ
73 ZONA: THE SECRETS 84 AGATHA CHRISTIE:
OF CHERNOBYL DEATH ON THE CARDS
S H O U L D Y O U P L AY I T ? M U S T - P L AY | Y E S | P R O B A B LY | M AY B E | N O

February 2020 tabletopgaming.co.uk 61

 P L AY E D
ROAM
Lost in Arzium
yan Laukat is a game designer
R who just wants you to explore.
First, we were invited to go Above
and Below in his colourful and attractive
fantasy world of Arzium, and then Near
and Far, before he tempted us to head
off to Islebound. Now… Well, the clue is
in the title. But despite the expansive,
open-ended promise of Roam, this
latest Laukat doesn’t have the thematic
breadth or depth of any of its Arzium-
building predecessors. In fact, it is his
most compact, and abstract, game yet.
The theme, such as it is, inflicts
a sleeping sickness on the diverse
residents of Arzium (goat-people,
warthog-people, lizard-people, people-
people), who now wander aimlessly
around the land, somnambulantly
62 February 2020
one is claimed, by a player placing the
majority of explore markers on the card,
it is flipped to reveal the character, who
then joins that player’s starting three
characters in the search, adding their
special searching ability to the group
and earning them victory points, which
will be totted up after one player ends
the game by building their team to 10.
Essentially, then, everyone is building
an area-control-primed engine. Each
character card depicts a specific
configuration in which explore markers
can be placed (without being rotated),
turning each turn into a Tetris-esque
puzzle, as you have to figure out the best
placement – taking into account the
other players’ tokens – to both collect
character cards and also pick up coins
off the map (these can be spent to
create more placement opportunities
with certain configurations). It’s not
particularly complicated, and is a
cinch to learn, but it does require a
lot of thought and attention during
play. This makes most games of Roam
surprisingly silent and characterised by
furrowed brows.
To add a little flavour, Laukat offers
the option to include magic artefacts,
which can be bought to gift your team
with bonus powers, such as moving
explore tokens on the map, or rotating
a character’s placement configuration.
Our advice is to include these from
the start, unless you’re playing with
younger children, as they mix things up
in an interesting way.
If you’re looking for another big,
narrative-driven Laukat game, you
40m 2-4 8+ £30 might find Roam’s abstraction a little
odd, perhaps even disappointing. But it
WHAT’S IN performing quaintly strange little tasks, is so rooted in his appealing, picture-
THE BOX?
◗ 43 Land/
Character cards
◗ 12 Starting cards
such as “building a restaurant near a
sulfuric geyser” and “breaking priceless
gems with a hammer.” It is up to the
book fantasy world, it will at least feel
familiar and welcoming, rewarding
his fans by packing its deck with
players to head out into the wilderness, characters from all his other titles. More
◗ 24 Artifact tiles find them, and gently bring them back importantly, its neat mechanisms make
◗ 96 Explore markers
into reality. for an absorbing, thinky and rewarding
(24 in each of
four colours) Each sleepwalker is represented on little experience.
◗ 36 Coin tokens the underside of a card, whose top- DAN JOLIN
◗ 4 Player aid cards side depicts a fragment of landscape
◗ Outpost card overlaid with a two-by-three grid. Six ❚ PLAY IT? Y E S
of these cards are randomly placed As long as you don’t go in expecting
at the centre of the table, forming a another Near and Far, and embrace its
larger six-by-six square grid. When abstraction, Roam is sure to please.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… PATCHWORK
While you’re putting down counters in patterns rather than tiles, Roam has a
similar feel to Uwe Rosenberg’s light, shape-arranging game in the way it makes
you think hard about each placement.
AZUL: SUMMER PAVILION
Diamonds are a tile-layer’s best friend
Designer: Michael Kiesling| Artist: Chris Quilliams
A
zul was Michael Kiesling’s
beautiful, million-selling and
Spiel des Jahres-winning game
of placing tiles to ornament the palace
of Évora, and Azul: Summer Pavilion
is the third part of the trilogy.
Trilogies have an interesting
place in gaming: there aren’t many
successful ones, as hit titles have a
habit of spawning spin-offs until they
outstay their welcome, and one weak
entry in the series can undermind the
reputation of the others. Recently both
Century and the Western Kingdom
games have produced three cracking
games, but perhaps the most respected
is the Masks trilogy (Tikal, Java and
Mexica) from twenty years ago, the first
of which also won the Spiel des Jahres
They were created by the legendary
Wolfgang Kramer and his at-the-time
protégé, a chap called Michael Kiesling.
He’s got form in the area, is what
I’m saying.
Though they’re dressed up with
a theme of decorating Portuguese
palaces with intricate
tile mosaics or stained
glass, the Azul games
are fundamentally
abstracts, and
Summer Pavilion is
no exception. The structure of the game
is largely unchanged: each turn you’re
still selecting a subset of tiles from one
of the factory displays, and then using
them to fill spaces on your board. But
the boards and tiles are what’s changed:
instead of squares within squares we
have interlocking flowery stars or starry
flowers made of diamonds, and it is
gorgeous. You thought the original was
pretty? This leaves it in the dust.
The tiles aren’t individually as nice
but the cumulative effect, and the
tactility of making patterns, combine
in a glorious swirl of delight. Chris
Quilliams’ graphics work remains
some of the finest in the field. And the
new mechanics and systems are just
as attractive and elegant.
Summer Pavilion has six colours
of tiles, against the original’s five, and
over the game’s six rounds they take
turns to be the wild card, letting that
colour stand in for any of the others.
You’re trying to fill as much of the
seven stars on your board: they match
the six tile colours with a seventh
star in the middle, which must be
completed with six different tiles.
The spaces between the stars are
interesting too, because they give
bonuses if you can surround them
30-50m 2-4 8+ £35
– extra tiles of your choice, which can
be extremely valuable. WHAT’S IN
It’s hard to fault any part of the THE BOX?
gameplay. Everything is elegant and fits ◗ 4 Player boards
together, the strategies are intriguing, ◗ 132 tiles in
six colours
the length is perfectly satisfying for
◗ 9 Factory displays
everything to come to an end and yet ◗ Scoring board
you feel the urge to try it again, and the ◗ 5 Wooden markers
physical production is so high that it ◗ Tower
demands to be played with. ◗ Cloth bag
If there is a fault, it’s in the rules ◗ First-player marker
which could be better explained and
laid out. I’ve noticed this problem
with other Plan B games: they have
some urge to fit everything onto a
single (albeit large) sheet of paper, at
the expense of clarity. An eight-page
booklet would have given the text
room to breathe a bit more. But there’s
always Youtube for explanations
on how to play, and if you’ve tried
either of the earlier Azuls then you’ll
recognise much of what’s here.
That isn’t to say it’s the same game
again. Summer Pavilion takes all that
was good about Azul and reworks it
into a greater game: more elegant,
more intelligent, more engaging, a
genuine improvement on a title that’s
already a classic. If you enjoy the
original then I strongly recommend
this, and if you’ve yet to try any of the
series then it’s a fine place to start. TRY THIS IF
JAMES WALLIS YOU LIKED…
SAGRADA
Well, Azul too
❚ PLAY? M U S T - P L A Y obviously, but
More than just a remix, this is
there’s more than
a reinvention of the original’s
a thematic overlap
systems to create a game that’s
between this and
familiar but demands a whole new
the game of making
set of strategies to succeed.
stained-glass
windows from a
selection of dice.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 63
 P L AY E D
REAVERS OF MIDGARD
Welcome back to a broader,
more dangerous Midgard
eavers of Midgard sees Grey Fox
R Games storming back to the
vibrant viking world established
in 2015’s acclaimed Champions of
Midgard. Taking the key elements of
worker placement and dice rolling from
Ole Steiness’ first game, and giving them
a fresh twist, new designer JB Howell has
ramped up the complexity and scope, to
deliver an impressive blockbuster sequel.
As masters of battle scarred longships,
players will traverse both sea and land
seeking fame and riches. Your heroic
crew will come and go as you face off
against both man and beast in brutal sea
battles, and plunder through the various
villages and keeps across the land. There
are territories to subdue and destinies
to fulfil, all whilst building an admirable
haul of pillaged treasure.
Whilst Champions of Midgard sat
comfortably at the lighter end of worker
placement games, alongside titles such
as Lords of Waterdeep and Stone Age,
Reavers elevates itself to somewhere
between mid and heavyweight. Despite
a total of only six action spaces to place
a single worker each turn (two workers
in the two player game), the game still
manages to offer an often overwhelming
level of choice. Add to that elements of set
collection and engine building, Reavers
quickly joins the ranks of other crunchy,
weighty Euros.
64 February 2020
1-2h 2-4 14+ £50
WHAT’S IN This jump in scale is notable in the
THE BOX?
◗ Double sided
game board
◗ 4 Player boards
game’s setting too, with the action
departing from the small harbour town
of Champions to Reavers’ wider, more
dangerous lands. Indeed, there are loftier
◗ 66 Reaver Cards
goals to pursue here on your path to
◗ 62 Village
Spoils Cards glory, exemplified by the game’s generous
◗ 76 Keep Spoils Cards wealth of choices and rewards. This
◗ 24 Sea Journey Cards generosity comes through in the sheer
◗ 45 Sea Battle Cards volume of riches players will receive
◗ 34 Prophecy Cards throughout the game, with each turn
◗ 2 Reference Cards regularly doling out dozens of cards and
◗ Start player marker dice. Whilst overwhelming at first, this
◗ 4 Score trackers abundance quickly leads to a satisfying
◗ Round tracker
and evocative sense of progress.
◗ 8 Longship pawns
◗ 1 Honor Ship token The path to becoming a successful
◗ 15 Farm tokens Reaver plays out largely through the use
◗ 15 Wall tokens of dice and cards acquired through a
◗ 15 Tower tokens neat spin on worker placement. Each
◗ 25 Favor tokens round will see the starting player choose
◗ 40 Food tokens a space on the board with their longboat
◗ 14 Terror tokens meeple, before taking that space’s action
◗ 12 Ship Upgrade tiles and receiving a generous bonus. All
◗ 54 Conquered
other players have the option to take that
Territory tiles
◗ 60 Crew Dice same action, receiving sequentially lesser
◗ 6 Combat Dice bonuses until the next player places their
meeple and the process repeats. It’s a
great mechanism that reduces downtime
and keeps everyone invested.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… CHAMPIONS OF MIDGARD
If you’re looking to venture into the heavier side of Euro games but don’t fancy
swapping your mighty warrior lifestyle for that of a Mediterranean trader, then
Reavers of Midgard is a safe bet.
Action spaces typically dish out cards
used for set collection, monster cards to
fight, and Reaver cards to gain crew dice,
alongside resources and end of round
scoring territory tiles. Reaver cards are
collected in pairs and immediately give
players a specific number of coloured
dice to roll. The results are placed on
personal ship boards, ready to be spent
on future action spaces or combat
resolutions. The multi-use Reaver cards
are then chosen to be either discarded
for more dice, promoted to leaders for
immediate bonuses and dice mitigation
options, or added to players’ ‘engines’
beneath their personal board, making
actions more powerful.
Occasional splashes of theme come
through in the form of Terror. These
negative point scoring tokens are
bestowed upon those feeling dastardly
enough to pillage that little bit extra
from villages. Of course, there’s always
the option to settle for less, but what
aspirational Reaver would succumb to
such timidity? Aside from this, the game’s
mechanics do little to truly justify the
viking theme. Thankfully, the gorgeous
artwork from Yaroslav Radeckyi brings
Midgard to life upon the tabletop.
Reavers of Midgard proudly possesses
that perfect combination of easy to
learn but tough to master. Exciting and
unexpected moments of intense decision
making are regularly thrust upon players.
Clear cut paths to victory are suddenly
thrown off course, encouraging the
pursuit of new ones or the interruption
of an opponent’s. It is this level of
dynamism across the game’s relatively
swift six rounds that sets it apart from
other similar sized but more gently paced
Euros. Pair this with an enticing setting
and a bright aesthetic often missing from
Euro-style games, and you have a recipe
for game-night success.
CHAD WILKINSON
❚ PLAY IT? YES
Reavers of Midgard is a triumphant sequel,
stepping up the complexity and strategic
options whilst still remaining accessible to
casual players. The exciting uncertainty of
how your game-plan might play out, paired
with how the game generously churns out
cards, dice, and options without feeling
bloated is a testament to its careful design.
BABYLONIA
New theme, same Knizia
here aren’t many designers that
T can be recognised by playing
just a couple of rounds of their
game, but Babylonia is unmistakably
a Reiner Knizia’s game from turn
one. Its tile laying, area-control and
pattern recognition mechanics have
been perfected through games of
Samurai, Through the Desert, Tigris
and Euphrates and others, coalescing
in the elegant, if somewhat familiar,
gameplay of Babylonia.
Players are transported into
southern Mesopotamia in the period
of expanding irrigational systems
that brought prosperity in trade and
flourishing of urban life. The game is still
predominantly abstract in nature, but
the Western Asian setting adds its own
distinct flair in ziggurat temple tokens
and the map of Babylonia, impressive in
both size and looks.
Each turn, players will be placing
some of their wooden tokens next to
ziggurats, towns or crop fields, each of
which will help them score victory points
in different ways. Again, in true Reiner
Knizia tradition, playing Babylonia is
easy: chose either noble or peasant
tokens, decide between three types of
locations on the map and then score
if possible. However, succeeding in
1h 2-4 14+ £43
Babylonia will take some finesse: players the Desert? Unfortunately, it has not. Its
will need to be good at recognising
patterns, spotting the most lucrative
spots on the board and take advantage of
mechanics are not the exact replication
of the previous Knizia’s titles with new
stripes, but it satisfies the same game
WHAT’S IN
THE BOX?
◗ Board
ziggurats, which grant special powers to need as previous titles and in much the ◗ 32 Location tiles
those who have control of them. There is same way. Those who love clever area ◗ 9 Ziggurat cards
a certain element of luck as players draw control games and pattern-building ◗ 120 Clan tokens
their tokens blindly from the supply, but will rejoice in what Babylonia has to ◗ 4 Stands
◗ 5 Ziggurats
there is always ample opportunity to offer, but equally, they can play Through
◗ 4 Scoring markers
turn any hand dealt into a move that will the Desert instead and get the same
yield results later in the game. gameplay fulfilment.
Almost everything in Babylonia is Babylonia is a great recommendation
balanced to near perfection. The game for two groups of people: the fans of
flows quickly but gives enough to puzzle this prolific game designer, who will
with, engaging all players completely never tire of his snappy brain-scratchy
each turn. There is plenty of player abstract gameplay and those who
interaction, but it never feels forced never played a Knizia game before.
as they naturally gravitate to compete For newcomers, Babylonia is a perfect
for high-earning spots on the map. board gaming sampler with flavours of
Components are simple, yet effective, challenges, puzzles, luck and strategy
generating a visually impressive mixed together perfectly. It is a high bar
smorgasbord of symbols, colours and for any board game to reach and a rare
token types on the board at the end of designer can boast having several under
the game. The only misstep is the player- their belt.
token stands which are meant to hold – ALEX SONECHKINA
yet never do – the tokens upright, hidden
from opponents.
Yet among all the praise there ❚ PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y
Babylonia will not bring any surprises
lingers a concern: has Babylonia done to players who are familiar with other
enough differently to set itself aside games in the repertoire of Reiner TRY THIS IF
from its distinguished predecessors, Knizia, but for the first-timers, this YOU LIKED…
like Tigris and Euphrates and Through game is a perfect introduction. THROUGH THE
DESERT
Babylonia has
ziggurats and
tiles and Through
the Desert has
candy-like camels
and oases, but in
terms of gameplay
they have a lot in
common. In both
games, players are
puzzling out patterns
to control areas of
the board to score
the most points.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 65
 P L AY E D
5211
ack when I was in the film
B industry my boss had a
saying: “Every movie is
somebody's favourite.” For a long
time I wondered if the same thing
was true of games, then last year I
wrote up a BoardGameGeek entry for
PARIS LA CITÉ
DE LA LUMIÈRE
efore electric lighting the
B streets of the world were either
dark, or lit by a sickly gaslight.
When Paris was shocked into life with
electric lights it became a marvel of
the world, painters flocked to paint
the city in a way that was, before,
more or less impossible.
66 February 2020
a forgotten 90s title, Jan Ken Po, in
which I described it as the worst CCG
and possibly the worst card game
ever published, and various gamers
emerged from crevices to declare that
it was one of their most cherished
possessions.
What I'm saying is two things.
Firstly there is no such thing as
an objectively good or bad game.
Secondly, I'm absolutely sure that
there are people who will go
nuts for 5211, who will find it a
perfect blend of cooperation and
competition, probability balancing
and luck-pushing mechanics. I don't
know who these people are, but they
weren't us.
5211 is a suit-based game where
you score for your face-up cards that
match the most-face-up suit. In other
words, if at the end of a turn there are
more visible yellow cards than any
other colour, you add your own face-
up yellow cards to your score pile and
As such Paris la Cité de la Lumière
is one of the prettiest games we’ve
come across recently. The two-player
game is played in a diminutive box
where you lay out tiles so you can
later lay buildings on your colour,
and more importantly set out the
streetlamps. The buildings are Tetris-
shaped double-depth cards which you
can choose to pick up on your turn
in the first round instead of laying
cobbles. Once collected they’re stored
until the second phase where you lay
out buildings in an attempt to set up
the city to light up your own buildings.
Place a lovely chimney meeple to say
it’s yours, and you’re done. Unless
you’re activating one of the stunning
action postcards around the board.
These give you little bonuses, like
adding in a painter, or an annex to a
building, both of which may help you
20m 2-5 8+ £10
discard the rest – unless there are too
many yellows in total.
There's a trump suit with kododo
lizards on (‘Kododo’ would be a much
better name than the opaque ‘5211’),
and many fiddly rules that depend on
how many players there are.
Mechanically it all works, but we
didn’t find it engaging or fun. That’s blunt
but true. The tactics are rudimentary, and
the restricted number of cards in your
hand often means that your choices feel
obvious or meaningless.
'5211' refers to the play structure:
you start with five cards, and you play
two, then one, then one. If a game has
to remind players of its systems via its
title then it needs a better name or to
be a better game.
Other reviewers have warmed to its
charms, but it left us cold. Still, not as
bad as Jan Ken Po.
JAMES WALLIS
❚ PLAY? M A Y B E
30m 2 8+ £19
score points. An action can only be
used once by one person, so choosing
wisely is important.
Like all games with building,
the most important part is that you
feel good with what you have at the
end. And you do – a little night time
diorama of a city appears between the
two players, and that’s more or less
enough. There is a sense of strategy
in getting the right pieces, and laying
your initial tiles effectively, and a few
games in you’re planning well ahead
to block your counterpart and not be
left with anything that will cost you
points at the end of the game.
A lush, puzzly little game that will
leave you happy you only had one
person round for games night.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
❚ PLAY IT? Y E S
DUNGEONOLOGY: THE EXPEDITION
We built this city on… cardboard tiles
45-105m 2-4 14+ £68

rowdfunding has been a To succeed, you’ll need to gather carefully about when to use them to

C double-edged sword for

gaming. On the one hand, it’s
allowed all kinds of quirky projects
to get off the ground, flooding stores
with an incredible variety of new
releases that might otherwise never
have seen the light of day. On the
other, it’s created a bigger-is-better
culture where publishers cram boxes
full of plastic minis and assorted
components, trying to wow potential
backers with their production values.
Often the results are visually stunning,
but they can be lacking when it comes
to actual gameplay.
Dungeonology: The Expedition
raised more than €500,000 (£425,000)
on Kickstarter in 2019, and like so
many crowdfunding successes, it looks
phenomenal. Its art has the look of a big-
budget animated movie. It comes with
gorgeously detailed and characterful
plastic miniatures, as well as an
assortment of deluxe-looking double-
layered boards and clip-on dials.
It also boasts a pretty original
premise. Despite the “dungeon” in its
title, it isn’t yet another bog-standard
fantasy dungeon crawler. Instead,
you and your opponents become
scholars competing for a position on
the faculty of a prestigious university.
information on creatures living in
a sprawling dungeon, publishing
a thesis that establishes you as the
leading authority on the various
monster clans. It’s a little more
original than kicking down doors and
skewering goblins.
Each player takes on the role
of a scholar, each of whom comes
with their own set of stats, strengths
and abilities. Over the course of
the game you’ll delve into the
dungeon in search of information
cubes – snippets of data which you
can include in your eventual thesis.
To find these you’ll hunt through
an environment which expands
as you explore it, laying down new
location tiles from a randomly
shuffled stack. Different locations
come with different opportunities or
dangers, from random ambushes to
opportunities to grab some rest and
recover your strength.
You’ll also be able to play all sorts of
underhand tricks on your opponents,
stealing their research, impeding their
progress or simply knocking them over
the head by discarding trick cards. But
as these can also be used to increase
your chances of finding information
in various zones, you’ll need to think
advance your own position, and when
to hurt another player. And because
this is a game about academia, the
resources you spend to activate cards
are… graduate students.
They’re all entertaining enough ideas,
but the problem with Dungeonology is
that its ambitious physical presentation
isn’t accompanied by a more restrained WHAT’S IN
mechanical design. The rulebook’s THE BOX?
“brief introduction” is three pages ◗ 4 Scholar Models
long. There are stats and symbols ◗ 1 Boss Model
and sidebars as far as the eye can see. ◗ 4 Note Boards
◗ 19 Zones
There’s also a catch-up mechanism
◗ 64 Information
where one player taking the lead Cubes
results in everyone else gaining new ◗ 105 Trick Cards
powers, which seems like a very blunt ◗ 1 Campus Board
instrument with no real thematic ◗ 45 Student Models
justification. It’s a chore to learn and ◗ 1 University Bag
to teach, and while it’s undoubtedly ◗ 1 Boss Card
beautiful, it doesn’t justify the ◗ 10 Intern Cards
investment of time, effort and the best ◗ 15 Jinx Cards
◗ 16 Randomizer
part of 70 quid.
Cards
OWEN DUFFY ◗ 3 Clan Cards
◗ 3 Alert Cards
❚ PLAY IT? N O ◗ 3 Panic Cards
Dungeonology: The Expedition is a
◗ Token set
beautifully produced game, and if
you crave plastic minis then it might
tempt you. But its rulebook is a real
slog, and the payoff when you finally
get it to the table just isn’t worth
the laborious learning process.

TRY THIS IF
YOU LIKED…
DESCENT
For big dungeon-
crawling fun,
Descent does
the job that
Dungeonology
hoped to.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 67
 P L AY E D
BUS
o most gamers the name
T Splotter Spellen may mean
nothing. It’s a boutique
games company from the
Netherlands, with a reputation
for brain-burning games, 22
years of history and 25 published
titles, many of them long out of
COFFEE ROASTER
olo games are a little bit strange
S for those of us who play games
to be social. Remove the
element of competition, and you just
have your own personal success and
failure, with no one else’s agency to
have butted up against. But this is
about coffee, and if you’re like me
you’ll have a dependency on it. Coffee
Roaster has been around for a while,
but difficult to get hold of outside of
Asia. This rich, less cartoony redesign
is a happier fit alongside serious
looking Euro boxes.
The game itself is a bag builder.
Add the recipe from the cards, which
come with historical flavour text,
and then draw and roast the bean
tokens to your preference. You return
these to the bag and decide if you’re
going to roast again, turning up the
heat and increasing your chances of
adding smoke to the bag or burning
68 February 2020
print. But it’s also responsible for
Food Chain Magnate, currently
the 27th-highest rated game on
BoardGameGeek, and that’s
brought a bunch of new fans to
their table.
Bus is one of those earlier Splotter
titles. Originally from 1999, this is a
20th-anniversary release, with new
graphics (thankfully – Splotter games
are notorious for their idiosyncratic
art) but unchanged rules.
It’s a game about building and
running rival bus companies in
a rapidly expanding town whose
population rotate between their
homes, their offices and the
numerous pubs. Also there’s a time
machine which can pause that cycle
but if overused will blow up and end
the game. Oh yes.
The game itself is sort-of worker
placement, as you build up your
routes in a sort-of Catan-like way
but with more double-deckers. Each
player only gets twenty actions in
the beans. Once you feel the beans
are in your favour you begin drawing
them one by one to place into the
cup, hoping to score the right roasting
level to match the score sheet for the
particular coffee and including the
other flavour notes.
Getting it right feels good, although
it does feel like busywork to be
upgrading each of the beans one point
2h 3-5 12+ £85
the whole game, and you only score
points by actually transporting
passengers on your buses, and that
sounds like it should be a recipe for
a few minutes of untaxing fun. The
map’s not complex. There are very
few rules exceptions. How hard can
this be?
You read the rules, and almost
every paragraph has something to
make you go, ‘Oh that’s clever – a
little fiddly, but clever.’ And then you
get the required three to five players
round a table and start, and in a
couple of turns your brain is on fire,
and will stay that way for a couple of
hours. This is a game that takes no
prisoners. It demands concentration,
and rewards it.
It’s not for everyone, particularly
not at that price, but if brain-burners
are your thing then Bus will take you
where you want to go.
JAMES WALLIS
❚ PLAY? P R O B A B L Y
10-30m 1 12+ £25
for each roast. This is aided by the
extremely useful labelled tray in the
box. Everything about the production
is rich and well thought out, and the
rules are clear and well written – an
important fact as you’ll be the only
one reading them.
The cards offering your goal and
some historical text are interesting,
even if they do avoid any mention
of colonialism, replacing it instead
with euphemistic references
to Europeans turning up for
‘economic’ reasons. It seems a
little disingenuous in a game
which does try and give context in
all other aspects of the text. It’s a
bitter taste, but if you can get used
to it the game is a good way to perk
yourself up.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
❚ PLAY IT? M A Y B E
ANKH’OR
Life is bazaar
leasing two-player games
P that feel as if they have been
actually designed for two
people are rare and valuable gems.
It can often feel like many games are
aimed at larger groups (or rather,
foursomes, truth be told) and when
they are played with less it feels a bit
too roomy on the board, too plentiful
in resources, and too much like a
reminder that it’s really hard to get
friends together these days isn’t it?
Thankfully, Sébastien Pauchon, the
creator of market-trading hit Jaipur, is
here (with two friends, ironically) to
give us twosomes something to spend
our tabletop time doing. Ankh’or is
a similar market game to Jaipur in
that you’re making trades with an
automatic market, providing speedy,
quick play across or around the table.
The lovely, replayable, smart thing
here is the use of the price markers.
There is a central fold-out board
with small holes for price tokens to
randomly be slotted into. What this
does is randomize the market each
game, making every time you play
feel different. This might sound minor
but it’s a central pleasure of the game.
In one game you might need to pay
two charcoal for something, whereas
in others you may only need one,
but with something else – making
charcoal a safer bet to pick up from
the resources pile.
Picking up from the resource pile
is a tough choice in itself. You can
only hold three resources in your
hand at the end of your turn, and the
most expensive item will take three
tokens as outlined in the wonderfully
readable marketplace.
But what are we buying from the
market? Being set in some kind of
genericised ancient Egypt, then
it’s usually a scarab, some kind of
dog statue, a bird statue, a scribe
(who gives you a bonus turn) or, er,
a desert. Really it doesn’t matter
though. They’re all lovely looking
and once you have one, you play it in
front of you. Add more to it, matching
colours and types for points at the
end. Interestingly you can stack
another tile on top where four tiles
meet, meaning the puzzle of points
in front of you becomes a little 3D.
In that, there’s a matching game
that feel reminiscent of smartphone
games without the feeling of losing
your mind.
The titular ankh tokens are used
to take control of the board. This
refreshes the market and removes the
first item, shuffling everything down
30m 2-4 10+ £18
and dealing new items in. This means
you can ruin your opponent’s plans
to buy a certain item with the tokens
they’re holding, and move items you
want to cheaper slots. As a game of
timing and matching, this taking
control is a simple mechanism that
brings a great depth to the game.
Between two players the game
offers a really nice back and forth,
and the speed of the games at 30
minutes (although, it can be a lot WHAT’S IN
quicker when you’re in a flow) makes
THE BOX
◗ Price Board
for games with swings that can then ◗ 15 Price markers
be forgotten about in the next board ◗ 36 Tokens
set up. This lightness makes it perfect ◗ 12 Bonus tokens
for a quiet night in, and it will be, ◗ 55 Tiles
with the slightly ‘thinky’ elements
of the games’ strategy sometimes
reducing chatter.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
❚ PLAY IT? Y E S
Ankh’or is an almost perfect two-
player game, only slightly diminished
by the fact that the game can be a
little quiet across the table. But then,
maybe that’s what makes it great
for company you can be quiet in.
TRY THIS IF
YOU LIKED...
JAIPUR
The wildly popular
market trading
board game has a
new companion on
your shelf.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 69
 P L AY E D
CITIES: SKYLINES
We built this city on… cardboard tiles
ity building is one of gaming’s great
C recurring themes. From Suburbia
to Between Two Cities and
Warsaw: City of Ruins, there are plenty of
opportunities to throw on a hard hat and
create your ideal urban environment.
That goes for video games, too. The
iconic SimCity series has kept generations
of players up into the early hours
tweaking tax rates and planning power
grids. And more recently, contender
Cities: Skylines has emerged as the top
civic administration simulator. Now it’s
made the jump to the tabletop, with a
cardboard conversion which charges you
and your friends with building the city of
your dreams, or woefully mismanaging
it into an overcrowded, polluted, crime-
ridden hellscape.
Unlike most city-building games,
which see players competing against one
another, Cities: Skylines puts everyone
on the same team, working together to
grow a tiny settlement into a thriving
metropolis. Your efforts unfold on a
modular board representing the land
your city is being built on. As you play
you’ll uncover more ground to develop,
flipping over new segments to reveal
areas to expand into.
With each passing turn, you and
your teammates fill the board with
tiles representing an array of different
buildings, each of which comes with
70 February 2020
advantages and drawbacks. Industrial
zones reward you with cash, but they
also generate pollution. Commercial
zones create jobs, but they also increase
the crime rate, presumably as bankers
furiously channel cash to dodgy accounts
in the Cayman Islands. Attractive homes
bring new residents flocking to your
WHAT’S IN city, but unless you have enough job
THE BOX? opportunities for the new arrivals, they’ll
◗ 6 Game board pieces reduce your population’s happiness as
◗ 85 Zone and they trudge dejectedly to the Job Centre.
building tiles It means that Cities: Skylines is
◗ 75 Construction cards essentially a balancing act. The things
◗ 10 Unique that generate money cause problems,
building cards
and the things that fix problems cost
◗ 10 Role cards
◗ 10 Policy cards money. There’s also a Tetris-like element,
◗ 10 News cards with players trying to slot differently
◗ 5 Rules overview cards shaped building tiles into various
◗ 26 Money tokens districts as efficiently as possible. But
◗ Skyscraper other elements are less fun.
score tracker The biggest problem is the card-
◗ Administration
board and markers
based system determining the buildings
available to you at any given point. While
◗ First player token
there are ways to manage the cards
in your hand, there are times when
you’ll desperately need certain types of
buildings to deal with specific issues, only
to be scuppered when the deck refuses
to spit them out. It results in turns where
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… SUBURBIA
Citites: Skylines is another tile-laying urban management puzzle. But it puts a
cooperative spin on the much-loved theme.
45-75m 1-4 10+ £35
you’ll play cards not because they help
you, but because you want to get rid
of them in the hope of drawing a more
useful replacement.
It leaves a sour taste in what’s
otherwise an engaging enough puzzle,
and while it doesn’t affect every game,
it feels unfair to see your city fall into
bankruptcy because you just couldn’t
play the cash-generating cards you
needed. Some of the game’s tiles are also
pretty similarly coloured, and even if you
have perfect vision is can be confusing
trying to distinguish light blue and grey
from dark blue and grey.
It means that while it has some
gleaming skyscrapers and well-kept leafy
avenues, this city also has a few run-down
neighbourhoods you’d prefer to avoid.
OWEN DUFFY
❚ PLAY IT? M A Y B E
It’s odd that we don’t have more co-op
city-building games, and Cities: Skylines
has a real feeling of collaboration. Its
Tetris-like spatial puzzle combines with
some tough resource management in
ways that take some careful thought.
But its reliance on randomly drawn
cards can become very frustrating.
UXMAL
Step on up
25m 2-4 10+ £35

uilding future UNESCO world the art; it’s beautifully put together, down the track and taking their points

B heritage sites on your tabletop

is usually good fun. After all,
Carcassone is a gateway game of
choice for many, and there’s nothing
quite like imagining what the ruins
once looked like. In this case we’re
putting together Uxmal, the ancient
Mayan city with the famous stepped
pyramids, on which popular culture
likes to at least imagine the ancient
Mayans did a bit of sacrificing.
In this game we’re going to build
the pyramid and score points. We’re
literally building it too. Once you get
the package open you realise that this
is an integrated box-and-board game.
The box works as your foundations
and, once you start the game, you
begin placing raised plastic tiles with
little feet into various corresponding
holes to slowly begin the construction
of the pyramid. It is, sadly, a little
underwhelming when it comes to
the scale on offer. You’re not so much
creating a huge and towering pyramid
as you are building a kind of double
curb – the kind you might accidently
scratch your car door on. This isn’t to
say that there’s anything wrong with
clear and readable, but it’s asking
quite a lot to only give us three steps
for a pyramid that has one for every
day of the year and hope that we’ll be
satisfied with its scale.
Adding these tiles to the
foundations gets you cards relating
to the idols, on the idol track. Their
positioning on this track (one to five)
shows how many points will be gained
at the end of the round for having a
priest on those spaces on the pyramid,
and leftover cards in your hand. You
can keep these for the points, spend
them on your turn to move an idol
up and down the track, relegating
friends, or improving your end score.
That score is dictated by where you
place your priest meeples on the
steps. Hedge your bets by spreading
out your priests, or attempt to flip the
idol track at the end of the round for a
last-minute swing.
Sadly, all of this feels a bit pointless.
Attempts to change the board state
can be quickly countered, and often
simply collecting the most tiles will
win you the game. There is some
fun in moving your opponents' idols
away from them, but as they’re likely
to change the state back to the way
they like it – and everyone is likely to
WHAT’S IN
THE BOX
◗ Game board
be pulling in a similar direction – it
◗ Score board
can feel like there’s little point in
◗ 29 Pyramid tiles
making these plays. There’s a rule ◗ 16 Priest meeples
that arbitrarily removes some idols ◗ 45 Idol cards
from the track for the last set of four ◗ 5 Idol tiles
tiles, which is fine, but as this round ◗ 4 Player aids
is so short, there’s really no sense of
competition. There’s only a minor
note of anxiety in the closing down of TRY THIS IF
space available, which is soon popped YOU LIKED...
and removed from your concern as QUADROPOLIS
you solve the last part of the board in If you’re looking for
your head. a game with laying
All of this combines to be a fairly tiles and adjacency
scoring, then this
dull game with some really pretty art
city builder might be
on the box. It’s a game you want to a better bet than
love, but it really doesn’t step up to mucking about with
what its theme promises. the Mayans.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
❚ PLAY IT? N O
Despite the great theme and what
should be a really good idea of building
up the steps of a pyramid, the actual
gameplay lets itself down by feeling
like it has no weight to it at all.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 71
 P L AY E D
ZOMBIE KIDZ: EVOLUTION
The kidz are alright
irst released in 2013, Zombie
F Kidz has been around in some
form for a little while. This
version, Zombie Kidz Evolution is an
attempt to bring legacy style gameplay
to the seven-and-up bracket – and all
in 15 minutes of gameplay.
For those unfamiliar, the game
is about a group of Nickelodeonish
72 February 2020
15m 2-4 7+ £20
looking cartoon children attempting
WHAT’S IN
THE BOX
◗ Double-sided
game board
◗ Zombie dice
to secure their school from the
onslaught of the living dead. Why
do the zombies want to get into the
school? Brains, of course. These
◗ 4 Hero tokens shuffling zombies spawn into each
◗ 8 Plastic standees room after the roll of the die which
◗ 13 Sealed Evolution
contains one, merciful, blank side.
envelopes
◗ Rulebook/passport Conflict is resolved by simply being
in the room with a zombie – although
you can’t clear and move. Once
you’ve cleared zombies from the outer
gates, you can put a lock on it, which
will stop the advancement of the
vitality-disadvantaged. Lock down all
four before you run out of zombies in
the supply and you’ve won. Run out of
zombies and you lose.
Simple stuff then, with a lot of good
lessons about teamwork. The legacy
element comes in with an ingenious
‘passport’ that the owner of the game
should be carefully filling in as they
play. They’re incentivized to do this by
the missions, which include playing
at different group numbers, or with
rules modifications – and even more
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED... HORRIFIED
When it comes to family based area and monster management games,
Horrified feels like the next natural step on from Zombie Kidz: Evolution –
although without the legacy element.
importantly a brain sticker to the back
of the passport. When enough games
have been played a new envelope can
be opened which contains… more
stickers. They’re not just any kind
of sticker though: they slot into the
passport-cum-rulebook and provide
modifications to the way the game
is played. This can be in the form of
new powers for heroes, and rules like
rolling multiple times on your turn,
causing more zombies to appear.
The videogame-style ‘achievements’
system is the beating heart of the
experience. It’s hard to argue that
opening a secret package is anything
other than a direct pleasure, its one
of the things that people cite as a joy
Gloomhaven, and it’s equally as valid
here, even if there’s a lot less plastic.
Later envelopes contain some really
wild modifications, and in four player
games, by the end, you’ll all have to
work really hard to keep the zombies
completely under control. And that
is to say, the game is in no way easy.
While the age bracket and simple
rules are easy to grasp, it requires fully
integrating all of the rules and powers
you’ve unlocked into your playstyle.
This leads us to the main criticism,
which is that the central dice rolling
mechanic can feel a bit unfair to some
players, and leave them a bit cold when
they roll the game into an unwinnable
scenario. It’s usually a lack of caution
which leads to these situations, but it
doesn’t necessarily feel like that.
For the most part though, the game
is one about solving the board together.
It can feel great to look at a board that
you think you’re about to lose the
game to, before another player smartly
clicks together all the mechanics in
their head and explains exactly what
you have to do to survive. While not
complex, the fun of opening the secret
envelopes makes for a hugely engaging
and replayable game.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
❚ PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y
A light legacy game for kids that,
just like in a real zombie apocalypse,
requires everyone around the table
to work together to survive.
ZONA: THE SECRETS OF CHERNOBYL
Slow and steady gets the secret
Designer: Maciej Drewing, Krzysztof Głośnicki| Artist: Wojciech Bajor, Tomek Zarucki
T
here has been a certain
resurgence in public interest in
the Chernobyl Nuclear Power
Plant disaster of 1986, possibly due
to the popularity of HBO mini-series
based on the events. However, instead
of joining the ranks of well-irradiated
Chernobyl tourists, may I recommend
a less radiation-filled way to satisfy
your curiosity? For example, playing
ZONA: The Secrets of Chernobyl the
board game. ZONA is more focused
on recapturing the feeling of the post-
apocalyptic wasteland, rather than
being factually accurate, but at least
playing the board game won’t kill you,
although it might your characters.
Players take on a role of scavengers
– tourists, soldiers, scientists and
even a setting appropriate, if not a tad
stereotypical, round-bellied drunkard
– exploring the area surrounding the
nuclear power plant and attempting
to uncover its secrets. The first player
to collect two secrets must make
their way to the sarcophagus – a huge
concrete structure enclosing the
exposed reactor – to complete one last
challenge and win the game.
This, of course, is easier said
than done. As to be expected with a
post-apocalyptic setting, every step
of the way something is attempting
to attack or throttle the scavengers’
plans. Mutants and anomalies spawn
around the map and even crossing
from one area to another can deal
damage to the characters.
The most interesting part of
ZONA is its event cards. Each one of
them carries several self-contained
scenarios that will offer a test or a
moral choice, as well as help to build
on the setting and ground players
within this world. The events will
vary depending on the locations of
the characters, with some scenarios
related to very specific zones on
the map and even character’s
reputations. Reading the event
cards is the biggest joy of the game,
as you feel fully submerged in the
world of the game and are eager to
find out more about its grim origin,
even if you end up fighting a vicious
kikimora as the result.
Almost everything within the
game – whether a fight or an event – is
2-3h 1-4 8+ £60
resolved through a dice test, where WHAT’S IN
players take the base stats of their THE BOX?
character (for the particular skills ◗ Board
that is being tested), roll three dice ◗ Voice of Zona token
and add both together to see if they ◗ 3 dice
◗ 40 Secret location
have passed or failed. Items can be
event cards
used to manipulate the results and ◗ Ten character
it is usually a good idea to be fully miniatures
equipped before going into the most ◗ Ten character boards
dangerous areas. ◗ 40 Character
Throughout ZONA, players will be starting items
rolling dice a lot, in fact, all the time, ◗ 4 Backpack boards
to the point it becomes exhausting. ◗ 40 Rouble tokens
This wouldn’t be so taxing if the ◗ 60 damage tokens
◗ 20 emission cards
pace of the game was much swifter.
◗ 21 rumour cards
Every location takes a while to get to, ◗ Token tray
impeded by penalties for crossing ◗ Emission marker
certain borders, anomalies and ◗ Eight lock tokens
mutants needing to be cleared and ◗ 12 Weakness tokens
areas being outright blocked before ◗ 4 Reputation tokens
they can be interacted with. With ◗ 4 fatigue dials
so many things slowing players ◗ 56 threat tokens
down, the designers, bewilderingly, ◗ Market place board
◗ 126 items cards
added another mechanic – massive
irradiation that triggers around
every 4 rounds – that make players
backtrack and hide in bunkers to
avoid masses of damage. Having
spent several rounds frantically dice
rolling to clear a path and having
achieved very little as the result, it
is hard not to get discouraged. It is
not that the tasks are hard to do, but
the amount of time that takes to do
them that drains the will to keep
TRY THIS IF
YOU LIKED…
going, which might be thematically ELDRITCH
appropriate, but as a gameplay HORROR
experience is not very entertaining. ZONA: The Secrets of
The slow crossing of ZONA’s Chernobyl contains
expansive map gives a good a lot of horrors, even
impression of what it would be like to without the presence
traverse the waste land. But among of Cthulhu, however
this slow trudge, there are interludes its scavengers have
less imaginative ways
of levity through narratives that
to deal with them
build on the world, even if the stories than Lovecraftian
themselves are grim. investigators.
ALEX SONECHKINA
❚ PLAY IT? M A Y B E
ZONA: The Secrets of Chernobyl is a
better experience than it is a board
game. It offers really intriguing, at
times, outlandish fantastical narratives,
but is hindered by its bad pacing.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 73
 P L AY E D
GENESYS: EXPANDED
PLAYERS’ GUIDE
More More More!
big part of the appeal of
A setting-free RPGs lies in their
flexibility, and while Genesys
has always had a solid base of options
to play around with, the Expanded
Players’ Guide doubles down on
the scope of games in almost every
direction imaginable.
Where previous supplements for the
generic RPG have focussed on specific
worlds or genres, such as cyberpunk
and swords n’ sorcery fantasy, this latest
book proudly embraces its amorphous
heritage. The result isn’t instantly exciting
in the way a more focussed product might
be, but within its modest page count
you’ll find dozens of little ways to spice up
adventures and build new worlds.
For example, when you’re just
skimming through the rules a lengthy
section on how to brew up vehicles may
seem a little dry and plodding. However,
as you flick through the examples it’s
hard not to be struck by the wealth of
possibilities it brings.
With just a little bit of work you can use
the systems to drum up an anime-inspired
mecha campaign where heroic pilots
batter monstrous foes with giant robots.
If you’re feeling a little less fantastical you
could just as easily conjure up tanks and
zeppelins for WW1-era pulp heroics.
Honestly, if you wanted to you could
easily just skip over the details for making
74 February 2020
112 13+ £28
vehicles on your own and simply fiddle
about with the 30-ish sample creations
listed in the book. They span everything
from war chariots to interstellar cruisers,
so there’s a good chance that something
close to whatever weird airship you feel
like grabbing in in there somewhere.
The same could probably be said of
the section on building NPCs for players
to battle and buddy up with, which focus
less on creating creatures from scratch
and more on tossing something together
from templates. Again, very few of the
entries are exciting on their own, but
though sticking the ‘mage’ skill package
onto a ‘smart person’ base doesn’t sound
exciting it’s a lightning fast way to brew up
an adversary for your party.
Of course, the GMs aren’t the only one
to get new goodies to play with in the
Expanded Players’ Guide – which isn’t
too surprising considering the name.
These include some expanded rules
for spellcasting and options for social
combat, but most of the exciting new
stuff is tied to the handful of new settings
sketched out in the book.
These include rules for playing around
in a Fallout-esque post-apocalypse and
a mythical age of heroism, complete
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… GENESYS
It’s not the most inspired choice, but if you are a big fan of the base game there
are few better ways to expand your options.
with options for demigods as player
characters, but perhaps the most
intriguing of the trio is the so-called
“Monster World.”
This slightly hand-waved name stands
in for creating worlds of gothic and
pulp horror – think Dracula through to
Underworld. The ideas it throws about
aren’t just a great source of dumb fun,
but also offer a slightly darker, more
dangerous approach to the game.
Within just a dozen pages the
Expanded Players’ Guide offers up ideas
for a truly exciting campaign that would
have been tricky to cobble together
without the new options and items it
brings to the table. There’s still plenty of
flexibility, but it makes it incredibly easy
to toss together a game about stalking
the streets of Victorian London in search
of werewolves, or raiding the lightning-
warped castles of mad scientists.
Of course, none of this is particularly
original stuff, and perhaps the book’s
greatest weakness lies in the fact that
it doesn’t really offer much that you
couldn’t already hack together with a bit
of time and effort. There are rules in the
corebook for bodging together monsters
and none of the settings are beyond the
imagination of a dedicated homebrewer.
However, it would be foolish to ignore
the amount of time and effort you can
save by simply letting the designers do the
work for you – and probably in a slightly
cleaner fashion than most of us would
manage at home.
Ultimately, perhaps the greatest
recommendation for the Expanded
Players’ Guide lies in the simple fact that
it inspired me to start filling up notebooks
with ideas for a half-dozen different
campaigns. It’s debatable whether any
of them will get off the ground, but that
is both the blessing and the curse of a
system as wonderful flexible as Genesys.
If you already own the corebook
and feel like growing your game, the
Expanded Players’ Guide should be an
easy purchase.
RICHARD JANSENPARKES
❚ PLAY IT? Y E S
More ideas, more rules, more fuel for
your imagination. Everything you want
from an (admittedly generic) expansion.
THE AQUICORN COVE
BOARD GAME 30-60m 2-4 10+ £34

atie O’Neill’s insatiably charming constructed because this isn’t what The

K graphic novels first transitioned

to the tabletop world as the
family-friendly deck-builder, The Tea
Dragon Society Card Game. The second
venture inspired by her works, The
Aquicorn Cove Board Game focuses on
the same audience and keeps Katie’s
signature the too-adorable-to-handle
art style, but digs much deeper, both in
gameplay and its theme.
In this co-operative board game,
players take the role of one of the
characters from the graphic novel as they
build a small fishing village next to a cove
of Aquicorns, benevolent reef guardians.
The game is split into phases, during
which players fish, plant crops, feed the
village, build and generate income. Each
round can be aided by the Aquicorns
or hindered by the weather conditions,
especially during the winter season!
There is no victory-point-pat on the
back from feeding the whole village
or bonuses for the most buildings
Aquicorn Cove Board Game is about. In
fact, there is no ‘winning the game ’in the
traditional sense. The main focus of the
game is on the delicate balance between
the growing industry of the village and the
natural world around it.
If players catch two of the same
kinds of fish it leads to overfishing. This
decreases the variety of fish, making it
easier to overfish and harder to feed the
village in the future rounds. Performing
certain tasks will cause pollution to the
cove, which, if uncleaned, will once again
make it harder to sustain the village in
the future.
This gently presented cycle teaches
in a simple, yet incredibly effective and
entertaining way, that nature’s resources
should not be taken for granted – we rely their impact on the environment and
on its resources to survive and prosper, maintaining the balance, resulting in
but we can’t keep taking and never prosperity for the village and in nature.
giving back as it will only lead to our own ALEX SONECHKINA
demise. Players succeed in The Aquicorn
Cove Board Game by understanding ❚ PLAY IT? Y E S

TRIAL OF THE TEMPLES 30-60m 2-4 14+ £32

he art in Trial of the Temples But quite the opposite is true, even can’t be placed, sudoku style, in rows

T puts you in mind of a generic

MMO, a mishmash of
mythology and sci-fi that amounts
if the direction it goes in is around in
circles. The game is played on a circular
board with randomly placed tiles
to “pyramids, but more space”. Some around the edge. A number of these are
may like this, but for me it was a flipped to day or night side, depending
warning that the contents might also on the round tile drawn. You then place
be a little directionless. your arch-mage to claim what is on the
tile, and to the left and right of you until
you meet another barrier or player.
This is the essence of the game
then; slicing the pie of resources in a
way that allows you to take everything
you need to make moves around
the inner tracks. These each ask for
a cost to move onto them, although
you can skip ahead if someone is on
the tile ahead of you. While all this is
happening, you’re building up a spell
board of extra powers, giving you an
engine of bonuses in resources. Your
mana here also allows you to carry out
some other generative actions. Get
three or four spells in a row (but they
with the same colour) and you get
some bonus points at the end. Oh, and
you have to spend an action point to
initiate a move on the board. It sounds
bonkers, but it flows effortlessly.
This makes for a surprising set of
choices for players – do you want to
greedily go for everything you can,
and hope other players don’t block the
vital resource, or will you slice it close
to a barrier so as to secure that item,
making it not worth another player
placing between? Can you risk moving
ahead of your opponent if they’re then
able to leapfrog you to victory?
For a light resource management
game, there’s a lot of back and forth
over the table. It’s worth an afternoon
even if the styling of the game might
leave you cold.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
❚ PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y

tabletopgaming.co.uk 75
 P L AY E D

WINGSPAN EUROPEAN
EXPANSION
40-70m 1-5 10+ £24

ingspan was arguably the more predators in the deck and

W game of 2019, and as such,

any addition to it deserves
scrutiny. We should be worried if
it plans to add new game modes or
similarly habitat-forming changes.
In this case, there’s nothing to worry
about. The Wingspan European
Expansion is more of the same, in the
best possible way.
With a host of new birds from
Europe, we gain some new powers
that can trigger at the end of the
turn, and a lot more conflict. While
Wingspan was one of the more
interactiony engine building games
out there, this expansion offers you
more opportunity to steal from your
competition and make plays on your
opponent’s turn. This is interesting as
the North American birds have a lot
this expansion brings the average
size of the birds down, meaning
there’s more snacks for the
predatory cards.
We played initially with two
decks, allowing us to draw from
either continental plate. After,
with a shuffled deck, which is the
correct way to do it, the game felt
just that little bit closer to home,
without unbalancing the game. It’s
a treat to have a local bird turn up
during play – even if it’s weird for birds those of us living on this side of the
who would never meet to interact. Atlantic there is the joy of seeing birds
Although, of course, the interactions from your back garden on the board.
themselves do feel correct. And it’s beautiful – but we didn’t
The fundamental question then is, need to tell you that.
is this an important expansion for the CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
game? Ultimately, we have to say no.
But it’s valuable in its own right. For ❚ PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y

TSURO: PHOENIX RISING

20-60m 2-8 8+ £39

he timeless gameplay of snakes avoiding collision with other players’ For example, needing to move the

T and ladders could only have

been improved by the addition
of dragons, making Tsuro a modern
classic in its own right. The second
standalone expansion of the game,
Tsuro: Phoenix Rises aims to uplift
the gameplay even further, by adding
more depth and strategy into the
familiar tile-laying, route building
gameplay
In Phoenix Rises, players are
not only following the snaking
paths from one tile to another,
phoenixes and perilous dives off the
edge of the board. They can also pick
up and rotate tiles creating their own
paths, that hopefully pass through
lanterns that in turn generate stars
that players need to collect in order to
win the game. Why are stars hidden
in lanterns and what does any of it
have to do with phoenixes? There
is an explanation as convoluted as
it is unnecessary, but at least the
components are pretty.
As the flipping and rotating of tiles
takes centre stage in Phoenix Rising,
Rising
the game adds a moulded
board which acts as a
foundation for the
tiles, making them
easier pickup and
manipulate. Yet the
act of picking up
a tile from a grid
and putting it
back in place
is still wrought
with plenty of
clumsiness.
opponent’s phoenix, if it is on that
tile, and having to remember its
exact position to place it back, even
though its original path has now
been changed.
The ability to rotate tiles has
added a delicious brain-scratchy
element to the Tsuro’s gameplay. A
masterfully matched path, with the
assistance of a fair bit of luck can take
a phoenix on the route around most
of the board, collecting several stars
in a move that feels satisfying, if not
entirely earned.
There is something beautiful in
the minimalist simplicity of Tsuro’s
gameplay. Unfortunately, Phoenix
Rising does not make a very good
case for making this gameplay more
complex. The fiddly additions – in
both rules and components – needed
to support this deeper gameplay take
away from its elegance, adding more
frustration than a challenge.
ALEX SONECHKINA
❚ PLAY IT? M A Y B E

76 February 2020
 We talk
TERRAMARA to Flaminia
Brasini and
Bronze place, but not third rate Virginio Gigli of
Acchittocca on
2h 2-4 12+ £49
page 44

ou don’t get much more randomized each game, with multiple although looking after two caravans

Y Eurogame than this. One huge

board, which is variable and
flips at the end of each turn. Three
different tracks to manage, which
all allow you different access points
along the way. A way to do some
light engine building in your own
personal village. Four different kinds
of meeples, and then some other
ones you can hire for a bit. And all of
this? In service of victory points, of
course. One in our group described
it as playing a gateway game like
Carcassonne with all of the expansions
from the start.
And yet… it was great. Not one of
us, even those of us who had made
the above comments, finished the
game without thinking of exactly
what they’d like to do next time. This
is Terramara, a game about being a
bronze age chieftain along the river
Po who gets to be the boss of everyone
if they get the most victory points. Or
something; it really doesn’t matter
once you’re into it. There are three
tracks: culture (giving you a range of
artifacts you can buy), trade (which
gives immediate benefits), and
military (lets you bully people into
using their space). All of these are
races, but each allows you to place
your workers on the main board
in particular places. Your worker
placement options will be somewhat
tiles that can be slotted into the
windowpane of 12 letterboxed shapes.
Time passes with each turn, with
tiles flipping for the level you’re on
and everyone gets their workers back
from that tile. This make commitment
to a better reward or effect from a
further land a tricky choice. Do you
want to commit heavily now for a
number of resources or additional
movement on track in exchange for
not getting your explorer back until
a later turn, or never? It creates an
interesting and uncomfortable set of
choices to make, as the benefits might
be good for the short term but give
you less manpower going forward.
This commitment risk also speeds
up play, meaning there is a sense
of momentum as turns become
shorter with players throwing more of
their workforce into higher yielding
locations. Because only two explorers
can be at any location – and not of
mixed type unless you have greater
military strength – it’s important to
either secure the furthest lands or be
prepared for war. And this is where
we get into some of the weaknesses
of the game. The military track can
seem low value as it’s the only one
which is spent when used for actions
like raiding or muscling in on other’s
territory. The other tracks yield points
and can be managed more directly,
which affect where you can place on
later boards can see players annoyed
with their initial urges to race ahead.
These caravans allow you to activate
other victory conditions such as the
numer of cards collected of a certain
type, or placement on the river. For
some this is a fun way to unlock more
ways to win the game as you play, for
others, it’s all a bit arbitrary. It is a
complex game, and while the rules are WHAT’S IN
clear, there are simply so many that all THE BOX
interact with one another that newer ◗ Game board
◗ 24 Territory tiles
players will be initially overwhelmed.
◗ 4 Homeland tiles
But that’s the best bit. It is a game ◗ 16 Flag tokens
that doesn’t feel solved the first time ◗ 4 Military meeples
you play it. There will be a different ◗ 4 Canoe meeples
set up each time you play the game, ◗ 8 Caravan meeples
meaning you’ll need to relearn it, ◗ 4 Chieftain meeples
and each new combination of players ◗ 24 Explorer meeples
sees wildly different tactics being ◗ 7 Character cards
implemented. You can’t win every ◗ 17 Worker tokens
◗ 18 Bonus tiles
race in the game, so choosing where
◗ 52 Artifact cards
to put your efforts is key. Find the ◗ 64 Resource titles
right group, and Terramara might
become one of your favorites – but it
will scare off everyone else.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
❚ PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y
Assuming you know you’re in for a
long game Terramara is a powerful
distillation of what makes Euros
fun. It’s complex, unwieldy, and
wonderful when you get it just right.

TRY THIS IF
YOU LIKED...
FRESCO
Fresco is a game
all about ensuring
your lazy assistants
don’t leave you, and
makes for heavy
euro fun.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 77
 P L AY E D
HOMEBREWERS
Two hobbies make for a joyful brew
omebrewers are a community
H of artisan spirit crafters, built on
competition and experimentation,
but also a mug full of comradery.
Homebrewers, the board game, has
managed to represent the spirit of this
community without spilling a drop.
It has a healthy dose of competition as
players are brewing stouts, ales, porters
and IPAs to climb up the prestige rankings,
collecting rewards and victory points
along the way. Yet, there is also the spirit of
sharing and helping, as players also get to
exchange dice to get the most out of their
actions each turn. Brewing is at the heart
of everything the players do, whether
that’s through keeping their equipment
clean and ready, or by throwing a mad
mixture of sweet, savoury and fruity
flavours into a still to see what happens.
Action dice determine everything a
player can do in a turn. While there is
always the luck of the roll in play, it never
feels restricting as players have numerous
ways to manipulate the outcomes of the
dice to get to the result they need. For
example, spending money to switch to a
more useful dice side or a free re-roll if the
first try yielded the same result on all dice.
However, the main mechanic is the
trade between players themselves.
Competition in Homebrewers is created
through decisions players make and not
from the scarcity of resources or limited
78 February 2020
WHAT’S IN spaces on the game board. While all
THE BOX?
◗ Game Board
◗ Medal tile
◗ 7 garage boards
players want to climb up to the top of the
rankings, refusing to trade with someone
for an action as a means of denying them
progress within the game doesn’t work.
◗ 7 character cards
A trade is always mutually beneficial – a
◗ Start player token
◗ 20 Wooden player getting rid of an action that is not
player pieces useful for them this turn for one that
◗ 5 Wooden score is, and vice versa. Having played many
trackers games, where players race to get that
◗ 5 Player power tokens one good spot on the board or collect a
◗ 16 Action dice resource before someone else snatches
◗ 10 Charlies’ cards them from right under your nose,
◗ 52 Money tokens Homebrewers’ built-in generosity is very
◗ 40 grain tokens
pleasantly refreshing.
◗ 54 flavour cards
◗ 12 quality track tiles However, players can still get ahead by
◗ 8 Event tiles using their ingredient cards wisely. Once
◗ 11 Judging a flavour has been added to a recipe, it
category tiles will start the game engine that generates
◗ 5 sanitisation tiles a specific benefit each time it is brewed.
◗ 5 reminder cards The more ingredients one recipe has – the
better the eventual pay-off. However,
there are various mechanics in the game
that encourage a variety in alcohol types
and flavours, like bonus point cards and
intermediate scoring turns.
Joyful to play, Homebrewers is equally
so in looks and components. Especially
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… PIONEER DAYS
When you rely on the luck of the dice for your actions, it can feel pretty unfair at
times. However, both Homebrewers and Pioneer Days figured out how to utilise
dice action mechanic, while giving players options to manipulate the outcomes
through strategy, rather than luck.
45-60m 2-5 14+ £39
delightful are the player tokens in
different shapes of beer glasses, one
type for each colour. Homebrewers has
the standard myriad of fiddly cardboard
components. The upside of this, however,
is that extra pieces increase replayability
and spice up the game with new
challenges, making it slightly different to
play each time.
Everyone from a brewing aficionado
to someone who has never had a sip of
alcohol in their life will find Homebrewers
a delight. While ales and IPAs play an
important part in the game, at its heart
Homebrewers celebrates a community of
people from the same hobby, who want
to share it, make it better and learn, all
while having fun. As board gamers, we
can definitely relate!
ALEX SONECHKINA
❚ PLAY IT? Y E S
It is rare to find the game that has
exciting competition, while also
encouraging players to share and help
each other. Homebrewers took these
seemingly unfitting ingredients and
mix them into a deliciously fun brew.
RUN, FIGHT OR DIE: RELOADED
Well hello Mr. Fancy Pants
erhaps what makes the humble
P zombie such an enduring
monster is his inevitability;
no matter how many you kill, they’ll
always be more behind him shambling
relentlessly forward. Run, Fight or
Die: Reloaded attempts to capture this
with frantic, fast-pasted action that
sees players fending off never-ending
waves of undead hordes. A reboot of
2014’s Run, Fight or Die! from Greyfox
Games, Reloaded brings a streamlined
rules system and a more cartoony art
style. Having not played the original
title, I can only judge the game on its
own merits, though the basic premise
remains the same between both.
At its core Run, Fight or Die is about
taking calculated risks and allocating
resources. Each player gets a board
divided into three areas representing
distances from the survivor; zombies
that make it to the player’s character do
a single wound each. During their turn
the player rolls six d6s with different
results on each side. The undead die
spawns a zombie, a baseball bat kills
two in the nearest zone and a gun kills
one in any zone. A run shifts zombies
back a pace, and players can shunt
them onto another player’s board if
they’re on the furthest zone. Loot results
let players draw follower or item cards,
whilst maps force players to draw a
new location. Depending on how many
map results are rolled, a new location
will confer a negative or positive effect,
or both. A player can make up to two
rerolls per turn, except for zombie dice,
20-40m
and at the end of a turn all zombies
will shuffle up one zone. Players may
also accidentally unleash the mutant
zombie, who’ll generally make life more
difficult. A game ends when one player
dies, the mutant zombie reaches the
bottom of his hit point pool or when
the Town Line card is drawn from the
location deck.
This, in a nutshell, is the game, and
it can be picked up within the space
of five minutes. It’s clearly been made
for lovers of the zombie genre, and it
takes every opportunity it can to reuse
the old familiar tropes with bare-faced
glee. The characters are all iterations
of stock archetypes – the grizzled
army vet, the prom queen, the sexy
ex-cop – whilst many of the cards and
tokens pay overt homage to The Evil
Dead films.
Where Run, Fight or Die occasionally
stumbles is in its execution. As simple
as the rules are, a number of omissions
and ambiguities leave them feeling
slightly slapdash at times. It’s not
clear, for example, how character
special effects that show only two
lines of dice work, and it took a thread
on boardgamgeek.com to reveal the
answer (the bottom result is changed
to the top). Nor, again, is it clarified
whether discard decks are reshuffled
when the main deck is exhausted,
although it seems obvious to assume
they are. Though flaws like these aren’t
game-breaking, you get the impression
that they’re likely down to the game
being Kickstarter-funded, and that
1-4 10+ £50
the designers have assumed players
will already be onboard with the
mechanics as a result.
Other niggles include the fact that
you’ll likely run out of zombies by the
late game if you’re playing a full four-
player match, and that the game’s solo
campaign mode requires additional
purchases to play, which both come
across as a bit cheap. One missed
opportunity as well was not having
the mutant zombie spawn in on the WHAT’S IN
following player’s turn when activated, THE BOX
which would have sped up play by ◗ 6 Custom dice
incentivising players to draw map ◗ 70 Zombie minis
cards more frequently. ◗ 4 Zombie boards
It’s hard to let these negatives detract ◗ 5 Character boards
from the game too much, as what Run, ◗ 30 Follower cards
Fight or Die offers in spades is sheer, ◗ 7 Reference cards
◗ 22 Loot cards
addictive fun. It’s a light-hearted affair,
◗ 23 Mutant
and it makes a great afternoon killer zombie cards
with some friends if you’ve got nothing ◗ Mutant zombie token
planned. This is in spite of the fact that ◗ 60 Wound tokens
there’s really only one way to play Run, ◗ 24 Leadership tokens
Fight or Die, which is to always use ◗ 30 Zombie tokens
loot rolls to draw followers whenever
feasible. Since followers not only offer
the main way of scoring victory points
but also a supply of ablative wounds,
TRY THIS IF
in the vast majority of cases it makes YOU LIKED…
sense to hoover up as many as you ZOMBIE DICE
can as quickly as possible and tank If you’re itching for
the negative effects of the sucky ones. more ways to dice
But its lack of playstyles is made up for with the dead, this
by the tactical planning it offers on a beer-and-pretzels
moment-to-moment level, and letting zombie game
players choose what order they activate puts you in the
scuffed shoes of
their dice results offers a great deal
a shambling ghoul
of strategic flexibility. Besides, there’s as you roll bones,
something childishly appealing about munch brains
mowing down the legions of zombies and try not to get
with a well-played card or dice roll. shotgunned.
A zombie-killing splatter-fest that’s
rough around the edges with plenty of
heart, Run, Fight or Die: Reloaded apes
the zombie B-movies that inspired it in
the best sort of way.
JAMES WINSPEAR
❚ PLAY IT? M U S T - P L A Y
Despite some loose threads in
its rules design, Run, Fight or Die:
Reloaded provides an experience that
can truly be said to be… Groovy.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 79
 P L AY E D
NIBIRU
Remember, Remember…
an an entire game be carried by
C just one idea? Well, if that idea
is as compelling, creative and
exciting as Nibiru’s memory-building
the answer might well be a “yes”.
On a very broad level the game’s a sci-
fi adventure that’s a little bogged down
with beautiful but star-dense lore, but that
description misses out the coolest part of
the entire game. Where most RPGs ask
you to start off adventures with a solid
idea of your character already pinned
down to the sheet, Nibiru instead sends
you out into the world with something
close to a blank slate.
You start as a vagabond somewhere in
the steel hallways of a vast, planet-sized
space station. You have with no stats, no
gear and, most importantly, no memories.
As the game plays out you get the
chance to add to these memories and use
them to completely shape and re-shape
your character on the fly. If you’re pinned
down in a firefight you might invoke a
hazy recollection an afternoon nailing
cans with a BB gun, for example, allowing
you to instantly pop one foe in the head
and gain a permanent bonus to shooting.
Similarly, you might be climbing a
dangling rope and suddenly think about
how cool it would be if your rough-and-
tumble brawler, long-plagued by the
memories of dead AI servants, had a
80 February 2020
201 13+ £40
horrible memory of falling into the void
somewhere in a past life. You’d fail the roll
and incur an ongoing penalty to climbing
checks, but taking on the negative
memory gives you more points to spend
on happy ones elsewhere.
The possibilities that the system
offers are damn-near endless, though
they do require a fair bit of friendly
give-and-take between players and GMs
if everything’s going to work smoothly.
None of the categories you can invoke
memories for – what would be called
skills in most games – are nailed down
and the advice in the rulebook is a little
hazy. It would be easy for players to try
and break the game with over-broad
categories – “talking” or “fighting”, say
– but it’s also annoying to sink valuable
memory points into playing the harp
and then never have them come up.
Despite this, the MEMO system – as
it’s labelled in the rulebook – is a truly
fascinating little idea and the shining,
sparkling heart of the game. Honestly,
it can be easy to spend so much time
thinking about the possibilities of playing
around with memories that you almost
forget about the rest of the game.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… THINGS FROM THE FLOOD
If you enjoy moody sci-fi and the storytelling side of RPGs, Nibiru is going to be
right up your alley
That would be a shame, however,
because Nibiru is a fascinating,
imaginative and thoroughly weird
place to play. The lore behind the vast
space-station takes up almost half of
the core rulebook’s 200-ish pages, going
into incredible detail about the social
inequalities that plague its society and
weird creatures that lurk in its depths.
Wonderfully, there’s even a chapter
contributed by a genuine astrophysicist
brought in as a consultant. This deals
with explanations of some of the game’s
more science-ey elements, such as the
surprisingly involved system for tracking
artificial gravity levels as the party travels,
and is a fascinating read.
The downside to the beautiful,
complex nature of the world is that the
endless chapters devoted to explaining
it are dense as all hell and stuffed to the
gills with a complicated new lexicon
to memorise. Unless you have a better
memory than most, you’re going to be
constantly bouncing back to the glossary
to remind yourself who the Enšu
and Silu are, and why the Umbra is so
different from the Antumbra.
You can probably ignore many of
the details as you play, as the game’s
set-up virtually demands that the heroes
are a little shady on the world’s details
and even the GM only really needs the
specifics of the area they’re currently
adventuring in. However, the sheer
volume of densely-written material to
absorb can be pretty damn intimidating,
especially if your players are the kind
who like to get invested in the world
they’re exploring.
Honestly, Nibiru sometimes feels like
a game that could have benefitted from a
bit of a trim and some polishing. Most of
the ideas are top-notch and the MEMO
system is an absolute gem, but the book as
a whole is a little rough around the edges.
If you’re a fan of the truly fascinating,
however, this shouldn’t stop you from
checking the game out and making some
memories of your own.
RICHARD JANSENPARKES
❚ PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y
Incredibly intriguing ideas tied
to some beautiful – if dense –
lore makes for one of the most
interesting games of recent years.
SKYTEAR
A MOB-Ah! if it’s your thing, a MOB-Urgh if it isn’t
Designer: Riccardo Neri | Artist: Riccardo Parmeggiani
Y
ou know what you’re getting
yourself into when the strapline
for a game reads like someone
threw darts at a board of tabletop
buzzwords. Skytear’s description as ‘the
card-driven miniatures game inspired
by MOBA video games’ (just rolls off
the tongue, doesn’t it?) is the sort of
blurb that could only exist in the age
of Kickstarter. It’s a game designed
by and for a very specific group, one
that’ll explosively cream its collective
pants when they hear these terms put
together. In the interests of fairness, I
should state upfront that I’m a definite
outsider to this group; I’ve never played
a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle
Arena) before and can only review
Skytear as a boardgame rather than a
videogame analogue.
The basic objective in Skytear is to
destroy the enemy ‘nexus’. This is a point
at one end of the board from where a
player’s units – consisting of heroes and
minions – spawn from at the beginning
of the game or when they’re killed. The
board is split into three zones – a left
and right lane and a ‘dome’ area in the
centre. Destroying the nexus requires
players to first eliminate an enemy
tower in one of the lanes. To do this,
players have to dominate a control
point in the centre of each lane. Gaining
control of the dome, meanwhile,
allows players to use the Outsider, a
powerful neutral monster that grants
the controlling player certain boons.
Dominating a control point or the
dome essentially comes down to having
more miniatures in that location than
the other player. This is the primary
purpose of the minions, who cannot
be moved around by players in a
conventional sense, but provide ablative
wounds and extra bodies. Games last
up to five turns, and can also be finished
by completing one of three objective
cards randomly drawn from a deck.
The meat of Skytear’s gameplay
revolves around using heroes to gain
control of the lanes or dome. Heroes
come from one of four factions, each
of which has its own strengths and set
of abilities. Combat uses power cards,
which grant special effects and also
introduce an element of randomness in
lieu of dice. For example, during combat
a hero’s base damage is increased by a
power card’s modifier, which is drawn
blind from the top of a player’s deck.
Skytear is one of those games
that demands its players learn the
playstyles of each faction and hero
and optimise their strategies over the
course of many hours of play. The
word ‘demand’ is used here with all
the negative connotations the term
implies, as there’s nothing about
the game that’s aimed at enticing
newcomers onboard. Partly this
may be down to the presentation of
the rules. Even with a five-minute
intro video available via the Skytear
website and a beginner mode that
strips heroes of their powers, the
game is in dire need of a single-page
quickplay sheet for ease of reference.
Its inaccessibility may also be down
45m 2-4 14+ $70
to the fact that perhaps the MOBA
experience just doesn’t translate very
well to a boardgame format. Having
to seize a lane’s control point rather
than attacking towers directly just felt
weird, and having to treat the minions
as non-interactable NPCs went
against every impulse habituated by
miniatures games.
This makes it sound like Skytear is a
bad game. It’s not. Skytear competently WHAT’S IN
brings together its various moving THE BOX
◗ Outsider miniature
parts to provide a strategic experience
◗ 8 Hero miniatures
with depth, and there’s enjoyment ◗ 16 Minion
to be had in pulling off devastating miniatures
combos against your opponent. Each ◗ 84 Cards
faction feels balanced against each ◗ 92 Tokens and
other, although the Aztec-themed markers
Taulot, whose playstyle relies heavily ◗ Two-sided board
on working in tandem with other
Taulot figures, seemed to be at a slight
disadvantage and the team that would
most benefit from players purchasing
its faction-specific booster.
Cliché though it may sound, Skytear
is a prime example of a marmite game.
If the idea of diceless gameplay, cards,
miniatures and MOBAs all in one has
you scrabbling at your wallet like its on
fire, knock yourself out. If you’re not
part of that club, though, it’ll probably
leave you feeling lukewarm.
TRY THIS IF
YOU LIKED…
JAMES WINSPEAR WARHAMMER
UNDERWORLDS
❚ PLAY IT? M A Y B E Games workshop’s
A competently designed game Warhammer
catering to a specific type of Underworlds
gamer, others may find themselves combines
sky-torn about buying this. miniatures with hex-
based, card driven
action to provide
an experience
that’s fast, slick and
immensely fun.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 81
 P L AY E D
A WAR OF WHISPERS
The war of wits
Designer: Jeremy Stoltzfus | Artist: Tomasz Jedruszek, Dann May
A
s board gamers we are not novices
in controlling armies over the
expanse of a tabletop battlefield,
managing strategies, supply lines,
objectives and battling opponents one
turn at the time. A War of Whispers has all
of that, but it doesn’t put players in charge
of an army on the battlefield. Instead,
players are the shadowy figures that
whisper in the ears of queens, emperors
and leaders.
A War of Whispers takes place over a
circular board divided into five empires.
Each turn players assign their agents to
one of four roles in each empire – sheriffs,
stewards, marshall and chancellor –
and perform the associated task, like
recruiting more soldiers, attacking other
territories and picking up cards, which
can be used as bonus actions later in the
game. The tasks vary slightly from one
empire to another, accounting for the
difference in their location, the number
of not-so-friendly neighbours and the
capabilities of each nation. The animals
representing each empire give hints as
to their strengths, which become even
clearer through card abilities.
The snowy empire with the polar
bear as their emblem is ferocious in
their attacks. Although they don’t have
much recruitment power, they start the
82 February 2020
30-60m 2-4 14+ £58
game with the biggest army and their
actions and cards reward aggression
and brutal play. Whereas the horse
nation starts with no army units at
all but use their vast territories and
resources to endure through the years of
conflict. There are also eagles who have
good manoeuvrability, elephants who are
WHAT’S IN strong soldiers and lions who are efficient
THE BOX? at mobilisation.
◗ Game board Players might be able to spot locational
◗ 4 Player boards strengths and weaknesses of each empire
◗ 20 Loyalty tokens just by looking at the map. However,
◗ 40 Empire cards learning how to best utilise their actions
◗ 100 Banner cubes
and cards will take at least several turns, if
◗ 36 Agent tokens
◗ 4 Turn trackers not several games. Especially, since each
◗ First player token action can be used not only to make that
empire stronger, but also to sabotage it.
A War of Whisper’s last twist that is
that players are routing for different
empires to succeed. At the start of the
game, tokens representing each empire
are randomly assigned to multipliers
of positive and negative values. This
encourages players to try to manipulate
events in such a way, that empires that
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED…
A GAME OF THRONES: THE BOARD GAME
Those who enjoy the scheming and the switching allegiances of A Game of
Thrones: The Board Game, but don’t want to spend the whole day playing one
game, will find what they are looking for in A War of Whispers.
earn them the most points are doing
the best, while territories with minus
modifiers get defeated, so they don’t give
them negative points.
While the tokens can be revealed
throughout the game, for the majority
of A War of Whispers, players only know
for certain about their own goals. Some
assumptions can be made by observing
actions of other players and which
empires they seem to be favouring, but
the games’ strategies are broad enough
that moves can easily be misleading.
There is depth within the game for short-
term and long-term strategies, and even
bluffing, if players are skilful enough
manipulators of the board.
To get the most out of A War of
Whispers, players will need to fully
embrace their roles, utilising their actions,
powers and army locations on the map
to try to fool and maybe even secretly
manipulate other players into helping
them with their goals. This will require
not only deep game knowledge but a
certain tactical finesse. Less skilful or
knowledgeable players, therefore, might
suffer and overall the game enjoyment
perhaps over-relies on the players’
complete commitment to the roles.
Despite all these complexities, A War
of Whispers is not a long game, lasting
only four, fairly snappy, although intense,
rounds. This tension ramps up, especially
in the last round, when any remaining
pretences are discarded, the best cards
and combos are played in order to secure
the territories and get the most points.
All that scheming, planning and
manipulating is enough to cause a
headache, however the satisfaction from
pulling a master strike from behind the
scenes, while outwitting and out bluffing
your opponents around the table, just
might be worth it.
ALEX SONECHKINA
❚ PLAY IT? Y E S
If you ever wondered what it would
be like to be Game of Thrones’
Littlefinger, manipulating kingdoms
and armies to achieve your secret
goals, then play A War of Whispers.
This game allows to be as cunning
and clever as one wants, without,
hopefully, getting stabbed in the end.
QUEENZ
The beez kneez
Designer: Bruno Cathala, Johannes Goupy | Artist: Vincent Dutrait 30m 2-4 13+ £49

T
his is Bruno Cathala’s second
gardening game of the year.
We reviewed Ishtar a couple of
months back as an extremely tight tile
layer about making the desert bloom.
This is a similar affair. Players play as
‘famous beekeepers’ (according to
the box) and as such they are trying to
create a garden which scores them the
most bee points.
While not exactly Wingspan in
terms of habitat building – you’re
just picking flowers from the row
that the gardener is currently on,
and strategically placing hives – it’s
still satisfyingly personal to you. You
take turns picking flowers, with a few
restrictions – you can’t pick three of
the same colour, but you can pick two
matching orchids. Once this is done
they go into your personal supply, and
the gardener is moved on equal to the
number of orchids picked.
The other action you can take, when
you have enough orchids to fill a tile,
is to take one of the Tetris-ish tiles and
place it front of you. Score points for
matching colours, and if, you’ve used
a hive for one space, think about the
placement of bee-encrusted flowers.
At the end of the game you’ll score
points for the number of bees around
a hive. Diversify your production,
which is probably the least sexy way
of describing having a complete set of
different honey flowers in front of you,
and you get some end game points.
A lot of ‘group solitaire’ games
don’t have strong interactions. And
while there’s no conflict here, you can
keep an eye on your bee-bothering
counterparts and shift on the
gardener one more than you imagine
they’d like. Equally, you can be smart
with your flower and hive placement,
and a late-game slotting of a hive into
a high scoring area can cause last-
minute panic amongst your friends.
The design is impossibly nice and
vaguely psychedelic in its mix of
vibrant colours and intricate, natural
patterns. The art has a lino-print look
about it, which gives it an authentic
charm. The making of your own little
fiefdom of bees and honey is distinctly
pleasurable. And like all games where
you want to build an empire, it’s nicer
when it’s just yours and there’s not
a chance of someone else sneaking
in and taking it from you. If we were WHAT’S IN
being uncharitable we could talk THE BOX
about how the lack of interaction ◗ Main board
leads to a less chatty game. There’s ◗ 4 Player board
less on the line than in other, similar ◗ 4 Player markers
tile layers too, but it is very hard to ◗ 125 Orchid tokens
make such comments when the game ◗ 24 Field tiles
looks this good and is blissfully simple ◗ 12 Hive tokens
◗ 20 Honey pot tokens
to pick up.
◗ Gardener pawn
Games can move fast and the eager ◗ 4 Diversified
attention to the board is something production tokens
that certain types of gamers will ◗ Score board
enjoy, and the satisfaction of your
own garden growing in front of you is
undeniable. It’s not the sweetest thing,
but it’s very close.
CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT
❚ PLAY IT? Y E S
Queenz is a charming tile layer
which can best be described
as a Carcassonne of one’s own.
Elevated by its vivid design and
puzzly pieces, this is a tile matcher
worth adding to your hive.

TRY THIS IF
YOU LIKED...
ISHTAR
While the arena
isn’t shared and the
nuances aren’t as
tightly negotiated
Queenz has the
same feeling of
doing-a-nice-thing-
for-points.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 83
 P L AY E D
AGATHA CHRISTIE: DEATH ON THE CARDS
One of you… is a murderer
gatha Christie has long been
A hailed as the “Queen of Crime,”
and her two most famous
creations – the sharp-minded spinster
Miss Marple and suave Belgian sleuth
Hercule Poirot – have become some of
the most enduring characters in all of
detective fiction. Her stories have been
endlessly adapted for TV and film, and
more than 130 years since her birth
she remains one of the most popular
mystery authors ever to put pen to
paper. Now a new game offers fans the
chance to step into a murder mystery of
their own. But Agatha Christie: Death on
the Cards feels like a bit of a busted flush.
Its premise is faithful enough to its
source material. Players become suspects
in a murder investigation, aiming to
deduce which of their number is the
killer. Even if you’re not the culprit,
though, you won’t be entirely clean.
Before the game begins, each player
draws three cards from a deck containing
a variety of shameful secrets. You might
be concealing the fact that you’ve faked
your own death, or that you’re a problem
gambler, or a kleptomaniac, or that
you’ve written a steamy account of your
passionate affair with the prime minister.
It’s a typical Christie-style setup:
a murky morass of dark deeds and
84 February 2020
deceptions where everyone has things
they’d rather the rest of the world didn’t
know about. But one player will draw
the “You’re the Murderer” card. If they
manage to conceal their identity for the
WHAT’S IN duration of the game, they win. If not,
THE BOX? they’ll be hauled off by the police.
◗ 18 secret cards To unmask the killer, you’ll play cards
◗ 25 detective cards representing detectives from Poirot
◗ 22 event cards and Marple to less well-remembered
◗ 4 devious cards characters like Tommy and Tuppence
◗ 10 Not so Beresford and Harley Quin (no, not that
Fast! cards
Harley Quinn). Each comes with special
◗ 1 Murderer
Escapes! Card abilities forcing players to reveal some
◗ Rules booklet of their secret cards, but you’ll need to
collect them in sets to activate them. The
result is that you’ll try to trade cards with
others around the table, accumulating the
ones you need to unmask the murderer.
The problem is, it often becomes clear
very quickly who that is. It’s in the killer’s
interest to frustrate the investigation,
and to run through cards to deplete
the deck and end the game as quickly
as possible. It leads to a frustrating
situation where everyone knows who
committed the crime, but they’re able
to evade and impede your efforts to nail
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… THE RESISTANCE
Death on the Cards is also all about figuring out who the sneaky villain at the
table is. But honestly, plenty of other games do a better job with the premise.
45-75m 2-6 10+ £35
them down. It’s as if the villain in one of
the original novels, rather than cleverly
covering their tracks, preferred to walk
around covered in blood, clutching a
dripping dagger and wearing a bright
pink T-shirt saying: IT WAS ME! – and
still somehow evaded justice.
Death on the Cards does come with
some charming 1930s-style illustrations,
but beyond that there’s not much to be
said for it, and its two-player mode is
a strange inclusion which completely
eliminates any mystery about the
suspect’s identity. If you’re looking for
some mysterious family or party games,
there are plenty of others you’d be better
off spending your money on.
OWEN DUFFY
❚ PLAY IT? N O
The most appealing thing about
Death on the Cards is its licence,
but get it to the table and there’s
little that captures the essence of
a thrilling whodunnit. It moves from
random guesswork to frustrating
later stages where you know the
killer’s identity, but might not be
able to do anything about it.
Summer 2020 www.brotherwisegames.com
 MARVEL CRISIS PROTOCOL
HEROES OF THE AVENGERS
Your friendly neighbourhood miniatures painter is PART
back with a set of Marvel heroes. But with a ONE
great palette, comes great responsibility
Words and photographs by Andy Leighton

PAINTS & TECHNIQUES

» Abaddon Black » Drakenhof » Pallid Wych Flesh Each model is split up into four Stage 2 is shading. During this of paint to the raised areas and
» Agrax Earthshade Nightshade » Phalanx Yellow stages, each with a list of colours stage we apply washes and straight edges of the area.
» Alaitoc Blue » Dryad Bark » Reikland Fleshshade and the corresponding paint that glazes to the more shadowed
» Averland Sunset » Eshin Grey » Russ Grey was used for it. Each stage uses areas of the miniatures, Stage 4 is for final details and
» Baharroth Blue » Evil Sunz Scarlet » Skrag Brown a different technique to achieve a particularly the lower edges highlights. This stage involves
» Cadian Fleshtone » Fenrisian Grey » Steel Legion Drab similar effect on each element but and undersides. adding the finishing touches,
» Caledor Sky » Fire Dragon Bright » Stormhost Silver with different colours. sometimes just small details
» Carrionburg » Ironbreaker » Teclis Blue Stage 3 is layering. This stage like the eyes, or adding small
Crimson » Karak Stone » Temple Guard Blue Stage 1 is basecoating. Base involves applying a layer of a highlights to increase definition.
» Celestra Grey » Khorne Red » Thunderhawk Blue colours are applied using flat lighter colour, generally focussed
» Ceramite White » Kislev Flesh » Ulthuan Grey colours. Since the models are towards the top of the model, If you find yourself unsure of where
» Dark Reaper » Lothern Blue » Warplock Bronze primed a lighter colour these initial avoiding the areas previously to apply the highlights or spot
» Dawnstone » Macragge Blue » White Scar coats are applied slightly watered shaded. This guide also features a highlights, look over the images
» Deathclaw Brown » Mephiston Red » Word Bearers Red down, around 2 parts paint to 1 lot of line highlights at this stage. alongside the guide and compare
» Dorn Yellow » Nuln Oil » Yriel Yellow part water. This involves applying a thin line that stage to the last.

86 March 2018
February 2020
 BASECOATING BASECOATING
CAPTAIN AMERICA

IRON MAN
Caledor Sky: Apply a basecoat to Word Bearers Red: Apply a
the whole model basecoat across the whole model
Skrag Brown: Apply a basecoat Averland Sunset: Apply a basecoat
to the straps and pouches to sections of the armour
Khorne Red: Apply a basecoat to Temple Guard Blue: Apply a
the gloves, boots and stripes basecoat to the eyes and repulsors
Ulthuan Grey: Apply a basecoat
to the sleeves, stripes and As
Ironbreaker: Apply a basecoat to
the stars and metal
Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a
basecoat to the skin

SHADING SHADING
Nuln Oil: Apply a wash across the Agrax Earthshade: Apply a wash
whole model across the whole model
Reikland Fleshshade: Apply a
wash to the face

LAYERING LAYERING
Teclis Blue: Apply a line highlight Mephiston Red: Apply a line
to the bodysuit highlight to the armour
Skrag Brown: Apply a layer to the Averland Sunset: Apply a line
pouches and straps highlight to the yellow armour
Mephiston Red: Apply a layer to sections
the reds Lothern Blue: Apply a layer to the
Ulthuan Grey: Apply a layer to eyes and repulsors
the whites
Ironbreaker: Apply a layer to the
stars and metals
Kislev Flesh: Apply a layer to
the skin

HIGHLIGHTING HIGHLIGHTING
Fenrisian Grey: Apply a spot Evil Sunz Scarlet: Apply a spot
highlight to the bodysuit highlight to the armour
Deathclaw Brown: Apply a line Phalanx Yellow: Apply a spot
highlight to the pouches and highlight to the yellow armour
straps sections
Evil Sunz Scarlet: Apply a line Baharroth Blue: Apply a spot
highlight to the reds highlight to the eyes and repulsors
White Scar: Apply a line highlight
to the whites
Stormhost Silver: Apply a line
highlight to the stars and metals
Pallid Wych Flesh: Apply a line
highlight to the skin

tabletopgaming.co.uk 87
 MARVEL CRISIS PROTOCOL

BASECOATING BASECOATING
BLACK WIDOW

CAPTAIN MARVEL
Dark Reaper: Apply a basecoat Macragge Blue: Apply a basecoat
across the whole model to the body, arms and legs.
Averland Sunset: Apply a Khorne Red: Apply a basecoat to
basecoat to the wrist blasters, the boots, gloves, collar and sash.
belt and badge Averland Sunset: Apply a
Steel Legion Drab: Apply a basecoat to the hair and detailing
basecoat to the holster and straps Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a
Mephiston Red: Apply a basecoat basecoat to the skin
to the hair and symbols
Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a
basecoat to the skin

SHADING SHADING
Nuln Oil: Apply a wash over the Reikland Fleshshade: Apply a
bodysuit wash to the reds, yellows and skin
Reikland Fleshshade: Apply a Drakenhof Nightshade: Apply a
wash to the face, wrist blasters wash to the blue
and belt
Carrionburg Crimson: Apply a
wash to the hair

LAYERING
Thunderhawk Blue: Apply a line
highlight to the bodysuit
Averland Sunset: Apply a layer to
the wrist blasters, belt and badge
Karak Stone: Apply a line highlight
to the straps and holster
Evil Sunz Scarlet: Apply a layer
to the hair
Kislev Flesh: Apply a layer to
the skin
LAYERING
Alaitoc Blue: Apply a line highlight
to the body, arms and legs
Mephiston Red: Apply a layer to
the boots, collar, gloves and sash
Yriel Yellow: Apply a line highlight
to the detailing
Dorn Yellow: Apply a layer to
the hair
Kislev Flesh: Apply a layer to
the skin

HIGHLIGHTING HIGHLIGHTING
Russ Grey: Apply a spot highlight Russ Grey: Apply a line highlight
to the bodysuit to the body, arms and legs
Dorn Yellow: Apply a spot Evil Sunz Scarlet: Apply a line
highlight to the wrist blasters, belt highlight to the boots, collar,
and badge gloves and sash
Fire Dragon Bright: Apply a spot Dorn Yellow: Apply a spot
highlight to the hair. highlight to the detailing
Pallid Wych Flesh: Apply a spot White Scars: Apply a spot
highlight to the skin highlight to the hair
Pallid Wych Flesh: Apply a line
highlight to the skin

88 February 2020
 BASECOATING
SPIDERMAN

EYES

BASES – STONE AREAS

Caledor Sky: Apply a basecoat to
the sides, back and legs
Khorne Red: Apply a basecoat to
the rest of the suit
Ulthuan Grey: Apply a basecoat
to the eyes
Abaddon Black: Apply a basecoat
to the borders around the red, Dawnstone: Apply a basecoat
the eyes, and the symbols on the
chest and back

Abaddon Black: Begin by adding

an oval over each eye Celestra Grey: Apply a heavy
drybrush

SHADING
Nuln Oil: Apply a wash across the
whole model

Ulthuan Grey: Apply an edge highlight

Ceramite White: Apply another oval

within the first, leaving a little of the Dryad Bark: Make a mix with 5
black showing around the edges parts water and apply as a glaze
across the base
LAYERING
Caledor Sky: Apply a layer to the

BASES – METAL AREAS

blue areas
Mephiston Red: Apply a layer to
the red areas
Ulthuan Grey: Apply a layer to
the eyes
Eshin Grey: Apply a line highlight
to the black edging

Warplock Bronze: Apply a basecoat

Abaddon Black: Apply a small dot

to each eye for the pupil
Leadbelcher: Apply a drybrush
HIGHLIGHTING
Teclis Blue: Apply a line highlight
to the blues
Evil Sunz Scarlet: Apply a line
highlight to the reds
White Scar: Apply a line highlight
to the eyes
Dawnstone: Apply a line highlight
to the black edging
Nuln Oil: Apply a wash

Ironbreaker: Apply a light drybrush

tabletopgaming.co.uk 89
 THE RECAP
T H E D U N G E O N M A S T E R ’ S G U I D E T O R O L E P L AY I N G

Keeping your games on track can be tricky when

adventurers ascend from the dungeon wielding mighty
new weapons, clutching important artefacts, and
groaning under the weight of shiny loot – only to ask,
“why did we do that again?” The answer? The recap
Words by Richard Jansen-Parkes | Image courtesy of Modiphius

PG campaigns tend to accumulate details can get buried in the long, grey morass of

R traditions and rituals as the years slip

by. Maybe you order pizza when you
level up, maybe you stick a certain
song on the speakers whenever a
character gets disintegrated.
In most of the groups I play with, we’ve
developed a particular way to mark the switch
from the ‘hanging round and chatting’ part of the
evening to the ‘stabbing up some goblins’ phase.
It’s one of the most important parts of the session,
even though it doesn’t have any actual impact on
the game.
It comes when the figure behind the screen
clears their throat, cutting through the babble
of gossip and grumbling, and asks the room
a question.
“So, what happened last time?”
LOOKING BACK
Sometimes the stories we tell at the tabletop can
get a little bit complicated. When we rush through
back-to-back battles with gene-spliced mutants
and negotiations with alien ambassadors, it
shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the
time between game sessions.
For this reason, a decent pre-game recap is
vital to setting up a solid foundation for your
session. Without it, hours of gameplay can be lost
to indecision and confusion, as the players fail to
recall exactly what magical artefact they’re hunting
for, or why one of them appears to be carrying a
severed arm in their backpack.
The form this takes will vary from group to
group, but ideally you should always leave the
players sure of three things:
What just happened
Why it happened
Where they’re going
DETAILS, DETAILS
As silly as it sounds, there’s a little bit more to
a recap than just running through the facts of
the last game you had together. While this will
probably make up the bulk of the summary, it’s
also important to provide a bit of context here
and there.
Sure, we get that the party was exploring the
Tomb of the Dragon Lords, but knowing why

90 February 2020
they’re there in the first place is also pretty darn
important. Likewise, if the city they’re in is plagued
by riots it’s probably worth establishing that they
know it was caused by the shuffling of a Great Old
One asleep in the bay. Sometimes it can be worth
just quickly establishing the main points of the
entire campaign, especially if you want to keep
things focussed.
Hopefully most of the players will know all this
already, but it never hurts to take a moment or
two to ensure that everybody is on the same page.
This is especially true if there’s been a sizable gap
between sessions or if some of them have memory
or attention issues.
The same can be said of clarifying what the
group’s current plans are. While this will usually
be obvious, spending a handful of seconds on an
out-of-character discussion over their goals for the
session can pay massive dividends further down
the line.
REMEMBER FOR ME
There are two main ways to get a recap going. In
the first, the GM picks up their notes and runs
through the details, filling in questions and making
sure the players know everything they need to
know along the way – you went here, killed these
monsters, spoke to this NPC.
This is a perfectly reasonable way to run things
and is almost certainly the most efficient way to
get the recap done and the game started. When
you hold the reins, you can ensure that all the
important points are neatly covered.
However, I personally prefer the second
method, which shifts the bulk of the work onto
the players themselves. This all starts with that
Hours of gameplay can be lost to
indecision and confusion, as the
players fail to recall exactly what
magical artefact they’re hunting for
question mentioned earlier: “So, what happened
last time?”
This is bit trickier to handle, as many players
don’t exactly excel at the art of note taking.
However, with some careful guiding questions and
the occasional clarification it can work wonders.
Simply asking the players why they travelled
somewhere or what happened next can get them
excitedly running through events they’d long
thought forgotten. If nothing else, it does a great
job of slowly getting people into character and
ensuring they’re raring to go once the action starts
up again.
On top of this, if you approach it in the right way,
a recap can actually be a wonderful way to take a
quick poll of your players’ priorities.
Pay attention to what parts of the game –
whether that be an epic combat, a moment
of downtime or even a particular NPC – keep
cropping up in their memories of your last
meeting. If certain things keep sticking in their
minds, that’s probably a good indication of what
they’re having fun with.
HOW MUCH TO SHARE?
Whether you’re choosing to let the players provide
their own recaps or laying it down yourself, you
may have to make some decisions about how
much help you want to provide them.
For example, do you remind them that they
picked up an easily-forgotten iron key ten minutes
into the last adventure, knowing that it’ll unlock
the prison door they’re just about to run into? Do
you make sure to carefully list the names of the
ambassadors they’re negotiating with, or turn their
forgetfulness into a plot point?
Whenever you’re faced with a decision like this,
it’s worth remembering that the relation between
in-game and real-world time is always going to be
a little fuzzy. You can skip over a week’s travel in a
sentence, or stretch out a one-day dungeon crawl
into a month of roleplaying sessions.
With this in mind, I usually try to err on the
generous side when it comes to helping the players
to remember the important little details that might
have slipped their mind between games. Having
a hero forget a fact they learned ten minutes
ago because their player has had two weeks of
reality fly by in the meantime isn’t good for either
immersion or enjoyment.
TO THE POINT
As much as I’ve waffled on about making sure
to include this bit of information or that slice of
context, this all needs to be balanced against the
practical side of things. Simply put, you shouldn’t
be spending more than a couple of minutes on
your recap.
Unless your group meets every six months and
plays for 12 hours at a time, this shouldn’t be a
problem. However, if you do find things dragging,
try to focus on jogging memories and summing
up encounters rather than getting bogged down
in details.
If the party fought their way through three
different bands of goblins, you can probably
smoosh them all into a single sentence – “On your
way through the cave you fought some goblins.”
Similarly, if it’s important that the party remember
that their corporate contact is shady as hell you
can get away with describing them as skeezy and
letting their memories fill in the details around it.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 91
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RED DRAKE GAMING FLINTSHIRE
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BOARDGAMES SOCIAL Stockport, SK4 3BS Chester, CH4 0DR WARGAMES CLUB WARGAMING CLUB
Reading, RG1 5DE TORQUAY BOARD GAME CLUB New Milton, BH25 5BT Bexley, DA5 1AA
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92 February 2020

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OXFORD OUTRIDERS
Oxford, OX1 2AU STIRLINGSHIRE NUNEATON ALTERNATIVE WORCESTER BOARD
FALKIRK DISTRICT GAMES ASSOCIATION GAMERS (WOBOG)
RENFREWSHIRE WARGAMES CLUB Nuneaton, CV10 8LJ Worcester, WR1 2DP
GLASGOW AND DISTRICT Grangemouth, FK3 8QR
WARGAMING SOCIETY OCTOBER WARGAMES WYRE FOREST GAMERS
Glasgow, G41 4AD LENNOXTOWN GAMING HUB ASSOCIATION Kidderminster, DY10 1RP
Glasgow, G66 7LL Birmingham, B29 6DX
SHROPSHIRE YORKSHIRE
BIG ORBIT GAMES STIRLING WARGAMERS SCIMITAR WARGAMES GROUP AIREBOROUGH
SHREWSBURY Stirling, FK8 1QJ Coventry, CV3 5GT COMMUNITY GAMERS
Shrewsbury, SY1 1PH Leeds, LS19 6AS
SUFFOLK WEST MIDLANDS
E-COLLECTICA GAMES BECCLES BOARD GAMERS BIRMINGHAM WARGAMES BEYOND MONOPOLY
Shrewsbury, SY1 2DT Beccles, NR34 9AB AND BOARDGAMES CLUB York, YO24 1AQ
AKA DRAGOON’S DEN
GAMES @THE BIRD BURY ST EDMUNDS BOARD Birmingham, B13 9EA EAST LEEDS MILITARIA
Shrewsbury, SY1 2DT GAMING GROUP SOCIETY WARGAMES CLUB
Bury St. Edmunds, IP30 9LH DUDLEY DARKLORDS Leeds, LS25 2HD
STAGS TELFORD Kingswinford, DY6 8AP
WARGAMING SOCIETY HAVERHILL AREA BOARD HEADINGLEY GAMES CLUB.
Telford, TF1 1LU GAME GROUP PLAY MORE GAMES LEEDS, WEST YORKS
Haverhill, CB9 8AU Solihull, B91 3TB Leeds, LS6 3HN
TELFORD BOARDGAMERS CLUB
Telford, TF1 2BW HAVERHILL WAR GAMES CLUB PLAY MORE GAMES! HOLMFIRTH GAMING CENTRE
Haverhill, CB9 9JE Solihull, B90 3GG Holmfirth, HD9 7HP
SOMERSET
ABBEYWOOD IRREGULARS IPSWICH BOARD GAMERS WEST SUSSEX HULL’S ANGELS
Frome, BA11 1PU Ipswich, IP3 0FS BOGNOR REGIS GAMING Hull, HU1 3HG
ASSOCIATION
BATH GAMING GROUP IPSWICH COUNTY LIBRARY Bognor Regis, PO21 5EU IRELAND WOOD GAMES
Bath, BA2 6AA BOARD GAMES LIBRARY COMMUNITY
Ipswich, IP1 3DE CRAWLEY GAMING CLUB Leeds, LS16 6BS
MID SOMERSET Crawley, RH10 5DF
WARGAMES CLUB MID SUFFOLK GAMING CLUB LEEDS GAMING
Wells, BA5 2PU Stowmarket, IP14 4SH DUNGEON CRAWL- Leeds, LS1 3DL
EY GAMES CLUB
PIGMAR WARGAMING CLUB SKYWARD FIRE GAMES Crawley, RH11 7QG LEEDS NIGHT OWLS
Bath, BA1 6AB Lowestoft, NR32 1TY Leeds, LS6 1LJ
HORSHAM GAMERS
THE ESCAPE COMMITTEE WHITE EAGLES Horsham, RH12 3LD SHEFFIELD AND ROTHERHAM
WARGAMES CLUB WARGAMES CLUB WARGAMES CLUB
Burnham-on-Sea, TA8 2ET Ipswich, IP2 0RG MID SUSSEX MEEPLES Sheffield, S2 2TP
Burgess Hill, RH15 8DX
THE FROME BOARD SURREY SHEFFIELD BOARD GAMES
GAMES CLUB BELLUM KNIGHTS POUND HILL BOARD GAMING Sheffield, S3 7HG
Frome, BA11 1PU Surbiton, KT6 5NJ Crawley, RH10 7EQ
SHEFFIELD WARGAMES
TRINITY WARGAMING CLUB CROSS GAMING CLUB SOUTH DOWNS SIEGEBREAKERS SOCIETY
Taunton, TA1 3JG London, SE1 7RW Pulborough, RH20 4DR Sheffield, S8 0PS
tabletopgaming.co.uk 93

SHOP SPOTLIGHT
MEEPLE PERK
Co-owner Rhiannon Oxley on making meeples the
kings of the New-castle
Interview by James Winspear
How did the store first get started?
I have a background in cofee and cafés,
and have always wanted to open my own.
Originally, I loved the idea of a geek culture
café but as I went through university my
friends introduced me to the world of tabletop
games, and I often spent hours of the weekend
playing Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride.
After meeting Drew [co-owner] and seeing
that he had a vast knowledge of tabletop
games, I convinced him to join me and Meeple
Perk was born!
What’s the gaming scene like
in Newcastle?
Very strong! here is a large local gaming
group that meets twice a month, as well as a
few smaller ones. We have a couple of great
94 December
February 2020
2017
What titles have you found popular
recently?
We ind that the classics are always
popular – Ticket to Ride and Pandemic
see a lot of play – but we also see a lot
of love for Santorini, Escape the Dark
Castle and Chronicles of Crimes. We’re
always trying to get people to try out
new games though so the library is well
loved by the community.
What makes Meeple Perk unique?
We try to embrace all aspects of what it
is to be a board games café; food, drinks
and knowledgeable staf in a comfortable
environment. Not only do we have a great
library of games with something for every
group, but we also have a diverse menu
catering to all diets, so everyone can enjoy
their time at Meeple Perk. Plus, we wouldn’t
be much of a café without having amazing
cakes, often decorated with hand-made
meeple cookies and chocolates which
people go nuts for!
What are some of your personal
favourite games?
Currently it’s Tiny Epic Zombies, which
I’ve mostly played solo after work or when
I’ve had a quiet moment in the café. I love
devising a strategy with limited turns and
having that blow up in my face sometimes.
Other personal favourites are Qwirkle
(in which I’m currently undefeated) and
Patchwork Doodle, just for their simplicity.
Being the game expert, Drew would hate it
if I didn’t mention that Twilight Imperium
fourth edition is his favourite game!
What events do you run for the local
gaming scene?
We have a whole roster of events that
happen every month. Most notably, we
have Social Fridays every Friday from
6pm, where we demo a game to get people
playing together from all diferent walks
of life. We also have Serious Sundays
where we demo heavier games that some
might ind daunting to try on their own.
We also do social deduction nights, RPG
workshops with local speakers and our
RPG one shot events.
friendly local gaming stores that sell games,
and the local library has a selection of games WHERE CAN I FIND IT?
to borrow, so there are a number of diferent 89 Clayton Street, Newcastle, NE1 5PZ
facebook.com/MeeplePerk
ways to get into the hobby in Newcastle. It’s
meepleperk@gmail.com
great seeing all sorts of people playing games!
EVENT REPORT
DUDLEY BUG BALL
Come one, come all! Organiser Steve Turner takes us
gaming in the West Midlands
Interview by James Winspear
When and how did the Dudley Bug Ball
first start?
he Dudley Bug Ball started way back in 1995. I
was an RPGA (Role Playing Game Association)
regional director for the Midlands and one
of our remits was to form a local games
convention. At the time my place of work had
a sports and social club with a large hall, which
enabled me to persuade my wife (who was a
trained PA) to help organise the event. We had
about 80 delegates that irst year.
What’s up with the name?
We needed something catchy we could hang a
logo on, and through brainstorming and some
beer we hit upon a local fossil, a trilobite only
found in the Dudley area, known locally as the
Dudley Bug. With a certain song in mind we hit
on the Dudley Bug Ball with a fantasy trilobite
warrior as a logo.
What’s changed since its first show?
he show grew over a seven year period,
moving to larger venues until we peaked at
the end of May 2002 at the Hilton Metropole
NEC with about 3,000 (turnstile) delegates.
At this point we both felt burnt out as we
had full time jobs and we were running
Brittannia Game Designs Ltd at the same
time (with two young children) so we ended
up taking a break. his proved longer than
expected and in 2019 we felt the time and the
stars were right to resurrect the show. We
moved from the original dates (some other
show has those dates now and they are a
bit bigger) to the end of February and also
changed venue. When we started Dudley
only had two hotels, and they now have ive
including a Premier Inn and a Travelodge.
his has had an impact on our future plans.
With the relaunch the team now consists of
myself and Sue (my wife) along with Nimrod
and Linda Jones.
UPCOMING EVENTS
PAW2020
Saturday February 1st to Sunday 2nd
YMCA, Honicknowle Lane, Plymouth,
B26 2RZ
Wargaming show with tournaments and
bring and buy
plymouthwargamers.co.uk
VAPNARTAK
Sunday February 2nd
Knavesmire Stand, York Racecourse,
York, Y023 1EX
Wargames show hosted by York
Wargames Society
vapnartak.co.uk
BUZZARDCON
Saturday February 8th
Linslade Community Hall, Waterloo Road,
Linslade, Leighton Buzzard, LU7 2NR
Boardgames convention hosted by the
Leighton Buzzard Boardgames Club
lbboardgames.org.uk/buzzard
What’s new this year? BEACHHEAD 2020
hey’ll be some new games at the event; Saturday February 8th and Sunday 9th
Brittannia Game Designs Ltd will be previewing Bournemouth International Centre, Exeter
Chivalry and Sorcery ifth edition (which was Rd, Bournemouth BH2 5BH
successfully funded on Kickstarter and is due for Wargames, RPG and boardgames event
release in March), Nightfall Games will be there with tournaments
with SLA Industries second edition and Word beachheadshow.co.uk
Forge Games will have D-Day Dice available
along with other previews. We aim to expand
ITZACON
Friday February 14th to Sunday 16th
our existing available range of RPGs along with NUI Galway, University Rd, Glaway, Ireland
possible CCG tournaments. Gaming convention with wargames, RPGs,
CCGs and LARP
What are some of the most popular titles at facebook.com/Itzacon
your event?
Currently the popular games tend to be Call SORCON 13
of Cthulhu and other indie games, although Friday February 21st to Sunday 23rd
we do try to have plenty of participation and Holiday Inn Basildon, Cranes Farm Road,
Waterfront Walk, Essex, SS14 3DG
introductory games for RPGs, boardgames and
Eurogames gaming day with bring and buy
miniature games. sorcon.co.uk
What are your plans for future shows? REVELATION
As we continue to grow the event once more, we Saturday February 22nd and Sunday 23rd
have the opportunity to expand over the Dudley The Garrison Hotel, Hillsborough
Area. he ive hotels are all within easy walking Barracks, 635 Penistone Rd, Sheffield
distance of each other, and surround a leisure S6 2GB
complex of eating establishments, cinemas and Roleplaying games convention
revelationgames.org.uk
so on. We are 15-20 minute’s walk away from the
Black Country Museum where Peaky Blinders is DUDLEY BUG BALL
ilmed, and we are over the road from Dudley Sunday February 23rd
Castle and Zoo. he venue is also considered Station Hotel, Castle Hill, Dudley, DY1 4RA
one of the UK’s most haunted hotels. dudleybugball.org.uk
tabletopgaming.co.uk 95
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 SHOP DIRECTORY
ONLINE HAMPSHIRE TYNE & WEAR ONLINE
A Fistful of Dice
Independent Wargaming,
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MERSEYSIDE

This space
could be yours!
To advertise here, call Liz on 01778 395059
or email
elizabeth.ridge@warnersgroup.co.uk

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D I R E C T LY F R O M U S !

tabletopgaming.co.uk/games
 12
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PENTE GRAMMAI
(FIVE LINES)
t’s always tempting to claim one game as ‘the reference to the game,

I ancestor of’ another, just because it’s similar and

came first. But reconstructing ancient games is a
tricky activity in default of written rules of play,
and there is a danger of reading back into them
features of their supposed descendants.
The ancient Greek game of Pente Grammai, or
Five Lines, is a case in point. It’s often mentioned and
about 600 BCE, implies
that moving a piece away
from the sacred line can
be a smart move, for the
proverb ‘he moves the
piece from the sacred
line’ often occurs outside
partially described in literature of the so-called ‘Dark a gaming context,
Ages’, but rarely from first-hand experience. Even suggesting some action
by the 2nd century CE encyclopaedist Julius Pollux which would normally be
considered it ‘an obscure piece of antiquity’, and strategically undesirable
the 12th-century Eustathios’ description is based at but in this particular
second-hand on one by the poet Alcaeus (c. 625-580 instance confers a
BCE, supposed lover of Sappho). significant advantage.
The most popular ‘boards’ for ancient games Stephen Kidd, of the Department of Classics
were simple grids that could be drawn with a stick at Brown University, offers the following
in the sand or inscribed on a wax tablet, and Five reconstruction (I paraphrase):
Lines is exactly what it says – five horizontal lines » Pieces start in hand and are entered and moved in
forming a column with each of two players sitting at accordance with the throw of a single die.
opposite ends of it. Each started with five distinctive » Each player moves their five pieces anti-clockwise
pieces and entered them singly, moving them around the board according to the throw, starting
forwards in accordance with the roll of a cubic die. at their bottom right-hand corner.
Visual representations often show more than five » The winner is the first to land all their pieces on the TEMPLE Five Lines board
lines, suggesting either that the non-player artist central ‘sacred’ line, which can only be entered at on the eastern pediment of
was just giving a general idea of its appearance, or their left-hand side. the temple of Leto, Delos
that expansions developed of their own accord. » If you land on an opposing singleton (a blot, in (Photo: Ulrich Schädler)
Boards of up to eleven lines are depicted – always Backgammon terms) the latter is removed and must
an odd number, owing to the significance of the start again. VASE Ajax and Achilles playing
central line. » If your opponent has two or more pieces ‘yoked’ on Five Lines, vase painting, early
Most reconstructions agree that you entered a line you cannot land on that side of it. 5th century BCE (Musées
pieces in the bottom right corner and travelled up Does Kidd read more than allowed by the evidence Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire,
the right-hand side, switched to the left at the top, with the benefit of historical hindsight? Maybe. Yet his Brussels, inv.no. R2512)
then travelled back down to the bottom, continuing reasoning is supported by other references detailed in
to move thus in an anti-clockwise direction, a total of his 2017 paper on the subject (ttgami.ng/Kidd5lines). David Parlett is a games
ten steps per circuit. In particular, you might well move one of your pieces inventor and historian,
The eighth step from Start brought you to the away from the sacred line in order, defensively, to author of The Oxford
left-hand side of the central or so-called ‘sacred’ line, accompany and thereby safeguard a vulnerable blot, History of Card Games and
which acted as your goal or ‘home’. The first to get or, offensively, to oust an opposing singleton. For its sequel on board games,
all five counters onto the left-hand side of the sacred a less elaborate account, see also Ulrich Schädler, and a visiting professor
of games design at the
line wins, as implied (in reverse) by Eustathios’ line Director of the Swiss Museum of Games (ttgami.ng/
University of Suffolk.
‘the beaten player goes to it last’. The earliest written Schadler5lines).

98 February 2020 tabletopgaming.co.uk

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