Latest Posts
Rebel Princess – Board Game Review
Rebel Princess is a trick-taking game inspired by Hearts. If you’ve played Hearts, you’ll already understand most of the game, which is to avoid taking certain cards, because those cards will give you points. And points are bad. In Rebel Princess, those points take the form of proposals. Each prince card represents a proposal, and the goal of the game is very simple: avoid proposals at all costs.
Why Board Gamers Are Always Chasing the Cult of the New
You love board games. You’ve played hundreds. You’ve backed dozens of Kickstarters, you read rules just for fun, you’ve joined online board game communities to talk about your favourite games… And yet… there they are. The games you genuinely liked, experiences you enjoy, just, sitting on your shelf. Unfinished legacy campaigns, half-explored systems. Expansions you’ve folded into the base box that you never got around to actually playing.
My question is: Why do board gamers keep abandoning games they actually like?
Perch – Board Game Review
Perch is an area control game for 2 to 5 players, designed by Douglas Hettrick, with art by Ari Oliver, and published by Inside Up games in 2025. Perch casts players as a colour of bird and tasks them with earning the most points possible over 5 rounds. Each round players will take two birds of their colour, and pull two more birds out from a bag as their options for the round. Then, turn by turn, players will place one of the birds they control onto the various tiles on the table. Once everyone is done placing their birds, each tile is evaluated for majority. Whoever has the most birds on a tile will earn the top billing of points, but there’s a small catch. Players who have tied amounts of birds will cancel each other out, denying each other from scoring any points at all.
Tearable Quest – Board Game Review
Once upon a time, I was learning about the difference between lived experiences and observed experiences. The teacher split the class in half. One group sat back and recorded what they saw, while the other group had to run up a staircase breathing only through a straw. Then the class switched roles.
Unsurprisingly, the observers didn’t quite grasp how difficult the task really was until they experienced it themselves. And that lesson came back to me when I sat down to play Tearable Quest, designed by Shintaro Ono, with art by Sai Beppu, and published by Allplay in 2025.
3 Witches – Board Game Review
One of the things I love about trick-taking games is how effortlessly they get to the table. You generally get a deck of cards and deal most if not all the cards out. The teach is usually something along the lines of “It’s a trick-taking game, but here’s the twist…” and you’re off. The bones of trick-taking games are familiar: follow suit, win tricks, claim victory. Sure, each game brings its own little wrinkles that make each one unique and interesting, but the foundations of the games are usually comforting and intuitive.
My Rant Against Hidden Trackable Information
Hidden Trackable Information (HTI) refers to information that everyone at the table could be tracking and therefore knows with 100% certainty, but which is deliberately hidden. I’m not talking about drawing cards into your hand in Ticket to Ride, even if you use the public market every turn, because you could still be drawing blindly from the deck, and that information is hidden.
7 Wonders Dice – Board Game Review
Ah, the roll and write. First comes a successful board game. Then comes the card game version. Then comes the roll and write cash in. 7 Wonders is no different, albeit it’s taken quite a bit longer to get here than some of the other examples I’m referencing, *cough Castles of Burgundy cough*.
Cairn – Video Game Review
Cairn casts you as expert mountaineer Aava attempting to summit Mount Kami, the most dangerous mountain in the world. If you take the time to explore the posters in the tutorial area, you’ll learn that around 30 people attempt the climb each year. Few ever return. None have ever reached the summit.
