Latest Game Reviews
Port Royal – Board Game Review
I have a tenuous relationship with the games designed by Alexander Pfister. On one hand, I generally dislike Great Western Trail, Blackout Hong Kong, and Maricabo. On the other hand, two of his co-designes, Broom Service, and Isle of Skye are some of my favourite games ever. While I’ve learned to steer clear from his bigger euro games, I hold out hope that I’ll continue to find joy in his smaller games.
Lost Ruins of Arnak – Board Game Review
Lost Ruins of Arnak is a resource management game with a touch of worker placement and deck building for 1 to 4 players, designed by Min and Elwyn, and published by CGE. In Lost Ruins of Arnak, players have two workers, a small deck of cards, and a huge board with various locations for their workers to explore and earn resources, which get spent on the temple track to move your two tokens up to earn more resources and victory points.
Wizards & Co – Board Game Review
Designers Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli, Stefano Luperto, and Antonio Tinto have brought us some wonderful games, like Lorenzi Il Magnifico, First Rat, and Coimbra, as well as some not so great games, like Grand Austria Hotel, and Egizia. It was this pedigree of designers that I agreed to receive a review copy of their latest game, Wizards & Co, published by Sinister Fish Games.
Bullet: Palette – Board Game Review
Continuing on from last week, I’m going to look at the characters and bosses that come in Bullet: Palette and share my experiences as I played them!
Bullet Paw – Board Game Review
Bullet Paw is one of the latest expansions to one of my favourite games of all time, Bullet❤️. While I’ve covered the original game here, and the standalone expansion, Bullet⭐, but I’ve never covered the 3 character expansions, Bullet🍊 and the freshly delivered Paw and Palette. So here I am to start to rectify this situation.
Kinfire Delve: Callous’ Lab – Board Game Review
Kinfire Delve: Callous’ Lab plays exactly like the previous two boxes, Vainglory’s Grotto and Scorn’s Stockade. It’s the same setup, the same core rules, but with two new heroes and a whole new well deck, it offers some fun and interesting twists on the system.
Whalefall – Book Review
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus came into my life via a skeet (a Bluesky post, for those who are unfamiliar with the term) by Elizabeth Hargrave, designer of Wingspan. It basically said “I put Whalefall on my holds list, then by the time it was available, I forgot why I wanted to read it. Going in blind is highly recommended for this book”. So I popped over to my library app, put the book on hold, and didn’t read a single word more about it.
Bonsai – Board Game Review
Designed by Rosaria Battiato, Massimo Borzì, and Martino Chiacchiera, Bonsai is a tile placement game for 1 to 4 players. Bonsai starts each player with a pot with a single wood hex buried in the dirt. A small deck of cards sits on the left side of a small board, then 3 cards are turned face up. Each turn consists of a player either taking a card from the board, potentially also taking plant tiles, depending on what slot that card was in, or to take the tiles from their supply and place them on their tree. Game play continues until the deck runs out, scores are calculated, and the player with the most points is the winner!