EXCLUSIVE: LONDON’S NEW GAMING SHOW

#12 Oct/Nov ‘17 tabletopgaming.co.uk

60 YEARS OF RISK
LOOKING BACK ON
A STRATEGY ICON

LIGHTS, DUNGEONS
& DRAGONS
CAMERA, BEYOND
ACTIONS ALL THE DEETS AS
WHY MOVIE BOARD D&D GOES DIGITAL
GAMES HAVE NEVER
BEEN BIGGER

30
REVIEWS
INSIDE!

PANDEMIC
LEGEND OF THE FIVE
RINGS: THE CARD GAME
WASTELAND EXPRESS
DELIVERY SERVICE

LEGACY
STAR TREK ADVENTURES
WHITEHALL MYSTERY
GLOOM OF KILFORTH
CODENAMES DUET
BEARS VS BABIES
THE GODFATHER
THE GAME THAT CHANGED THE WORLD IS BACK.
SPIRIT ISLAND HERE’S EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW

ESSEN 2017 AN ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO

Display until 29/11/17
£5.25

THE WORLD’S BIGGEST

SHOW PREVIEW TABLETOP CONVENTION

001_Cover_v3 MJ.indd 1 25/09/2017 14:32

 LONDON
SECOND EDITION

From acclaimed designer Martin Wallace

and the team at Osprey Games comes
London: Second Edition.

After the devastation of the great fire,

many competing developers want to see
their vision for the city realised. Will you
combat poverty and increase employment,
build iconic monuments as a testament to
your ingenuity, or simply make the trains
run on time?

2-4 14+ 60-90

MINUTES Grow your city through the decades, as
PLAYERS AGES PLAY TIME
you vie to become an icon of London.

Star Cartel is a space trading game

of making the right bets at the right
time. Players take on the role of traders
and smugglers, trying to maximise
the value of the goods they have
stockpiled, while minimising the value
of other player’s goods.

Trading goods to the cartel increases

their value on the black market, but
you can’t stash what you’ve traded
away. Upgrade your ship, stockpile
3-6 14+ 30-45
MINUTES
your loot and remember...
PLAYERS AGES PLAY TIME
In space, no-one can hear you scheme.

O R D E R T O D AY AT W W W. O S P R E Y G A M E S . C O . U K

p002.indd 1 19/09/2017 11:29

 IN THIS ISSUE

WELCOME
04 YOUR FREE GIFT 60 RISING STAR
A unique When I Dream card. Star Saga prepares to shine.

05 TABLETOP GAMING LIVE 64 STREETS OF FIRE

Announcing our new show! Fire Hazard and the breathless
With the big reveals of Essen just around the corner, October is always one of world of live-action games.
the most exciting months for gamers across the globe. This year, it’s even more 06 NEED TO KNOW
exciting. That’s because we can proudly announce that Tabletop Gaming will 67 PLAY IT SMART
be holding its very own gaming convention in London next year. Yes, really! 08 FIRST TURN Catching the bug for viruses.
Held in Alexandra Palace on September 29th and 30th 2018, Tabletop Gaming 2017 Spiel des Jahres winner
Live will be London’s new home for the latest and greatest board games, Bruno Cathala on Lawless. 68 A SPIRE TO GREATNESS
miniatures and RPGs. We’ve got a lot of exciting plans in the works and we RPG designer Grant Howitt
hope you’ll be able to join us – turn to page 5 for the full details.If that wasn’t 10 MY FAVOURITE GAME on ascending to The Spire.
enough, from the end of November onwards Tabletop Gaming will become Starfinder co-creator Amanda
a monthly magazine, putting the finest coverage of analogue gaming in the Hamon Kunz talks Gloom. 70 SPIEL THE BEANS
world into your hands every 30-or-so days. The first monthly issue will be out Your guide to Essen 2017.
on November 30th, and can now be found in more shops than ever before 12 KICKSTARTING
in the UK, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, WHSmith, hobby stores and more! FROM SCRATCH PLAYED
Visit tabletopgaming.co.uk to find your local stockist. Of course, you can also Art Deck hits a bump on its 76 LEGEND OF THE FIVE
subscribe to make sure you keep up with the latest news, exclusive features way to crowdfunding. RINGS: THE CARD GAME
and interviews, free gifts, and reviews of the games you shouldn’t miss. We 80 WASTELAND EXPRESS
wouldn’t be here without the support of readers like 14 TEN OF THE BEST DELIVERY SERVICE
you, and we can’t wait to show you what else we have Euro gonna love these picks. 83 CODENAMES DUET
planned for the future. There’s no need to wait for all 84 STAR TREK ADVENTURES
the excitement, though – enjoy our exclusive look in 16 ROLE CALL 85 WHITEHALL MYSTERY
this issue at 2017’s hottest game, Pandemic Legacy: The latest RPG releases. 86 THE GODFATHER
Season 2 and see what’s in store for this year’s Essen. 89 STATECRAFT

Matt 18 ALL THE JAHRES

James Wallis trucks on
with Auf Achse.
89 MEDICI: THE CARD GAME
90 UNTOLD
93 GLOOM OF KILFORTH
94 SPIRIT ISLAND
Matt Jarvis 20 A WORLD
ON THE
COVER
96 BEARS VS BABIES
OF DIFFERENCE 97 13 MINUTES
Editor Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock 97 THE LOST EXPEDITION
change the world again in 98 MODERN ART
Pandemic Legacy: Season 2. 100 UNEARTH

Contact us... 28 THE COOL OF CTHULHU

How H.P. Lovecraft became
102 CAVERNA: CAVE VS CAVE
103 DEADLINE
105 THE NETWORKS
@ tabletopgaming@warnersgroup.co.uk the master of tabletop horror. 106 LOVECRAFT LETTER
106 FIRST DATES: THE GAME
www.facebook.com/tabletopgamingmagazine 34 AN INTRODUCTION TO... 109 CATCH THE MOON
The King of Tokyo and I. 110 THE FOX IN THE FOREST
twitter.com/TabletopMag
110 PURRRLOCK HOLMES
36 THE MAKING OF... 111 DONNER DINNER PARTY
EDITORIAL MARKETING
EDITOR Matt Jarvis MARKETING BRAND MANAGER Dan Jolin enters the chaotic, 111 THAT’S A QUESTION!
01778 392 400 Nicola Lumb charming Magic Maze. 112 LAZER RYDERZ
matt.jarvis@warnersgroup.co.uk
MARKETING ASSISTANT
112 STROOP
HEAD OF DESIGN & PRODUCTION Katherine Brown 01778 395 502 42 RISK REWARD 113 ACCESSORIES
Lynn Wright katherine.brown@warnersgroup.co.uk The strategy icon turns 60.
DESIGNER Richard Hallam 115 PAINTING GUIDE
PUBLISHED BY
COVER IMAGE FROM ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER 46 PANEL PLAY Meching the most of Scythe.
PANDEMIC LEGACY: SEASON 2 Claire Ingram
Warners Group Publications PLC
Inside the pages of
The Maltings, West Street, Bourne, tabletop comic books. 120 A DM’S GUIDE TO RPGS
Lincolnshire PE10 9PH
ADVERTISING 01778 391 000 | www.warnersgroup.co.uk
50 CHANGING THE RULES 122 EVENT REPORT
TO ADVERTISE PLEASE CALL
GROUP ADVERTISING MANAGER NEWSTRADE Dized reveals how it plans
Claire Ingram 01778 391 179 DISTRIBUTION to revolutionise rulebooks. 124 CLUB DIRECTORY
clairem@warnersgroup.co.uk Warners Group Publications PLC
01778 391 150
GROUP TELESALES EXECUTIVE 52 ROLL AND MOVIE 126 SHOP SPOTLIGHT
Ben Jackson 01778 391 129 PRINTING
ben.jackson@warnersgroup.co.uk
Dan Jolin goes from big screen
This publication is to big box with film games. 128 SHOP DIRECTORY
ADVERTISING DESIGN
AND PRODUCTION printed by Warners
Nicola Lock 01778 392 420 01778 395111 56 DIGITAL DRAGONS 130 TABLETOP
nicola.lock@warnersgroup.co.uk We explore D&D’s new app. TIME MACHINE EXCLUSIVE: LONDON’S
NEW GAMING SHOW
#12 Oct/Nov ‘17
tabletopgaming.co.uk

The views expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the publishers. Every care is taken to ensure that the content
of this magazine is accurate, but we assume no responsibility for any effect from errors or omissions. While every care is taken 60 YEARS OF

SUBSCRIBE TODAY
RISK
LOOKING BACK ON
LIGHTS, A STRATEGY ICON

with unsolicited material submitted for publication, we cannot be responsible for loss or damage. While every care is taken when CAMERA,
ACTIONS
WHY MOVIE BOARD
DUNGEONS
& DRAGONS
BEYOND

accepting advertisements, we are not responsible for the quality and/or the performance of goods and/or services advertised in
GAMES HAVE NEVER ALL THE DEETS AS
BEEN BIGGER D&D GOES DIGITAL

this magazine. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) exists to regulate the content of advertisements. Tel: 020 7429 2222
30
© Warners Group Publications PLC, 2017 Get an exclusive gift with your next issue REVIEWS
INSIDE!
LEGEND OF THE FIVE
RINGS: THE CARD GAME
WASTELAND EXPRESS
DELIVERY SERVICE
STAR TREK ADVENTURES PANDEMIC
LEGACY
SEE PAGE 108 FOR MORE DETAILS
WHITEHALL MYSTERY
GLOOM OF KILFORTH
CODENAMES DUET
BEARS VS BABIES
THE GODFATHER
SPIRIT ISLAND THE GAME THAT CHANGED
HERE’S EVERYTHING THE WORLD IS BACK.
YOU NEED TO KNOW
ESSEN 2017 AN ESSENTIAL GUIDE
TO
SHOW PREVIEW THE WORLD’S BIGGEST
Display until 29/11/17

£5.25

TABLETOP CONVENTION
001_Cover_v3 MJ.indd
1

25/09/2017 14:32

003_WelcomeContents_v2 MJ.indd 3 25/09/2017 15:05

 FREE WITH THIS ISSUE
EXCLUSIVE WHEN I DREAM PROMO CARDS
Float away with these customisable double-sided cards for the dreamy party game

E W IT H T H E PR IN T EDITION
FREE GIFT ONLY AVAILABL it ta b le to p g a m in g.co.uk
f the print edition v is
To order a copy o

I
n When I Dream, one player dons a sleep mask
and pretends to fall asleep, while everyone
else is dealt a secret role card. They could be a
good spirit trying to help the dreamer understand
their visions, a bad spirit aiming to mislead them
or a trickster spirit that switches from helpful to
devious as each two-minute round goes by.
The sleeper must try and identify their
dreams using the one-word clues given by the
rest of the group, with the cards going in the
correct or incorrect piles depending on whether
they manage to guess accurately. The two piles
score points for the opposing teams of spirits
at the end of the round, while the dreamer can
earn bonus points by telling a story using all of
the revealed cards when time runs out.
Each of the dream cards displays a surreal
mixture of two words – for example, rice and
oyster, or zombie and babysitter – that the
sleeper can guess, complete with beautiful
artwork that combines the words, with highly
entertaining results.
64 cards come ready-to-play in the box, but
you can add your own personal twist to the
game with this month’s free Tabletop Gaming
gift: your very own personalised dreams.
Attached to the front of this magazine is one of
five exclusive When I Dream cards. They’re much
more than standard dream cards, though – these
are double-sided promo cards featuring brand
new artwork, with a different dream on either side.
All of the cards’ labels come blank, allowing
you to customise your card with your very own
idea for a dream, making your game of When I
Dream completely unique.
You’ll find one card with your magazine, but
there are five different cards to collect, for a total of
10 new dreams. Pick up another copy (or four!)
of Tabletop Gaming to expand your collection! ■

Awesome games club

two nights a week - and weekends!
We’re close to Junction 1 of the M6 & Junction 18 of the M1

004_whenIDreamPromo_v2 MJ.indd 4 25/09/2017 15:06

 CONTACT US...
www.facebook.com/tabletopgamingmagazine

NEED TO @ tabletopgaming@warnersgroup.co.uk

www.twitter.com/TabletopMag

KNOW...
ANNOUNCING LONDON'S NEW GAMING SHOW:
Celebration of everything board games, miniatures and RPGs to
take place in Alexandra Palace on September 29th and 30th 2018
We’re very excited to announce Tabletop
Gaming Live, a new gaming show run by the
teams behind Tabletop Gaming and Miniature
Wargames magazines that will take place in
London next September.
The two-day event will take place on Saturday,
September 29th and Sunday, September 30th
2018, meaning it’ll be the first place in the UK to
see some of the hottest games revealed at Gen
Con in mid-August, as well as your chance to
play the most talked-about upcoming releases
before Essen Spiel takes place in October. Not to
mention that it won’t cost you an expensive flight
to the US or Germany!
Tabletop Gaming Live will be an extension
of the in-depth and enthusiastic coverage you
enjoy in every issue of Tabletop Gaming and
Miniature Wargames, covering every genre and
style of tabletop gaming, from board and card
games to miniatures, wargames and RPGs.
It will be a show for everyone, whether you’re a
dedicated Magic: The Gathering or X-Wing collector,
Warhammer 40,000 or Malifaux miniature wargamer,
Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying adventurer, or
someone who just enjoys a lighthearted round of
Exploding Kittens or Pandemic.
The convention will be held in London’s iconic
Alexandra Palace, making it the best place for
gamers to meet in the UK capital. The venue is
easy to get to for both those in the city and those
coming from around the rest of the UK and abroad,
with close-by train and public transport links.
Full details and ticket prices are yet to be
announced, but needless to say we have
some really exciting plans in store that are set
to make Tabletop Gaming Live the very best
gaming convention the UK has to offer. We’re
looking forward to seeing you there!

■ Tabletop Gaming Live will be held in London's

Alexandra Palace in September 2018.

Central location. Free parking.

Comfortable facilities.
We’re close to Junction 1 of the M6 & Junction 18 of the M1

005_007_news_v2 MJ.indd 5 25/09/2017 09:44

 NEED TO KNOW...

THAT’S NO MOON
It’s what could be the biggest
game reveal of the year: a new
Star Wars miniatures game!
Fantasy Flight has announced
Star Wars: Legion, an infantry
skirmish game set in the galaxy
far, far away and due to come out
early next year.
Legion plans to do for ground
combat what X-Wing did for space
dogfighting, allowing two players
to take control of squads of
Stormtroopers and Rebel soldiers
in battles during the original Star
Wars trilogy’s Galactic Civil War.
Unlike X-Wing, however, you’ll
be needing to stick together and
paint the 33 models in the core box
yourself. As well as Stormtroopers
and Rebel Troopers, the set will
include vehicles in the form of two
74-Z speeder bikes for the Empire
and an AT-RT walker on the Rebel
side. Most excitingly, the first two
commanders will be Darth Vader
and Luke Skywalker.
The gameplay will be markedly
different from both X-Wing
and Fantasy Flight’s previous
miniatures game Runewars,, using
a card-driven system to activate
units that changes based on
which leaders are being used. As
troops are activated, they can use
two actions and move as squads,
with a free-form system allowing
grunts to be placed around
their leader without needing to
measure every single move.
Legion isn’t the only Star Wars
game coming out soon – the
hugely influential 1980s roleplaying
game based on the sci-fi series is
returning in a fancy new edition for
its 30th anniversary later this year.

TWILIGHT IMPERIUM RETURNS CTRL-ALT-DELETE

There are few games released more Imperium is on
that can measure than a decade ago the way, which
up to Twilight in 2005 and was promises to be
Imperium, with the renowned for the the most refined
iconic strategy epic significant changes version of the game
of galactic conquest it made to the yet, making further
as well known for its interstellar empire- tweaks to the way
rewarding complex building behemoth, trade, construction
gameplay as its which celebrates and upgrades work,
notoriously lengthy its 20th anniversary as well as placing
play time. this year. more of a focus
The game’s Now, a fourth back on the battle
third edition was edition of Twilight over political hub
and galactic centre
Mecatol Rex.
As you might
expect, the box
will be a monster,
packing in over
300 miniatures,
450 cards and 700
tokens. It’ll cost £135
here in the UK and
is due out before the
end of the year, so
you best start saving
those pennies.
Android: Netrunner is getting
refreshed with some big changes
set to shake up the legendary
competitive card game.
First of all, a new revised core set
has been announced for the game
that will combine cards from the
original core box with new additions
from the Genesis and Spin cycle
data packs.
None of the cards will be
completely new, meaning there’s
no need to rush out and pick up the
box if you already own the core set.
However, some will be new versions
of existing cards, updated with
fresh artwork that ages the world’s
characters in line with the advanced
in-game narrative.
The main reason cards from the
first two series of expansions are
joining the main box is so that they
survive the first rotation for the
game, which took effect on October
1st – meaning it will impact the
Netrunner world championships held
in November.
As with Magic: The Gathering
Gathering, the
rotation is designed to make certain
cards illegal for use in tournaments
and organised play, aiming to keep
the game’s meta balanced. Some
of the iconic cards outlawed include
Scorched Earth, Account Siphon,
Corroder and SanSan City Grid.
The first rotation removed support
for Genesis and Spin cycle cards
not included in the revised core set,
leaving the number of expansions
legal to use equal to five cycles of
data packs and the first data pack in
the upcoming Kitara cycle, which will
begin with the Sovereign Sight set.

IN BRIEF EMPIRE-BUILDING EPIC THROUGH THE AGES IS OUT ON IOS AND ANDROID

Dedicated
war room
We’re close to Junction 1 of the M6 & Junction 18 of the M1

005_007_news_v2 MJ.indd 6 22/09/2017 09:15

 GET THE A VERY WIDE WORLD
GANGS A new edition of classic 1985 World War
II strategy wargame World in Flames is
BACK gunning to be crowned as the biggest
TOGETHER board game ever made.
The Collector’s Edition of the complex
After more than wartime simulation comes with a
a decade away, staggering four hardback main maps,
Warhammer 40,000’s each measuring 83cm by 57.4cm, as
grubby younger sibling Necromunda is well as three 42-by-29.7cm “mini” maps
returning with a new edition of the punky and displays – bringing the total play
gang warfare spin-off. surface of the game to an enormous
Necromunda focuses on smaller 2.27 square metres.
groups of models than in Warhammer Its so large, in fact, that publisher
40,000, as teams of Hive Gangs kit up Australian Design Group believes the game It’s not just World in Flames’ map that
with sci-fi augmentations and mods should take the Guinness World Record for the is big. The game recreates the movements
before battling it out in the Underhive. ‘Largest board game commercially available’ of the nations involved in WWII from the
The incoming revision is said to be from current record-holder The War Game: outbreak of war in 1939 to its end in 1945.
based on the updated eighth edition World War II, which has held the award for the While the shortest scenario can be played in
rules for Warhammer 40,000, introducing past decade. an hour, there’s the option to embark on the
an action point system similar to that The War Game includes a 197-by-98cm board – Global War ‘mega campaign’, which takes an
seen in Space Hulk where activating or 1.93 square metres – which would make World estimated 150 hours to finish. That’s a lot of
different models and actions costs in Flames a fifth larger, if its creators are correct. very sore bums!
varying amounts of points.
The early word is that the rules will
support combat across different terrain GREAT STUFF Stuffed Fables’ story, as players
take on the roles of stuffed toys
actions each player can use that
turn based on the dice’s colours.
types, with a selection of terrain included The creator of the fantastically
in the box. (modelled with more than a When black dice are drawn,
fantastical Mice & Mystics is
As for miniatures, the first two touch of The Nightmare Before minions spawn and attack, with
back with another unique co-op
teams confirmed will be revamped Christmas about them) trying heroes’ melee attacks, ranged
game inspired by fairy tales and
versions of Necromunda favourites: to save their child owner from a attacks, healing, searching and
childlike imagination.
the nimble female warriors of House realm of nightmares. special actions also in the mix.
Jerry Hawthorne’s Stuffed
Escher and the armoured The action is powered by Players can share dice – or their
Fables is the first in a new series
muscle of House dice, which are pulled at random own stuffing – as they work
of ‘StoryBoard’ games, which
Goliath. Future from a bag and dictate the together to defeat the evil villain.
use the pages of a flip-open
expansions book as both their board and
will seemingly manual, being made up of thick
follow the cardboard pages on which the
format used plastic miniatures are placed.
for last year’s Each spread presents the
Blood Bowl. next chapter of the narrative,
It all sounds alongside maps, story choices,
good, but there’s one special rules and NPC
catch: we’re yet to characters to interact with that
get a whiff apply to each different scenario.
of a release As well as being an interesting
date. Boo! twist on the use of boards and
rulebooks, the format ties into

❯ DEAD OF WINTER PREQUEL RAXXON BREAKING OUT IN OCTOBER

Perfect venue
for large events
We’re close to Junction 1 of the M6 & Junction 18 of the M1

005_007_news_v2 MJ.indd 7 22/09/2017 09:16

 FIRST TURN
BRUNO CATHALA
The Kingdomino king, 7 Wonders Duel-ist and recent Spiel des Jahres
superstar casts back to his genesis moment: western card game Lawless
Interview by Dan Jolin
“I never BACKGROUND
“In 2004 I was fired from my job as an R&D engineer,
thought about which I’d done for 18 years. It was a very narrow
speciality and my only possibility for a new job was
the audience. in the US or on the other side of France, but I was
divorced and wanted to stay close to my children. So I
The audience had to create my own activity. That’s why I decided to
transform my passion for games into a real job.”
is me. It’s COMPONENTS
quite a selfish “I discovered there was life after Monopoly when I
was about 20. The French magazine Jeux & Strategie
attitude. But revealed to me that there was such a thing as a ‘game
designer’ – I’d never imagined people designed
it’s the only games before then. My first modern game was Fief,
which was published because the designer had won
way I’m able a game design contest, so I said: ‘One day I have to
design my own game.’ I made Lawless a western game
to work.” because I like those kinds of movies. I have good
memories of watching westerns like 3:10 to Yuma on
TV with my father.”
OBJECT
“I’ve only ever designed games for myself. My only
target is to create the game I want to play myself now,
and at this time I wanted to play this one. So I never
thought about the audience. The audience is me. It’s
■ A prototype of Lawless, showing
the clip art that inspired the final
game’s story and mechanics.
008_FirstTurn_v2 MJ.indd 8
quite a selfish attitude. But it’s the only way I’m able
to work. And it works because my taste in games is
very wide.”
SETUP
“I started by just looking through clip art libraries for
pictures I could use to make my prototype. As it was a
western, I needed cows, so I chose three cows, out of
hundreds. Then I needed cowboys, so I chose three
cowboys. And suddenly I saw that I had a very small
cow, a normal one and a fat one; and I had a very young
cowboy, a standard one and a veteran. So the pictures
gave me the idea for the story and the mechanism.”
HOW TO PLAY
“In Lawless you try to build the best ranch in the wild
Wild West. So you need fields, represented by cards,
and on these fields you can place cows, and the more
cows you keep on the fields the more money they
will earn you. There are also a lot of action cards that
can trigger some special effects, and you also have
offensive cards and cowboys to protect your herd.”
END OF THE GAME
“The first publisher was a very small company based
in Geneva, but before the game was produced
they suddenly disappeared. I said, ‘I have to find
another way.’ So I emailed Bruno Faidutti, who I had
never met, but I knew had been designing games
for 15 years. I proposed that if he helped me find
a publisher, he would get 50%. I thought he would
never answer. But he answered me one hour later. I
sent him the prototype and he liked it so much that
he helped me find my first publisher, Descartes, and
in return only asked for ten boxes of the game. So Mr.
Faidutti, thank you! I will never forget you!”
STRATEGY TIPS
“The first lesson a game designer has to learn is
patience. And my advice is also to play it again, again,
again, and not present the game to publishers before
you’re sure it’s 100% finished. I am still very proud of
Lawless. It’s the game which gave me the confidence
to be a game designer but, more than that, it’s still
a game I like to play. Though I would really like to
reboot it...” ■
25/09/2017 09:47
 SHOP
Huge range of board games,
miniatures, card games & more!

PLaY
Gaming venue for events large & small

GO OnlIne
Check out our full product range,
events & forums

CALL 01327 702 001

VISIT We’re close to Junction 1 of the M6

& Junction 18 of the M1

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p009.indd 1 19/09/2017 11:35

 MY FAVOURITE GAME
AMANDA HAMON KUNZ
The ENnie Award-winning Starfinder co-creator and prolific Pathfinder author
considers the way macabre card game Gloom fostered her love of roleplaying
“In our hands,
G
rowing up among the corn and soybean fields
of rural Ohio, game days with my friends were
Gloom a much-anticipated escape when I was a
teenager. It was the mid-aughts, the internet was still
became a considered a luxury and the nearest game store was
an hour away.
storytelling Games needed to provide a lot of mileage for us
back then. Resources were scarce. Friends’ school
game with and work schedules began to pinch. In the end, when
we got together, we needed something to fill the gaps
a narrative between nerding out over our favourite video games,
trading sobering stories about the area’s hard times
as funny and laughing ourselves silly over the mundane and
ridiculous alike.
as it was A rotating cast of board, card and tabletop
roleplaying games filled that need nicely. Previous
explanatory.” editions of Dungeons & Dragons were a staple. As
was a slate of Arkham Horror games, and favourites
including Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The
Apocalypse and Mage: The Ascension.
But when I think about a game that subtly
■ Gloom’s habit of inspiring influenced me as a creator, I keep coming back to
darkly comic tales can help one title. It’s called Gloom, a unique card game first
roleplaying fans practise their
improv skills. published by Atlas Games in 2004.
10
010_myFavouriteGame_v2 MJ.indd 10
Gloom takes place in a delightfully cheeky, gothic
universe in which the magnificence of one’s afterlife is
directly proportional to the misfortune suffered in life.
Each player controls a family of misfits and is dealt a
hand of awful happenstances – events such as Pursued
by Poodles and Mauled by a Manatee, to give an idea of
the game’s tone. The goal is to visit as many misfortunes
on one’s own family while cheering opponents’ families
with happy events.
The secret to Gloom lies in the way it’s played. In
our hands, Gloom became a storytelling game with a
narrative as funny as it was explanatory. When a player’s
family member was pursued by poodles, it was because
his sister had been training them as attack beasts. When
he was mauled by manatees, he had jumped into the
ocean to escape the poodles. It went on from there.
As goofily as we played the game, it taught me the art
of improvisation. I judged my friends’ reactions to my
tales, tweaked them when they weren’t working and
compounded them to ludicrous heights when they did.
The ability to create and adjust a narrative with
lightning speed made me a good game master. To this
day, when I’m writing and developing games, that
skill helps me address the twists that a story might
take so that I can make GMs’ jobs easier.
Gloom also taught me how familial relationships
can throw wrenches into storytelling. Even the
most intentionally silly plots can take on complex
nuances when parents, aunts, uncles, siblings and
cousins are involved.
I now use that knowledge to add depth and
meaning to my games. Crack open any adventure
I’ve written and there’s a good chance you’ll find a
set of cousins desperately seeking a family heirloom,
lost siblings searching for each other or a child with a
wayward parent (or vice versa).
More than a decade ago, game days seemed like
much-needed time with friends, away from the
hardships and worries that crowded other days.
They were a repository of memorable experiences, a
marker of a time since past and a training ground for
my professional future.
I’m glad for those days, and for the lovely folks who
shared them and still do, when my husband and I visit
from Seattle. I’m glad we had games to help us grow
up, and I’m glad that Gloom was along for the ride. I’d
not be the same creator without it. ■
22/09/2017 09:22
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p011.indd 1 22/09/2017 15:31

 KICKSTARTING
FROM SCRATCH
Just weeks before their crowdfunding campaign goes live, Holly Gramazio
and the Art Deck team are forced to delay the project as reality strikes
“The work
O
ctober is probably a pretty good time to run a
crowdfunding campaign.
that actually Not the absolute best time. People have
spent a lot of effort trying to figure out exactly
pays the what that absolute best time might be, and their
conclusions are... well, inconclusive. But October
rent isn’t seems as good a month as any, and better than most.
It avoids the late December/early January lull. It
this weird comes at a time when most people aren’t spending all
their money on tax bills or holidays. It’s early enough
painting- that you might be able to offer delivery by Christmas,
if you’re pretty much finished with the game and just
and-drawing raising money for the print run; but it’s close enough
to the end of the year that you’ll catch a few people in
card game.” fretful shopping mode: “Oh god, I have to get something
for Winnabel. Wait, this game mentions cutlery and
Winnabel definitely owns at least one fork! IT’LL DO.”
We’d looked at the stats and thought through the
logic when we decided on an October launch for
our drawing game Art Deck. October! Perfect! And
then we got a big piece of paying work for precisely
October, and that plan went out the window.
Most people who run crowdfunding campaigns for
■ 30 days is short enough for a
tabletop games have to fit their game design around
Kickstarter to seem urgent while
being long enough for people to other commitments – a day job, studies and exams,
actually discover the game. family duties; sometimes all three. We’re lucky that
12
012_kickstartingFromScratch_v2 MJ.indd 12
making games is the way we spend our working days,
but the work that actually pays the rent isn’t this weird
painting-and-drawing card game. It’s commissions
and client work and consultancy. And so that has to
come first.
There are some common-sense aspects of
Kickstarter timing that we can take advantage of. The
received wisdom is that 30 days is the best length of
time for a campaign; short enough that there’s a sense
of urgency, but long enough for people to find out
about your project and spread the word. Common
sense and stats both say that you should try to finish
on a weekday, when people will be around and
paying attention to the internet, instead of an evening
or a weekend. That’s easy enough to do.
But unless you’re working on an enormous project
with staff specifically dedicated to getting your
Kickstarter ready and then running it while it’s on,
the marginal advantage of one week or month over
another is tiny compared to the bigger question of:
when do you actually have time to do this? The best
time for a crowdfunding campaign is the time when
you can give it as much attention as you possibly can.
The advice that everyone we’ve spoken to has given us
is: don’t underestimate the amount of time and energy
it takes to get a campaign ready, and to run it while it’s
active. If you’re just going to pop up a description of a
game and a few rewards for backers, you might as well
not bother. So don’t try to force a particular launch
date. Find a time, and a way of running the campaign,
that you can really dedicate your energy to.
For us, the first few months of the year disappear
into the all-consuming maw of the Now Play This
games festival we run so, after October, our next
possible launch date is April. Like a lot of people who
are preparing for a Kickstarter, we’re really excited
about the game we’re making, and we want to finish
it and tell people about it and get it printed and get
people playing as soon as possible. Waiting until April
seems ridiculous. But it turns out that ‘patience’ is
yet another of those skills that are, we’re reluctantly
learning, part of running a crowdfunding campaign. ■
This is the third instalment in this continuing series
following Art Deck from concept to Kickstarter, which
began in TTG #10. Next month: Art Deck hits the road
on a tour to drum up excitement about its campaign.
22/09/2017 09:46
 Bagration to Waffen-SS
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p013.indd 1 19/09/2017 11:41

 2
THE CASTLES OF BURGUNDY
Stefan Feld is one of the designing greats when it
comes to Eurogames, and The Castles of Burgundy
is arguably his masterpiece. Players take on the role

1
of aristocrats in medieval France, trading goods and
building settlements to gain workers and earn money
for victory points. It’s strategically complex without being overly
complicated, plays just as well with two people as it does with four
and has quite a reasonable playing time – topping out at around an
hour and a half – compared to many other Euros.

AGRICOLA
There’s maybe no more revered designer
of Eurogames at the moment than Uwe
Rosenberg. His 2007 Kennerspiel des Jahres
winner is a deep and fulfilling strategy game
about managing a farm as well as a family,
and solidified many of the elements that
would make Rosenberg a tabletop icon,
including his thinky worker placement and use
of occupation cards. Agricola supports up to
five players and can take over two hours to
play, but if you’re looking for a faster, simpler
two-player version, spin-off All Creatures Big
and Small is well worth your time.

I
10Essen. To celebrate the return of the annual
German fair, we’ve picked out ten of the
finest ‘Eurogames' to ever grace the tabletop.
OF THE BEST…
t’s October, which means it’s once again time
for the biggest tabletop event in the world:
EUROGAMES
For those not in the know, Eurogames are
generally considered to be more complex,
skill-dependent and thematically drier than
their so-called ‘Ameritrash’ (it's a term of
endearment, honest) cousins, which tend
to favour theme and luck. Of course, these
are just broad terms rather than specific
cut-and-dry definitions – many of the best
games on both sides of the Atlantic combine
elements of luck, skill, theme and mechanical
complexity in equal measure.
Still, the traditional allure of Eurogames
continues to produce some of tabletop’s most
acclaimed designers, many of whom make an
appearance in this list. Whether you’re a Euro
expert or a complete newcomer looking for
something a little heavier, all of the following
games are guaranteed masterworks. Dive in.
Chosen by Matt Jarvis

3 4
PUERTO RICO
Andreas Seyfarth's 2002 gem is one of the
most commonly-suggested contenders for
the best board game of all time by many
gamers. Players are colonial governors
on the titular island aiming to earn VP by
trading goods and constructing buildings,
growing crops they can swap for doubloons
and gradually increase their abilities. It has
an interesting role-selection mechanic that
involves choosing a role at the beginning of
a turn, which allows all players to perform
the action but grants the chooser a discount.
If you enjoy Seyfarth’s original, the designer
later released a snappier card game based
on the game's concepts called San Juan.
7 WONDERS
It’s rather fitting that a card game about
the seven wonders of the world is itself a
wonder, isn’t it? Set over three epochs,
7 Wonders sees players developing their
cards – that’s right, this is a Euro without
a board – to develop their city, apply military pressure
to rivals and gain victory points. As players draft
cards, they pass the remaining hand to both of their
neighbours as the rounds progress, giving them some
insight into what their opponents are up to. Of course,
the original multiplayer title was later reimagined as a
two-player showdown in 7 Wonders Duel, which is just
as highly regarded.

14

014_015_tenOfTheBest_v2 MJ.indd 14 22/09/2017 09:47

 5 6
RACE FOR THE GALAXY VITICULTURE
As beloved for its tight spacefaring The perfect board game to enjoy with a glass of white or red,
civilisation-building as it is notorious Viticulture plonks (pun intended) players in the shoes of Tuscany
for its cryptic iconography when it winery owners hoping to make their vineyard the finest (winest?)
comes to introducing new players, around. As with wine, the game flows around the seasons, with
Race for the Galaxy is a tense battle workers having different tasks in summer and winter as grapes are
of cards as players secretly select squashed and corks popped. Helping the wannabe wine experts out is tourism, as
and then simultaneously reveal one their cellars can be opened up to visitors to help boost the winery’s standing. Luckily,
of seven roles. This the game doesn’t take decades to mature to a fine taste, taking about an hour-
allows every player to and-a-half to play as players complete wine orders, plant fresh vines and erect new
perform the action, structures to help their business flourish.
but the player who
selected it receives an
extra bonus, making
it a careful risk-reward
race. Tom Lehmann’s
game went on to have
a similarly cherished
dice-rolling sequel,
Roll for the Galaxy, and
a snappier introductory
spin-off, Jump Drive,
which might be useful
when decoding the
complex original for
the first time.

7 8
TERRA MYSTICA TZOLK'IN:
Embodying the preference for strategy and skill over luck THE MAYAN
for which Eurogames have become known, Terra Mystica CALENDAR
is a tale of fantasy exploration as each player develops Everyone loves
resources, constructs buildings and advances the corn, right?
following of religion among one of 14 different clans that Well, nobody
have made their home across a variety of environments. loves corn more than the
The heady civilisation-building game has become a firm Mayans, who use it as currency
favourite of Euro fanatics in the five years since it was in this unique worker placement
released – isn’t it time you gave it a go? game that also features
massive rotating gears on its
iconic board. Players place
their tribespeople in visible
holes in each gear, performing
an action when they pick them
up – meaning that waiting
for the gears to rotate round
to more powerful abilities
can pay off if you have the
patience. There’s nothing else
quite like it out there. Plus,
you get diddly crystal skulls!

10
POWER GRID
Probably the best-known and best-loved game
by green-loving and F-obsessed designer
Friedemann Friese, Power Grid is about
networking energy across a map, keeping the
lights on in cities and bidding for better power
plants while contending with the fluctuating role
of resources such as coal, gas and uranium.
A super-sized deluxe edition of the modern
favourite came out a few years ago, followed by
last year’s Power Grid: The Card Game, which
does away with the board and focuses on the
bidding aspects for a faster play experience.

9
FOOD CHAIN MAGNATE
One of the many celebrated Eurogames from small studio Splotter, Food Chain
Magnate is a hefty strategy game about establishing your own fast food franchise
to rival McDonalds or Burger King. Over the course of several hours, players must
juggle the purchasing, marketing and customer sales of food and drink, as well as
managing their staff and outlets. Plus, they’ll need to keep an eye on the moves
of their opponents as they vie for control of the central city map. Like many of Splotter’s games,
Food Chain Magnate can be hard to track down – but if you can find a copy, it’s a must-buy.

15

014_015_tenOfTheBest_v2 MJ.indd 15 25/09/2017 11:27

 16

016_017_RoleCall_v2 MJ.indd 16 22/09/2017 09:50

 The weather outside may be turning frightful, but the tabletop remains
delightful. We pick out the roleplaying releases on the way for autumn
Words by John Dodd
I
n the aftermath of Gen Con, things
always get a little quiet until the other big
conventions start to ramp up, but that gives
us time to showcase a number of the smaller
independent roleplaying releases that are
about to hit shelves.
Arion Games recently finished its latest
trio of books for the Advanced Fighting
Fantasy game system. Stellar Adventures is
a standalone book that allows players and
GMs to run games in the far-future settings
of the Fighting Fantasy world. It contains a
huge number of options to support almost
any style of game, from gritty alien hunting
on derelict spacecraft and deep space
exploration to desperate rebels fighting an
evil space empire. Rules are provided for
vehicle and starship construction, alien race
design, psionic powers, robot types, starship
crews and setting design.
Complementing Stellar
Adventures is the Starship
Catalogue, presented as a
dealer's catalogue for all
the different types of ship
available in the futuristic
setting. It also contains details
of customisation rules for
starships and new weapons
with which to wage war.
Finally for AFF there is The
Titan Herbal, a sourcebook
dealing with the various
different plants and herbs
found in the Fighting Fantasy
universe with over 250 different
17
016_017_RoleCall_v2 MJ.indd 17
herbs and plants, herbaceous monsters, and
new archetypes, as well as rules for herb
usage in the world.
We’re also going to take a moment
to highlight some of the games that did
very well at the ENnie Awards – the RPG
equivalent of the Oscars. Even though some
of them have been out for a short while,
they’re all worth taking a look at.
Timewatch is a game of time-travelling
secret agents where the players work to
defend the timestream from radioactive
cockroaches, psychic velociraptors and
human meddlers. Go back in time to help
yourself in a fight, thwart your foes by
targeting their ancestors or gain a vital clue
by checking a scroll out from the Library of
Alexandria. But watch out for paradoxes that
may erase you from existence... or worse.
Philippe Tessier's Polaris is another
top pick. For centuries, wars and climatic
catastrophes have ravaged the surface of
the earth, making it uninhabitable by all
but the mutated and monstrous. Humanity,
searching for refuge, combs the world’s
oceans and finds sanctuary – and more.
Green Ronin's Atlas of Earth Prime is a
sourcebook for the Mutants & Masterminds
system that allows the heroes to explore the
sites and perils of all seven continents, as
well as fabled Atlantis, the Lost World and
the strange realms of Sub-Terra that lie at the
centre of the Earth. Packed with locations,
heroes, villains and worldwide agencies, it’s
everything that you need to play a campaign
in the new world. ■
22/09/2017 09:50

James Wallis replays the winners of the Spiel des Jahres in order
Title: Auf Achse | Year of win: 1987 | Designer: Wolfgang Kramer | Number of players: 2-6
Availability: No English edition, but the German edition is easy to find | Price: Around €15 on eBay
L
ook at that box. Just look at it. This isn’t
simply the 1980s, this is the 1980s in
Germany and vorsprung durch technik is
the name of the game, gleaming machines and
efficiency, except the name of the game is Auf
Achse. We are in the era of Yorkies, denim and
diesel, and the world is ready for a big game
about trucking. And just visible above the title,
in tiny letters, are the words ‘Wolfgang Kramer’.
Wolfgang Kramer was the designer who’d
won the Spiel des Jahres the year before, for
Heimlich & Co., Nobody had ever won the
SdJ twice, let alone won it in consecutive
years. For games critics and fans, this was
huge. This win cemented Kramer’s position
as a modern maestro of board-game design,
perhaps one of the all-time greats.
Yet, despite all that, Auf Achse is one of
the few Spiel des Jahres winners that’s never
been published in English. You’d be right to ask
why. And if the answer that springs to mind is
‘because it’s not very good', you’d be right, too.
Auf Achse is a German phrase that
translates as ‘on the axle’, though in English
018_019_allTheJahres_v2 MJ.indd 18
ALL THE JAHRES
Playing time: 60 minutes | Worthy winner? No | Worth playing now? No
‘on the road’ or ‘keep on trucking’ is closer
to the meaning. But if English people say the
German name out loud it sounds a bit like
‘Aw, fucks’, which is also what people say when
they learn it’s another roll-and-move game.
Heimlich & Co. was also roll-and-move
but it was clever: you could move any piece
and divide your roll between them. In Auf
Achse you roll one dice on your turn, and
that’s how many spaces you move your truck.
Truck: singular. Although you play a trucking
company dispatcher, your firm has a ‘fleet’
comprised of one small rubbery truck of a
curiously 1950s design, with enough space
for six items of unidentified cargo.
Your job is to fulfil contracts by hauling
freight between assorted western European
destinations, from Flensburg in the north to
Trieste in the south, depending on the contracts
you’re either assigned or that you bid on. Short
contracts for a few bits of freight won’t earn
you much, but long runs with a lot of pieces
will earn a lot – and this is obviously a game
about earning, because it comes with great
18
stacks of money in different denominations.
The contract cards, likewise, have the names
of places on them and different values for how
much you earn under different circumstances,
plus there’s a deck of cards with random events
on them. Frankly, if you half-close your eyes the
whole thing starts to feel like Monopoly.
This is my suspicion about Auf Achse.
I think it won the SdJ because someone
believed that with the publicity shove of a
major award behind it, it could have been a
Monopoly-killer. If you’ve spent time in the
business you’ll know that the Monopoly-killer
is not so much the holy grail as the white
whale of the games industry; it’s elusive, it
promises fabulous wealth to the one who
discovers it, it may not exist and many people
have ruined themselves hunting for it.
Auf Achse is not trying to reinvent
Monopoly directly, but there’s a sense it’s
taken the things that are
fun about Monopoly and
strained them through a
Eurogame filter to create
22/09/2017 09:51
 a game that’s rampantly about making money,
mostly by outbidding the other players for the
best contracts or fooling them into paying too
much to stop you getting a contract that you
didn’t really want. Then you roll the dice and
move your truck. Do not pass Stuttgart; do not
collect 200 Deutschmarks. One of the random-
chance cards even gives your truck first
prize in a beauty contest. Wolfgang Kramer
definitely knew what he was making.
That’s not to say that there aren’t some
nice ideas and intelligent mechanics in here.
Organising and optimising the logistics of your
route, and where you’ll pick up and drop off
cargo (Should you buy a trailer? A big one or a
small one? It’ll cost you!), is immersive fun, and
could form the heart of an intriguing stripped- ■ Left: There are several similarities
down version of the game. The auction system to Monopoly – including the chance
is clever. But the core of Auf Achse is moving for your truck to win a beauty contest.
your truck around the map, and it’s slow. Plus,
■ Bottom: Despite being cast as
two players can’t occupy the same space at truck dispatchers, players only
the same time, which works game-wise but control one vehicle each.
breaks the illusion that it’s a game about trucks.
Trucks are big, but saying only one can be in Looking at the 1987 SdJ shortlist there’s a shortlisted was Kremlin, a brilliant but hard
Frankfurt at a time is ridiculous. visible tension among the nominees, which political satire about the Russian politburo that,
Movement gets clogged further with comes to a head in a couple of years. The Spiel this being 1987, was still a major world power.
traffic jams and roadworks; the underlying des Jahres has always been a prize for family In 1989 the SdJ will split childrens’ games into
mechanics are good but they slow down a games, but the winner of the Sonderpreis (a their own category, the Kinderspiel, but for now
game that is already suffering from a lack of special award for ‘most beautiful game’) went there’s this weird sense of one award trying
zing, tension and direct player interaction. to Orient Express, a thinky murder-mystery to cover too many bases, and ending up with
Auf Achse is certainly playable, don’t get me game out of reach of most children. Also middle-of-the-road winners like Auf Achse. ■
wrong, and with
the right people it’s Next issue: Klaus Teuber scores his first win, the distinctly odd Barbarossa.
even fun. But Game
James Wallis is a games designer and director of the games consultancy Spaaace.
of the Year?

19

018_019_allTheJahres_v2 MJ.indd 19 22/09/2017 09:51

 A WORLD OF
DIFFERENCE
Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau are back to change the
world again in the second season of Pandemic Legacy.
We caught up with the pair for a spoiler-free chat
about the sequel to their tabletop masterpiece
Words by Matt Jarvis

20

020_027_pandemicLegacyS2_v2 MJ.indd 20 22/09/2017 10:03

 21

020_027_pandemicLegacyS2_v2 MJ.indd 21 22/09/2017 10:03

 PANDEMIC LEGACY: SEASON 2
■ Pandemic Legacy’s second
season once again comes in
two differently-coloured – but
otherwise identical – boxes. The
artwork literally completes the
circle of the first game.
020_027_pandemicLegacyS2_v2 MJ.indd 22
T
he first Star Wars film wasn’t retitled as Episode
IV: A New Hope until four years after it was
first released in 1977, once George Lucas’
ambitious space opera had already proved it was
a cultural tour de force set to redefine the world of
cinema. It was a confident statement: there’s more to
be told here.
When Pandemic Legacy launched in 2015, it made
no such hesitation. The red and blue boxes – each
with identical contents, allowing two groups to keep
track of their progress separately – boldly declared
that this was merely Season One: the beginning of
something big.
“About halfway through development, we started
to realise it felt a bit like a TV series,” Pandemic
creator Matt Leacock recalls. “[Publisher] Z-Man
actually came up with that concept and put it on the
box. They were like, ‘Oh, I guess we may be doing
another one!’”
“We realised we could probably do this again
and find something new, but Season One was just
designed as ‘let’s try Pandemic Legacy’,” adds his
22
co-designer, and the person widely considered
the trailblazer of the legacy genre, Rob Daviau.
“Towards the end they were like: ‘Great! ...what are
you doing next? This looks like it’s going to be good.’”
Just as Star Wars’ unprecedented special effects
and sweeping sci-fi storytelling were rooted by the
influence of classic Japanese and Italian cinema,
Pandemic Legacy wasn’t just the start of something
new – it was the culmination of years of innovation
and invention on the tabletop. Leacock’s Pandemic
had quickly earned a place alongside Catan, Ticket
to Ride and Carcassonne as an approachable yet
strategically satisfying gateway game upon release
in 2008, spawning several spin-offs and expansions,
while Daviau had begun to put forward his
revolutionary ideas for an evolving board game in his
celebrated 2011 reimagining of Risk
Risk.
While it’s easy to assume now that Pandemic
Legacy was an obvious hit in the making, it wasn’t
as certain before its debut. No other designers
had jumped on the legacy concepts showcased in
Daviau’s Risk experiment in the years following its
25/09/2017 09:51
 release – could the fledgling genre turn out to be
little more than a flash in the pan?
“If Season
With the format still unproven but the confidence
of Z-Man behind them, Leacock and Daviau
One is ‘The
nevertheless started work on a proposed follow-up.
“We started Season Two six months before Season
world’s fine,
One came out,” Daviau reveals. “They take a long time
to make. It was a little bit of, ‘Well, let’s get started and
can you save
get into it and come up with some ideas, then when
Season One comes out we’ll have more feedback of
it?’, we said:
what worked and what didn’t.’ We didn’t want to be
starting right after it came out and just be reacting
‘The world is
to what everyone said. If it was good, do more of the
same, if it was bad, run away from it. We wanted to
not fine, it’s
have some ideas in place before it came out so we
were unaffected by the reaction to it. Once we started
already just
reading the reviews and comments and looking at it
we realised, ‘Here were some things we could’ve done
about gone,
better’ or ‘Here are things that worked well’, but at that
point it was more making adjustments to our idea
can you
rather than basing our idea around the comments.
“I’ve designed more games that didn’t get finished
keep it from
than games that do get finished. You sometimes start
ideas and either a sequel or an expansion and then the
going out?’”
first game doesn’t live up to what you thought it might.
You go ‘Okay’, and put it to the side. In order to be timely
we sometimes have to start things knowing they’re not
going to work out either for business reasons or just
because your idea was bad. It was low risk there. It’s
time spent, but it’s not like we invested a million
dollars into Season Two before One came out.”
The pair had little reason to worry. Pandemic
Legacy was universally acclaimed and rapidly
ascended to the coveted number one spot
in BoardGameGeek’s all-time board game
rankings, ousting Twilight Struggle after close to
half a decade at the top. It’s a position it holds to
this day – but could its sequel be the rightful heir to
the throne?
THE RISK PAYS OFF
While Risk Legacy had earned the appreciation of
players but seen few games that paid a debt to its
pioneering gameplay features, Pandemic Legacy
finally ushered in a new wave of legacy-style games.
Its influence can be seen in games as diverse as
Gloomhaven, which applies the tearing up of cards,
changing world state and gradually unlockable
content to an epic roleplaying adventure, through
to the branching murder-mystery story of recent
Android: Netrunner expansion Terminal Directive.
That’s not to mention this year’s trend of boxed
escape-the-room games, which take the controversial
limited lifespan of Pandemic Legacy’s one-way story to
new levels, offering sub-hour experiences that result
in the complete destruction of their components.
“It’s funny, there hasn’t been a straight-up legacy
game like we did in Pandemic Legacy that I’ve
23
020_027_pandemicLegacyS2_v2 MJ.indd 23
played,” Daviau suggests. “I’m desperately looking
for one. I kind of want to sit down and be like,
‘Alright, let’s do this’ – let me see it from the other
side, let me see what they do differently, let me see
what it feels like to go ‘Aaah! What’s in that box?’ I
feel like there’s all of these interesting siblings to
legacy games that are all different and all sort of
elbow out the idea and push it in new directions, but
I haven’t played one that’s just what we did but with
a different game.”
Pandemic Legacy: Season Two is the true successor
to Leacock and Daviau’s masterpiece, but it too
moves away from many of the gameplay elements
pioneered in the first game.
“I guess it was easier in some degrees and harder
in others,” Leacock says of the design process. “It
was easier that we had a structure to work with that
we had proven out with Season One, so we weren’t
starting completely from scratch. But we also didn’t
want to repeat ourselves in the second season, so
it was a little more challenging because we really
wanted to make sure that the game was novel and
wasn’t just a retread of the first season.”
He pauses. “I’m trying to think if there was
anything from Season One that was on the cutting
room floor that we picked up and dusted off and put
in Two. I can’t think of anything, really. I think we
kind of came up with a new arc for Two and then
it was all about trying to figure out how to make
everything in the game work to support that.”
Even gone are many of the aspects familiar
to Pandemic fans. The game board begins
largely covered, hiding the world beneath. As
players travel around the map, they reveal new
countries and settlements, which they must
then attempt to help by adding supply cubes
to each location. Unlike Pandemic’s direct battle
against disease, Season Two begins with no cure
available – slowing down the spread, rather than
stopping it completely, is the only option.
“We basically set out to create a very close sibling or
cousin of Pandemic,” Daviau says. “So we were starting
from a different underlying base game and then could
go in a different direction. Because we know that
people played somewhere between 15 and 20 games of
Season One and we had explored all the ways that base
Pandemic could go in different directions. It would be
hard to come up with new rules and ideas that didn’t
feel like we were just repeating ourselves or that were
not as good as our first ideas, so it was important for us
to start in a different direction.
“We also ask some interesting thematic questions
– if Season One is ‘The world’s fine, can you save it?’,
we said: ‘The world is not fine, it’s already just about
gone, can you keep it from going out?’ We turned some
things on their head and said: ‘What if cubes on the
board aren’t inherently bad?’ We did some sort of
assumption challenging right at the beginning both ▶
25/09/2017 09:51
 PANDEMIC LEGACY: SEASON 2
thematically and mechanically to try to start from a
place that felt different.”
Despite Season Two starting life years ago, it shares
some similarities with recent games that Leacock and
Daviau have released independent of each other. The
increased reliance on naval movement and proactive
prevention of disease are both ideas that were seen in
last year’s Pandemic historical spin-off Iberia, which
Leacock co-designed with Jesús Castro.
“It was more of a coincidence,” Leacock says. “The
mechanisms aren’t all that similar between the two
different games. It was interesting how the two have
similarities but really come from very different places.
Often you do explore something in one game and
figure out how you can twist it or shape it into another.”
020_027_pandemicLegacyS2_v2 MJ.indd 24
■ Season Two’s most striking
feature is its hidden map, which
is slowly revealed by players over
the course of each game.
24
Travelling across the sea and discovering new
lands played a particularly prominent role in Daviau’s
divisive solo legacy project SeaFall, which saw players
setting out to explore islands in a more narrative-
driven story setting than Pandemic Legacy.
“Game designers are like anyone else who creates,
whether you’re talking about a chef who has favourite
ingredients or a musician who has favourite chords,”
he considers. “There are certain things that I’m going
to like, and I can tell you right up: exploration is one
of them. My passion for gaming got started by playing
Dungeons & Dragons and the idea of a map or what’s
over the next hill will always appeal to me. I started
SeaFall before Season One, and then finished it after
Season One and while we were working on Season
Two, but the idea of ‘Yeah, let’s go see what’s out
there’ is something I’m always going to get excited
about. I will be like, ‘Well, I’m kind of doing it in
another game’ and then I’ll think, well, I don’t care, I
really like it and there’s different ways to do it.
“I’m working on a bunch of games now and I can
look and say this game has similar things to that
game. A is similar to B, B has stuff from C and C has
stuff from D. Sometimes it bothers me that they’re
not all discreet and don’t run into each other, then
I realise this is just the part of my career where I’m
using these sorts of ideas together and then I’ll move
22/09/2017 10:03
 chance to integrate the rules and enjoy them, so we
then have to go back and say, ‘How do we stretch this
out and how do we shape this?’”

PANDEMIC’S LEGACY
With the magic of Pandemic Legacy hinging on
its twists and turns, it’s little surprise that the pair
responsible for plotting the shocks in store refuse to
be drawn on what players can expect.
“In my head there are three things that I
particularly like,” Daviau teases warily. “I will say
that one is a game mechanism, one is a very, very
small thing that many players will not see and may
not notice – it may not resonate with them like it did
with me – and the third is more narrative. They’re up
and down.”
It turns out that Leacock and Daviau hope to even
surprise themselves.
“There’s a lot of things I like, and Matt and I have
been done for a year, so I’m keenly looking forwards
to getting the game, opening up and going, ‘Oh right,
that’s what happens in August!’” Daviau continues.
With Season One solidified as a modern classic
and Season Two the most anticipated game of 2017,
it would hardly be unexpected for a third Pandemic
Legacy instalment to be in the works. Daviau stays
tight-lipped on the subject.
“We’re hoping for five seasons and a movie,” he
jokes. “That’s all I’m going to say. This is all about
Season Two. We recognise that there’s a desire
for more – they’re also incredibly long to make.
We don’t want to reveal the story. Maybe it’s a
two-part story, maybe it’s three, maybe it’s four,
maybe it’s five. At a certain point we won’t have the
mechanisms or the story left to tell, or there’ll be
fatigue for the players of playing again. We’ve got a
couple of different ways we may go with it, but we
don’t want to get into that – this is all about Two
right now.”
As for projects outside of their joint magnum
opus, both designers express a desire to reunite in
the future.
“There’s plenty of other things we could explore
together,” Leacock says enthusiastically. “If a
project came up that was of interest to both Rob
and I, it’d be fun to work together again. It wouldn’t
have to be Pandemic.”
“And it wouldn’t necessarily have to be legacy,”
Daviau chimes in. “That nice simple card game we
always talked about.”
With Pandemic Legacy: Season Two looking
like it will live up to the lofty expectations of its
predecessor, whatever the pair work on next –
Pandemic, legacy or otherwise – is sure to cause
waves across the tabletop. Still, fans might still
end up disappointed if they can’t tear up at least
a few cards.
“Yeah, just randomly for no reason,” Daviau laughs. ■

27

020_027_pandemicLegacyS2_v2 MJ.indd 27 22/09/2017 10:05

 THE COOL OF CTHULHU
H.P. Lovecraft’s monstrous creations and tales of cosmic horror
have haunted gaming for decades. Designers, experts and fans
tell us why the master of fear continues to shock and inspire
Words by Matt Jarvis
S
tephen King, the modern maestro of
spooky storytelling, once called H.P.
Lovecraft “the 20th century’s greatest
practitioner of the classic horror tale”.
King’s recognition of the author in the early
eighties neatly summed up the remarkable boom
in popularity and recognition that Lovecraft’s
work had experienced in the half-century
following his death in 1937, when he had
died largely unknown by the wider public, his
fame confined to the small readership of pulp
magazines in which his stories were published.
Three-plus decades on from King’s eulogy,
and fast approaching the centenary of Lovecraft’s
death, it’s hard to find someone who hasn’t come
into contact with a Lovecraftian yarn of forbidden
knowledge and cosmicism – the existential fear
of an uncaring, godless universe, symbolised by
the fruitless struggle of humanity against celestial
beings of incomparable power that appear in so
many of Lovecraft’s tales. Netflix series Stranger
Things, horror movie The Void and PS4 video game
Bloodborne are just a few of the more-admired
efforts to pay homage to Lovecraft and his distinct
flavour of cosmic dread in the last couple of years.
Noted Lovecraft scholar, bibliographer
and literary critic S.T. Joshi admits that even
he is “constantly stupefied” by the author’s
ongoing popularity.
“I cannot think of a single writer from his
era who has infiltrated both ‘high’ and popular
culture the way he has,” he explains.
While Lovecraft’s presence in film, TV and
games has ebbed and flowed over the decades,
his work has remained consistently popular
on the tabletop, with dozens of board, card,
roleplaying and miniatures games inspired
by his oeuvre released every year. While the
unrelenting barrage of Lovecraft adaptations and
spin-offs has become somewhat of a running
joke (and, at points, gripe) among players,
several tabletop takes on Lovecraft remain
some of the highest-regarded games of all time.
The first major Lovecraft game to hit the
tabletop was Call of Cthulhu, an RPG designed
by Sandy Petersen and published by Chaosium
in 1981. As well as innovating on the roleplaying
staples established by earlier titles such as
Dungeons & Dragons by grounding its human
28
028_032_cthulhuInGames_v2 MJ.indd 28
investigators in reality – death and insanity are
typical, and direct combat often deadly – Call of
Cthulhu’s themes opened the portal for games
to subject players to darker, interconnected
narratives and tougher challenges in line with
the doom-and-gloom tone of its muse.
“Looking at the last few years, it seems that
nearly everyone is trying to squeeze Cthulhu
into their games,” observes Call of Cthulhu line
editor Mike Mason. “Obviously everyone is
waking up to the fact that Cthulhu and his kin
are just plain cool. I’m just glad that Chaosium
was the first and led the way – we didn’t jump
on the bandwagon, we built the wagon.”
Arriving less than a decade after D&D
had generated mainstream controversy for
roleplaying’s supposed corruption of youth, Call
of Cthulhu faced an extra wave of criticism from
proponents of Lovecraft’s prose. Among its
early detractors was a “highly skeptical” Joshi.
“I thought, without actually knowing much
about it, that the RPG had ‘dumbed down’
Lovecraft’s richly textured and complex fiction
to the level of cheap entertainment; I also didn’t
care for the fact that creations from Lovecraft’s
successors were intermingled with Lovecraft’s
own creations,” he recalls. “But it turns out that
many of those who use this RPG and others like
it have in fact been drawn back to Lovecraft’s
fiction, so that Lovecraft’s own writings are
the beneficiary of this ever-expanding interest
among those who initially may not have had
any familiarity with his work.”
Call of Cthulhu sowed an interest for Lovecraft
in gaming that blossomed into the obsession
that continues today. A proposed Call of Cthulhu
board game emerged in 1987 as Arkham Horror,
which later sparked the creation of Fantasy
Flight’s successful Arkham Horror Files franchise,
uniting Eldritch Horror, Elder Sign, Mansions
of Madness and last year’s Arkham Horror: The
Card Game. Call of Cthulhu is now on its seventh
edition, and has given rise to roleplaying spin-offs
including Trail of Cthulhu and Delta Green. That’s
without mentioning the innumerable standalone
original and derivative games to have emerged
as Lovecraft’s name grew in stature.
“A great number of the games that followed
were more inspired by the Call of Cthulhu RPG ▶
22/09/2017 10:17
 ■ Above: The cover artwork from
Fantasy Flight’s The Lord of the
Rings: The Card Game.

■ Below: The Lord of the Rings:

The Card Game is a living card
game, and has been continually
expanded with new stories
and characters – both from the
original material and brand new
creations – since its release.

29

028_032_cthulhuInGames_v2 MJ.indd 29 22/09/2017 10:18

 THE COOL OF CTHULHU
“Game designers are more
intuitively aware of the
potential of Lovecraft’s
stories than film-makers
have been.”
than by the original short stories, I would argue,”
suggests Yves Tourigny, creator of Arkham Noir,
a series of card games that reimagine Lovecraft
tales as Chandleresque detective mysteries.
“When Call of Cthulhu was released nobody
had heard of Cthulhu or Lovecraft, except for a
minority of people who had somehow managed
to find and read a Lovecraft story,” Mason
agrees. “The game’s release certainly helped to
bring Lovecraft’s stories to greater attention.”
CAREFULLY ‘CRAFTED
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind
is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of
fear is fear of the unknown.” – H.P. Lovecraft,
‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’
Like most horror stories, much of the terror
in Lovecraft’s writing comes from the unknown.
You’ll often find a Lovecraftian protagonist
recounting their experience through letters or
journal entries, hinting at a hidden secret until they
are destroyed – physically or mentally – leaving a
warning not to follow in their doomed footsteps
and to let forbidden knowledge remain so.
It’s a spine-chilling technique that resonates
across the author’s many short stories – you
could spend dozens of hours reading and
never need to revisit a single tale, preserving
the dread and surprise of each. When it comes
to a board game designed to be played time
after time, though, it’s not quite as easy.
“For tabletop designers, this is a tough cookie
to crack,” confesses Arkham Horror: The Card
Game co-creator Matt Newman. “After all, you
buy a $40 game, open the box and know what’s
inside. You can see it right there; you can even
read all the cards before you play. The question
of how we make players feel the same way
readers did reading these stories for the first
time is one we constantly seek to answer.”
Arkham Horror: The Card Game demonstrates
just one such attempt to sustain excitement and
fear. Adopting the living card game format, where
periodic expansions introduce new cards and
narrative arcs, the title allows players to create
028_032_cthulhuInGames_v2 MJ.indd 30
custom decks and replay completed scenarios as
a variety of characters with individual loadouts,
veering down different storyline branches. It
may seem an ill fit with the guided nature of
Lovecraft’s writing, but the traditional and modern
mediums aren’t as incompatible as first appears.
“His tales are supremely well crafted as
narratives, proceeding dynamically from a
quiet beginning to a cataclysmic ending, with
the ‘monster’ or other powerful revelation not
■ Forbidden knowledge is a key theme of Lovecraft.
■ Don’t expect many happy endings.
30
shown until the reader is emotionally prepared,”
says Joshi. “Moreover, many of Lovecraft’s stories
are first-person narratives, meaning that the
reader is simultaneously viewing and vicariously
participating in the events as they unfold.
These features would seem to lend themselves
naturally to games of all sorts, and I suspect
game designers are more intuitively aware of
their potential than film-makers have been.”
Tabletop titles may offer more potential to
capture the enthralling spirit of Lovecraft’s work,
but that hasn’t stopped some designers and artists
from taking advantage of the author’s growing
adulation. Most egregious is the widespread
use of the author’s best-known creation,
tentacle-mouthed Great Old One Cthulhu, who
pops up in just about every form imaginable in
pop culture – a darkly fitting modern state for
the iconic subject of fictional mass cult worship.
Even games that do venture beyond Cthulhu
often end up including a similar line-up of
monsters, making previously lesser-known
creations such as Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth and
Shub-Niggurath familiar sights while ignoring
Lovecraft’s countless other creations. The
majority of games concern the Cthulhu Mythos
– the collective name for Lovecraft’s connected
fictional universe – as a whole, rather than
adapting specific stories or singular monsters.
“I don’t think very highly of most adaptations
of Lovecraft to tabletop games, for the same
reason that I don’t think very highly of most
Mythos fiction [not written by Lovecraft]: it
completely misses the point, and far too often
devolves into an exercise in cramming the most
monsters and forbidden tomes as possible into
the work in question,” slams Tourigny.
Sticking with a relatively small pool of
increasingly recognisable Lovecraftian horrors,
rather than exploring the darker corners of the
Mythos, regularly means that designers and
publishers can draw a far bigger audience to their
game than if they were trying to establish a brand
new setting or use a more generic horror dressing.
“The alien monsters and gods in Lovecraft’s
writing are unique and genuinely ‘different’ –
they are things of nightmare that make no sense
to a rational mind, which sets them apart from
your everyday monsters we know loads about,
like vampires, werewolves and zombies,” Mason
proposes. “Thus, not only are we surprised and
horrified due to their ‘difference’, but we also face
an unknown challenge with uncertain outcomes.
“In terms of game design, they present
plots and challenges quite different to many
tabletop games. As a designer, you are trying
in to engineer plots that build a mystery and
suspense, which harkens back to Lovecraft’s
22/09/2017 10:18
 ■ The Cthulhu Mythos unites
many of Lovecraft’s creations
in a single shared universe.
stories. The inevitability of your destruction
and humanity’s insignificance in the cosmos
are strong themes, allowing designers to craft
plots with a huge breadth – from the personal
to the epic, and all points in-between. The
source material is a rich vein of inspiration.”
With Cthulhu and all of Lovecraft’s work widely
considered to now be in the public domain, anyone
can turn their hand to crafting a new tale or game
in the extensive universe and cashing in on the
seemingly unending fervor – but it takes much
more than a name to break away from the crowd.
“As developers, we have to do our own
research, and ensure that Lovecraftian elements
feel and look the way they’re supposed to,”
Newman says. “Provided you’re not doing a
parody work, it’s not enough to just slap a monster
on a card, name it ‘Shoggoth’ and call it a day.
“That being said, working within the
confines of the Mythos still allows for a lot of
creativity to shine through. Lovecraft’s work
“The human race is
beginning to comprehend our
insignificance in the universe,
a fear that Lovecraft explored
and one that is very ‘current’.”
028_032_cthulhuInGames_v2 MJ.indd 31
is all about fear of the unknown, so it would
be doing the Mythos a disservice to not throw
some unknown factors into the mix.”
LOVECRAFT AND HATE
As Lovecraft’s writing and imaginative
monsters have continued to rise in popularity,
the more problematic personal beliefs of the
author have similarly bubbled to the surface.
Chief among these is the issue of racism,
although Lovecraft’s misogynist and anti-Semitic
views also rear their ugly heads throughout his
stories. Much of the fear that Lovecraft finds in
the ‘unknown’ isn’t just limited to cosmic horrors
– it extends to immigrants, Jews, Italians,
Polish people, Mexicans, women, people of
colour and many other races and creeds.
Lovecraft’s attitudes towards race have been
a controversial talking point for literary critics
for decades, but his growing celebrity on the
tabletop has brought the conversation back
31
THE WEIRD AND
THE WONDERFUL
Enjoy Lovecraftian games on
the tabletop but haven’t actually
read any of his stories? Here’s
a selection of classic tales you
should consider checking out.
Like Call of Cthulhu
RPG? Read The
Call of Cthulhu.
Like Mansions of
Madness? Read
The Shadow
Over Innsmouth.
Like Eldritch
Horror? Read The
Dunwich Horror.
Like Mountains of
Madness? Read
At the Mountains
of Madness.
Like Lovecraft
Letter? Read The
Cats of Ulthar.
Like Arkham
Horror: The Card
Game? Read The
Colour Out of Space.
Like Delta Green?
Read Herbert
West–Reanimator.
across to the flourishing medium. Although
the horrifying treatment of certain people and
cultures is completely absent from games such
as Call of Cthulhu and Eldritch Horror, some
of the monsters and stories that their creators
pull from remain rooted in abhorrent ethics – so
should designers continue to further the visions
of a noted xenophobe?
“There is no problem in using an author’s
stories for inspiration even though that author
may have held obnoxious personal beliefs,” Mason
replies. “Lovecraft is not the only writer to have
held views we would nowadays find distasteful
and downright wrong. I think most everyone is
intelligent enough to separate out the bad from
the good, and draw out the elements of the stories
that make for engaging plots and adversaries.
Lovecraft’s racism isn’t pleasant and shouldn’t be
ignored. His stories, however, are influential and
groundbreaking science fiction and horror from
which ideas and concepts can be drawn.”
In early 2015, newly-founded publisher
Monolith raised $3.3 million on Kickstarter for
its debut title, a board game adaptation of Conan
the Barbarian. Conan’s creator Robert E. Howard
was a friend of Lovecraft and influenced by the
Cthulhu creator’s strongly-held views on race,
many of which he shared.
Upon release last year, Conan ignited
controversy over its troubling portrayal of women
and perceived stereotyping of Chinese and Native
American culture in its fantasy races of the Picts
and Khitai. Monolith defended the representation
as faithful to Howard’s original short stories, ▶
22/09/2017 10:18
 THE COOL OF CTHULHU
■ Horrors that emerge
from the sea are a
favourite of Lovecraft.
but the upset and debate over whether the board
game was appropriate continued.
Unlike Conan, in most cases Lovecraft’s
own racism has been separated from the
transformation of his work into games. Some
designers have gone one step further by actively
seeking to combat the history of hatred lurking
in the background of Lovecraft’s original texts by
updating, replacing or even introducing brand
new elements into his stories.
“Lovecraft’s works, as inspiring and
successful as they are in some aspects, are
deeply problematic when it comes to race and
gender,” says Tourigny. “I’ve taken the liberty
of ‘casting’ African-Americans in some of the
depictions of the characters from his stories –
Walter Gilman and Frank Elwood, for instance
– as a way to ensure more diversity in the
representation. I even imagined Arkham Noir as
possibly depicting only African-Americans, to
add even more significance to the game’s title,
but I felt that gimmick might be a bridge too far.”
“We’ve seen, in recent years, authors taking
Lovecraft’s creations and repurposing them
to directly address and turn upside-down
Lovecraft’s personal racism,” Mason adds.
“Modern game designers are likewise drawing
inspiration from Lovecraft in a similar way.”
With diversity a hotter topic than ever when it
comes to entertainment as a whole, and especially
in gaming, the treatment of Lovecraft will almost
certainly remain a much-discussed subject
for years to come. Joshi insists that designers
should be inspired by the inventive storytelling
and universe-building that continues to engross
readers and players, and not be saddled with the
politics of a bygone era – whether they’re accurate
to Lovecraft’s work or not.
028_032_cthulhuInGames_v2 MJ.indd 32
“In my estimation, far too much has been
made of Lovecraft’s racism – which is only one
relatively small aspect of his overall life and
thought, and much less significant than some
other facets that could be mentioned,” he offers.
“Nevertheless, we do have to face the fact that
Lovecraft was a racist, even though he was a lot
of other things as well, and even though many
other writers and other prominent figures of
his era were also racists. But a fair-minded
examination shows that racist elements enter
into his fiction only in passing, and there is no
particular reason why game designers should
place undue stress on these elements.
“It is true that in some stories the ‘heroes’
appear to be white males while the ‘villains’
are alien races; but in other stories, Caucasians
don’t come off very well either! And Lovecraft’s
cosmic entities are so otherworldly that they
cannot be associated, even symbolically, with
the ‘foreigners’ whose presence in American
society troubled Lovecraft. There are, in fact, no
true ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ in Lovecraft’s stories
at all: the whole of humanity is doomed!”
GREAT OLD ONE?
2017 marks 80 years since Lovecraft’s death.
Next year, The Call of Cthulhu – and its
eponymous monster – will turn 90. Lovecraft
and Cthulhu fatigue often seems to be at an all-
time high among gamers, yet new instalments
in the ever-widening Mythos are still regularly
received with critical plaudits and the devoted
audiences to match. In fact, it might be that the
king of cosmic horror and existential dread has
never been more in vogue.
“The human race is beginning to comprehend
our insignificance in the greater universe, a
32
fear that Lovecraft explored and one that is very
‘current’ in today’s world,” Mason says. “Games
based upon these concepts somehow ring true
and make them more impactful, and also allow
us, within the games, to make some measure
of resistance. While we can’t always control the
world around us, we can find some sense of
accomplishment through narrative storytelling,
otherwise known as roleplaying games.”
Believe it or not, there may be a limit to how
many people take comfort in a universe full of
alien creatures, murderous cultists and deities
seeking the destruction of all humanity. So
while it may seem that the unstoppable wave
of Cthulhu spin-offs will eventually lead to a
maddening flood of disposable Lovecraft tie-ins,
it’s more likely to remain the current balance of
first-rate games and reskinned side attractions,
with designers continuing to reimagine
Lovecraft’s worlds for a new generation until the
writer finally falls out of fashion.
“Cthulhu is not by any measure a
‘mainstream’ thing,” Mason continues. “It
remains niche and, while there does appear to be
a preponderance of the world ‘Cthulhu’ on any
number of card and board games, most gamers
are shrewd enough to know when the name is
being used purely to shift a few more units.”
For those entranced by weird tales of
undead gods beneath the sea, lost ancient
cities and unimaginable horrors from outer
space, there’ll be no shortage of the strange to
dive into for a long while yet.
“So far, those interested in Lovecraft seem
to be devouring all these products with relish
and show little sign of having reached their
limit,” says Joshi. “So let’s ride the wave as
long as we can!” ■
22/09/2017 10:18
 Launches at the
Derby Worlds Wargaming Show
7 th October 2017

A tabletop game for

2 or more players
Fun for all
the Family

www.derbyworlds.com
info@derbyworlds.com
01206-869467
0800-6126-430
Play on any one of 19 different Derby Worlds!
Choose from Shifty EC, TooDee, All-Estry,
Eltamortis, Granulite, Bovinity
and many more . . .

@DerbyWorlds
p033.indd 1 19/09/2017 11:43
 AN INTRODUCTION TO…
KING OF
TOKYO
TOKYO
Richard Garfield’s city-smashing games are
glorious monster mayhem from Japan’s capital
to the mean streets of the Big Apple. Join us
in the fray as we fight to crown a new kaiju
Words by Matt Jarvis
W
hen it comes to the best big movie
monster, there are only two real
answers: King Kong or Godzilla.
The Beatles-or-The Rolling Stones debate of
the cinematic world has raged on for decades
since the enormous ape and gigantic lizard first
stomped onto the silver screen, with the two
eventually clashing directly in 1962’s King Kong
vs. Godzilla. (Spoiler: Kong won.) Godzilla has
gone on to beat up other monsters, and both
Kong and Godzilla have returned to screens
alone in various incarnations – including
recent reboots of both film franchises in the
last few years – in the time since, but the
question remains open as to which colossal
creature is top of the food chain.
Hollywood won’t take another stab at
solving the conundrum until Godzilla vs. Kong
hits cinemas in 2020. Luckily, game design
genius and Magic: The Gathering creator
Richard Garfield came up with a way to solve
the ultimate showdown on the tabletop all the
way back in 2011, in the form of King of Tokyo.
Okay, okay, so it’s not the actual Godzilla
or King Kong trading blows in King of Tokyo,
but the game’s Giga Zaur and The King pay
clear homage to the legendary on-screen
beasts. It’s not just a one-on-one duel, either –
the equally powerful Alienoid, Cyber Bunny,
Kraken and Meka Dragon join the oversized
lizard and primate. (In the second edition of
the game, Cyber Bunny is Cyber Kitty instead
and the Kraken becomes Space Penguin.)
The ultimate prize is control of Tokyo city,
Godzilla’s iconic stomping ground and home
034_035_introToKingOfTokyo_v3 MJ.indd 34
of countless
kaiju – the
Japanese term
for giant monsters
– since. That is, until
the beasts decide to
cross the sea…
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Although its characters are beings of
awe-inspiring scale, King of Tokyo’s
gameplay is relatively compact. If you’ve ever
played the dice-rolling classic Yahtzee, you’ll
be right at home as you roll six dice in pursuit
of a killer combination of victory points,
energy, health and attack power.
Each player and their respective monster
gets three throws to keep and re-roll as
many dice as they like, with the final
result dictating their actions for that
turn. Energy can be used to buy
special cards in the middle of the
table, unlocking powerful moves
and abilities that fit right in with the
comic-book style of the clashing
creatures, from a shrink ray or high-
altitude drop to transformations and
the size-boosting ‘Even Bigger’ card.
Victory points are only scored if you
cash in three or more matching results
showing 1, 2 or 3 – each extra matching
die grants a bonus VP, which can
be vital as you claw your way
towards the winning total
of 20. Of course, the other
34
22/09/2017 10:22
 ■ Many of the monsters way to win is simply to be the last monster left
in the games are less- standing. Easy as that.
than-subtle homages to
movie icons – including While small amounts of VP can be earned
two giant gorillas called outside of Tokyo, the main way to rack up your
The King and Kong. score is by taking control of Tokyo city, which
grants extra points the longer you manage to
defend your territory. With bigger groups – the
game plays with anywhere between two and
six players – monsters can also occupy Tokyo
Bay. This is a risk-reward decision, as being
in the city gathers bonus VP each round and
allows the monster to deal damage to all of
their opponents outside of the city, but
stops them from using heart die results to
heal their wounds and opens them up to
attacks from all players. Because of this,
the kaiju controlling the city or bay can
choose to flee after being damaged,
yielding their location to their attacker
– which can be dangerous itself for
a weak monster forced to dish out
damage by unfortunate rolls.
It’s not a complicated game, but
the simple dice-rolling mechanics
and bright, fetching visuals – not
to mention monsters the size
of skyscrapers punching each
other in the face – have made
it a favourite for many players
– as well as a popular gateway
introduction to the world of board
games for newcomers.
MONSTERS TAKE MANHATTAN
King of Tokyo proved so popular when it was
released in 2011 that Garfield soon followed up
with a sequel, 2014's King of New York in 2014.
As the name suggests, the city of choice
this time is King Kong’s adopted home of
New York – if that wasn’t obvious enough, a
character called Kong rounded out a brand
new roster of six monsters, including Captain
Fish, Sheriff, Mantis, Rob and Drakonis, who
could be used alongside the original King of
Tokyo characters in either of the games.
While King of New York is similar to King
of Tokyo in a lot of ways – players are again
rolling dice to try to collect 20 victory points
or be the last monster standing while making
use of power cards – it makes a number of
changes to its older sibling’s gameplay.
The most notable is the idea of ‘fame’
– because everyone knows that being the
biggest, baddest monster is pointless if your
personal brand isn’t on point. A new star die
face allows players to gain the ‘Superstar’
card, which earns extra VP on future rolls
until another player steals the spotlight.
35
034_035_introToKingOfTokyo_v3 MJ.indd 35
Instead of scrapping over a single place in
the city, each monster instead stays on the
board throughout the game, but can move
between the different districts of the Big Apple,
rolling the new destruction die results to
destroy buildings, which grants extra health,
life or energy. Squashing buildings attracts
the ire of the US military, who can similarly
be crushed with the right dice rolls to gather
bonus resources, but will also attack and deal
damage to the attacking monster each turn.
While the other locations have their benefits,
Manhattan is the place to be for any worthwhile
monster, serving as a stand-in for Tokyo as it
allows players to dish out (and receive) damage
to all of their rivals while making their way from
Lower Manhattan through Midtown to the Upper
region, gaining more VP and energy as they go.
HAIL TO THE KING
King of New York isn’t the only follow-up to
King of Tokyo. Expansions for both games
have been released over the years (including,
rather confusingly, two different add-ons
both called Power Up!) that introduce
additional characters, power cards and
gameplay elements, such as the ability to
evolve and unleash extra powers.
A special Halloween pack for King of Tokyo
added in two spooky monsters and their
mutations, plus some suitably witchy black
and orange dice and the amusing concept
of costumes for the monsters, which can
be worn for extra powers but torn off at any
moment by a jealous opponent.
Cards specific to King of New York have
included promos with landmarks and famous
buildings, including the UN headquarters,
Trump Tower and Washington Square Park.
As with the main games, many of the
expansions can be mixed and matched
to work with both Tokyo and New York,
meaning it can be worth picking up both
boxes if you try one and enjoy it.
WHY SHOULD YOU TRY IT?
Both King of Tokyo and King of Tokyo feature fun
as massive as their movie inspirations. They put a
quirky, comic-book spin on the simple-to-learn,
quick-to-play gameplay of Yahtzee, with the extra
powers and abilities providing plenty to enjoy as
you roll dice and send buildings crumbling.
There’s a lot to love in the easy-going games,
and they’ll finally let you work out which
cinematic titan would come out on top in a
duel – although you’ll probably end up having
so much fun you’ll forget the silly reason why
you started playing in the first place. ■
22/09/2017 10:23
 THE MAKING OF...

MAGIC
MAZE How a Danish former phone app developer came up
with the year’s most original board game and proved
that, even at the tabletop, silence is golden
Words by Dan Jolin

36

036_040_theMakingOfMagicMaze_v2 MJ.indd 36 22/09/2017 10:28

 I
t was in April that Kasper Lapp first
realised just how big his Magic Maze was
getting. First, the 37-year-old Danish
designer received word that his real-time
co-operative title – the first game he’d ever
published – was the ‘HIT’ of 2017’s ultra-
exclusive Gathering of Friends convention.
That word (caps and all) was used by Dale
Yu, editor of The Opinionated Gamers, who
took a copy of Magic Maze to Alan Moon’s
Niagara Falls-based, invite-only shindig
and urged everyone he could to give it a go.
(Yu’s copy was “well worn” by the end of
the convention, he blogged, “and has been
constantly in play”.)
Then Tom Vasel posted his review. It was
nothing less than glowing, with the Dice
Tower co-host admitting he’d owned the
game for a while, but previously dismissed it
at a glance as just another tile-shuffling maze
game. Then, at a convention (the very same
Gathering of Friends, Lapp believes), Vasel
had the box waved in front of his face and
was urged, “You gotta play it.” Soon, he was
as smitten as Yu, slapping a Dice Tower Seal
of Excellence on the game.
“I think that was my favourite moment
with Magic Maze,” ,” says Lapp now. “It meant a
lot to me that he actually liked it.”
Vasel and Yu are far from alone. They aren’t
the only ones impressed by the way that,
despite an arguably silly theme, the game
grips you, thrills you and, most importantly,
feels like nothing you’ve played before.
Requiring players to work simultaneously
to help four fantasy heroes execute a race-
against-time raid on a shopping mall (!) for
their questing equipment, the closest thing
it comes near to is Vlaada Chvátil’s 2008 title
Space Alert – a game that Lapp admits was his
biggest influence.
“It taught me both that you could have a
co-operative game and that you could have a
game in real-time,” he says. “I couldn’t have
made Magic Maze without it.”
But even then there’s a key difference:
crucially, Lapp’s rules require every player
to co-ordinate their efforts in silence. The
only time your group is allowed to confer is
at the start of the game, before a single hero
pawn has been touched, and every time the
three-minute sand timer is flipped to extend
the play time (by placing a pawn on a specific
sand timer icon space), though silence has
to fall again once the pawns are back on
the move. Other than that, the only kind of
communication allowed is intense staring, or
plonking a big, red ‘Do Something!’ pawn in
036_040_theMakingOfMagicMaze_v2 MJ.indd 37
front of a player as a way of letting them know
they may be missing a trick. It is, as Vasel
enthuses, “bonkers fun”.
Not bad for your first game. But it gets
better. The following month, at the urging of
Magic Maze’s Belgian publisher Sit Down!
Games, Lapp logged on to the nominations
page of the Spiel des Jahres site. There, in
the main category, nestled between Reiner
Knizia’s The Quest for El Dorado and Bruno
Cathala’s Kingdomino (which ultimately
won), was his game. He’d been told by Sit
Down! it might have a chance of receiving
a nod from the voters of the world’s most
coveted gaming award, but hadn’t believed
them. For the one and only time during our
conversation, the softly-spoken designer
raises his voice. “I just went WHOA!” he yells
happily. “I think I shouted. It was a great
experience being in Germany for the awards
ceremony. Very interesting, kind of suddenly
being part of a community.”
“I’ve had people
coming up to me
and saying, ‘You
owe us a table!
You destroyed
our table!’”
■ Magic Maze
creator Kasper Lapp
embracing the magic of
his game.
37
SILENT BUT DEADLY
Just three years ago, Lapp couldn’t have
felt any further from that community. He
grew up in the sleepy suburban town of
Birkerød, just to the north of Copenhagen.
Despite designing games as a hobby (“Never
Eurogames,” he says, “it was always something
with fighting.”), he never thought it would
become a career – mainly because he didn’t
then know anybody else who did it, and had
no notion of how to get anything published.
Instead, he tried carving a career in the
video games industry and spent a few years
reskinning old arcade titles for Nokia and
Sony Ericsson phones, until he resolved
to pack it all in, move to the big city of
Copenhagen and become… a children’s
author. But that didn’t quite work out either.
“It turned out really hard,” he admits. “I
haven’t totally quit, but I have given up living
off that.”
While in Copenhagen, however, he
encountered other designers and realised
that perhaps the idea of getting a game
published wasn’t so crazy. So, while at the
2014 Fastaval gaming convention in Hobro,
Denmark, he decided to try out a “gimmick
game” he’d been quietly formulating in a
contest that required entrants to develop
and present a novel idea during the course
of the weekend. “Now is the time to make
this weird little game I’d thought of,” he
said to himself.
“I wanted to make something different
for this competition,” he recalls now, “but
I didn’t think it would be a game for a
wider audience.”
The core idea was that each
player doesn’t have a
specific pawn to move
around a map, but
rather a group of players
simultaneously co-operate to
move all the pawns, with each
player only having access to
a very limited set of actions
that can be applied to the
pawn of their choice, at
any time.
“And then I thought to
make that challenging, it
has to be in silence.”
So he tried it out, unsure
of how other gamers would
react. After all, for most of
us the tabletop experience is
one that’s almost inherently
verbal – especially if you’re ▶
22/09/2017 10:28
 THE MAKING OF…
playing a co-op title, the kind of game Lapp
enjoys the most. (“Because I’m a very bad loser,”
he laughs.) You talk strategy with your fellow
players, argue tactics, share insights. Lapp’s
strange little puzzle game took all that away. But
even so… “I noticed that people were actually
having fun. There was this happy, fun frustration
in their faces, because they had to communicate
without really communicating. I realised there
was something good about the game. So I kept
working on it.”
Lapp won the contest and the next year
returned to enter Fastaval’s main board game
competition with a full-on prototype for
his silent, turnless co-op concept. Except it
wasn’t Magic Maze. Not yet.
“The game was called Hivemind and it was
a bit different then,” he explains. “You had
036_040_theMakingOfMagicMaze_v2 MJ.indd 38
to move robots around a spaceship, pick up
weapons and put them in good positions to
shoot at invading aliens. It was built in these
two phases where you have one minute to
plan – during which you can talk – and then
one minute to resolve the plan. So it was a
kind of puzzle game where you had to find
the correct positions in which to put the
robots. It was a very complicated game. Way
too complicated.”
Despite this, Lapp won the competition
and realised that maybe, possibly, finally he
could get a game published. So that October
he took Hivemind to present at the Essen
Spiel fair, but not before he’d sent it to Sit
Down! to see what they thought. Suffice to
say, they were impressed, and snapped the
game up almost immediately.
Above all, says Sit Down!’s Laetitia Di
Sciascio, it was “the non-communicative
communication” element that hooked them:
“There was something in the expression of the
players who couldn’t communicate, but who
were still trying to express something. It brings a
lot of feelings that are uncommon in games, and
a very special atmosphere.” The way its silent
approach discouraged alpha players was a plus
point, too, she adds, “but not the main one”.
Sit Down! did ask if Lapp might consider
streamlining the mechanism a little. “I think
they said, ‘so you can sell 10,000 instead of
1,000 copies’. And I thought: ‘Well, that sounds
good,’” he recalls. But he didn’t merely simplify
Hivemind. He completely reconstructed it.
38
HEROES WELCOME
Apart from the core mechanism, Lapp threw
everything out and started over. Gone were the
Space Alert-ish sci-fi elements, leaving Lapp
with just a themeless idea of a group going
into a labyrinth and, as he puts it, “trying to
get something”. Surprisingly, despite spending
his youth playing RPGs and even LARPing (“I
used to run around in the forests being dressed
up as a knight.”) the fantasy setting wasn’t
something he came up with himself. So sadly
the ‘heroes on a shoplifting spree’ concept
was not based on a true story of Danish LARPy
shopping-centre misbehaviour…
Rather, it was the Sit Down! team which
suggested it to him, having brainstormed it
during the long drive back to their hometown
after the Festival International des Jeux de
Cannes, in France.
“We brought up a lot of ideas and
immediately dismissed most of them,” says
Di Sciascio. “We didn’t want to make another
dungeon crawler; as this game is unusual and
a bit off-the-wall we needed a theme that was
also unusual and that would fit the mechanics.”
What her team did was try out a process
they’d honed during their days in advertising,
which she explains “involves bringing
together two things that have nothing in
common in order to create a new element
that conveys the idea we want”. The two
winning and seemingly unconnected
ideas, of course, being fantasy heroes and a
shopping mall.
“We knew that fans of medieval fantasy
would probably hate it,” Di Sciascio admits,
“but it’s not a big deal, as nothing can
pretend to be appealing to everyone. The
most important thing is that players have
fun, and as you can see in the illustrations
[ultimately conceived by Belgian cartoonist
Gyom] we love nonsensical humour.”
Lapp loved it, too. “It would have been
too ordinary to just have some heroes in a
dungeon,” he thinks, and he appreciated the
way Sit Down! felt his unique mechanism
deserved a unique theme. He did add some
final touches, though. “I figured it should be
the heroes from Hero Quest.” — i.e. barbarian,
mage, dwarf and elf – “That was my favourite
game when I was young, so I made it exactly
those heroes.” He also felt it would be a little
dull if the heroes were merely on a shopping
trip. “So I suggested the story about the
adventurers having lost all their equipment
and needing to retrieve it.”
There was a question as to whether it was
immoral to have the characters shoplifting,
22/09/2017 10:28
 but Lapp and Sit Down! stuck with the idea
regardless. After all, reasons Di Sciascio, it’s
no worse than “killing, dominating people
and ruining your opponents, as we do in
many other games. Games are made for
doing what we can’t in real life, right?”
NEGOTIATING THE LABYRINTH
During our conversation, Lapp makes a
confession: he’s not actually very good at
Magic Maze.
“I’m really bad at real-time games,” he
reveals. “I’m not a quick thinker and I have a
tendency to AP – analysis paralysis – so that’s
very annoying, both to me and other players, if
I’m sitting there and can’t make up my mind.”
However, like his playtesters and most who
have tried out his game ever since, he enjoys the
challenge. “If there’s a timer running I just have
to do something. It’s fun to try and think quickly.
That’s why I like real-time co-operative games.”
There is an advantage, he feels, to not
being that good at your own game during the
design process.
“A game has to work with bad players as
well, so I don’t think it’s a disadvantage. It
also means I can play along even though I’m
the one making the game. I can still fail.”
036_040_theMakingOfMagicMaze_v2 MJ.indd 39
Lapp truly values the playtesting process
as a way of ironing out design wrinkles.
For example, Magic Maze originally had
a mechanism whereby players needed to
place colour-coded doors on
the tile edges in order for
players to flip and add new
tiles via the placement of
a correctly coloured pawn
(the elf being green, the mage
purple, and so on).
“It was very complicated
because players had to remember
to actually put these doors on
the tile and then remove them
when the right hero came
around and opened it. And if
they forgot to put them on,
it was only a good thing for
them, so it was easy to cheat.”
It was at the suggestion of
a test player that Lapp removed
the doors and simply added
a colour-coded exploration
space. “I just went, ‘Whoa, that’s the solution
I’ve been waiting for.’ It was so obvious.”
His greatest challenge, however, was
nailing the rulebook. Hardly surprising, ▶
■ The constant pressure of the game’s three-minute sand timer means
that players can’t hang around, leading to some of Magic Maze’s
funniest moments – especially as the group isn’t allowed to talk.
39
25/09/2017 11:46
 THE MAKING OF…
when you consider that the game is, in Lapp’s
words “so strange”. As players, we can usually
fall back on our knowledge of previous,
similar titles to ease us through a rulebook. If
you know Agricola, for example, then you’ll
click into Lords of Waterdeep very quickly.
But if you’re coming to Magic Maze cold,
you’ll be double-taking your way through its
entire ruleset: the fact that there are no turns,
no talking, no specific pawn for each player…
Lapp’s background in computer game
design helped a little here. During playtesting
he realised new players would need to be
eased in gently. So he conceived different
scenarios for each (roughly 15-minute) play
session – effectively levels, like you’d find in
an arcade game or Mario-like platformer.
The first seven of these introduce the rules
gradually. In fact, the very first scenario even
allows talking.
“There should be a gradual difficulty
rising,” says Lapp – something that was also
important because, he noticed, “players get
better at the game so quickly”.
Anyone who’s experienced Magic Maze
will have noticed that, after some initial
blunders you can reach a point where you all
silently lock in to its play flow and find the
game’s rhythm. It’s oddly exhilarating.
“If it was just win or lose, then players
would lose, lose, lose and then win, win, win
forever. So the challenge had to be upped
all the time. And then it might as well be
increased by adding rules.”
There is one element which still nags at
Lapp, though. A rule which he’s noticed
players are still misunderstanding: namely,
the vortexes. These magical teleporting spots,
colour-coded for each hero, enable players
to take tile-hopping shortcuts (at least until
every hero has made it to their respective
shop, at which point things get tougher).
“The thing with the vortexes is you don’t
have to be standing on a vortex of your
colour to move to another vortex,” Lapp
emphasises. Rather, you can pick up the
relevant pawn from any space and move
it to a vortex space. It’s a rule he even had
printed in bold. “You really have to yell it
in order to make players understand,” he
sighs. “That’s actually been the most difficult
thing to make players understand. And I
think it’s very important because the vortex
is not really that useable if you have to be
on another of the same colour.” He makes a
request: “It would be great if you could put it
in the article, because I really want to get the
word out, so people understand.”
036_040_theMakingOfMagicMaze_v2 MJ.indd 40
THE NEXT LEVEL
Like most successful
games, Magic Maze is a
work-in-progress. When
we speak, Lapp has just
sent the game’s first
expansion, Maximum
Security, off to production.
“It introduces security guards,”
he explains. “So instead of making
the mall bigger, I’ve made it more complex.
You have to move the security guards around
as well, so it becomes more of a puzzle.”
He’s also working on a version of the game
for younger children. “It’s not just Magic
Maze made simpler, it’s kind of a new game “I’m also trying to make a pirate game,” he
also.” There will be no exploration element, adds. “A semi-co-op game where you have to
rather a selection of pre-made boards. “But sail the sea and loot, but you’re on a sinking ship
the new challenge instead is that there are so there’s only a limited time to get the treasures
some animals on the board, so you have to you want. You have to negotiate with the other
puzzle your way around them. And it’s going players about where you’re going to sail and
to be very much from the bottom up. You can there’s constant mutiny, where the captain
add one rule at a time, and of course it starts can be replaced if you don’t agree with him.”
much easier than the other game. Though it Thanks to his weirdest-ever idea, the quiet
can still get very difficult…” guy from small-town Denmark is finally
It’s interesting that, as challenging as it making a living from the hobby he loves most.
can be, Magic Maze never becomes all-out There is no doubting that Magic Maze has
stressful. Why exactly is that? “It must be changed Kasper Lapp’s life. People no longer
something to do with the silence, I think,” think he’s living “in a dream world” when
answers Lapp. “That people cannot yell at he talks about having a career as a game
you. That might be it. Although they can put designer. And as happy as the rave reviews
the ‘Do Something!’ pawn in front of you. and Spiel des Jahres nomination make him,
That can be pretty stressful. I’ve had people he’s above all gratified by the way regular
coming up to me and saying, ‘You owe us a gamers have embraced his strange creation.
table! You destroyed our table!’ Because they “Seeing people play Magic Maze is so
have put it down so hard that it’s made marks good. I’m proud of it,” he beams. “Though I
on their table,” he laughs. don’t know if I’ll be able to ever make such
Lapp has other ideas he’s working on, a game again. It’s such a new game. I think I
too – other than his Magic Maze progenitor was lucky to come up with it.” ■
Hivemind, which he’s re-developing as an
upcoming hardcore variant. One of those
ideas even involves noise, being a themeless
real-time co-op party game that positively
encourages shouting. “It’s coming out next
year with Amigo Spiel,” says Lapp, though he
says it’s yet to be titled. (“The working title
was Photo Safari.”)
■ The maze
is made up
of various
shopping
mall areas.
40
22/09/2017 10:28
 Will you survive?
The world we knew is gone.
The world of commerce and frivolous
necessity has been replaced
by a world of survival and responsibility
responsibility.
The hit series comes to life
on the tabletop!
Fast-paced head-to-head action!
Highly detailed collectible
miniatures!
www.manticgames.com

The Walking Dead is © 2017 Robert Kirkman. All Rights Reserved.

The Walking Dead™ (including all prominent characters) and The Walking Dead logo, are trademarks of Robert Kirkman, LLC.
Skybound is TM and © 2016 Skybound, LLC.

p041.indd 1 25/09/2017 09:23

 RISK REWARD
As the most famous strategy board game of all time turns 60 years old, we take a trip through its
many revisions, regional variations and reincarnations, from the shores of Westeros to the final frontier
I
t may not have quite the same popular
name recognition as Monopoly, but Risk
is surely the world’s best-known strategy
board game. Originally invented by the
Palme d’Or- and Oscar-winning French
film director Albert Lamorisse, the game is
now celebrating its 60th anniversary. It first
appeared in 1957 in France as La Conquete
du Monde (The Conquest of the World).
The game was bought by Parker Brothers
in 1959 and published first as Risk: The
Continental Game and then as Risk: The
Game of Global Domination.
Risk is so well-known that we hardly need
to explain the rules of play here: in the basic
game, a map of the world is divided into 42
territories unequally distributed over six
continents. Players occupy territories and
accumulate armies with the aim of capturing
neighbouring regions and eliminating
other players. Combat is by dice roll, with
the attacker rolling one fewer die than the
number of armies they have in a territory, up
to a maximum of three. If the defender has
two or more armies on a territory, they roll
two dice. The defender wins tied rolls, which
means that probability favours the defender
when each player rolls the same number
042_045_riskAnniversary_v2 MJ.indd 42
Words and pictures by Selwyn Ward
of dice. However, more often than not,
probability will favour the attacker because
the attacker will usually have put themselves
in a position to roll one more die than the
defender. When they do this, the attacker has
a significant advantage because only their
highest two rolls are compared with the two
dice rolled by the defender.
For many of us, Risk was our first ‘serious’
board game. We can surely all remember
seizing and reinforcing Australasia in the
hope of creating an impregnable base for
our armies. There is genuine strategy in
optimising attacks and defence, and, in
games with several players, there can be
elements of diplomacy as players negotiate
and form unofficial alliances.
I would not want to make exaggerated
claims for the educational value of the
game, but I am sure that I cannot be the only
person who learnt their world geography by
navigating their way around the Risk board.
It was only through playing Risk that I can
even now immediately pinpoint the location
of Irkutsk. It was the lines of connection that
enabled armies to move between the eastern
and western edges of the board that taught
me that Alaska borders what is shown on the
42
standard Risk board as Kamchatka. When
Alaskan governor and vice-presidential
candidate Sarah Palin was reported to have
claimed she could see Russia from her
kitchen window, it may have been the cause
of mocking merriment in the United States
but it came as no surprise to me.
GETTING RISQUÉ
A succession of rule variations over the years
have helped to keep Risk interesting. These
include alternate setup rules, differences in
the use of cards to draft additional armies,
the introduction of ‘capitals’ (starting
positions to be protected from capture by
opposing players) and the adoption of ‘secret
missions’ (concealed individual objectives
that give an instant win when achieved). The
secret missions typically involve capturing
two specified continents, eliminating a
specific opponent or occupying a set number
of territories each with two or more armies.
It has been the secret mission cards, in
particular, that have given a new lease of
life to the game. Prior to their introduction,
Risk invariably involved player elimination:
if a player was eliminated, their cards – and
therefore extra armies – would go to the
22/09/2017 10:31
 player knocking them out. This meant the transpose the game way beyond the routine Official tie-ins have included a plethora
player in the weakest position was always confines of planet Earth. Avalon Hill’s Risk of television series and video games, as
highly likely to be targeted by the stronger 2210 AD and Risk Godstorm extended the well as movies. Amongst others, these have
players. In contrast, with mission cards, game into space and classical mythology. given us Risk: Transformers, Risk: Halo, Risk:
players may well have a vested interest in Both games are organised across a finite StarCraft, Risk: Mass Effect and Risk: Game of
bolstering weaker opponents and keeping number of rounds during which players are Thrones. The latter, in particular, will probably
them in the game because they may fear that seeking to accumulate victory points. Limiting come as no surprise: fans of the books and
their elimination could be the secret victory the game, in effect, to just five turns was TV series will recognise the obvious parallels
condition needed by another opponent. perceived as an attempt to tackle a criticism between the struggle for supremacy in the
Though in 2015 it was seven kingdoms and the area
Pandemic Legacy that took control game at the heart of Risk.
the gaming world by storm, “Though Castle Risk triggered Risk: Game of Thrones comes
its precursor in 2011 was Risk with two boards and two sets
Legacy, which was arguably the little interest in 1986, the 21st of components. With three to
very first game in which each play five players, the houses of Stark,
directly and irrevocably affected century has seen an explosion in Baratheon, Lannister, Tyrell and
the next. To the shuddering Martell battle for domination of
horror of collectors around the exotic Risk variants.” Westeros. In a two-player game,
world who strive to keep their the Targaryens and Ghiscari
games in pristine condition, Rob Daviau that the original open-ended game could compete to control Essos. With six or seven
(the co-designer of both these legacy games) take too long. Wargame publisher Avalon Hill players, the maps and factions are combined.
insisted on players destroying cards and did not establish its reputation, however, by Turn order has always been something
defacing the world map game board. Though producing short and snappy games; even with of an issue in Risk, and this appears to be
it did not have the engrossing story arc that a five round limit, the complexity introduced especially evident in the two-player version
characterises its successor, there is no doubt in these variants meant that play rarely took of Risk: Game of Thrones. Unless ‘house rules’
that without Risk Legacy’s blazing trail, we less than three hours. are introduced to modify the first player’s
might never have seen Pandemic Legacy. advantage, then the second player will always
As we learned from one of the Bond RISKY BUSINESS find the game a very uphill struggle.
movies, the world is not enough. And so it has Over the years, numerous franchise tie-ins Inevitably, there has been a zombie variant,
proved with Risk. Though the first Risk variant have given us Risk: Lord of the Rings and with Risk: The Walking Dead – Survival
Castle Risk triggered little interest when it various Risk: Star Wars games, the most Edition. This is set on a map representing only
was published in 1986, the 21st century has recent of which, released in 2015, drifts so the south-eastern part of the United States,
seen an explosion in exotic Risk variants that far from the original game as to be barely which is where the comic book and TV series
recognisable. Reiner Knizia’s Risk Express are set. In the game’s ‘survival’ mode, players
also had little in common with the original each play one of the factions of survivors. They
game. In most cases, however, each Risk are battling each other but they also need to
variant has introduced new additional protect themselves against ‘walkers’, who are
mechanics but still follows recognisably in not controlled by a player but who form an
the tradition of the original game. existential threat. When attacking walkers, ▶

■ Opposite: The
form of Risk familiar
to most players.

■ Left: Some of the

many Risk variations
that have been
released over the years.

43

042_045_riskAnniversary_v2 MJ.indd 43 22/09/2017 10:32

 60 YEARS OF RISK
players get their die roll enhanced but any
pieces they lose have a 50% chance of turning
into more of the undead. This is thematically
strong and offers an inventive twist to the
underlying Risk game.
In 2013, we were given a Doctor Who
edition of Risk, subtitled The Dalek Invasion of
Earth. In this version of the game, each of the
players controls not the Doctor but an army of
competing Daleks who are bent on achieving
global supremacy – a welcome return to the
original theme. In addition to mission cards,
‘power cards’ in this edition introduce random
events that can have a significant favourable
or negative effect. Doctor Who fans will
appreciate the fact that the illustrations on
mission and power cards draw on the original
series as well as the more recent version, so the
Daleks are as likely to encounter the Seventh
Doctor’s companion Ace as they are Ninth and
Tenth Doctor companion Rose Tyler. Each
turn, the Doctor’s TARDIS materialises in a
different territory, freezing for the turn any
action in that location. The Doctor also acts as
a ‘timer’ in the game: ‘regenerating’ through
his various incarnations from the First to the
Eleventh (the version of the Doctor when this
game was published). The game ends when
the Doctor’s regeneration reaches Eleven,
which can make for a remarkably brisk game:
if you play with four or five, each player may
not even get a third turn!
As USS Enterprise captain James T. Kirk
once famously commented, “Risk is our
business”, so it seemed very appropriate in
2016 for USAopoly to publish Risk: Star Trek
50th Anniversary Edition. The game uses the
042_045_riskAnniversary_v2 MJ.indd 44
omnipotent character Q as a plot device to
bring together the captains from all the various
TV incarnations of Star Trek and to pit them
against each other. Sadly, the publishers’
licence seems to limit them to sales only in
North America, making the game currently
difficult to get hold of in the UK.
WORLD DOMINATION
In 2015, Hasbro took Risk to a new level
with the release of Risk Europe. This sets
the game in medieval Europe with players
controlling feudal kings but involves several
new mechanics. Actions in the game are
card-driven, so this is an area control game
that also involves hand management.
In their turn, players’ choice of cards
determines whether they will tax (collect
income for the territories they control) or
spend their income on weapons, troops or
castles. A second card allows for different
types of movement between territories. The
game incorporates capitals with special
powers and a blind bidding phase for turn
order and recruiting mercenaries. It also
has four different types of combat unit so
that the traditional Risk dice resolution is
substantially modified. For example, in Risk
Europe, the archers fire before the cavalry
attack, although their chance of success is
less than that of the cavalry. The net result is
a game that can certainly trace its roots back
to the original game but which players might
not immediately recognise as Risk if it weren’t
for the branding on the box.
Some variants have been published only in
specific markets. For example, S.P.Q.Risiko!
44
is a visually attractive variant set at the
time of the Roman Empire that appears
only to have been published and sold in
Italy. Its implementation of naval units and
amphibious attacks, and its turnly reckoning
of victory points, makes for a more tactical
tussle than in the ‘vanilla’ game. Risk: Balance
of Power tweaked the rules to better work as a
two-player game, but Hasbro decided not to
market the game at all in the USA – possibly
because the map for the game did not include
North America. The publisher perhaps
feared that a map without North America
might seem alien and irrelevant to its more
parochial customers.
NO END TO WAR
There have been scores of unofficial
variants of Risk over the decades. These
are area control games with elements very
reminiscent of Risk, to the extent that some
would class them as ‘Risk clones’ even though
they do not use the name Risk in the title.
First published in the 1980s, Milton
Bradley’s Gamesmaster games, including Axis
& Allies, Fortress America and Shogun (re-
released as Samurai Swords and later Ikuza),
clearly owe a strong debt to Risk, as do games
such as TSR’s Buck Rogers Battle for the 25th
Century, which was published in 1988. All of
these games suggest the influence of Risk in
their underlying design but each takes the
game in a different direction. The Buck Rogers
game is especially memorable for its use of
planetary orbits. This means that territories
constantly vary in distance from each other
in accordance with each planet’s movement
22/09/2017 10:32

■ Top: Classic Warlord
swaps Risk’s dice-based
combat for a novel
guessing system.
■ Above: Last year’s
Spheres of Influence is one
of the more recent games
heavily inspired by Risk.
■ Far left: The 2013
Doctor Who spin-off
ties the Time Lord’s
regeneration and
TARDIS into the rules.
■ Left, middle: Risk
Europe made big changes
to the original’s battles.
■ Left: S.P.Q.Risiko! is an
example of a region-specific
version of Risk, having
only appeared in Italy.
45
042_045_riskAnniversary_v2 MJ.indd 45
around the sun. This becomes a key factor
as players have to take careful account of the
different planetary motions when planning
attacks and defence.
Mike Hayes first self-published his game
The Warlord in 1974. A cut-down version
was later marketed by Games Workshop as
Apocalypse, and the game has since been
republished by its designer in a limited
edition entitled Classic Warlord. This is a long
game that uses an impressively huge map.
Though there are discernible links to Risk,
this game eschews dice rolling for a novel
system requiring the attacker to secretly
select the number of armies he is attacking
with. If the defender guesses correctly, the
attacker loses that number of armies; an
incorrect guess means the defender loses
just one army. Whereas Risk traditionally
rewards a territorial gain with a card that
can be exchanged for additional armies,
Classic Warlord awards a nuclear warhead to
the successful attacker. This can be a mixed
blessing, as nuclear arms can prove to be
more a juicy target than a deterrent…
Josh Lamont’s Kickstarter-funded game
Spheres of Influence: Struggle for Global
Supremacy is another commendable example
of a game that is, in the words of the designer,
“kind of like Risk”. The game was published
in 2016. Playable by up to eight, Spheres of
Influence is at its best when played with two-
to-four players so that each controls more
than one faction. When players each control
more than one faction, they can develop a
strategy to sacrifice one faction to keep their
winning faction on top. Spheres of Influence
is a dynamic, fluid and fast-paced game. It
appears to have been designed systematically
to take each of the perceived flaws in the core
game of Risk and offer up a solution. Some
players, for example, dislike the way in which
forces sweep back and forth across the board
in Risk through long sequences of successive
attacks. In Spheres of Influence, armies cannot
steamroll across the board. Instead, the
number of actions (attacks) each player can
take each turn is determined by the number
of oil-producing territories they control, and
the order in which players take each of these
actions is randomly determined. This makes
for a tense and intriguing game.
Sixty years on, and through its many
incarnations, Risk has undoubtedly managed
to stand the test of time. It continues to bridge
the divide between families and ‘gamers’,
and still shows its influence on new games
emerging today. ■
22/09/2017 10:32
046_049_titanComics_v3 MJ.indd 46 22/09/2017 10:43

Bloody, brutal and full of beefy folks who love to fight,
Warhammer 40,000 and Blood Bowl are the perfect fit for the
page-turning action of comic books. The writers and artists
behind the series’ latest adaptations take us inside their worlds
Words by Matt Jarvis
T
he glistening green skin of an Ork squad
as it charges into battle. The copper
sheen of drying blood on a Space Marine
Chainsword. The glowing core of a Gauss Flayer
as a Necron Warrior unleashes a deadly shot.
For years, these details existed primarily in the
meticulous brush strokes and imaginations
of Warhammer 40,000 players, fuelled by
the painterly illustrations in the iconic sci-fi
game’s rulebooks and issues of White Dwarf.
Today, the Warhammer 40,000 universe
stretches far beyond the detail of little plastic
soldiers. There are numerous video games,
novels, audiobooks and even an animated
movie, 2010’s Ultramarines, featuring the
voice talent of renowned actor Terence Stamp
and the late, great John Hurt.
Yet, there’s perhaps no medium that fits the
gritty tone and style of Games Workshop’s sci-fi
creation better than comic books. After making
their debut in the pages of Black Library volumes
in the late 1990s, Warhammer 40,000 comics
ran regularly until 2004, stopping for a few years
before returning under a new publisher in 2006.
Boom! Studios dropped its line of comics based
on the game just three years later, leaving them
dormant for more than seven years.
Warhammer 40,000 finally made its triumphant
return to comics at the end of last year with a new
arc from Titan Comics, Will of Iron. The four-issue
run, plus a standalone prologue, was followed
earlier this year by a second storyline, Revelations.
A third arc, Fallen, kicked off this summer.
Written by George Mann, who had previously
penned Doctor Who novels, as well as Warhammer
40,000 audiobook Helion Rain, the series follows
a squad of Dark Angels Space Marines as well as
an Inquisitor, Sabbathiel, who is investigating the
group. As the plot progresses, more Warhammer
40,000 factions appear; the corrupted forces
of Chaos make an appearance, with Eldar and
Necrons playing a prominent role in Revelations.
“As a setting, it’s very much defined by its
visuals,” says Mann. “The fact that everything
begins with these amazing sculptures, and is
then encoded and expanded in hugely evocative
illustrations – it just lends itself to visual storytelling.
We’re also lucky to have a wealth of narrative
material that’s gone before us, both in terms of
the background content in the core books, and in
47
046_049_titanComics_v3 MJ.indd 47
FROM TABLE TO PAGE
Black Library fiction, which all means we’re mining
a really rich seam of worldbuilding and story.”
While the comics feature established ■ Step 1: An initial rough concept sketch.
chapters and factions from Warhammer 40,000’s
expansive lore, most of the key characters are
completely original creations for the series.
“Creating them and working on them is amazing
but, of course, the tough part is always making
sure that everything we do stays coherent to the
setting,” explains colourist Enrica Eren Angolini.
“The fandom is very attentive to every single detail:
armours, insignia, proportions and so on. I’ve been
repeatedly questioned – if not critiqued at times
– about Sabbathiel’s armour; many of those who
see pictures without having read the series think
she’s just a fan creation and it’s not actually ‘legit’.”
The series’ setting is similarly brand new,
taking place in the Calaphrax Cluster, an
Imperial sector made inaccessible by warp ■ Step 2: A greater level of detail is pencilled in.
storms that only receded after 10,000 years,
setting in motion the events of Will of Iron.
“We wanted to make sure there was a sense
of real peril – and by carving out our own little
corner of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, it
meant that we had free reign to destroy planets
or armies at will, without worrying about
how it would impact on the core Warhammer
40,000 narrative,” Mann explains. “We’re all
clearly megalomaniacs at heart!”
A NEW DAWN
The series that began with Will of Iron isn’t
the only Warhammer 40,000 comic to have
surfaced in the last year. A mini-series, based on
■ Step 3: The vibrant presence of colour is added.
the latest entry in the Dawn of War collection of
PC real-time strategy games, made its debut in
early 2017, ahead of the computer game’s release.
Focused on the battles between just three
races – Space Marines, Orks and Eldar –
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III is written
with a deliberately more intimate tone than some
might expect for an adaptation of a game about
anonymous warriors being slaughtered in droves.
“My goal was to have an almost Band of
Brothers-style story,” explains writer Ryan
O’Sullivan. “One that focuses on a smaller unit
of Space Marines as they embark on a more
personal journey.”
“You can see Warhammer 40,000 as a space
opera – set upon fun, but not only,” adds ▶ ■ Step 4: Speech completes the finished page.
25/09/2017 11:01
 GAMING COMICS

colourist Kevin Enhart. “You can empower

that universe with deeper events and stories,
maybe with a philosophical ground or even in
resonance with our history. The fact that it’s an
open science-fiction universe means you can go
deeper with tones and violence than with a more
realistic background.”
To explore these deeper subjects and forge
an emotion connection between readers and
characters, the creators came up with new
heroes for the series – a risky move when it
comes to such a beloved universe.
“The main worry when it comes to creating
new characters is that the readers are going to
hate them,” O’Sullivan admits. “Readers buy
the comics to see characters they’re already
familiar with. They want to see Space Marines
such as Gabriel Angelos, Tarkus or Cyrus. They
don’t want to see some random newbie I’ve
created. If I make a new character too badass
then they’ll hate them for overshadowing their
faves. If I make a new character too much of
a pushover, then they’ll hate them for being a
wimp. The trick is to create a character that fits
in with the existing group dynamic, and that
contributes to the story in a meaningful way.”
For Enhart and artist Daniel Indro,
crafting the look of each page to fit with what
players already know and enjoy about the
Warhammer 40,000 universe is just as crucial
to capturing the tone of the game.
“My goal is to give the readers the feeling and
style of the game and the figurines, but, in some
way, more real,” Enhart says. “Since I’m mostly
painting, I can play with a lot of elements players
don’t have when playing. Even the tones are made
to fit Ryan’s script and Daniel’s pencilling. It’s a
■ Will of Iron captures how action-packed
different experience than painting a figurine, but as Warhammer 40,000’s violent world can be.
thrilling. And the advantage I have is that, with luck,
Daniel’s pencils are bigger than most figurines.”
Just as players carefully pose and paint their chaotic sports spin-off based in an alternative
miniatures to reflect their individual style timeline of the Warhammer Fantasy setting,
and tells unique stories on the tabletop, the made its way into a comic series, More Guts,
wide-reaching drama, action and style of the More Glory, for the first time this spring.
Warhammer 40,000 universe means it feels “On the surface Blood Bowl is a fantasy
right at home in pencil and ink. sporting board game, but at its heart it’s
“Having such varied character visuals allows really a black comedy, full of colourful and
for some really great-looking comic pages,” unpredictable characters,” says writer Nick
O’Sullivan enthuses. “I’ve also found that Kyme, who has authored several Warhammer
people tend to get into comics and Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 novels and stories.
in their early teens, so a comic book adaption “It’s a rich world, with a reasonably well-
seems like a natural melting pot: equal parts developed lore and history. There’s the actual
teen nostalgia and adult hobby.” game, of course, but surrounding it, woven
through it is the story. Comics need drama.
BLOODY GOOD TIME They need characters and colour. Blood Bowl
It’s not just Warhammer 40,000’s sci-fi future has all three in abundance, and by marrying
that’s had the chance to spill claret between the craziness of the game with the inherent
the pages of comic books. Blood Bowl, the drama of the world and its inhabitants, it’s

48

046_049_titanComics_v3 MJ.indd 48 22/09/2017 10:43


great subject matter for a comic adaptation.”
Taking Blood Bowl’s parodying of American
football as a leaping-off point, More Guts, More
Glory follows fallen star Dreng Sturmblud
– “Coming up with the names is one of the
best parts of the process,” Kyme quips – as he
attempts to work his way back into the hearts
of fans as part of the Hochland Harbingers.
“I created a story that leaned heavily on a
sporting archetype, the notion of a team of no-
hopers who get their shot at the big time,” explains
Kyme. “It is as much a story of his revival as it is
about him inspiring the Hochland Harbingers
to success. These classic sporting narratives,
subverted through the lens of Blood Bowl, really
helped to anchor the story in more than just
mayhem and gave the whole thing a heart.”
It might raise a few eyebrows to suggest that a
game where players are constantly injured and
killed while tossing a ball around could boast an
emotional core. Kyme nevertheless describes
More Guts, More Glory as “Friday Night Lights
meets Lord of the Rings”, but insists that staying
true to the tabletop experience is key.
“It’s about finding a story within that, admittedly
large, creative sandpit,” he says. “During the
writing, I found myself trying to think of things that
would happen in the board game, as well as the
universe. I tried to imagine the fun, crazy situations
that could occur and added in phrases that fans
of Blood Bowl would appreciate, articulating
them through the voices of the characters.”
BOOK RULE
As board games continue to rise in stature, the
characters and worlds they bring to life on the
tabletop will continue to be explored in other
forms. In the last year alone, comics based on
everything from zombie dice-roller Dead of
046_049_titanComics_v3 MJ.indd 49
Winter and RPG Pathfinder to classic whodunit
Cluedo (put together by a Guardians of the Galaxy
writer and Judge Dredd artist, no less) have been
announced. It’s a clear sign of the growing power
of board games to engross and enchant players.
“With a game you don’t just sit and watch, you’re
actively engaged in it and, especially if it has a rich
setting and theme, you can find yourself fantasising
about it as you play,” says Warhammer 40,000 artist
Tazio Bettin, who has also worked on adaptations
of blockbuster films such as Independence Day
and Terminator. “In translating that setting in the
comic book format, I felt more actively engaged
than in drawing a comic adaptation of a movie.
The universe I’m depicting feels more alive,
vibrant and, in a way, personal to me.”
Does that mean we should expect a comic
exploring how Monopoly’s Rich Uncle Pennybags
made his fortune? Or charting the struggle of the
farming family in Agricola? Well, no, not quite
– but that doesn’t take away from the ability of
comics to dive deeper into the worlds that players
are already desperate to learn more about.
“There are a lot of great board games with
really rich settings that ooze atmosphere and
drama,” says Kyme. “In the case of some games,
like Mansions of Madness, TIME Stories or
Pandemic Legacy, the narrative is the heart
and soul, and what makes the experience of
playing so compelling. There’s that moment of
verisimilitude where you are so absorbed you
almost forget you’re playing a board game.
“The key thing to remember is the board game
is one kind of experience and reading a comic is
another. A comic that reads like a gaming session
could fall a little wide of the mark, but equally the
story should still cleave to the essence of what that
game is about. It should feel like the experience
of playing that game but not echo it slavishly.” ■
■ Blood Bowl combines
classic sporting stories with
the chaos of the fantasy world.
49
PAGE-TURNERS
Writers and artists reveal which board games
they’d like to see turned into smash-hit comics
George Mann, writer: I’m
a sucker for the Lovecraftian
mythos, so I’d love to do
comics set in the world of
Fantasy Flight’s Arkham
Horror. Or Modiphius’s
Achtung! Cthulhu. There’s
so many great opportunities for stories in
those. I think there could be fun to be had with
Zombicide, too. And I’ve been a fan of the
Forgotten Realms for years, so the chance to
do something D&D would really appeal, too.
There’s so much!
Nick Kyme, writer: I’d
have to say Mansions of
Madness, or any of the
games based on the Call of
Cthulhu Mythos. The horror,
the intrigue and mystery,
the wonderful setting and
characters – it’s ripe for comic book adaptation.  
Tazio Bettin, artist: I believe
that Jamey Stegmeier’s
Scythe, a game I simply
love, would make for an
unique and great setting to
explore, also thanks to the
hauntingly beautiful artwork
by Jakub Rózalski. The game’s focus on area
control would definitely make for an interesting
plot, the characters look intriguing and, besides,
post-World War I steampunk mechs in Eastern
Europe: what’s not to love? Another game I enjoy
immensely is Gloomhaven by Isaac Childres.
A gorgeous, vast game with a very unique and
detailed setting: a dark fantasy with original
visuals that I believe would work wonderfully in a
comic book.
Ryan O’Sullivan, writer:
This might be a bit out of left
field, but I’d quite like to do
a Monopoly comic. I think
that IP would be perfect for
a comic book story, there are
so many different directions
you could take it. Settlers of Catan, Shadowrun
or Call of Cthulhu could also be awesome.
Honestly, tabletop games have so much
potential comics-wise it’s surprising to me there’s
not more comics out there based on them.
Enrica Eren Angolini,
colourist: From a purely
creative point of view I’d
love to work on a series
on Seasons, because I
adore the colours and the
visuals of the game. Going
with something more classic, Carcassonne
would be my other choice; I really love historical
settings, adore the game and I’ve actually been
to Carcassonne when I was a kid and have
such a fond memory of the place. Probably my
main, but most challenging, choice would be a
comic adaptation of the ancient Chinese game
of Go. I’ve been playing it for around 10 years
now and I owe so much to it. There’s a beautiful
manga about it, Hikaru No Go, which I love to
bits, but working on something that is somehow
connected to that game would be absolutely
wonderful for me.
25/09/2017 11:01

How long has Dized been in the works?
We always wanted to do something digital with
board games. We realised what we can actually
do very well is solve the rulebook issue.
We’re doing the same thing that video
games did 20 years ago – ‘Hey, we don’t
actually need this manual! People can sit down
and start playing immediately.’
The app is like a friend at the table who
teaches you how to play while you’re playing,
knows exactly how to teach this particular
game and answers your questions.
In that case, why should players use Dized
instead of just having a friend teach them?
The problem with that friend is that they’re
not always available or they don’t know that
particular game that you want to play.
Friends tend to make mistakes. It’s very
common when someone reads the rulebook or
watches a video and teaches you a game, and
then you teach it to your friend who teaches it
to their friend, that at some point during that
game of telephone the rules change a little bit.
That’s one thing we’re doing with the app:
ask a question, get an immediate answer,
and the answer is from the publisher and not
the community, so you know it’s going to be
the right answer to that question. Skip the
argument and just go back to the game.
YouTube tutorial videos for board games
are really popular at the moment. Do you
see them as your competition?
50_dized_v2 MJ.indd 50
CHANGING THE RULES
Playmore Games CEO and founder Jouni Jussila runs us
through interactive tutorial app and digital gaming toolkit Dized
Interview by Matt Jarvis
I don’t see them as rivals. I think a board
game publisher should offer all these different
methods and let their customers choose which is
the method they want to use to learn the game.
Tutorial videos are brilliant – for example,
when you’re sitting on a train or public
transport and watch a video while you’re there.
What we want to do is give people the ability
to sit down with a new game and start playing
immediately. So you don’t have to spend half an
hour, 45 minutes or even 50 minutes watching a
video or trying to consult the rulebook.
Our tool can do things that these other
methods have a hard time doing. One of them
is that our tool is updatable – it’s very difficult
to update a rulebook once it’s printed or a
video once everything is done. We can just
go and update the app and it immediately
updates all devices. The other thing is our app
answers your questions. That is something you
can’t do with a video.
What other features do you have planned?
The cornerstones of Dized are the tutorials and
look-up tools. Tutorials teach new players how
to play, the rule look-up tool is for players who
already know the game but then they have
those FAQ-style questions.
Around that, we’re building a full service:
the ultimate companion app, the Swiss Army
knife for every board gamer, that allows you to
upgrade your games through digital expansions,
new content, game mechanics, score trackers, AI
players or GMs, sound tools... Even like demos
■ Playmore’s debut title
Race to the North Pole was
the first game to have an
interactive Dized tutorial.
50
and intros like you have in video games – watch
this intro in the beginning, then a mid-game
thing and an ending video for the game, as well.
We can really bring the board game alive with
this digital content. There are 100,000 board
games out there, and we want to do them all.
Exactly how free-to-use is Dized?
It’s a free-to-download app and the tutorials,
the rule look-up tools, are ad-based. So watch
a video, then you can download the tutorial.
You can use it offline, so even if you lose
internet connection, your tutorial is not going
to end. The extra content and new features, some
of it is free, some of it is a small in-app purchase.
Is there a limit to how complex a game
can be to have a Dized tutorial?
The more complex the game is, the more it
benefits from having a Dized tutorial, because the
more learning curve there will be to that game.
If you have one sheet of rules to a game, you
don’t really need an interactive tutorial to show
you how to play the game, because you can
figure it out in two minutes yourself. But these
heavier games that come with 100- or 200-page
rulebooks, especially those games where you
want to get players into the game quicker and
learning the concepts quicker, then teach them
the new features slowly as they are already
playing. That’s what we want to do anyway: play
and have fun, not study how to play.
Will you support rules for gameplay
variants created by fans and players?
This is something we need to discuss with
publishers and also what the community wants.
One challenge is that we’re using the
publishers’ IP, so we’re using their copyrighted,
protected materials. So it’s always a question
of whether a third-party developer can use that
content. That’s up to the publisher.
Right now, we’re building a toolset that
allows publishers to use our toolset to create
their own content for Dized. So it’s definitely
something we’re looking into. But
then can the community go in and
start developing stuff for it? That’s
something I cannot yet answer.
One challenge is that we want
to keep the content premium, so
whatever you download on Dized
you know it’s going to be good. ■
22/09/2017 10:49
p051.indd 1 19/09/2017 11:49
 ROLL AND MOVIE
From big screen to big box: why film-based games have never
been so popular – especially if they’re from the ’80s…
Words by Dan Jolin

E
arly in 2016, erstwhile Ghostbuster Dead 2 studio that now has board games of The Smith. “I totally get that confusion. That was, for a
Ernie Hudson found himself on the Terminator and The Howling incoming), we’re very long time, definitely the landscape: licensed
Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, seeing more and more cinematic narratives being reskinned games. A hit blockbuster movie would
California, zipping up a khaki flight-suit. It had a parlayed into tabletop experiences. And they’re come out and then you’d just quickly release a
red-on-black “Zeddemore” name patch stitched experiences that take us far beyond the days of Candyland clone with the logo on it that sells well
above the left chest pocket and came complete the banged-out-for-Christmas, licensed crap-in- during Christmas, and then you never have to
with a cumbersome proton pack. This was the a-box game – or the dreaded Monopoly reskin... worry about it again. So it’s nice seeing licensed
first time Hudson had donned the outfit of games now where people are realising, ‘Oh,
fourth ‘buster Winston since 1989. But it wasn’t MOVIE MAGIC we have to actually make this good.’”
a new Ghostbusters movie that coaxed him back If you think about it, Star Wars Monopoly makes Fantasy Flight’s Corey Konieczka perhaps
into the uniform. It was the Kickstarter promo no narrative sense; why was R2-D2, for example, appreciates better than anyone that Star
for Cryptozoic Entertainment’s Ghostbusters: buying up planets like Tatooine and Coruscant? Wars-licensed products like Kenner’s trudging
The Board Game II. “The secret is that you’re actually playing as the 1977 roll-and-move offering Escape from
“It was pretty exciting,” says co-designer Hutts,” jokes Space Goat’s lead designer Taylor Death Star [sic] just won’t do anymore.
Matt Hyra. “It was great seeing him back in the
gear. He definitely had fun with it.”
As anyone at Cryptozoic would no doubt ■ Ghostbusters
confirm, movie-based board games have never II – better than
been so popular as they are right now – especially the film?
those based on movies from the peak-geek
era of the late ’70s through to the late ’80s.
Whether produced by established
publishers with firmly rooted
licensing deals like Fantasy
Flight (responsible for a whole
variety of Star Wars titles), or
plucky indie outfits like Space
Goat Productions (the Evil

52

052_054_moviesToGames_v2 MJ.indd 52 22/09/2017 10:56


Over the past six years, Fantasy Flight has fed
fans’ passions, adapting George Lucas’ mythical,
cinema-changing saga into card, miniature, dice,
roleplaying and board games. The big advantage
for movie-adapting designers these days, says
Konieczka, is that in this thriving, post-Eurogame
era they have so much more mechanism-based
inspiration to draw upon.
“Being able to use the innovations within
the tabletop gaming space and combine them
with these properties was something that
hadn’t been done before,” he points out.
So Eric M. Lang, for example, has just
turned cast-iron classic The Godfather – a
film the designer describes as “an oil painting
come to life” – into a worker (or rather
gangster)-placement game. Hyra, Adam
Sblendorio and Mataio Wilson’s Ghostbusters
games are co-operative skirmish campaigns.
Back to the Future last year surfaced as a
light-strategy hand-management card game
■ The Terminator
takes place in both
1984 and 2029.
052_054_moviesToGames_v2 MJ.indd 53
■ Star Wars: Rebellion condenses the entire original trilogy
into a few hours, covering the main moments in the films.
by Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle. And
Konieczka himself took on the seemingly
crazy task of boiling down the entire original
Star Wars trilogy into one (admittedly very
big) box, with Rebellion.
“It sounds like you’re setting yourself
up for disaster,” he admits, “but I looked
at the original trilogy and said, ‘Okay, let’s
break down what the key events are, and the
memorable moments. And now let’s give
players the tools to recreate those moments.’”
Early in the process, though, one big
question loomed: “How do we create the
framework of a game that allows that?”
Konieczka found his answer in Rebellion’s
mission system, and an asymmetrical duel
structure which, in the spirit of the trilogy’s
high-stakes struggle, meant the Rebel player
could never match the Imperial blow-for-blow
in combat.
“We had a couple of playtests early on
where the Rebels were actually able to outgun
the Empire and completely beat them back.
I immediately said, ‘No, this is wrong. It’s not
accurate to the source material.’”
CREATIVE LICENCE
Modern movie games have an interesting and
not always close relationship to their source
material; their designers certainly have to be
creative. For Taylor Smith, the trick to a
decent screen-to-table adaptation is to not
just try and stuff the entire plot into a box.
“I kinda look at the film and then
abstract it, instead of thinking about it as
a series of scenes,” he says. “Like, there’s a
lot of sci-fi games out there, but what makes
Terminator Terminator?”
53
The result with The Terminator is an
intriguing, asymmetrical semi-co-op: a group
of players teams as humans facing a single,
evil-A.I. Skynet controller in a game which
plays out over two boards – one representing
1984, the other post-Judgment Day 2029.
“You just supply the players with the same
tools that the characters in the film had and
put them into similar situations,” Smith says.
“But board games are such an interactive
media that if you want any more than a single
gaming experience you’re gonna want to have
interactivity and variability and discovery happen
throughout the course of the game. A gameplay
session should feel like a procedurally-
generated version of that movie. Something that
could have been another cut of The Terminator
– not an exact recreation, but feels familiar.”
Daniel Mandel and Ben Chicoski are well
versed in the art of ‘new but familiar’ through
their Legendary Encounters titles Alien, Predator
and Firefly: fully co-operative deckbuilders
that are replete with beats and quotes from the
three franchises (there’s even a “Goddamn
Sexual Tyrannosaurus” card in Predator). And,
unlike their Upper Deck predecessor Marvel
Legendary Encounters, they even require you to
stack the enemy deck in three movie-style acts.
“We did that so it’s more of a narrative
structure,” says Chicoski. “It ramps up in
difficulty as you play – we couldn’t have the
[Alien] Queen come out on turn one – but it
also makes it a better story.”
“Our goal’s never to totally simulate the IP
that we’re doing, but to give an experience
that feels like it could be in that universe,” he
continues. If the pair had directly copied the
plot of Aliens, Mandel points out, “you’d have ▶
22/09/2017 10:57
 MOVIE GAMES
“A game should feel
like a procedurally-
generated version
of the movie. Not an
exact recreation, but
feels familiar.”
four of the players die and only the Ripley
player would be at the end. It’s somewhat rote.”
AUDIENCE MATTERS
Dealing with intellectual properties which
inspire great passion from fans does come with
its pitfalls. “I got one of the Aliens characters’
names wrong during an online demo,” admits
Mandel. “I called him Drake instead of Frost.
And I got bashed on the internet.”
Even setting aside the risk of pedantic fan-fury,
Smith points out, it can still be tricky keeping
cineastes in mind while designing these games.
“With licensed products, not only do you
have to make a board game that’s fun for people
who’ve played a lot of board games, you also
have to make a product that’s accessible for
someone who absolutely loves that movie
but has never played a board game. It is
challenging.” Though he’s certainly rewarded
when seeing fans play his titles at demos. “I’m
an anxious person, so I’m wringing my hands,
but people laugh when they play Evil Dead.
That’s the kind of gameplay experience I want.”
As movies offer a shared, audience experience
they are, for all the challenges, ideally suited to the
052_054_moviesToGames_v2 MJ.indd 54
tabletop, Smith feels – co-op games, especially.
“Like the films, it’s a collaborative, shared
activity,” he points out. “You should be able to
react out loud and share that experience with the
people around you.”
Chicoski agrees. “It’s a very social
experience. Very different than a video game.
There’s a great Alien video game – Isolation –
and it is single-player. But with our games, you
can talk as a team and ask: ‘What if we were
fighting the Predator? What would we do?’
That’s such a cool, immersive moment.”
A WIDE UNIVERSE
To Chicoski’s knowledge, nobody who actually
fought the Predator has yet played their game.
Aside from Ernie Hudson’s brief Ghostbusters
return, the closest any of the designers
interviewed got to the stars was Smith hearing
from Evil Dead’s Bruce Campbell – via the
licensor and his agent – that he felt his chin
was a bit too big in the game’s art.
“There’s so many levels between you and
the people involved,” says Smith.
Nobody has cautionary tales of meddling
film studio marketing departments or micro-
managing clients. Hyra speaks of “round after
round of re-dos on a particular piece of art,” but
doesn’t sound at all incensed by the process.
Konieczka, meanwhile, can only remember
having “a fun time” playing Rebellion with the
licensing people at Lucasfilm. Their only big
note, he recalls, was that the Millennium Falcon
be put in the game; “It’s almost as important as a
character,” he was told.
The film studios
know that these
licences are in safe
hands, you sense,
and value the way
their IPs are being
innovatively
interpreted,
rather than just
54
■ Left: The Legendary
Encounters games
are crammed with
references to their
movie inspirations.
■ Bottom: ‘80s classics,
such as Back to the
Future, are particularly
popular among gamers.
wanting to churn out merch. When it came to
Upper Deck’s Alien expansion, Mandel was even
given free rein to make up his own new plots.
“Danny basically got to write two movies
in card-game form,” Chicoski marvels. “It got
tweaked a bit, but they approved it. That’s
pretty awesome.”
GOLDEN AGE
There’s never been a better time to tackle a
classic movie in tabletop form. But why are so
many of them rooted in ’80s IPs?
“In nerd culture the ’80s were just an amazing
time,” believes Hyra. “And right now hitting on
the ’80s stuff is a good time to hit the 40-to-50-
year-olds who have all the disposable income.”
Konieczka sees the phenomenon as part
of a larger cultural movement in which, he
says, “a lot of people have seen the success
that nostalgia can bring and are capitalising
on that.” He cites the return of Star Wars (“I
never imagined there would be new Star Wars
films in my lifetime.”), and the huge success of
’80s-immersed Netflix hit Stranger Things – a
show also cited by Smith and Ben Chicoski.
“There’s a lot of nostalgia for the ’80s,” says
the latter. “The ’80s were just wonderful”. His
designing partner Mandel, meanwhile, points
out that it’s also the case that the designers
themselves are from that era; “We both grew
up in the ’80s,” he says.
Even Smith, who is only 26 years old, feels
an affinity for that time. “I’m too young to
have grown up with these films,” he says of
Space Goat’s “VHS horror renaissance”, but he
watched them all with fresh eyes and instantly
fell in love with them. “They all have a great
story to tell, with great visuals.”
Still, for the considerable core of the gaming
audience, it’s mostly a question of hitting a
generational sweet spot.
“It gives us an opportunity to relive our
childhood,” reflects Konieczka. “That’s what
games are about, right?” ■
22/09/2017 10:56
 DIGITAL
DRAGONS
The most famous roleplaying
game of all time is swapping
pen and paper for pixels with
its official companion app.
Project lead Adam Bradford
reveals how D&D is gearing
up for the 21st century
Words by Matt Jarvis

F
or four decades, hand-drawn maps,
hastily-scribbled character sheets and
leafing through hundreds of pages
in a hefty rulebook have been as key to the
classic roleplaying experience as swords
and sorcery, dice and grid squares, and,
yes, Dungeons & Dragons.
The thing is, as traditional and tangible as
cramming miniscule notes into a margin or
hastily scanning through pages in desperate
search of a specific difficulty class are,
sometimes it’s just a bit, well, awkward.
That’s not to say that the increasing
number of digital alternatives to a good ol’
hardback tome have often been much better.
Between crashing apps, awkwardly pinching
to zoom on tiny tablet text or scrolling
through unresponsive PDFs, trying to find a
happy balance between the reliance of pen-
and-paper and convenience of technology
continues to be the holy grail of modern
tabletop gaming.
Curse’s Adam Bradford believes the studio,
which cut its teeth with online utilities for
video games, has found the solution with
D&D Beyond. Developed with the help of the
RPG’s publisher Wizards of the Coast, Beyond
is pitched as a comprehensive toolset for fifth
edition, including fully digitised versions Dungeons & Dragons into a video game or
of everything from character and monster automate everything to the point that it’s no
creation sheets to the game’s core rulebooks. longer recognisable.
It’s an ambitious service that aims to “We want to mitigate or remove the
combine the practicality of popular third- negative impact that rules can have at the
party software with the game-spanning table to save time. This will allow all the
access and information of an official app. positive elements – overcoming challenges as
Although he’s keen to extol the virtues of the a group, roleplaying your character or telling
virtual companion, Bradford is just as quick an interactive story with your friends – to
to reassure players less enthused by the idea shine through more clearly.”
of swapping their printouts and books for a Beyond isn’t the first official app released
laptop or iPad. by Wizards of the Coast. A decade ago,
“D&D Beyond is just that – a companion,” the publisher released D&D Insider, a
he stresses. “We are not attempting to turn subscription-based service that promised

56

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 a virtual dungeon with customisable 3D to the right paragraph in a flash. With almost to say that?’ Our toolset is a perfect way to
character miniatures, an archive of digital half a century of history and evolution behind provide such a guide for the community.”
content and rules compendium based on the latest ruleset, it’s been quite the task. Although the app as it exists at the moment
the then-new controversial fourth edition. “A few specific rules have been interesting, is an impressively fully-featured service,
Responses to Insider were mixed, expressing such as spell casting with multi-classing there’s plenty more planned to develop D&D
criticism of the unwieldy Microsoft Silverlight or temporary hit points, but the greatest Beyond’s standing as a digital experience.
platform on which it was built and the challenge has been turning such an “Beyond is meant to unify a wide variety
absence of some promised tools but general expansive ruleset into a relational database,” of features and functions under a single
praise of the service. Insider was discontinued Bradford reveals. “We’ve parsed all the data banner,” explains Bradford. “We have to start
in 2014, but its spirit lives on in Beyond. into parts that we can use now. No one somewhere, as we are with what’s available at
“When we originally started talking about aspect has been too tough for us to handle – launch, but the toolset will expand over time to
what became D&D Beyond, we actually wanted it’s definitely the breadth of complexity.” continue to bring more and more to the table.
to position it in the same way for fifth edition as It’s not just all rules, either – Bradford “I find myself using the compendium a
D&D Insider was for fourth,” Bradford recalls. reveals that players may discover some great deal. Cross-linking and tooltips make
“There was a great deal of potential there
that I feel like was never realised.
“The demand for digital tools has been
evident through the past couple of editions,
“Technology is at its best
and they have fallen through for a multitude
of reasons. Sometimes it’s the technology –
when it enhances human
Silverlight is bad. Other times, the challenges
in creating such a service are underestimated.
interaction – not when it
D&D Beyond is coming to fruition because of
Curse’s experience with creating communities
overshadows it.”
and toolsets, as well as the incredible success
of fifth edition. We aim to grow alongside the other surprising features hidden in the it easier than ever to run an adventure at
game in the years to come.” toolset. Perhaps most curious is a full the table. The character builder and digital
pronunciation guide for all of the creatures sheet give players a way to engage with
ULTIMATE D&D from the game’s Monster Manual and Volo’s their characters in new and exciting ways.
Over the years, numerous third-party Guide to Monsters, complete with audio And I have recently started spending too
developers have popped up to fill the virtual demonstrations by professional voice actors much time looking at the incredibly creative
space left by publishers. Some of the most and stars of online roleplaying video series homebrew spells, magic items, and monsters
popular virtual tabletops, character creation Critical Role, Matt Mercer and Marisha Ray. from the community.”
suites and other tools have even teamed up “The feature came up at our own table, To help evolve the app over the months
with Wizards of the Coast to sell official D&D- where one of my players really messed and years to come, Curse is enlisting the help
specific content through their apps. With up with a name,” he recollects. “After the of fans, having previously taken on board the
D&D Beyond aiming to bring together many laughter died down, he very innocently comments of 160,000 testers during a pre-
of the aids delivered by separate third-party asked, ‘How am I supposed to know how release beta earlier this year.
offerings into a unified platform, what does
that mean for the future of these outside apps?
“Wizards of the Coast has made the great
move with fifth edition to work with partners
to expand and enhance the reach of D&D,
and D&D Beyond is a new part of that,”
Bradford responds. “As far as I’m aware, the
relationship with those partners will continue
and hopefully thrive. We are focused on
making the best digital toolset/game
companion we can make, and we fully intend
to work with and integrate with as many other
partners as we can in order to provide value
to the community.”
Like a fire-breathing winged lizard, one
advantage that Beyond boasts is scale.
Bradford and his team have worked to turn
D&D’s many rules, world, creatures, spells
and concepts into an extensive and accessible
library. Need to find something specific
during a combat encounter or skill check? No
more thumbing through books required – pop
it in the search box and the app will take you ■ D&D Beyond includes a comprehensive library of spells, rules, creatures and more for the RPG.

57

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 D&D BEYOND
■ Two different subscription options are available, aimed at heroes and dungeon masters.
“The feedback we have received has
certainly shaped the toolset already,”
Bradford says. “A big part of that has been
confirming that we are marching down the
right path, which is great to have. There
have been other things that have surprised
us, such as the need for a basic equipment
listing in addition to magic items or how
much players wanted to see tooltipping
faster. We responded to the feedback
throughout the beta rapidly – we want
players to know how seriously we take it and
how important that feedback is to the overall
quality of the toolset.”
THE PRICE OF ADVENTURE
As with fifth edition’s basic rules, the main
D&D Beyond app is free to download and
start using right away, including the Standard
Reference Document and Elemental Evil
Player’s Companion.
From there, features and extra game content
are split into both subscriptions and one-off
purchases. For example, digital sourcebooks,
such as the Player’s Handbook or Volo’s Guide
to Monsters, are $29.99 (£22), with adventure
modules, including Curse of Strahd and Storm
King’s Thunder, slightly cheaper at $24.99 (£18).
Subscriptions are broken up into two tiers:
Hero and Master. As the names suggest,
Hero is aimed at players, removing adverts,
allowing the creation of an unlimited
number of characters and allowing the use
of homebrew content. Master, meanwhile,
is intended to be the offering of choice for
DMs and groups, adding the ability to share
unlocked content with players taking part in
the same campaign to avoid the need to buy
multiple copies of the same book.
The decision to allow sharing is one
that has been greeted warmly by fans, but
questions remain over the need to re-buy
duplicate copies of a rulebook in the app
if players already own physical or digital
volumes. Bradford admits that enabling past
58
056_058_dAndDBeyond_v2 MJ.indd 58
TABLE TECH
Five more roleplaying apps and tools
you should consider taking with you in
your virtual bag of holding
ROLL20
A customisable virtual tabletop with
character sheets, maps, chat features,
dice rolls and support for mobile as well
as PC. There’s official content for games
purchases on the platform to unlock D&D including D&D, plus a marketplace full
Beyond content isn’t currently a priority. of user-created goodies.
“Purchasing sourcebook content on
FANTASY
D&D Beyond provides a digital version GROUNDS
of that book, but the primary value is in Bringing pen-
the incorporation of that content into the and-paper RPGs
toolset,” he states. “Right now, the D&D to PC, the virtual
tabletop platform
Beyond team is focused on delivering the includes plenty
best suite of digital tools for D&D.” of licensed content for games such as
D&D, Call of Cthulhu and Pathfinder.
GOING BEYOND Some of the highlights include
automated combat, shared maps and
It’s still early days for D&D Beyond – and the random table generation.
role of technology in roleplaying as a whole –
but Curse’s app shows a promising approach HERO LAB
to uniting the digital and analogue worlds. Aimed at making
character
When it comes to the potential for virtual creation an
tools to enhance tabletop gaming, Bradford easy task,
isn’t short of ideas. Hero Lab can
“We intend to release a native mobile be downloaded on PC or mobile and
includes electronic character sheets
app with offline capability, Twitch stream tailored for games including D&D,
integration, digital dice rolling, monster Pathfinder and Shadowrun. The app
progression/encounter building, and more,” doubles as a handy way to quickly
he details. “Once we get to a place where track your hero’s status once your
adventure begins.
character management is in a good place, as
well as monster and encounter management, TABLETOP
then we will move on to automated combat SIMULATOR
tracking. That will allow for a DM to do things This PC sandbox
allows almost
like target a group of players with a spell, any game to be
prompt the players to roll saving throws and made and played using its virtual bits
the players roll digital or real dice to get the and pieces, and the community has
results. That’s the end goal for our first major filled its marketplace with everything
from board games and miniatures to
functionality arc.” RPGs. Beware though – there is a table-
Still, even as he works to bring tech and flipping button!
the tabletop together, Bradford remains wary
that preserving the real-life experience of SYRINSCAPE
Bring an added
games such as Dungeons & Dragons is vital to sense of
keeping the magic where it belongs. atmosphere to
“Technology is at its best when it your roleplaying
enhances human interaction – not when with this audio
tool that lets
it overshadows it,” he says. “The most you create custom background music
compelling thing about tabletop roleplaying and set off sound effects. While there’s
for me is enjoying structured make-believe nothing specific to D&D, there is a
with friends. If digital tools can make that dedicated fantasy player with an official
Pathfinder soundset and another pack
better without removing that interaction, for Starfinder – and users have made
they succeed.” ■ plenty of custom audio cues, too.
22/09/2017 11:06
 VISIT OUR WEBSITE TODAY

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p059.indd 1 22/09/2017 09:05

 60

060_063_starSaga_v2 MJ.indd 60 22/09/2017 11:08

 RISING STAR
The follow-up to Dungeon Saga is overhauling the dungeon crawler
with some vital lessons from the world of roleplaying. Mantic studio
manager Stewart Gibbs invites us to run his sci-fi gauntlet
Words by Matt Jarvis
L
aser pistol shots fly overhead and sink
into the thick metal walls behind us
as a squad of security officers opens a
barrage of gunfire. One of our mercenaries,
Francesco Selvaggio – better known as ‘The
Devil’ – steps forward and lets loose a jet of
fire from his flamethrower at the incoming
foes, burning two to a crisp before they have
the chance to react. It’s not enough; the
burned baddies are replaced by two more
anonymous goons just as hell-bent on taking us
down. In the corner, a floating robot attempts
once again to crack the password for the only
door to safety by hacking into a terminal. It
fails, losing precious time as it starts again.
A lab technician wielding a knife begins to
sprint from the end of the corridor towards
our trapped group. As they approach, our
last companion sheathes his sword and
desperately opens a nearby crate, frantically
digging in search of a weapon to hold off the
attackers. Suddenly, there’s a huge bang. The
crate has exploded, shrapnel ripping through
our ally. “Booby trap,” grins our game master.
This could easily be a few rounds of combat
from a sci-fi roleplaying game, but it’s not.
All of this took place during a single turn of
Star Saga, the interstellar sequel to Mantic’s
fantasy dungeon crawler Dungeon Saga.
Released back in 2015, Dungeon Saga
was very much a tabletop dungeon crawler
in the purer sense of the phrase, with pacey
exploration and combat punctuated by the
rolling of handfuls of dice as wizards, elves and
dwarves clashed with skeletons and zombies
in their attempt to make it through each quest.
While there were some roleplaying-lite
aspects present – the cards drawn at random
and played by the opposing ‘Nexus player’
served as a simplified way to capture the
surprise events and shifting action of RPGs –
Dungeon Saga stuck largely to the legacy of
board games such as Descent, Arcadia Quest
and Warhammer Quest as it put the joy of
rolling a whole bunch of dice to kill a whole
bunch of monsters above all else.
Star Saga has no qualms about being a
sci-fi version of Dungeon Saga – there’s no
61
060_063_starSaga_v2 MJ.indd 61
escaping the inevitable comparisons with that
name – but its aims are easily more ambitious
than its predecessor’s.
The combat changes are minor: building on
the basic bow-and-arrow shooting rules seen
in Dungeon Saga, most of the characters now
brandish rifles and pistols in fitting with the
futuristic theme and can fire from cover and
around corners, resulting in a less up-close-
and-personal brawl (although melee remains
a very viable option). For much of the game’s
design, it’s more a case of polishing and
tweaking the simple but effective mechanics
rather than a complete overhaul.
“This is essentially taking the Dungeon
Saga rules and editing them,” summarises
Mantic studio manager Stewart Gibbs. “This
is sci-fi Dungeon Saga.”
Instead, most of the major additions
concentrate on developing the fleeting
roleplaying elements present in Dungeon
Saga and bringing them to the fore,
introducing persistent character progression
through gaining experience and levelling-
up, as well as imbuing each scenario in the
campaign with a stronger sense of story.
This is most obvious in the expansion of
the Nexus player’s role, providing the overlord
with more narrative flavour text to drive the
group of heroes through their adventure and
bolstering the deck of random generic actions
with mission-specific events that are triggered
as each game progresses. In one of the early
missions, the players are attempting to escape
from a force of pursuing enemies, who can
end up calling for backup if the group takes
too long to flee, encouraging them to not
waste too much time hunting for loot. This can
be used to carefully measure out the length of
certain action set-pieces, too: later in the same
encounter, the players must hold off constantly
attacking forces until their teammate has
managed to open a door from the opposite side.
“I think in some ways Dungeon Saga was
too light, and there wasn’t enough of an RPG
element to it,” Gibbs says. “So there’s a few
things we’ve added into this to make it more
like that.” ▶
22/09/2017 11:09
 STAR SAGA
LIGHT SPEED
Although the framework of Star Saga doesn’t
veer too far from the template laid down by
Dungeon Saga, the overall tone and feel is
different. This is a game where the players feel
under near-constant pressure to drive forwards
and complete objectives against the race of
the clock, instead of having the luxury to scout
every last corner and completely clear areas of
foes before proceeding. It’s not uncommon to
be forced into a sprint to the exit as gunshots
whizz overhead, or to venture into a side room
only to end up in a very sticky situation.
Driving this tension is the Nexus player;
unlike Dungeon Saga’s set rooms of enemies,
Star Saga allows event cards to be played as
additional reinforcements, presenting the
opportunity to spawn in extra enemies to put
the heat back on the mercenaries in every turn.
“In Dungeon Saga, you could take your time
and methodically kill everything as you went
along,” Gibbs explains. “Once you cleared the
map, there was nothing else to do. So some of
the missions you could take your time and kill
everything, and it made the game a bit slow.
Whereas in this, if you hang behind and try and
kill every minion, you’re going to get swamped.”
The Nexus cards can be played either for their
special ability or for reinforcements, ramping up
in intensity across three levels. The reinforcement
number specifies a total cost of characters to bring
in, presenting the chance to summon crowds
of cannon fodder or a smaller number of more
powerful opponents at the Nexus player’s whim.
“With Dungeon Saga, people built up big
collections of miniatures and then had no
reason to use them,” Gibbs admits. “This was
done so that you can have whatever you want
in your collection and bring it on. It also forces
060_063_starSaga_v2 MJ.indd 62
people to keep moving, because Dungeon
Saga did get a bit boring for the Nexus player
sometimes, because they had four really strong
characters taking on their minions one at a
time and it was less of a challenge.”
With the build-up of enemies providing a
more natural time pressure, the instant game
over that occurred when Dungeon Saga’s
Nexus deck ran out is gone, with the events
simply being reshuffled this time around. Some
missions do reintroduce the older game’s way
“Dungeon Saga was
too light, and there
wasn’t enough of an
RPG element to it.”
62
of timing out, but do so in a way that serves the
refreshed narrative drive of the scenarios.
In one instance, an area begins to fill with gas,
which must be turned off at four different points
by the mercenaries. If the deck runs out before
the gas is stopped, the mission ends – but, unlike
in Dungeon Saga, it’s not a simple case of fail and
try again. Instead, the story splits: if the gas is
stopped, the plot continues along as planned. If
the heroes fall unconscious, they are imprisoned
and must be rescued by the mercenaries who
weren’t used during the previous mission before
the normal narrative resumes.
At the moment, that scenario is the only such
example of a branching narrative, but Gibbs tells
me he has more planned for future expansions.
He adds that future instalments in the series
might also continue the main story, which
currently comes to a conclusion at the end of the
core box’s campaign but receives an extra chapter
in a currently Kickstarter-exclusive expansion.
“At the moment we haven’t directly followed
up this storyline, but I haven’t gone through
all the expansions yet,” Gibbs details. “You can
take your character from this and play them
straight into the next one.”
OPEN SPACE
After the initial 15-minute tutorial – which is
designed for a single Nexus player and solo
mercenary – used to introduce Star Saga
Saga’s
basics, the game’s missions play in around half
an hour to 90 minutes. Sometimes this can be
down to the players’ own decisions, as Gibbs
gleefully explains while describing one scenario
that involves a maze-like environment.
“If you go the right way through it, you can
finish it in about half an hour,” he laughs. “If
you go the wrong way, it’s about an hour and a
25/09/2017 11:02
 half. But you get a lot more experience because
you kill all the bad guys on the way.”
Containing a complete campaign, the core
set will include several hours of gameplay.
Unlike its predecessor, however, the contents
will stay much fresher for longer thanks to the
new changes in the background.
“Dungeon Saga is exactly the same every
time you play it through, whereas this isn’t,”
Gibbs enthuses. “There’s three or four different
things that can change; different mercenaries,
different minions, different cards.”
Gibbs doesn’t expect players to remain
satisfied forever with what comes in the box.
Among the first expansions for Star Saga will be
a character creator and mission creator, opening
up the game’s building blocks for players to
remould into their own custom campaigns.
The creators are an evolution of
Dungeon Saga’s Adventurer’s Companion,
a set collecting decks of cards, tokens and a
rulebook for both heroes and the Nexus player
that attracted some criticism from fans upon
release. Gibbs is frank about the problems.
“It was a bit of a mess,” he confesses. “It was
very clunky. It did work, but it wasn’t easy to do.”
Determined to do things differently this time
around, Gibbs has streamlined the process of
creating custom content for Star Saga, dividing
the rules into two sets comprising books
and card decks, and improving the way that
characters are made.
“It will be a bit more flexible and much
simpler,” he insists. “It involved a very
complicated set of cards and rules in Dungeon
Saga and no-one bothered doing it in the end.”
Taking tips from the world of roleplaying,
characters are built up from a race and set of
attributes, such as tech, shooting and tactics, which
060_063_starSaga_v2 MJ.indd 63
act as a form of ‘class’. This combination dictates
the skills that players can gain both through
levelling up and as a starting loadout, with points
values restricting which characters and enemies
are best to use for a balanced experience.
“Some people can’t be bothered to do that,”
Gibbs accepts, so each mission will also have
recommended ready-to-roll teams.
While race doesn’t limit the skills available
at the moment (future options and specific
abilities are planned for expansions), there
are still differences between sturdy but slow
dwarves, adaptable humans, tech-savvy robots
and other species – a change that Gibbs says
gives each character a more distinct personality
and play style when compared with Dungeon
Saga’s more interchangeable roster.
“With all of these we’ve tried to give them
each something that’s really special, but they’ve
also got a weakness,” he says.
Character and mission creation aren’t the only
sets of rules from Dungeon Saga’s Adventurer’s
Companion finally getting their due in Star Saga. All
of the Nexus cards include instructions for playing
with an automated overlord player – a concept
that was introduced in the previous game, but was
equally met with a mixed reception from fans.
“They were clunky and nobody used them,”
Gibbs explains. “So we took the idea of how they
worked and simplified it. It’ll be slightly easier
if you play it solo, but it means you don’t need a
Nexus player so you can play completely co-op.”
BLAZING A WARPATH
Star Saga joins Deadzone, DreadBall and the
titular wargame in Mantic’s Warpath universe,
pulling not only its races but also specific
characters from the previous games (albeit with
new miniatures) and even a spin-off short story.
63
The character and mission creator packs will
honour this legacy, providing guidelines on how
to use characters and creatures from across the
Warpath setting in Star Saga – and vice-versa.
It’s one of Mantic’s games set outside of the
Warpath series that has served as perhaps Star
Saga’s most important influence, however: its
recent miniatures game based on comic book
and TV series The Walking Dead, All Out War.
Gibbs says that the success of the zombie
survival game – Mantic’s biggest title to date – has
been eye-opening, with more players opting to craft
custom storylines than in any other game by the
publisher. Its mainstream appeal has been a driving
factor behind Star Saga’s tightened rules, too.
“Dungeon Saga people can jump straight
in, but we’ve used the experience of talking
to board gamers, which became a lot of the
people from The Walking Dead – people who
aren’t into gaming got into it,” Gibbs recounts.
“So we used that experience to write the
rulebook in a way that’s more accessible.”
All Out War’s influence also extends to less
obvious improvements – the conventional
six-sided dice of Dungeon Saga are replaced in
Star Saga by custom dice similar to those found
in the Walking Dead game, a small tweak that
Gibbs says “massively” speeds up combat.
“This still has the tactical play behind it
Dungeon Saga had, it’s just presented in a
more accessible way,” he adds.
Years on from Dungeon Saga’s difficult debut,
the team behind its spiritual successor is openly
upfront about the mistakes made and is hitting
them head on with a game that pulls from the
roleplaying genre, but also Mantic’s own growth as
a publisher, to offer a vastly improved experience
that looks both forwards and backwards for the
better. It’s the start of a brand new saga. ■
25/09/2017 11:02
 STREETS OF FIRE
hide-and-seek, it’s building on games that
have been running for thousands of years, but
it’s tweaking them to use this idea of energy at
There’s a growing wave of immersive live-action games that swap the core. You’ve got a group of you all starting
together, so you can all eye each other off and
sitting around a table for spyhunting in the alleys of London or dash out the door on a whistle. You’ve got a live
battling evil magic in a forest. Gwyn Morfey, founder and MD of Fire scoreboard on your phone so you can see every
time you do something, whether you’re still
Hazard Games, explains why more players than ever are taking part battling for that top spot or not. And we’ve got
Interview by Matt Jarvis people chasing you, which adds an incredible
amount of energy because it forces you to stay
When Fire Hazard started in 2010, gaming Then Raiders [of the Lost Archive] came out aware of the game at every moment. You can’t
– both live-action and on the tabletop – last year; that was Amy [Strike, MD and head of zone out and check your email because one
was in a very different place. How have production]’s game. We’re now starting to work of our orange-suited runners is going to pop
things changed? on bringing Raiders into other places. We’ve got round the corner and run you down.
2010 was a breakthrough year in a lot of ways, in two games in the V&A, but we’re looking at other
that we did Heist, which everybody’s been talking museums because people want to keep playing it. While your games can have dozens –
about ever since, including us working out how to or even hundreds – of people running
run it again. That was when we first ran Citydash, What makes your experiences more than around at once, you keep each group of
which later turned into our mainline game. simple scavenger hunts? players reasonably small. Why is this?
Back then, it was still a hobby and we were Everything we do is driven by energy. What I A big focus around what we’re doing is this
running games on weekends. At the start of 2015, want to do is take you completely out of your idea of individual agency. Everything you do
I finally made the jump and went, ‘Alright, let’s existing life for an hour or two. I want to give as an individual matters. You tell your own
do this thing properly.’ you a completely different experience where story, you are the hero of this.
Since then, we’ve launched a whole stack of you are the hero and all you can think about is We don’t want to have people who are
extra games. Citydash was the big one, then there what you’re doing in part of this game. So I’m following along at the back of the action –
was Undercover, our spy-themed game, which trying to make things incredibly intense. everybody is essential and everything they do
has been running continuously since we built it If you play Citydash, for example, which makes a difference. I’ve found that large teams
in 2015. is basically a scavenger hunt combined with have trouble doing that. If you’re one of a group

64

064_065_fireHazardGames_v2 MJ.indd 64 22/09/2017 11:10


■ Left: Players are often
racing against time to
solve puzzles or reach
specific locations.
■ Right, top: The games
are enhanced by the
use of mobile apps.
■ Right, bottom: Fire
Hazard Games founder
Gwyn Morfey.
of, like, three to five, everything you say and so
is going to make a huge difference to how your
team performs, but in a group of ten you can
often get a situation where there’s a smaller
group inside that group that is making the
difference and everyone else is tailing along.
There’s lots of experiences where that is the right
way to do things, but we’re all about the action
and the energy so that’s not what we do.
Gaming is going through a golden age at
the moment. How has that changed what
you can pull off with live-action games?
It’s made it a lot easier to explain what we’re
doing to people. I still don’t think it’s mainstream,
but everybody knows someone who knows
someone who’s played an escape room. Everyone
knows someone who knows someone who’s
heavily into board games. So if you say you make
immersive games, particularly with the giants
like Punchdrunk [Theatre Company] and Secret
Cinema attracting huge followings, then people
understand what you’re doing and why you’re
doing it. So it is moving in that direction.
We’ve been very much about bringing games
into the mainstream, about making games
for everybody and making them accessible,
which is why a lot of our stuff is quite short – it’s
only an hour or two in comparison to a LARP
064_065_fireHazardGames_v2 MJ.indd 65
which might be a weekend long. And there’s no
preparation required. Quite intense and relatively
simple, actually, in comparison to detailed
roleplaying games or the higher end of tabletop.
This progression of everything is making things a
lot easier for us and a lot of other companies.
In Undercover, players are spies on a top-
secret mission. In Raiders, they’re solving
puzzles in a museum like Indiana Jones.
In Sorcerers of Southwark, they’re wizards
battling defending London from evil magic.
How important is theme to your games?
That’s something we’ve started doing in the last
couple of years. Basically, it’s being driven by
Amy, who’s been building worlds around the
core mechanics. Citydash itself is absolutely
bare; it doesn’t have a theme. It’s about three
inches away from being a sport. But we did
something called Shadow Over Southwark,
where we build out a whole world. So you are
members of the mysterious Lumos Society,
you’re trying to stop an unspeakable horror from
breaking its way through into London by closing
these portals without getting your soul drained
by the patrols going through the forest.
What we are doing with this theming is
creating the skeleton of the story. It gives players
a framework for writing a much richer story that
they’re in the centre of. a game together, but to make something that
really works and it works all the time, you have
You’ve pointed out the links to live-action to test it. So you can simulate an immersive
roleplaying, but do you take any inspiration game on a board game. You basically get out a
from more conventional tabletop gaming? board and you write some rules – you go, ‘Okay,
We do take things from other formats – so a lot of these tokens are players and they can run at
things we take from movies, for example. Like, that one square per tick until then get tired and
cool thing – can we make a way to make that into a then it’s one square every two ticks.’ You just
game? You can do that in tabletop as well, and you sit there playing as all of the different players
see a lot of the same moments coming through. and making reasonably decisions for them and
seeing what they do.
“What I want to
The last year has seen escape-the-room
do is take you games explode in popularity. What does
that mean for other live-action gaming
completely out of experiences, such as the events you run?
Everything that gets people playing is great for
your existing life for all of us. We’re friends with basically all the
other games people in London and I take the
an hour or two.” view that we’re not really in competition. It’s
not us versus them; it’s us and them versus
I played Dead of Winter with a bunch of the Xbox.
immersive games people recently, and we could We are a whole new form of entertainment
recognise a lot of the moments that were happening and I think people are figuring out just how
in that game. They’re both common zombie much fun this is and how much it hopes it
tropes, but they’re also cool things we’ve managed connect them with each other again, as well,
to make in ours. But it goes the other way as well. because these analogue things are much more
One of the big things with immersive games about the people you’re playing them with
is you have to test them. It’s very easy to slap than the digital version. ■
65
22/09/2017 11:10
 The show you’ve
all been waiting for...

29–30th September 2018

Alexandra Palace
THE LONDON SHOW FOR BOARD GAMES, RPGS & MINIATURES

Sign up to our free enewsletter for the latest show news at

tabletopgaming.co.uk
From the team that brings you Tabletop Gaming & Miniature Wargames

tabletopGamingLiveFP.indd 8 22/09/2017 12:28

m2+y
y2+z3
c
cc 180
∏r 2
Play it smart
Manchester Metropolitan University academics and Games Research Network co-directors
Paul Wake and Sam Illingworth catch the bug for viruses and disease on the tabletop
Illingworth
Doctors Paul Wake and Sam
D
eadly viruses and infectious disease
are one of gaming’s recurring themes.
Games such as Matt Leacock’s
Pandemic and Michele Quondam’s Virus pit
players against deadly viruses, while games
like James Vaughan’s Plague Inc. and António
Sousa Lara and Gil d’Orey’s Viral turn the
players-versus-virus format on its head.
These games, which range from co-op to
competitive, from Euro to American-style,
are united in presenting viruses and bacteria
as a threat. And it’s easy to see why. Popular
representations (from cleaning product ads
to hospital superbugs) have turned these
microscopic organisms into villains far more
believable than the monsters of myth and
legend. They must be a game designer’s
dream – an eminently-marketable threat
against which violence is justified. But
is there, perhaps, a danger that these
microscopic organisms are just
the victims of bad PR?
As anyone who has seen a
Yakult advert can tell you,
not all microbes
(organisms too
small to be seen
with the naked
067_playItSmart_v4 MJ.indd 67
√z
a+b
eye such as bacteria and viruses) are
evil. In reality, whilst some are “bad”,
many are “good” like Bifidobacterium
longum, which is found in the intestines
and which prohibits colonisation by
other harmful microbes. Others we’re
just beginning to understand – take
the single-celled parasite Toxoplasma
gondii, for example. Research has shown
that rats infected with this microbe are
unafraid of cats, while the same microbe
has been found to make men more likely
to dress poorly.
It is the balance between good,
bad and downright curious microbes
that provides the impetus for
microbiologist David Coil’s Gut Check: The
Microbiome Game, a title that tasks players
with nurturing a healthy microbiome – the
67
(a) 2
+
6 (b)
Y
P
La
Ga
Am
Es
trillions-strong community of microbes
that live in the human body. Unlike some
edu-games, Gut Check was designed by
dedicated gamers, and it shows. The result
is a game that’s both educational and
enjoyable, and one that we’d recommend
to anyone who likes hand management
games – not just those who want to better
appreciate the value of fecal transplants…
While games such as Gut Check represent
our current understanding of the human
microbiome, games such as Pandemic, Virus,
Plague Inc. and Viral also have a part to play,
both in prompting questions and reflecting
societies’ beliefs and fears. Pandemic,
promoting a largely positive view of science,
has been used to teach global connectedness
and effective collaboration whilst Virus,
revitalising the Frankenstein myth for
the 21st century, speaks of our fears of
viruses, vaccination and scientists. Viral
and Plague Inc., on the other hand,
prompt more abstract questions. With
win conditions that effectively attribute
motivations to bacteria – Plague Inc. sees
players wipe out cities with infectious
diseases, while Viral simulates
the infection of a single human
body – they have us wondering:
do microbes care about winning?
Probably not, but recent research
suggests that interactions between
microbes living in our brains and microbes
living in our guts might actually influence
emotional behaviour in humans. So, the
next time you get a gut feeling about
something, there might be more to it
than simple intuition. ■
■ Unlike the global
scale of Pandemic
and Plague Inc., Viral
simulates the infection of
a single human body in
microscopic detail.
22/09/2017 11:13
 A SPIRE TO
GREATNESS
Grant Howitt is fast becoming one
of the roleplaying scene’s hottest
indie designers. We catch up
with him as he prepares to
release his most ambitious
project yet, politically charged
fantasy-punk RPG The Spire
Words by Jake Tucker
G
rant Howitt is nervously checking his
phone as we eat through a plate of
takeaway dumplings.
His nerves are understandable. Howitt,
the co-founder and public face of RPG
studio Rowan, Rook and Decard, had just 24
hours earlier asked the internet for £25,000.
The sum is for his latest Kickstarter project,
The Spire; his third Kickstarter, but also his
most ambitious.
Rowan, Rook and Decard is a
collaboration between Howitt – ‘Rook’
– Chris Taylor – ‘Decard’ – and Mary
Hamilton – ‘Rowan’. Howitt admits with a
wry smile that the names were pilfered from
roleplaying characters the trio had played
over the years, which they decided was more
exciting than using their own surnames. So
far, they’ve shipped two successful games via
Kickstarter, while releasing one single-page
RPG each month via Howitt’s Patreon, the
online subscription platform where fans can
donate regularly to their favourite creators –
often in return for exclusive goodies.
Howitt got his start creating zombie-
themed LARP experiences, and worked as a
freelance video games journalist, but didn’t
shift into making tabletop games until he
moved to Australia with Hamilton for her
job. With a career in games journalism
tougher down under where the industry
is small, he started designing games
68
068_069_grantHowitt_v2 MJ.indd 68
full-time, tapping his thoughts into an iPad
as he tried to come up with games people
wanted to play. The Spire, one of those ideas,
was partially inspired by Howitt’s own career
and the world around him.
“I’m not especially politically active, but
I feel there’s something cathartic about
writing and hopefully playing a game
about revolution, or rebelling against
injustice, after recent politics has
been so eye-opening,” he explains.
The Spire is a game about righting
wrongs. You play a dark elf, looked down
on because of your grey skin, hiding
from the sun in corridors, temples and
crumbling architecture that makes up the
lawless undercity cowering beneath the
titular urban setting. The high elves have
forced you here, and it’s those who must
pay, with your characters swearing a blood
oath to take down the corrupt regime via
subterfuge, insurrection and other means.
Howitt mentions several crushing
political events through 2016 and 2017
that were the impetus for creating the
game. The designer describes Brexit as
an eye-opener, with the discovery that
a slim majority of his native country
fundamentally disagreed with his
personal views.
“There was a really horrible energy in
the air after that, and then we had the
American elections, too.”
Still, if you’re expecting tolerant
drow discourse, you’re mistaken.
Player characters will lie, cheat, steal
and kill to achieve their political ends.
An early look at the rules reveals a
game filled with weird tonal touches
and engaging mechanical complexity;
one of the classes in The Spire, in fact,
comes with a hyena. Howitt chuckles at
the suggestion of the RPG being a more
mature offering than his previous work.
“I don’t think it’s a maturity, as a
writer. But I think it’s more confident, and
that previous experience has given me
the confidence to come forward.”
It’s a long way from some of Howitt’s early
efforts, including the aborted Prime Time
Murder Justice, a title influenced by iconic
1990 arcade game Smash TV that made it to
22/09/2017 11:15

the prototyping stage and took three hours
to play.
“It wasn’t a terrible three hours, but I feel
like playing out the prime-time hour-long
Saturday night TV slot took three times as
long as it would take to just watch it, and that
was kind of the issue.”
“I’m interested in going back to it in some
way,” Howitt adds. “I have grown as a writer
since then though, and I feel a bit squicky writing
games about senseless murder for profit.”
This is one of the biggest changes Howitt
has noted as he’s grown up: less of a desire
to deliver an engine for senseless chaos, with
more passion instead for something that can
create fascinating stories. With his later games,
the designer wants to deliver a toolkit for
people to build and experience new worlds.
STRETCH TEST
Most tabletop RPG fans first encountered
Howitt through his debut Kickstarter.
Described as “Itchy & Scratchy crossed with
The Animals of Farthing Wood”, Goblin Quest
was a crowdfunding success story, raising
more than ten times its initial £2,000 target.
Howitt remembers success despite several
minor mistakes, such as offering to write out
the rulebook by hand, in a leather-bound
book, for the first four people to pledge £250
to the Kickstarter.
“My mother, bless her heart, ordered one
without realising how much pain she was
causing me to write it all out. I’ve written
three now, and it’s not fun anymore.”
The fourth book, the one bought by his
mother, is a work in progress.
“Mom, thankfully, backed down. I sent
her the PDF rulebook – and remember this
is a book intended for children to read.
She’s like, ‘We got to page four and we were
068_069_grantHowitt_v2 MJ.indd 69
“There’s something cathartic about writing
and playing a game about revolution or
rebelling against injustice.”
quite confused, so we stopped.’ And that is
my parents’ sole direction with my creative
career over the last four years.”
Goblin Quest came out of two years of
tinkering. It was a game Howitt kept in
his back pocket, pulling it out to play with
nephews and nieces, and polishing it up
through repeated playtests. Hamilton was key
to Howitt taking a chance on Kickstarter.
“Mary was encouraging me, she’s like:
‘Well, we could publish this, we could make
this happen! We can afford to print this as a
book, just as we print up the money, but we
can go to Kickstarter.’”
“So we looked into different funding avenues
and we got a print-on-demand service, which
meant that the costs were not astronomical, even
if the books weren’t great. And we went for it!”
The following year they brought to life
Unbound, a card-based RPG where players
build a world. Each game had become
gradually bigger in scope, with Unbound
being a big hardback book that looked more
like something you would find in a game
store. The Spire will be a similarly weighty
tome, if Grant has anything to do with it.
SPIRALLING UP
30 days after we eat dumplings and talk
game design, The Spire is funded, too.
69
“1,483 backers,” Kickstarter politely
informs me, “pledged £71,708 to help bring
this project to life.”
This time, Howitt was more sensible
with the stretch goals, delivering more
art, more audio and some incredibly
detailed notes on arachnid midwives.
There’s not a handwritten leather book
in sight. Despite the improvements, the
campaign’s level of success surprised
even its creators.
“We were figuring we’d top out at
£60,000, and we shot past that in the last
couple of days,” Howitt enthuses.
“The other big surprise was that
people seemed to get pretty steamed that
we weren’t giving away the quick start
rules package for free; we went back and
forth on it but, in addition to it being a
lure to buy in, I think what we’d made
was worth money.
“The quick start wasn’t there as an
advert, but more to let people play around
with the system and setting in some
small way before we move to release it
next year. I don’t know whether we can
afford to give out free loss-leaders like a
lot of bigger companies can, you know?
We’re still learning. Maybe next time we’ll
release it for free.” ■
■ Left: The Spire takes
place in a fantasy
world where dark elves
are forced to live in a
lawless undercity by
the ruling high elves.
■ Main: Adrian Stone’s
artwork brings the dark
tone of the RPG to life.
22/09/2017 11:15
ESSEN PREVIEW

SPIEL THE BEANS

The world’s biggest board games show is back for another week of massive releases
from the German home of tabletop: Essen. But with thousands of games set to launch
in the span of just four days at the end of October, how the heck are you meant to
keep up? To help out, we’ve picked out ten titles deserving of your attention
Words by Matt Jarvis

QUEENDOMINO
After Kingdomino picked up the most prestigious award in tabletop gaming – the
Spiel des Jahres – earlier this year, you might have expected a follow-up to Bruno
Cathala’s cheerful tile-layer from 2016 about growing your lord’s domain – but
you might not have expected it this quickly! Queendomino is both an expansion
and a standalone sequel to Kingdomino, layering a slightly more complicated
set of rules over the simple spin on dominoes by adding an extra colour that
represents cities. City tiles don’t feature a crown, and so don’t earn extra points,
but can be used to generate income that can later be spent to construct special
score-boosting buildings, so they pay off in the long run. The game in the box
plays with two to four players using five-by-five grids, but can be combined
with the original set to support seven-by-seven grids for four people or up to
six players using the standard area size. If you’re still not convinced, know that
Cathala himself has called Queendomino the version of his game he wanted to
play after hundreds of Kingdomino matches – how can you argue with that?

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 ALIEN ARTIFACTS
A card game about expanding your civilisation
and advancing your technology in space, you say?
Well, shucks, that sounds an awful lot like Race for
the Galaxy. And, yes, in some ways Alien Artifacts
does seem to be a spiritual successor to Tom
Lehmann’s well-loved interplanetary title, but it’s
also very much its own thing. Each turn, players
utilise two of the three resource cards in their
hand to build ships, develop tech, explore planets
or trade, with multiple routes to victory possible.
As well as having two different types of resource,
the more than 200 cards are also double-sided,
allowing them to be played either as ongoing
bonuses or to expand the ways in which points
can be gained. The breadth of decisions and ways
to rack up your score are designed to capture the
4X depth of heavy sci-fi strategy games such as
Eclipse, all in under an hour. It’s an ambitious
aim, but everything we’ve seen so far suggests
that Alien Artifacts manages it with gusto.

HUNT FOR THE RING

This Tolkien adaptation is designed by two of the designers behind lauded Lord of the Rings game
War of the Ring and the creator of the similarly-acclaimed Letters from Whitechapel,
Whitechapel Garibaldi and
Mister X so hopes are high, to say the least. Considered the third part of Ares Games’ War of the
Ring trilogy – after The Hobbit spin-off The Battle of Five Armies and the eponymous epic strategy
title – Hunt for the Ring isn’t a sprawling war simulation like those games, but instead a
more intimate hidden movement take on Frodo’s journey from the Shire to Rivendell at
the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring. Instead of commanding armies, one player
will control the ring-bearer and his hobbit companions as they try to avoid the terrifying
Nazgûl (Ringwraiths) chasing them, controlled by up to four other
players, and resist the corruption of the Ring. The
game is divided into two halves based on the book,
firstly following Frodo from the Shire to Bree,
before the hobbits join Strider and attempt to
make their way to Rivendell. Players can save
between the two chapters, and the game
mechanics change, too. With a number of
fantastic games under the creators’ belts,
it’s hard to imagine this being anything
but another stellar effort.

PULSAR 2849
2017’s big Essen release from Codenames, Through the Ages and Tzolk’in studio
Czech Games Edition, Pulsar 2849 is a dice-drafting space exploration game by
Last Will designer Vladimír Suchý. Players roll a number of dice before taking
turns picking one each to take specific actions, such as gaining a spaceship,
travelling to a star system to discover alien knowledge, building megastructures
or upgrading their technology. Every player’s powers are different, and
each competing side also has hidden objectives they’re trying to complete,
alongside shared public goals for the maximum score possible. When each
round ends, the turn marker progresses based on which dice were rolled that
turn, potentially bringing the match to an end sooner or later than you expect.
With CGE promising a unique use of dice and plenty of options when it comes
to achieving victory, we’re very keen to learn more.

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070_073_essenPreview_v3 MJ.indd 71 22/09/2017 11:16

ESSEN PREVIEW
BUNNY KINGDOM
The news of any new game by Magic: The Gathering,
Robo Rally and King of Tokyo designer extraordinaire
Richard Garfield is enough to get our ears to prick up,
but when that game involves clans of rabbits ruling
over a medieval fantasy world, you can bet our tails
start twitching, too. Happily, there will be no Game
of Thrones-style bloodshed involving the bunnies,
either; Bunny Kingdom takes place in a land where its
hoppy inhabitants have learnt to live in peace, and are
now just focused on – what else – growing carrots and
other vegetables as they expand their colonies like,
erm, rabbits. The vegan-friendly meat of the game is
in drafting cards and positioning your warrens across
the 100 squares of the main board in other to discover
resources, all the while building and improving cities
to increase your score. It sounds charming as all heck,
helped along by the inclusion of tiny plastic rabbits who
can sit in miniature towns and cities as they occupy the
map. We’ll be jumping on this the first chance we get.

OTYS
There’s something about the beauty, mystery and danger of being underwater that
makes scuba diving an endlessly fascinating theme for board games. Otys puts an
interesting post-apocalyptic twist on the act of diving, as players set out from the last
settlements on a drowned Earth in search of the civilisations lost underwater. Each
team of divers must search for and retrieve the materials needed to help their colony
thrive, fulfilling contracts and becoming more famous than their competitors. The
dwindling air supply of the explorers is represented by the need to optimise each
diver’s talents to maximise what they bring to the surface before their oxygen runs
out. The individual player boards show five different depths, which relate to a
set of actions at the same depths on a shared central board – as players pick a
depth, they perform the action before moving their diver to the top of the stack,
pushing everyone else down. Players must wait to refill their depth gauge before
choosing the same options again, making timing crucial. Over time, players can
improve their gauges to increase the efficiency of their team, collecting
items in groups to score both personal and shared objectives as they work
their way towards victory. Otys has plenty of interesting ideas and a great
look – you can bet we’ll be diving in as soon as we can.

WHO SHOULD WE EAT?

Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘eating with friends’, Who Should We Eat? is a game
about chowing down on your former pals. The players are left stranded on an island by a plane
crash and decide to work together to gather resources to build a raft. The trouble is, it’s hungry
work; if sanity and food starts running low, the camp will hold a trial each evening to decide who
must be sacrificed as grub for the others, which can erupt into a knife fight resolved by the players
drawing straws. Whether by voting or combat, the unfortunate loser is killed and consumed,
helping their surviving companions to make it to the next day. Before you groan about player
elimination, though, there isn’t any: instead, those served up as dinner can return as ghosts,
haunting the living and potentially even winning as a separate team. It looks like there will be
plenty of dark humour as fewer and fewer people from the group of up to ten players remain alive
and desperately try to finish the raft. Plus, the box includes a wooden conch shell that marks the
group’s leader and is banged on the table like a judge’s hammer and gavel to begin each trial,
which seems pretty hilarious – or as funny as cannibalism can be. Anyone else feeling peckish?

72

070_073_essenPreview_v3 MJ.indd 72 25/09/2017 10:03

 DRAGON CASTLE
Inspired by traditional Chinese tile and set collection favourite Mahjong, Dragon
Castle involves claiming pairs of matching tiles from a central ‘castle’ and building
your own personal castle in front of you. Each time a set is collected, those tiles flip
facedown and earn victory points – with bigger sets leading to higher scores. When
tiles are ‘consolidated’ like this, that player also has the chance to build a shrine
on top, which limits their future building options but can grant the chance to
score more points at the end of the game. In fitting with the name, the dragon card
dictates certain building requirements that can be
followed to rack up bonus points. There’s an
element of power-usage, too, with a spirit
card presenting special abilities – at the
cost of tiles. When the castle in the middle
gets down to one floor, the game ends and
the most points wins. Coming from Horrible
Games, the publisher of interesting marble-
collecting game Potion Explosion, Dragon Castle
should hopefully turn out to be a modern take on
a staunchly traditional abstract game with some
fascinating gameplay updates.

KEPLAR-3042
Simone Cerruti Sola’s sci-fi exploration game originally snuck out last year
but largely went under the radar, so this revamped new edition – complete
with gorgeous updated art from Flip Ships illustrator Kwanchai Moriya –
means more people should get the chance to experience its enthralling
tale of interstellar colonisation. Players are competing nations looking to
expand from Earth onto neighbouring worlds, terraforming the various
planets of the Milky Way and advancing their technology as they travel
further from home. A nifty game about resource management, each player
only has a finite amount of matter, energy and antimatter to make or
spend, so must use their supplies carefully. Supplies can be burnt and lost
permanently to perform more powerful actions, a costly but potentially
crucial decision as they race to earn the most victory points and prove
their worth as Earth’s greatest explorers. Keplar-3042 marks the first time
Lanterns: The Harvest Festival, Raiders of the North Sea and Clank! studio
Renegade has waded into the deeper end of the gaming pool, so it will be
interesting to see what the studio produces next if this is a hit.

NOMADS
Nomads is the second instalment in the Legends of Luma series, which
began with Oh Captain! this summer; the idea behind the ambitious
series is to produce six games over two-and-a-half years, featuring
different gameplay mechanics but starring the same set of characters in
the same world of Luma, gradually telling an ongoing adventure. (Even
the games’ boxes reveal the world’s map section
by section.) Whereas Oh Captain! was a bluffing
card game, Nomads is a more strategic move-
and-collection title based on traditional favourite
mancala. Inspired by the tales told by a tribe of
nomads around campfires as they travel across the
continent, players must try and walk around the fire
to put together each story bit by bit, optimising their
moves to assemble the longest legend and weave
the most impressive yarn. We love the idea of telling
a single story across multiple games, so we’ll be
checking out the latest chapter as soon as we can.

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 76 80 83

PLAYED
OLD GAME, NEW BOX
84 85 86

89 89 90
W
e live in an age of endless remakes and reboots, from this year's reheated
films Beauty and the Beast, Ghost in the Shell and The Mummy, and video
games brought from their 16-bit origins into HD to the subtler nostalgia
of ‘80s and ‘90s-inflected works influenced by the cool-again style of decades past.
Board games are certainly no stranger to the return of beloved classics, whether
through long-awaited reprints or new editions, but there’s also a growing trend of
treating tabletop brilliance as just the leaping-off point for brand new experiences.
Take Whitehall Mystery, the spiritual successor to Letters from Whitechapel (with a 93 94 96
dash of ‘80s classic Scotland Yard) that trims the hidden movement masterpiece back
to its tense roots. Or Medici: The Card Game, a drastically reworked version of the
middle chapter of Reiner Knizia’s acclaimed auction game that actually does away
with the auctioning altogether. What about 13 Minutes, a seriously condensed dose
of Cold War simulation 13 Days packed into a pocket-sized box? It’s a similar story
with Caverna: Cave vs Cave, another impressive two-player adaptation based on the
genius designs of Uwe Rosenberg, and Codenames Duet, which makes a previously
sidelined co-op variant for the word game its main focus. Of course, we also have 97 97 99
Legend of the Five Rings: The Card Game, marking a long-awaited return for the
samurai-battling card game series begun in the ‘90s that draws from its rich history
while updating it for a modern world. These are all examples of the endless invention
of games designers, who often do so much more than just stick the same old bits in
a brand new box – although, as the new version of Modern Art proves, sometimes
simple perfection is best left largely untouched.
76 LEGEND OF THE FIVE 99 MODERN ART 100 102 103
RINGS: THE CARD GAME 100 UNEARTH
80 WASTELAND EXPRESS 102 CAVERNA: CAVE VS CAVE
DELIVERY SERVICE
103 DEADLINE
83 CODENAMES DUET
105 THE NETWORKS
84 STAR TREK ADVENTURES
85 WHITEHALL MYSTERY
106 LOVECRAFT LETTER 105 106 106
106 FIRST DATES: THE GAME
86 THE GODFATHER: 109 CATCH THE MOON
CORLEONE'S EMPIRE
110 THE FOX IN THE FOREST
89 STATECRAFT
110 PURRRLOCK HOLMES:
89 MEDICI: THE CARD GAME FURRIARTY'S TRAIL
90 UNTOLD: 111 DONNER DINNER PARTY 109 110 110
ADVENTURES AWAIT
111 THAT'S A QUESTION!
93 GLOOM OF KILFORTH
112 LAZER RYDERZ
94 SPIRIT ISLAND 112 STROOP
96 BEARS VS BABIES 113 DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
97 13 MINUTES: THE
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
CHARACTER SHEETS PACK
111 111 112
113 GOTHIC TEMPLE AND
97 THE LOST EXPEDITION WALLS SCENERY

112 113 113

075_ReviewsIntro_v2 MJ.indd 75 25/09/2017 10:04
 PLAYED
LEGEND OF THE FIVE RINGS: THE CARD GAME
Battle for honour in this exhilarating complex card game of warring clans
Fantasy Flight | £36.99 | LCG | 2 players | 45-90 minutes | Age: 14+ | fantasyflightgames.com
W
hen Fantasy Flight
announced in 2015 that it
was developing a successor
to long-running ‘90s collectible card
game Legend of the Five Rings – and
therefore bringing to a close the
two-decade run of AEG’s original – it
was met with a mixture of excitement
from those optimistic about a modern
reimagining that could recapture the
complex samurai-fighting title’s early
magic, which had begun to wane over
the lengthy years, and wariness on
the part of fans concerned about the
publisher’s treatment of a sprawling
world that inspired fervent devotion
and had sparked many players’ love
affairs with tabletop gaming, not unlike
fellow CCG Magic: The Gathering.
The result, Legend of the Five Rings:
The Card Game, is an intricate and
captivating competitive card-battler
that remixes fundamentals of the
original L5R’s gameplay, as well as
drawing on the extensive universe
further explored in its spin-off
roleplaying game. The musculature of
this rich lore is moulded around the
refined frame of Fantasy Flight’s ‘living
card game’ format – established in
Android: Netrunner before being used
in Star Wars: TCG, A Game of Thrones:
TCG, Lord of the Rings: TCG and the
recent Arkham Horror spin-off – to
076_077_legendOfTheFiveRingsReview_v2 MJ.indd 76
produce a game that feels instantly
fresh and familiar, whether you’re
already familiar with L5R or not.
As in the collectible card game,
L5R: TCG’s action explodes from
the electric interplay between dual
decks of cards controlled by each
player: dynasty and conflict, the latter
BOX CONTENTS revised from the original’s ‘fate’. In very
◗ Seven stronghold cards basic terms, dynasty cards generally
◗ 17 province cards
focus on the provision of characters
◗ 117 dynasty cards
◗ 98 conflict cards who can be summoned for battle,
◗ Five role cards while conflict cards fuel the abilities,
◗ Two reference cards weapons and reinforcements needed
◗ Imperial Favour card
to bolster their strength. Dynasty
◗ 20 status tokens
◗ 40 fate tokens cards are initially drawn and placed
◗ 50 honour tokens facedown on provinces – four bases
◗ Two honour dials that can be attacked and destroyed
◗ Five ring tokens
by your opponent to open up a killing
◗ First player token
◗ Learn to Play book blow on your home stronghold –
◗ Rules Reference book before being revealed and potentially
purchased during the opening phase
of each round. It’s an exciting setup
intensified by being able to see your
rival’s available dynasty cards, allowing
you to predict and plan which conflict
■ Top: There's a lot cards hidden in your hand might
happening in L5R:
TCG, but it's relatively
be able to counter their line-up of
easy to keep on top of. warriors as the tension ramps up.
Suddenly, the action shifts from
■ Opposite: Each players passively preparing their forces
clan has a distinct
personality and play
out in the open to become a shadowy
style, such as the tricks game of stealthy manoeuvres. Players
of the Scorpion clan. set a dial to prepare a bid for cards
76
– the higher the number, the more
conflict cards they can draw before the
fighting begins, but if they’re the higher
bidder, they must pay their opponent
the difference in honour for their
disreputable behaviour.
In stereotypical fashion for its
Japanese-inspired setting, honour is
the lifeblood of each side – attaining
25 wins the game, while hitting zero
means defeat. Honour is hard to come
by, but can be quickly lost with too
many expensive draws, layering in a
small yet crucial pacing element to
managing your bids over the course
of a match. The bidding system is
a gloriously atmospheric way of
reflecting the by-the-book (or not)
conduct of clans while introducing a
dramatic build-up to L5R’s core action
– a player on the back foot going all-in
to try and brace their ailing forces
can lead to a reversal of fortunes, or
their destruction. It never fails to be
completely gripping.
The other key concept driving L5R:
TCG’s thrilling momentum is fate. Akin
to Magic: The Gathering’s mana, but
persisting and accumulating between
turns, fate serves as the key resource
used to buy characters and execute
events. What makes fate unique is that
it’s not used to invest in characters
once, as in most card games. Instead,
25/09/2017 10:05
 each character steadily degrades at the
end of each turn, losing fate placed on
them – when they run out completely,
they’re discarded. As characters are
rarely ‘defeated’ in the traditional sense,
sticking extra fate on a strong character
can swing a match by wearing down
your rival through attrition, as their
weaker troops are forced to withdraw.
This becomes especially exciting when
one player finds that they’ve exhausted
their pool of fate, often leaving an
opening for their opponent to strike
and deal a major blow. The intertwined
use of honour and fate give L5R: TCG
the feel of a sword-fighting duel, with
players interlocking in frantic clashes
and trying to exhaust their opponent
before stepping back to catch a breath
during the planning phases.
Accentuating this short but
intense pacing – and the importance
of preparation – are the battles.
Each player can engage in just two
attacks on their rival each round:
one using political influence and
the other using more conventional
military might. Provinces are left
facedown until attacked, providing a
dramatic shock of luck to the first few
rounds as each location’s strength
076_077_legendOfTheFiveRingsReview_v2 MJ.indd 77
and special abilities are suddenly
revealed, before those provinces
already known become familiar
targets in following turns. Players
have the ability to select and organise
five province cards – one attaches to
their main stronghold – during setup,
introducing an interesting layer of
meta-strategy to defending, assisted
by the chance of drawing ‘holding’
cards from the dynasty deck that
further toughen provinces.
While calculated play of characters
and events, effective investment of
honour and fate, and a dose of luck
all play a part in overcoming your
rival, once you’re in the action there’s
another important ball to juggle:
the legendary five rings themselves.
As a battle is declared, the attacker
chooses one of the five, flipping it to
the respective military or political side.
If they achieve victory – whether or
not the province is destroyed – they
then get the opportunity to power up
that ring’s ability, varying from gaining
honour and drawing extra cards to
honouring or dishonouring a character
to modify their battle prowess, and
removing fate from a foe. While the
defender can’t use the ability if they
77
fend off the assault, each ring can
only be claimed once during a round,
making every clash a tense skirmish
with the chance to change the players’
standings rather than feeling impotent.
There’s also the chance for the most
successful player each turn to gain
imperial favour, bolstering a side’s
power during the following round
and stopping some characters from IF YOU LIKE
attacking, which further widens the A GAME OF
already vast strategic options on offer. THRONES: THE
CARD GAME…
As you can probably tell, there’s TRY LEGEND
a lot to manage in L5R: TCG, but OF THE FIVE
it never feels overwhelming. The RINGS: THE
complexity comes from knowing CARD GAME
Both of these
when and where to invest honour deep and
and fate, rather than actually doing rewarding head-
so, leaving plenty of room for those to-head card
who commit themselves to the game games value the
ability to master
to refine their mastery of the various political adeptness
interlocking systems and experiment and military might
with the broad tactical gameplay. L5R: in equal measure.
TCG captures the preparation and
behind-the-scenes planning of major
military battles in just as streamlined
and enrapturing a way as the heated
confrontations themselves.
True to Fantasy Flight’s consistently
impressive production budgets, the
top-tier presentation glows from each
card’s masterful artwork. The seven
clans, locations and characters of the
L5R universe come with the weight
of more than 20 years’ of storytelling
behind them, and this new chapter
feels fittingly soaked in the narrative
and style of the world. The dedication
to L5R’s clan-centric structure may
be frustrating for players of slightly
more flexible competitive card games
– although there’s the ability to spend
influence to include cards aligned with
other clans when deckbuilding, it’s
not as open as a game like Netrunner.
It’s also worth mentioning here that,
like most of the Fantasy Flight LCGs,
although you can play with two people
and build a standard deck out of the CONCLUSION
core box, you’ll ideally be needing at Legend of the Five
Rings: TCG boasts an
least a couple of copies to put together
involving world and
a proper custom loadout. sleek set of gameplay
Legend of the Five Rings: The elements that come
Card Game builds on an impressive together to form a
beautiful recreation of
legacy and does it justice with a
samurai warfare from
fascinating card-battler. It’s deep and the bloody action at
atmospherically rich without being the front line to the
offputtingly complicated or sacrificing wider-scope strategy
playing out at the
the more unique elements of its
back. It’s complex,
namesake. The legend lives on. ■ gorgeous and
MATT JARVIS completely enthralling.
22/09/2017 11:25

Legend of the Five Rings: TCG is an intricate and absorbing reimagining of the ‘90s collectible card game.
Designers Nate French and Brad Andres reveal how they brought a legend back to life
Legend of the Five Rings was a
collectible game card first, followed
by a spin-off RPG. How did you go
about translating the ‘feel’ of the
original series to this year’s revival?
Brad Andres: Before anything else, we
familiarised ourselves with the original
game by playing a bunch of games of the
CCG, trying lots of decks from different
clans and sets in order to get a sense of the
flow and feel of Legend of the Five Rings.
We specifically looked for the
mechanics that were the most fun or
distinctive in the old game, and tried
to carry them forward. During this
time, we also made sure to get a sense
of all the different great clans. From
a Crane honour duelling deck to the
Unicorn cavalry deck, we took in the
feel and play style of each and translated
those as best we could to the new game.
Nate French: In addition to grinding
out games, I also had a number of
conversations with players of the original
game, seeking to discover what drew
them to the game and kept them hooked.
Why was a living card game the
right modern format for L5R: TCG?
BA: The regular release of LCG packs
is very conducive to telling an ongoing
story, which Legend of the Five Rings is
famous for. The release of each pack is a
078_079_legendOfTheFiveRingsInterview_v3 MJ.indd 78
LORDS OF THE RINGS
Interview by Matt Jarvis
community experience which uncovers
the next piece of the story. This makes
the LCG model ideal for L5R.
NF: There’s a fairness to the fixed LCG
distribution that appeals to today’s card
players. Everyone has equal access to
the entire card pool, and it’s what you do
with those cards that matters.
Which gameplay features did you
carry forward from the original L5R?
What did you need to change?
BA: Conflicts are structured very similarly
to how they are in the CCG. Multiple
characters square off against each other
while players play cards and activate
abilities to influence the outcome.
We took the most exciting features of
combat from the original game and
transplanted them into the LCG.
We felt it necessary to change the
resource mechanic in order to smooth
out the game flow, making fewer games
snowball in favour of one player. In
the original game, you had to hope
to get your economy and character
cards in the right order for your deck to
function as intended. A player that got
ahead early in the game had a distinct
advantage over their opponent. This
issue was exacerbated by the fact that
once a province was destroyed, its
controller would get one less dynasty
78
card each turn, giving them fewer tools
to fight back once they got behind.
NF: Multiple win conditions was
another core element we wanted to
bring forward – that on one level,
you could win through conflict and
breaking your opponent’s provinces,
but on another level how you played the
“We felt game, honourably or dishonourably,
also mattered. One thing we did try
compelled to do here was integrate the different
conditions, so that players would have to
to pay our consider both elements in most games.
The basic structure of the game,
respects with two decks, an open information
set of available cards in the provinces
to the and a set of hidden cards in hand,
was also identified as an essential
original element we wanted to maintain. The
way these two decks and game areas
game connect with the concepts of honour
and dishonour inspired a fair bit of the
and its game’s structural design.
universe What remains of the original series'
world and characters?
and lore.” BA: The storyline of the LCG takes
place in its own version of Rokugan,
independent from the Rokugan of the
CCG. You will notice some familiar faces,
■ Top: L5R: TCG takes as well as some new ones, but the way
place in an alternate that the story plays out will be intriguing
version of Rokugan. to both new and returning players.
22/09/2017 11:26

NF: The original setting was our
primary inspiration. We want the
experience of the new game to feel
simultaneously familiar and fresh.
What was important about setting
this game in the Legend of the Five
Rings universe, rather than creating
a new series with similar samurai-
inspired and mystical elements?
BA: Legend of the Five Rings has a
history going back over 20 years and
is widely recognised for the quality of
its storytelling and world building. The
established universe is a perfect setting
for a game, since the factions are already
well defined within the lore and there
are so many evocative elements that
inspire card abilities and characters.
As far as the design process goes, we
felt compelled to pay our respects to
the original game and its established
universe and lore by highlighting the
best and most interesting mechanics
and lore from the original game and
critically think about the way that
players experience the game’s story.
NF: The setting introduced some fresh
concepts that we hadn’t really explored
in our other LCGs. Honour and
Dishonour, mono no aware [a Japanese
term encapsulating the impermanence
of things], the ephemeral nature of the
078_079_legendOfTheFiveRingsInterview_v3 MJ.indd 79
universe – it opened up some new
possibilities in how a card game could
play out.
Fantasy Flight has put out a
number of living card games over
the years – you’ve both worked on
a number of them. What did you
bring from those titles to L5R: TCG?
BA: We’ve seen several successful LCGs
and we can look at each of them and ask
ourselves what about the game made
it successful. We try to carry forward
principles and ideas from our successful
LCGs while still creating a fresh and
unique gaming experience for both new
players and players returning from the
original game. For example, in Legend
of the Five Rings, we have an influence
system that is similar to the influence
system in Netrunner. We found that fans
of Netrunner really enjoyed the influence
system and felt that a similar mechanic
would fit into this game perfectly.
NF: There are probably dozens – if not
hundreds – of examples of lessons we’ve
learned from previous games that can
be seen here. A simple one that comes
to mind: in previous games, we have
used the word ‘to’ as a loaded term in
ability text that separates an ability’s
cost from its effect. This frequently led
to confusion among players who didn’t
realise the manner in which this word
was being used. In L5R, we adopted the
use of a dash to differentiate between
costs and effects, and it’s made teaching
that aspect of the game much easier.
One of L5R: TCG’s most interesting
aspects is the role of fate, which
can allow cards to remain on the
battlefield for longer but steadily
depletes. Could you explain a little
about how you implemented the
system and accounted for the
varying strengths of characters?
BA: The fate mechanic allows players,
when they are initially bringing a
character onto the board, to invest more
fate in that character in order to keep it
in play for additional turns.
Because of this, there is less need for
cards that outright destroy characters
since each character will eventually
leave play on their own. This causes
each game to have a constantly shifting
board state, with both players trying to
find opportunities to gain advantage
over their opponent. Figuring out the
right mix of characters you’ll need on
79
the board is one of the chief puzzles
that the game contains. Players are able
to afford to keep low-cost characters
out for longer, but their impact on the
overall game is less potent than higher-
cost characters typically are. It is quite
expensive to keep a high-cost character
around for long, but the right character
“Each at the right time can dramatically shift
the game in your favour.
mechanic NF: In most card games, a character’s
cost is fixed – if you want the character,
places a you have to pay the same amount any
time. The fate mechanic is empowering
premium in that it allows a player to decide how
heavily they want to invest in each
on skillful character they play, based on the
current state of the game.
play and What would you point to as your
is heavily favourite mechanic in the game?
BA: One of my favourites is the ring
grounded mechanic, as it brings the elemental
rings to the forefront of every conflict
in a in the game. The rings give players
an interesting choice to make with
powerful every conflict they declare and ties
the flavour in as well. An air conflict
thematic might represent a battle of wits or a
quick-paced duel to the death, while
concept.” a fire conflict might represent might
represent a passionate debate or a
clash between great armies. It really
lets players weave their own story as
the game unfolds.
NF: Both the fate mechanic, and the
honour bidding for card draw, are up
there for me. Each mechanic places
■ The balance between a premium on skillful play, and each
honourable and is heavily grounded in a powerful
dishonourable play is thematic concept: the ephemerality
key to L5R: TCG's action. of fate, and the idea that the hidden
information of the hand is less
honourable than the open information
of the dynasty cards for the bidding.
Other than the planned expansions
on the way, what’s next for the new
Legend of the Five Rings series?
BA: Our first winter court world
championship happens in
November. We may see some
interesting plot development as more
of the story unfolds, and the role-
selection ceremony is set to take place
at the tournament! So lots of exciting
things coming up.
NF: There’re some pretty cool cards
coming up in the first cycle of dynasty
packs as well… can’t really say much
more than that! ■
22/09/2017 11:26
 PLAYED

WASTELAND EXPRESS DELIVERY SERVICE

The post-apocalypse has never been so full of life
Pandasaurus | £79.99 | Delivery | 2-5 players | 90-120 minutes | Age: 13+ | pandasaurusgames.com

BOX CONTENTS
◗ Mod Shop tray
◗ 125 truck mods
◗ Grand Lord Emperor
Torque figure and card
◗ Six player trucks
◗ 25 action markers
◗ Three raider trucks
◗ 75 cargo
◗ 18 character standees
◗ Six ‘not welcome’
character standees
◗ 10 combat dice
◗ Raider check die
◗ RAD check die
◗ 105 scrap

W
hat is it about the end of
the world that convinces
everyone to fuel up their
gas-guzzling trucks and hit the road?
Whatever it is, we can’t get enough of it.
Wasteland Express Deliver Service
is a collaborative effort between Dead
of Winter co-creator Jon Gilmour and
Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback, the
designer pair behind the card game
spin-offs of Back to the Future and The
Goonies. A different ‘80s cult movie
franchise thrums in the background
of WEDS like a purring petrol engine,
but it’s the influential out-and-out
flair of riotous car chase fest Mad Max
– rather than its name and characters
– that counts here.
Before the good – and, boy, is it
good – it’s time for the (very slightly)
bad. There are a hell of a lot of pieces
needed to play WEDS, and they take a
very long time to punch out of dozens
of boards the first time around. It’s
something you’ll want to do before
gathering up your group to play, unless
you like never seeing your friends
again (or they have an irrational love of
repetitive tasks, in which case make
a brew and sit back to watch). While
the initial unpacking can be heavy-
going – it took us around an hour to
sort everything into their designated
holes – WEDS’ creators have thought
ahead with an outstanding series of
plastic trays that helpfully keep every
bit and piece exactly where you need
it for future games. Honestly, we’re
talking a Mechs vs Minions-level of
godly box design here.
The manual doesn’t help things
get rolling either, overcomplicating
a straightforward set of rules with
a poorly-structured guide and
lack of clear reference points for
newcomers. However, after you’ve
◗ Six dashboards
learnt the rules and played a couple ◗ Mod Shop
of times, the trays make setup and reference board
teardown a brief matter of minutes, ◗ Market board
◗ 16 terrain octagons
meaning your efforts at the start
◗ 21 location tiles
don’t go unrewarded. ◗ Five nuclear bombs
Once you’re up and running, there’s ◗ 22 supply counters
no need to hit the brakes. Like the ◗ 20 artifacts
◗ 36 demand counters
trucks and their drivers that players
◗ 40 damage tokens
pilot across the near-deserted wastes ◗ 10 trailers
of the post-apocalypse, WEDS puts the ◗ 15 dig tiles
pedal to the metal from the start line, ◗ 60 progress markers
◗ 16 ally cards
offering up three shared contracts – as
◗ Nine raider truck cards
well as a starting private objective for ◗ 10 event cards
each player – that direct the lorries ◗ 15 vision quest cards
around the irradiated landscape. ◗ 16 raider enclave cards
◗ Eight priority first-
As the name suggests, this is a
class contract cards
game about delivery – whether ◗ 45 faction job cards
that’s satisfying the supply-and- ◗ Rulebook
demand of scattered outposts
seeking water, food and weapons,
hauling a nuclear bomb into the
heart of a raider outpost or digging
up and transporting the corpse of
a half-man, half-machine monster
to harvest for parts. It takes three
completed contracts to win the game,
but some are lesser jobs that offer up
■ Main: The game's
rewards in scrap – the currency of the
clever momentum
end of the world – and other benefits, system means things
such as helpful passengers, making never hit the brakes.

80

080_081_wastelandExpressDeliveryServicesReview_v3 MJ.indd 80 22/09/2017 11:49

 them worthwhile to fulfill in-between
aiming for the big goals.
At a couple of hours long, WEDS
isn’t a short game, but it is a fast game.
This is a sandbox adventure, allowing
players to visit outposts, purchase
cargo, upgrade their truck, hire allies,
acquire missions, deliver goods, and
fight and pillage either raider enclaves
or roaming raider trucks. Despite the
variety of options, the tempo never lets
up thanks to a graceful action selection
‘dashboard’ for each player that keeps
individual turns brief yet meaningful.
Key to this is the ingenious momentum
system, which steadily offers players the
ability to move further and further with
a single action following successive
moves – or sacrifice their built-up
motion by instantly performing a
different action with no additional
cost. This means that turns are very
rarely spent just moving, presenting
a consistent feeling of progression
and pace as each truck zooms around
the randomly-generated map,
slowing down to collect or drop off
commodities before whizzing off again.
Combat is similarly snappy,
consisting of little more than a simple
dice roll against the defence value
of a randomly-drawn raider enclave
or truck card. Failure means taking
damage – but this never leads to total
destruction, just the risk of losing
storage room and ultimately precious
cargo before being repaired. While
combat is frequent, it never occurs
between human players – although a
designer variant offered in the back
of the rulebook does present optional
rules for head-to-head clashes, if that’s
more your style.
080_081_wastelandExpressDeliveryServicesReview_v3 MJ.indd 81
While the lack of player interaction
by default may be off-putting for some,
it keeps the focus on the frantic dash
to complete contracts ahead of your
rivals rather than getting bogged down
in back-and-forth scraps: this is a race,
rather than a brawl. Instead, the main
way for players to impede each other
is by moving the three roving raider
trucks by landing on specific spaces,
granting them the chance to move the
foes into a new area. The only other real
danger is radiation, again resolved with
a single die roll. The pace of the whole
game means that such encounters
never feel simplistic – they’re exactly
as weighty as they need to be to feel
consequential without bringing
everything to a screeching halt.
There are plenty of post-apocalyptic
games out there, but even some of
those with engaging gameplay often
have forgettable worlds. That’s not
the case with WEDS. An abundance
of story and lore seeps into every
available gap across the game, from
the rulebook to players’ contracts and
the random event cards drawn at the
outset of each round. The six drivers
are diverse and well-characterised,
while the multiple factions that
operate across the world – the culture-
obsessed Archivists, broken New
Republic Army and religious Oracles
of Ceres – tie into a wider story that
can be explored further in an eight-
mission campaign.
While the campaign starts out slow,
with minor tweaks to the standard
sandbox mode, it shifts gears in its
latter half with more substantial
changes to the setup and rules of each
scenario. It’s perhaps not as extensive
81
as it could be, but the sheer number of
different alternatives offered by even
the standalone main mode is such
that there’s never a lack of variation.
There’s even a suggested gameplay
variant from each of the game’s
creators – something we’d love to see
more often in games.
The universe is brought effortlessly
to life by the stunning illustrations of IF YOU LIKE
talented comic book artist Riccardo SALTLANDS…
Burchielli, which brim with the same TRY WASTELAND
EXPRESS
visual energy, invention and anarchic
DELIVERY
style as series such as Tank Girl. If SERVICE
WEDS doesn’t have the best artwork Where Saltlands
of any board game we’ve ever seen, had a strong
look but fell apart
it’s damn close. This is combined
under the hood,
with character and vehicle designs WEDS delivers
that combine clear homages to Mad on the promise of
Max with hints of cel-shaded video a Mad Max-style
wasteland chase
game Borderlands and countless
to remember.
other influences to create a style
that nevertheless feels refreshingly
distinct, instead of pandering or
tipping over into cliché. The game’s
writing and flavour is impressively
strong given the long history of
bland and generic wastelands on the
tabletop, kicking in with a jet-black
dose of surreal humour, effective
world-building and knowing pastiche
that – despite the out-there visuals –
thankfully doesn’t overdo it.
WEDS stalls at the start with an
imposing first-time preparation and
unnecessarily frustrating rulebook,
but these small bumps can’t stop
its payload laden with stacks of
personality, polish and unrelenting
gameplay oomph from ultimately
bringing the goods. Strap in for a hell
of a ride. ■
MATT JARVIS
■ The outstanding
art is backed up by
blackly comic writing.
CONCLUSION
If you can get past
the slow start of
your very first game,
WEDS soon kicks into
gear with a fast and
furious romp through
a wasteland like no
other. From there, the
momentum of the
high-octane gameplay
and incredible visuals
never let up – it’s a
non-stop joyride.
22/09/2017 11:49
 䄀圀䄀刀䐀            圀䤀一一䤀一䜀 䜀䄀䴀䔀 䴀䄀吀匀

嘀䄀刀䤀伀唀匀 䐀䤀䘀䘀䔀刀䔀一吀 䰀伀吀匀 伀䘀 䘀䰀䄀吀 刀䄀吀䔀

匀䤀娀䔀匀 䴀䄀吀䔀刀䤀䄀䰀匀 䐀䔀匀䤀䜀一匀 䔀唀 匀䠀䤀倀倀䤀一䜀

圀圀圀⸀䐀䔀䔀倀䌀唀吀匀吀唀䐀䤀伀⸀䌀伀䴀 䤀一䘀伀䀀䐀䔀䔀倀䌀唀吀匀吀唀䐀䤀伀⸀䌀伀䴀

p082.indd 1 19/09/2017 12:18

 PLAYED
CODENAMES DUET
Play in harmony with this catchy co-op spin on the word game
Czech Games Edition | £16.99 | Co-op | 2+ players | 15 minutes
Age: 11+ | czechgames.com/en/codenames-duet
C
odenames Duet is quickly
becoming my favourite way
to play Vlaada Chvátil’s
outstanding one-word clue-giving hit
– and, despite the name, it’s fun by
no means limited to two people.
Although a co-operative variant was
technically included in the back of the
original Codenames’ manual, Duet
takes the basic concepts presented
there one step further, fleshing out
the competition against a cardboard
adversary with dedicated turn-timer
tokens, balancing the involvement of
both human players and introducing
a charming campaign mode in the
form of a map of missions with
varying difficulties and challenges.
With the 400 new words from
this box able to be used with the
original (and vice-versa, plus spin-
off Codenames Pictures), it’s also a
worthwhile expansion that increases
the replayability of the cross-compatible
series to a frankly staggering level.
Instead of racing against the
intellect of a rival team, the opponent
here is your own skill: the standard
mode only gives you nine turns as
a pair (or two teams of any number
of players – it should’ve really been
called Codenames Co-op) to discover
15 agents hidden around the grid of
083_codenamesDuetReview_v2 MJ.indd 83
BOX CONTENTS word cards while avoiding the usual
◗ 200 word cards crowd of assassins and bystanders.
◗ 15 green agent cards
◗ 100 key cards Unlike Codenames’ barebones
◗ 11 timer tokens variant, both players have a unique
◗ Assassin card group of agents for their partner to
◗ Mission maps pad find – although some apply to both,
◗ Card stand
◗ Rulebook introducing a captivating layer of meta-
strategy as you bounce clues off each
other and use your knowledge of how
many agents and assassins are shared
to pare down your options.
Once the time runs out, the fun
doesn’t immediately stop – a nail-
biting ‘sudden death’ mode halts the
■ Top: Both players clues but keeps guesses going as long
have a number
as they remain correct, offering a
of spies for their
partner to find. thrilling last-minute chance to swipe
victory. Exemplifying the simple
■ Right: The mission genius that made Codenames such
map pad adjusts
an incredible joy in the first place, it
difficulty on the fly
as players move leaves the highly entertaining core of
around the world. the game untouched while applying
changes that feel meaningful and fresh
– and, like the original, it’s all-too-easy
to end up in a 'one more game' loop
for hour after enjoyable hour.
The standard game is already
much more than a simply repackaged
version of the original’s alternate
IF YOU LIKE CODENAMES… TRY CODENAMES DUET
This set increases enough cards to double the size of the original game, but also
offers a fantastic fully fleshed-out version of the previously barebones co-op variant.
83
mode, but it’s in the optional campaign
that the changes really shine.
Completing a basic match kicks
off a globetrotting adventure, as the
players choose which country to visit
next based on linked paths. Each
location alters the difficulty, reducing
or increasing the number of turns and
incorrect guesses permitted (going as
low as 0 for a tough but tense instant-
failure challenge).
There’s no narrative hook, yet
the choice of where to visit next and
dynamic method of encouraging
different play styles (risky or
conservative, depending on the setup)
is a treat, injecting extra life and energy
into a game that has never been short
of either. It’s also an ideal mode for
Codenames connoisseurs looking for
an extra linguistic trial, as the harder
levels hinge on providing first-rate clues
to score higher and higher combos
without slipping up. The flexibility to
start from and end on any location, or
try and travel as far as possible without
losing once, makes the campaign a
fantastic way to lose an afternoon.
Codenames Duet doesn’t reinvent
Codenames, but it achieves a rare feat
by being just as exceptionally crafted
and compelling as the original without
being exactly the same game in a new
box. Whether you get it to add to your
collection, or simply find out what all the
fuss is about, just make sure you get it. ■
MATT JARVIS
CONCLUSION
Introducing enough meaningful changes
to mark it apart from its predecessor,
Duet is nevertheless just as entertaining
and enthralling to play. The campaign
mode is light but smartly encourages
different styles of play, while the
gameplay tweaks make one of the best
competitive games around now one of
the finest co-op experiences going.
22/09/2017 11:50
 PLAYED
STAR TREK ADVENTURES
To boldly roll where no-one has rolled before
Modiphius | £44.99 | RPG | 2+ players | modiphius.com
I
n Star Trek Adventures, Modiphius
has come up with probably the
best way to recreate the feel of the
iconic TV show at the tabletop – no
mean feat considering the many
ways in which Star Trek differs from
other sci-fi settings.
After all, while they certainly
had lasers, tentacled monsters
and everything else needed to keep
things exciting, the episodes' focus
rarely fell on explosions as much as
diplomacy, exploration and science
– even if that last one amounted
to little more than babbling about
deflector dishes and neutrino beams.
This is reflected neatly in Star Trek
Adventures; while there are extensive
rules for combat, they aren’t the
focus by any means. Exploration and
diplomacy are just as important as
shootouts, brawls and ship-to-ship
engagements, with an entire chapter
dedicated to solving problems
through futuristic science.
Indeed, Modiphius has made a
real attempt to replicate the approach
of the show and accommodate the
various spanners the format would
throw into the works of a more typical
RPG. For example, a player taking
084_starTrekReview_v2 MJ.indd 84
the role of the chief engineer as their
primary character can hop into the
shoes of a literal redshirt for missions
where there’s more call for steady
aim than technical skill, allowing
everyone to participate without
having to contrive a reason for the
entire command crew to take on
every excursion.
Beyond this, the impressive
breadth of systems on offer means
that it’s possible to reproduce virtually
every aspect of a Star Trek episode,
whether you’re romping around with
alien princesses pulled from The
Original Series or confronting the
ethical dilemmas posed by the Borg
or Dominion. However, this does
come with a few downsides.
While a typical check in the game
will have relatively simple core
mechanics – roll a few d20s, then gain
successes for each one that comes
in under a value determined by your
character’s attributes and skills – there
are a number of extra systems bolted
on that can muddy up an otherwise
simple interaction. None of them are
particularly unwieldy on their own,
but that hardly matters when they
stack up so quickly.
84
Opening a locked door can
require management of momentum
and threat counters, a complication
range, advantages and disadvantage
traits, and a few others depending
on the exact nature of the situation.
All this can sometimes slow the
pace of the game to a crawl, with the
need for both players and the GM
to be highly focused and extremely
familiar with the rules to keep things
zipping along.
Still, even if you do need to keep
the rulebook on hand, you probably
won’t mind all that much. It’s a
genuinely lovely piece of work,
crafted with obvious reverence for
the Star Trek universe.
The background and setting
sections are incredible primers for
the universe and are enjoyable to
read entirely independent of the
rules – the section on how each
class of Starfleet vessel is designed
is a favourite. There’s a wealth of
information on offer, supported by
countless extracts from in-universe
reports, letters and logs. Much of the
art is exceptional and does a good
job of showing everything from the
■ While combat is campy pulp of space castles to the
covered with extensive clean curves of Federation starships.
rules, it's not the
focus of the RPG.
Ultimately, this highlights perhaps
the game’s greatest strength and
weakness. Most RPGs licensed
from major properties are relatively
streamlined affairs that try not to
burden more casual gamers with too
many complications but, for better or
worse, Star Trek Adventures doesn’t
seem to share these concerns.
For some this will be off-putting, but
if you’re familiar with both crunch-
heavy RPGs and 3D chess, it may well
be just what you’re looking for. ■
RICHARD JANSENPARKES
CONCLUSION
An incredibly wide-ranging ruleset with
plenty of options for exploring strange
new worlds and seeking out new life
and new civilisations, but probably
not an ideal first step into the world of
tabletop RPGs.
IF YOU LIKE THE DOCTOR WHO RPG…
TRY STAR TREK ADVENTURES
Fans of classic sci-fi settings where
talking and quick thinking is prioritised
over combat should put Star Trek
Adventures at the top of their wish list.
Make it so.
22/09/2017 11:50

Chase the Ripper through the streets of London in this heart-racing hunt
FFG/Giochi Uniti/Sir Chester Cobblepot | £39.99 | Hidden movement | 2-4 players | 1+ hours | Age: 13+ | fantasyflightgames.com
W
hitehall Mystery is hidden
movement at its best: a
thrilling high-stakes race
between hunters and hunted that
never pauses for breath.
Based on the grisly true-crime
legend of Jack the Ripper – and
taking heavy inspiration from
spiritual successor Letters from
Whitechapel – Whitehall sees one
player cast in the role of Jack as he
scatters the dismembered remains
of one of his victims around London
while avoiding three pursuing
investigators, controlled by the
remaining players.
Jack’s hidden movement is
boiled down to its dramatic basics,
with a limited pool of special
single-use movement tiles that
allow him to cross bodies of water,
jump two spaces or slip through
alleys punctuating the otherwise
straightforward sprint to get to three
discovery locations selected during
setup by the player within 15 turns
over the course of three rounds.
Hot on his heels, the investigators
gradually uncover spaces visited by
the invisible killer, marking them
with yellow discs representing the
revealing glow of lamplight before
trying to cut off his potential next
move. Each exposed disc sparks
another burst of animated deduction
and prediction about Jack’s
potential path and target, with the
same excitement of following crisp
footsteps in snow or recreating that
scene from The Two Towers where
Aragorn emotionally tracks the fate
of Merry and Pippin.
Whitehall’s map – and board
– is pared down a little from
Whitechapel, resulting in not only
a faster pace better befitting of a
breathless chase through the streets
of Victorian London but a more
claustrophobic and close-call tension
from the off.
Unlike in Whitechapel, Jack is
no longer a creature of habit who
returns to his hidden hideout after
each murder, choosing instead to
roam directly between his selected
discovery points – forcing the
085_whitehallMysteryReview_v2 MJ.indd 85
WHITEHALL MYSTERY
hounding investigators to stay
constantly on his tail instead of
waiting for the starter pistol trigger
of a murdered victim to chase him
back home.
The tighter player count, reduced
number of rounds and trimming of
some of Whitechapel’s more nitpicky
rules makes Whitehall a purer
experience than both that game and
fellow hidden movement darling
Fury of Dracula, placing the glaring
spotlight squarely back on the
cat-and-mouse chase at its exposed
heart, bringing it more in line with
Scotland Yard, the classic 1983 Spiel
des Jahres winner that pioneered
the genre.
That’s not to say that Whitehall
Mystery has completely stripped
the flesh from its acclaimed
predecessor's bones. While the
standard mode excels at highlighting
the simple hunt with very few bells
and whistles beyond Jack’s deck
of special moves, there are a good
number of optional rules suggested
in the manual to tweak the standard
mode to your choosing, whether
by allowing Jack to recharge some
of his limited special movement
tiles between rounds or enabling
the unique talents of the three
investigators – two in the case of
journalist Jasper T.C. Waring, who
can come accompanied by his
loyal pooch Smoker. Whitehall
■ The map is smaller
than that of Letters
from Whitechapel,
intensifying the
claustrophobic action.
85
BOX CONTENTS can even be combined with parts
◗ Game board of Whitechapel and its Dear Boss
◗ Six special expansion to mix in familiar
movement tiles gameplay elements from those
◗ Three investigator tiles
◗ Smoker tile games, while retaining the taut
◗ Three investigator minis tension of the condensed redesign.
◗ Jack figure Whitehall suffers from some of
◗ Jack screen the inconsistencies in difficulty
◗ 30 Jack move
track sheets and playing time that afflict hidden
◗ 15 yellow clue markers movement as a genre – early matches
◗ Four discovery can be frustrating for newcomers
location markers unfamiliar with the rhythm and
◗ Rulebook
tactics of toying with their opponents,
and can stretch on to the point of
exhaustion if steadfast players spend
minutes overthinking every step. But
if you allow the shadowy atmosphere
and tension of Whitehall Mystery to
simply envelop you, you’ll uncover an
outstanding showdown that rivals the
finest drama around. ■
MATT JARVIS
CONCLUSION
IF YOU LIKE Tight, taut and tense as anything the
LETTERS FROM tabletop has to offer, Whitehall Mystery
WHITECHAPEL… brings the focus of its hidden movement
TRY WHITEHALL influences back to the cat-and-mouse
MYSTERY chase beating in its chest with a
Whitehall smartly condensed scope and flexibility
Mystery trims that makes this an ideal game for
the more finicky newcomers and veterans alike.
requirements of
its predecessor
with a neat set
of rules that take
the race between
hunter and hunted
back to its pulse-
pounding origins.
22/09/2017 11:51
 PLAYED
THE GODFATHER: CORLEONE’S EMPIRE
Eric Lang’s sprawling gangster game won’t leave you sleeping with the fishes
CMON | £79.99 | Worker placement | 2-5 players | 60-90 minutes | Age: 14+ | cmon.com
H
ere’s an offer you can’t refuse:
a board game adaptation
of one of the greatest
movies ever made, by one of the
best tabletop designers working
today. That designer is Eric Lang,
who brings his ‘dudes on a map’
philosophy previously perfected
in Blood Rage to the blood-soaked
world of The Godfather.
Although framed around the first
Godfather film – the four acts span
from the opening wedding scene
(“You come into my house on the
day my daughter is to be married,
and you ask me to do murder for
money.”) through to the climactic
betrayal and deaths at the close of
the gangster epic – you wouldn’t
necessarily know it if it wasn’t on the
box. Despite the suggestive title, the
action avoids following the iconic
Corleone story, instead opting to
focus on the clashes between other
warring mafia families that takes
place primarily in the background
of the film. Marlon Brando’s Don
086_087_theGodfatherCorleonsEmpireReview_v2 MJ.indd 86
BOX CONTENTS and money, and higher-ranking
◗ Game board family members, who more subtly
◗ 34 figures
◗ 32 illegal goods cards influence their way into reaping the
◗18 ally cards benefits of entire districts at once.
◗ 12 business tiles Establish your presence in a region
◗ 44 job cards and you’ll profit from the actions of
◗ 120 money cards
◗ 45 control markers competing families, gathering guns,
◗ Five metal suitcases blood money, alcohol and narcotics,
◗ Horse head token which can be spent to complete
◗ Police car token specific tasks. These jobs, which
◗ Rulebook
include extortion, shakedowns and
even planting car bombs, are among
the most satisfying and thematic
parts of the game, with killing
Corleone appears as a plastic rival gang members, stealing from
miniature, but serves only as a round opposing families and hiding cash
counter and a thematic excuse to away exactly the kind of nefarious
discard down to a hand limit at the dealings any self-respecting mafioso
end of each round. should be indulging in.
■ Top: The game's While the narrative of The Stashing cash away is especially
production values
Godfather is little more than light important, as any money left in
live up to the movie's
acclaimed polish. dressing, its atmosphere is delivered your hand could be claimed by Don
like a gunshot to the chest. Players Corleone at the end of a round. In
■ Opposite: Don apply pressure around 1950s New a lavish, albeit unnecessary, touch,
Corleone appears
York by strategically placing their players can claim specific businesses
in miniature form,
but has little bearing low-life thugs, who shake down the around the map to add money to
on the action. front of lone businesses for goods their individual metal suitcases,
86
22/09/2017 11:53
 which safeguard earnings and
completed jobs until the end of the
game (or they’re pinched by a rival
family). As money cards can’t
be exchanged, knowing
when to spend your turn
banking some dollars is
crucial – but overloading on
top-value cards makes you
a prime target for a robbery,
especially as every card
hoarded must be revealed to
the entire table before vanishing
into the metal tin.
The suitcases are far from the only
extravagant flourish: this is a game
stuffed full of opulent production.
Publisher CMON once again shows
off its love of abundant miniatures,
throwing in plastic representations for
everything from the roving gangsters
to a police car phase tracker and even
a miniscule horse’s head to mark the
086_087_theGodfatherCorleonsEmpireReview_v2 MJ.indd 87
first player. The models are roundly
well-sculpted, although the police car
is a little too hollow and lightweight,
and the horse’s head lacks definition
– it looks more like a rock-face carving
than a bedsheet surprise.
Given the near-universal polish of
the components and the somewhat
fleeting inclusion of Don Corleone,
it’s disappointing that the artwork for
the job cards simply reuses the cover
art showing Marlon Brando rather
than offering similarly gorgeous oil
painting renditions of the various
events and actions executed by the
players. The goods cards make up for
this oversight, applying the stark black
and white puppet-string style of the
unmistakable logo to great effect.
Rather fittingly for a board
game that will inevitably result in
drawling impressions of Marlon
Brando and Al Pacino, there’s a
pleasing sense of theatricality
to many of the elements. The
miniscule plastic bodies of
gunned-down thugs are dumped
unceremoniously in the Hudson
River (until they’re revived as
further nameless cronies in the
next round) and, in a flourish that
would be the sole entertaining hook
in a smaller game, players load the
hinged lids of their suitcases with
money cards and let them clank
open onto the table to reveal their
bets as they try to win the affections
(read: bribe) of potential allies at
the close of each act. The allies, who
scale in power as the turf war heats
up, present reusable powers, but take
up a vital slot in your hand and
can be costly to acquire. Still,
it’s hard to resist the chance to
call up the mayor to swindle
87
control of a district or have the chief
of police in your pocket.
New businesses, prime for a
shakedown, open up around
New York as the rounds wear
on, with the random tiles
keeping strategies fluid
and shifting advantageous
positions to avoid a bottleneck
on the map at the beginning of IF YOU LIKE
BLOOD RAGE…
each act. The second and fourth TRY THE
rounds grant extra family members, GODFATHER:
which gently ramps up the tension CORLEONE’S
and interaction between players EMPIRE
Eric Lang continues
without overcomplicating the tight set to prove he’s the
of rules. The map can still feel a little master of modern
empty at game end when playing with strategy games by
smaller groups, as the varying setup bringing his ‘dudes
on a map’ mentality
leads to fewer buildings and certain from bloodthirsty
regions being less fought over, but Vikings to 1950s
is cleverly designed to avoid players New York mobsters.
never coming into contact with each
other, ensuring that battles over
■ Above, left: The
territory – the crux of the game – spark metal suitcases
off with just as much ferocity. aren't just a lavish
What’s perhaps most impressive detail – they're also
about The Godfather: Corleone’s used to thrilling
theatrical effect when
Empire is that it manages to distil bidding for allies.
all of these aspects – area control,
worker placement, bidding auctions,
set collection – into a board game
that never once feels bloated or
convoluted; turns and rounds flow
comfortably, presenting complex
decisions as straightforward options.
There’s still plenty of meat to chew on
when it comes to gameplay, and it all
knits tightly enough with the theme
to pay ample respect to the weighty
world and tone of The Godfather – if
perhaps not the story. Taking under
half the running time of the three-
hour film, it’s a remarkably elegant
adaptation that feels exactly as long
and as deep as it should.
As Eric Lang has proven
before, he has a knack for turning
established worlds into board CONCLUSION
games that do so much more that Those looking to
simply bring a well-worn story simply relive the
events of The
across to the tabletop. Corleone's
Godfather will come
Empire, like the best of those away disappointed,
efforts, isn’t necessarily a faithful yet Corleone’s
adaptation in terms of narrative, but Empire manages to
accurately translate
it’s absolutely devout when it comes
to cards and plastic
to atmosphere and that certain ‘je the brutal dealings
ne sais quoi’ – or should that be of the gangster epic.
'nun lu sacciu'? – feel. It engrosses It’s perfectly paced,
thrillingly constructed
as a game, invites as a presentation
and has top-notch
and thrives as a pure experience. ■ production values.
MATT JARVIS Pay your respects.
22/09/2017 11:53
 SELWG WARGAMES SHOW
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SELWG 2017 ADVERT_A5.indd 1 7/27/2017 11:33:39 AM

p088.indd 1 19/09/2017 12:29

 MEDICI: THE CARD GAME
Grail Games | £21.99 | Set collection
2-6 players | 30-45 minutes | Age: 10+
grail-games.com/medici-the-card-game

M
edici: The Card Game is an outstanding stripped-back version
of Reiner Knizia’s classic auction title that’s quickly becoming
one of my favourite travel games.
I say ‘stripped-back’ – Medici was hardly the most complex title to
begin with. Significantly, Medici: TCG takes out the original’s bidding
between players over a variety of goods – spice, dye, furs, silk and grain
– to create an interesting press-your-luck variant built around the
‘shall I, shan’t I’ decision of drawing up to three cards each turn.
Players are forced to claim the last card they reveal, but can
also choose to take either, both or neither of the two preceding
cards – including those drawn by other players. This change shifts

STATECRAFT the dynamic between players away a little from head-to-head

Inside the Box Board Games | £19 | Hand management
2-6 players | 20-60 minutes | Age: 14+
itbboardgames.com/games/statecraft
competition to a more nuanced and strategic position, with the role
of luck making for a tense and thrilling half-hour.
Players only get a certain amount of room on their ship to fill
up, but new bonus cards grant goods that don’t take up any space,
encouraging more ballsy play when it comes to drawing cards.

A
lmost everything about Statecraft makes you want to love it – With enough wiggle room to avoid too many frustrating forced
except actually playing it. pickups and the interesting division of points scoring between ship
Designed as a card-battling simulation of a political value and stored goods, this remains a game of strategy rather than
race for Number 10/The White House/Leader of the Earth (delete luck – but the random aspects add in a sense of amusement and pace
as appropriate), the game neatly breaks down complex political that some may have found was missing from the drier original.
concepts into four key scales that slide up and down as each of your The top-notch presentation completes the package, with the
cabinet members endorses or denounces specific policies. Support simplified set of cards improving hugely on the unnecessarily
state-owned housing? Say hello to socialism and anarchism. Prefer complicated (and often ugly) visuals of Medici’s scoring pyramid boards.
affordable housing? Extra authoritarianism it is. It’s a fluid way of The box could be a little better at holding them, but it's hardly a problem.
tracking your overall manifesto as you attempt to court floating voters, It doesn’t matter whether you’ve played the original Medici or not –
and introduces some amusing thematic decisions as you try to please this compact spin-off absolutely deserves the small space it will fill in
as many supporters as possible, scrapping the minimum wage as both your collection and your heart. ■
you chase retirees or backing agricultural labour to the chagrin of MATT JARVIS
the middle-class. The bright and clean visuals of the cards pair with
snappy flavour text that leans into the satirical thick of it, so to speak.
There are a variety of different setups and win conditions, with the
basic game being a straight democratic election. Reflecting the back-
and-forth scraps of modern politics, players can pinch voters that have
grown unsatisfied (or, for a cost, even those who claim to be happy) or
employ action cards that screw over their opponents with everything
from scandals to assassination. The interaction here is solid and lifts
up the otherwise fairly lifeless policy play, unlike the event cards –
Statecraft’s career-ending blunder.
Drawn at random during play, the event cards aim to shake things
up by forcing tough decisions on players, often resulting in the loss of
voters, policies, politicians or all three. The manual suggests adding a
third, two thirds or all of the cards to the deck for normal, disruptive
or chaotic play, but it hardly makes a difference – they suck. With no
effort to maintain a flow over the course of a match, the occurrences
feel random, frustrating and repetitive, pulling many of the same
punishing tricks time and time again to hinder a satisfying sense of
progression and achievement.
Real-world politics aren't fair, but Statecraft kills what could've
been a fascinating satirical simulation with a wildly uneven flow.
The core ingredients of something special are in here, let down by
a severely lacking execution and what too often appears to be an
underdeveloped grander vision. Cast your vote elsewhere. ■
MATT JARVIS

89

089_statecraftAndMediciTCGReviews_v2 MJ.indd 89 22/09/2017 11:54

 PLAYED
UNTOLD: ADVENTURES AWAIT
Come up with your own gripping hour of TV in this
inventive family-friendly roleplaying game
The Creativity Hub | £25 | RPG | 1-4 players | 60 minutes | Age: 8+ | creativityhub.com
R
od Bassman, fish PI, kicks down
the door and bursts into the
room. He had heard a muffled
scream from student Janey Chips as
the starfish that snuck through her
open window tried to smother her in
her sleep. She had struggled to tear
the evil echinoderm from her face, but
Bassman somehow succeeds, flinging
the sea creature into a corner. Why was
Janey the target? Why a starfish? How
was Bassman’s boss, Sergeant Batter,
tied up in all of this? All of this would
become clear – after all, this was only
the opening scene of Fish & Chips.
More accurately, it was the first
few minutes of our first Untold:
Adventures Await episode. An episode
that would take us from a vague
premise and groan-worthy pun
to a shock twist and gripping final
showdown with the malevolent Batter
and his corrupt fish forces in under
an hour, while hinting at the wider
revelations to come in the rest of the
season. We know you’ll be tuning in.
Untold is a fast and loose roleplaying
game built around storytelling toy
Rory’s Story Cubes, a series of nine
dice that dictate the flow of a tale with
their suggestive symbol faces. Nine
dice are included in the Untold box,
but can be substituted easily for any
090_091_untoldReviewAndInterview_v3 MJ.indd 90
BOX CONTENTS of the countless Story Cubes variations
◗ Set of nine Rory’s
Story Cubes
out there, opening up the door for
◗ Story board this to become a Batman, Adventure
◗ Story Cubes tray Time or Doctor Who RPG – or even a
◗ 30 scene cards mashup. With the game embracing
◗ 15 outcome cards
◗ 10 reaction cards
the open invention of players, it’s just
◗ 10 question tokens as effective plotting a gritty detective
◗ 14 action tokens drama (with fish) as a whimsical
◗ Episode guide pad treasure hunt on an alien planet.
◗ Character profile pad
◗ Four dashboards
Framed in the format of a TV series –
◗ Four play/pause cards each hour-long playthrough makes up
◗ Four sets of one episode, with characters, world and
edit tokens story able to carry over into a longer
◗ Rulebook
season – Untold uses Story Cubes in
combination with random boards that
lay out the action of five scenes using a
basic sentence structure (“In [BLANK],
[BLANK] was attacking [BLANK].”),
where the blanks are filled with the
results of the pictorial dice. These
charmingly-illustrated boards form the
backbone of each episode, offering up
links between people, places and things
to pull the whole thing together in a
way that feels comfortable and cohesive
rather than being five random events
with little character or story progression.
Within each scene, the group can
ask a specific number of questions,
IF YOU LIKE NO THANK YOU, EVIL!… TRY UNTOLD: ADVENTURES AWAIT
Being a kid-friendly RPG doesn’t mean offering a dumbed-down experience just for
kids, as these two standout roleplaying games fit for families of all ages prove.
90
which built out the wider world and
narrative, and perform actions. Actions
are resolved using a rudimentary card
system: an outcome card dictates
whether the result is positive or
negative, with potential modifiers
(“And…”, “But…”) leading to emotional
reactions from a second deck of facial
expressions. It’s simple but surprisingly
elegant in execution, gently
encouraging players to improvise the
drama with enough agency to shape
the story without overwhelming them
with options or the pressure to invent
every last element of the narrative.
As well as the shared scene
tokens, each player also has their
own personal stash of tokens,
allowing them to offer two ideas to
other players, re-roll a Story Cube or
flashback out of the current scene to
further develop a character or plot
point. This gently encourages quieter
players to get involved and help build
up a more established world, while
doubling up as a way of stopping one
or two people controlling the entire
story throughout. There’s even a play/
pause card for each player that can be
used to stop the game and ask for help
if they feel a little lost – an especially
welcoming touch.
Although Untold is clearly
designed for younger players as
a first introduction to roleplaying
and storytelling techniques (you’ll
probably still need an older player
to lead things with those aged under
10), that doesn’t stop it being buckets
of fun with adults. Those seeking the
true flexibility of grown-up RPGs may
find the partial hand-holding and
limitation to the direction of Story
Cubes a little frustrating, yet it serves
as such a delightful bite-sized chunk
of improvisation and yarn-spinning
that it’s impossible to do anything but
smile your whole way through. ■
MATT JARVIS
CONCLUSION
Untold adds just enough direction to
the random storytelling of Story Cubes
without getting rid of the room for
players to tell their own tales, improvise
and have loads of fun. It’s a memorable,
entertaining roleplaying experience in
under an hour – beat that.
22/09/2017 11:54
 THE GREATEST STORY EVER ROLLED
Storytelling dice game Rory’s Story Cubes has added a twist to its tale this year with roleplaying
spin-off Untold: Adventures Await. Creator Rory O’Connor tells us about the latest chapter
How did the idea for an RPG based
on Rory's Story Cubes come about?
The idea of creating an RPG/adventure
game powered by Rory’s Story Cubes is
an idea I have been mulling over since
2010. It wasn’t until I met John Fiore,
creator of The 9Qs solo RPG guide,
that I began to put serious thought
into making it a reality. The 9Qs was a
set of rules for solo roleplaying with
Rory’s Story Cubes. So the way there’s
the kind of mythic generator which
is used by gamers, The 9Qs gave you
a way to combine Story Cubes with
your favourite RPG manual so that
you could have a GM and you could
be the character in the story.
Myself and John got in contact
and we started talking. I loved what
he was doing but I was like: ‘It’s still
kind of clunky.’ I love DMing but
I’m always put off at the notion of
running games because I think, ‘Ah,
there’s so much I need to know and
so much I need to remember.’
I wanted to create this game
where a family – I always
think of a mum and her
090_091_untoldReviewAndInterview_v3 MJ.indd 91
Interview by Matt Jarvis
kids – could sit down and have the
experience that loads of other people
are having with roleplaying games
without the heavy lifting of the book
and the manual and the character
creation and all that stuff. That puts
people off. So we’ve kind of taken the
heart of what it’s like to put yourself
into a story, but gotten rid of a lot of
the paperwork of the rules. I needed
Story Cubes to do it.
I want to open that door of what it
felt like to be in a story and recreate
the notion of what were for me ‘80s
action TV shows, like Quantum
Leap, Star Trek and other things.
That’s essentially what we’re trying to
create: this game that drops you into
an adventure, drags you through the
story and you’re done within kind
of 45 to 60 minutes. Hopefully it will
inspire people to go, ‘I want to find
out more about this.’ So then they go
and look at D&D and Pathfinder or
the Doctor Who roleplaying game, as
well. We’re hoping to be that gateway
for people to get involved.
There are dozens of different
Story Cubes sets. What
happens if you start mixing
your Untold campaign with,
say, Batman or Scooby-Doo?
What we discovered is it actually
works brilliantly with the themed sets.
So now you can be a character in a
Batman story, you can be a character
in a Doctor Who episode or, even
weirder, you can have Finn and Jake
team up with Scooby-Doo to battle The
Joker by mixing all of the sets together.
Ultimately what I wanted to create
is the sense of an adventure game
where you can go anywhere and do
anything. Because with collaborative
storytelling, a lot of it is left for you to
say, ‘Well, you decide what happens.’
I wanted kids to be able to play this,
and they don’t have that
capacity to say, ‘You go
first’ or ‘You go with your
idea,’ because they’re
like: ‘No, my idea’s
awesome! Why didn’t
you pick my idea?'
91
You’re also working on Blank –
what can you tell us about the
customisable card game?
Blank is an original card game by
Henri Kermarrec of Sushi Dice and
Boom Bokken fame. Like Crazy
Eights, the goal is to play all the cards
from your hand to the discard pile
by matching colours and numbers.
“What I A few of these cards also have simple
effects that trigger when played.
wanted to At the same time, players must
observe the three rule cards that are
create is randomly dealt each game, adding a
unique twist to every play.
the sense What makes Blank so special is
that the winner of each game gets
of an to customise either a blank rule or
game card, forever changing the
adventure game with a new rule or effect they
have introduced. A lot of work went
game into making the game as user-
friendly as possible for new players.
where you We’ve focused on accessibility and
also included a simple ‘recipe’ to
can go help with writing new rules.
We are so excited about this game
anywhere and how we imagine the community
might build around it. This is something
and do we want to celebrate and encourage.
So, one of the things we are planning
anything.” are annual Blank booster packs. These
will feature our favourite community-
generated rule cards gathered from
social media and at conventions.
Given the success of Untold on
Kickstarter, do you have plans
for other Story Cubes spin-offs?
We personally don’t have any
future plans for Rory’s Story Cubes-
compatible games. Partly because
we want to make new games, but
also because when we sold the Rory’s
Story Cubes IP to Asmodee, this
included the rights to produce Story
Cubes-compatible games. That’s not
to say Asmodee doesn’t have its own
plans. We will have to wait and see.
■ Left: Different sets Untold is like our swan song with
of Rory's Story Cubes Rory’s Story Cubes. I knew that if we
can all be used together did not publish it now, we would
in Untold, meaning miss our window of opportunity
Batman and Scooby- before it leaves home and heads off
Doo can team up. into the big wide world without us. ■
22/09/2017 11:54
 all scenery and battle mats are ready straight out of the box: pre-painted  and assembled
www.gamemat.eu

p092x.indd 1 25/09/2017 12:18


Like your fantasy dark, your foes demonic and your quests deadly? We’ve got just the place for you...
Hall Or Nothing Productions | £49 | Co-op exploration | 1-4 players | 2-4 hours | 13+ | hallornothingproductions.co.uk
T
he name’s a bit of a giveaway.
Gloom of Kilforth, be assured,
is not all sunshine, lollipops,
fairy dust and unicorns. A play
session in British independent
designer Tristan Hall’s lushly
detailed, card-based fantasy terrain
is more likely to yield pelting hail and
fierce storms than sunshine. And
if it did feature a unicorn, it would
probably be called the Horn-horse of
Agony or something.
Yes, it’s tough out there in Kilforth.
Those painterly terrain cards (each
impressively rendered by Polish
artist Ania Kryczkowska) might look
inviting in their randomly laid five-
by-five grid, but don’t let them fool
you. When you’re not encountering
hideous demon foes or trying not
to inhale the titular, life-leeching
miasma that creeps across the land
at the end of each day (by flipping an
indicated terrain card ‘Into Gloom’,
like Forbidden Island’s landscape-
depleting flood mechanism), you’ve
still got a wealth of quests, stranger
encounters and places to confront and
survive. Even the seemingly benign
Goodwife can nastily turn on you if
you rub her up the wrong way (via a
failed influence test).
This is a co-operative, explorative
race against time in which success
against the world-corrupting
Ancients (i.e. end-game bosses –
one per player) really does depend
093_gloomOfKilforthReview_v2 MJ.indd 93
GLOOM OF KILFORTH
on your questing heroes working
together as a tightly-knit unit,
spending action points wisely
on a wide range of options (hide,
confront, search, etc.) and being
prepared to bravely run away from
a fight. Though player-eliminating
permadeath can only occur once
those powerful big bads are on the
table for the end-game, losing all
your health presents a significant
setback. So each of you must be
utterly prepared to make sacrifices
for your fellow Kilforthers, while also
teasing out the most effective card
synergies through each extensive,
absorbing and occasionally
frustrating session.
Even so, Kilforth also works
well as a challenging solo
experience, especially as each
character, built from a combination
of eight D&D-ish classes and
races, has to choose and complete
a four-chapter saga by collecting
cards with specific keywords, then
levelling up via the application
of new skills with each chapter
completion before they can take on
those unpleasant demon-lords.
Be warned, though. It is a
very rule-y game, taking time to
settle into Hall’s terminology: the
difference between actions (which
require spending action points)
and deeds (which don’t), for
example, or rumours (unplayable
93
PLAYED
reward cards held in the hand) and
assets (rumours that have been
discovered in a specific location
so they can enter play as items,
allies, titles or spells). A seasoned
Gloom-head will have twigged that
a successfully confronted stranger
card can be instantly traded for
an ally card rather than taken into
your hand as a rumour, which is the IF YOU LIKE
surest way to earn, say, a shadow TALISMAN…
or pious keyword, but for the first TRY GLOOM
few sessions there will be a lot of OF KILFORTH
Though it’s a
flipping through the rulebook, co-operative card
squinting hard for clarification. game rather than
Even once you do get it all down, a roll-and-move
the box’s suggested playtime of 45 board game, Hall’s
debut feels like a
minutes per player seems crazily hardcore spiritual
conservative. Even a two-player successor to the
bout takes around three hours. Games Workshop
But, despite a little too much Magical Quest
Game classic.
dice-rolling for this player’s taste (the
presence of result-improving fate
tokens only slightly mitigating the
bad-roll rage), those long, sprawling,
fantasy-questing sessions always
left us craving more. It’s a gorgeous CONCLUSION
product and a worthy entrant into A brutal but
the burgeoning ‘RPG in a box’ rewarding gothic-
subgenre. Debut designer Hall’s fantasy co-op. Its
knotty rules take
passion and enthusiasm are evident a few sessions to
on every card. His sense of humour, fully absorb, but it
too; yes, there is a little levity amid all delivers a truly epic
that doom and Gloom. Kilforth may and exciting narrative
feel that’ll keep
have no unicorns, but it does have a drawing you back
dog ninja... ■ to its gorgeous-but-
DAN JOLIN deadly world.
22/09/2017 11:55
 PLAYED
Harness the power of nature in this rewarding co-op challenge
Greater Than | £79.99 | Co-op | 1-4 players | 90-120 minutes | Age: 13+ | greaterthangames.com
Y
ou’ve been the villains all
along. That’s the philosophy of
Spirit Island, flying in the face
of countless strategy games that see
players crusading through unknown
lands, subjugating natives in pursuit
of total geographical and cultural
domination – all in the name of glory.
Here, that perspective is flipped: the
invaders attempting to capture regions
and develop their civilisation from
scattered explorers to bustling towns
and cities are your foes.
The invaders spread across the island
like a plague in Pandemic, slaughtering
the indigenous Dahan people and
eventually blighting the land. The
only hope is the players’ pantheon
of natural spirits, titled with fittingly
grandiose names – Ocean’s Hungry
Grasp, Shadows Flicker Like Flames
and River Surges In Sunlight are among
the defenders – and wielding decks of
power cards that evoke the distinctive
personalities and fortes of the deities as
they help the Dahan to flee while scaring
off or even outright destroying the
explorers and their colonies. Building
up energy and letting loose with powers
094_095_spiritIslandReviewAndInterview_v2 MJ.indd 94
SPIRIT ISLAND
feels as impressive and formidable as
you’d hope controlling god-like deities
would be, helped along by ostentatious
titles such as ‘Sap the Strength of
Multitudes’ – a little over-the-top, sure,
but isn’t that exactly what you’d want?
Despite the spirits’ imposing solo
powers, the ubiquity of the invaders
means that working with your fellow
immortals is not only vital for victory but
also a lot of fun, as the timing-specific
execution of fast and slow powers and
simultaneous player turns throws open
the chance to pull off combos as one
god pushes invaders into the searing
flame pillar of another, or defends a
Dahan village while their fellow spirit
wipes out the menacing invaders.
As the spirits’ powers grow, neatly
reflected by the slow expansion of
players’ decks, so too does the fear they
instill in the attacking forces. Once
enough fear has been earned, the
spirits unleash frightening abilities that
drive back the unending tide of settlers,
helping to combat the aggressors’ own
growing efforts to claim the island. As
more and more fear cards are gained,
the spirits’ victory conditions eventually
become easier, instilling the roughly
two-hour game with a sense of
deep thematic progression
while helping to balance the
often punishing difficulty level.
That’s important, because the
invaders have their own sense of
advancement. Between spirits
deploying fast and slow powers,
as well as innate abilities that
harness their specific natural
forces, the explorers work their
way deeper into the island. There’s
94
BOX CONTENTS
◗ Invader board
◗ Four modular
island boards
◗ Eight spirit panels
◗ 36 Dahan tokens
◗ 20 cities miniatures
a compelling rhythm to the invader
◗ 32 town miniatures
phase as they explore, build towns and ◗ 40 explorer miniatures
cities, and finally devastate certain ◗ 38 blight tokens
regions in succession. This predictability ◗ 52 spirit
presence tokens
gives Spirit Island its gripping sense
◗ 12 single-turn
of desperation, as the spirits work effect markers
together to frantically deplete their ◗ 32 energy markers
foes in specific areas before they have a ◗ 20 fear markers
◗ Eight player aid cards
chance to bed in and strengthen their
◗ Four power
presence, eventually causing the blight progression cards
that weakens the spirits. ◗ 15 fear cards
How players tackle the threat varies ◗ Two terror level dividers
◗ Two blight cards
not only based on their choice of spirit
◗ 15 invader cards
and powers, but on the very geography ◗ 22 major power cards
itself. One of Spirit Island’s most ◗ 36 minor power cards
astonishing features is its modular board, ◗ 32 unique power cards
◗ Three adversary panels
comprised of four jagged sections that fit
◗ Three adversary
together to form the land. Only as many reminder tiles
sections as players are used, resulting in ◗ Four scenario panels
dramatically different landscapes and ◗ Rulebook
play styles. Although the standard board
is perfectly crafted for a tough but fair
experience (and is slightly easier to parse
visually), the reverse of each section IF YOU
displays a thematic variant that together LIKE MAGE
form the ‘canonical’ Spirit Island, KNIGHT… TRY
SPIRIT ISLAND
favouring narrative and atmosphere over Enjoy a healthy
an even-handed challenge. (There’s a splash of theme
significant lore section in the manual and fulfilling sense
that cements the background world.) of progression
mixed in with your
It won’t be for everyone, yet the option deckbuilding and
to forgo fully balanced gameplay for a complex strategy?
more atmospheric experience in this Here’s one for you.
way is something from which more
games should take inspiration.
In a similar vein are the optional
adversaries and scenarios, which
grant ‘real’ identities and nationalities
to the invading forces, introducing
extra gameplay concepts and the need
for tighter strategy based on alternate-
history reimaginings of England,
Sweden and Brandenburg-Prussia. CONCLUSION
Each also has an escalating difficulty Every aspect of Spirit
level, which can be combined (with Island exudes depth,
whether it’s the
the help of a handy table in the book)
subversion of traditional
to present ten different challenges for strategy game tropes
each of the adversaries – which is to or the excellent co-
say nothing of the variability of the op combination of
deckbuilding and area
differently-talented spirits.
control. The lore and
Spirit Island has it all: a deep and theme are genuinely
meaningful theme, complex and interesting, with the
interesting gameplay, and a look that superb visuals and
lavish naming of spirits
ties everything up in a truly magnificent
and powers delivering
package. Be ready to devote yourself. ■ the mighty feel of
MATT JARVIS power you’d wish for.
22/09/2017 11:56
 THE SPIRIT OF…
Spirit Island creator R. Eric Reuss looks back on the various
stages of carefully crafting his fabulous board game
Interview by Matt Jarvis

…INSPIRATION The response was startlingly do so as well. I remain faintly startled

The question struck me, hard, amidst
a game of Goa or Endeavor: We’re
colonising this foreign land. Where are
the people who already lived there?
They’d been abstracted away. They
weren’t represented in the reality of
the game.
It’s no secret there are many board
games themed around European
“I wanted
exploration. Some are explicitly
colonial, while others focus on trading,
the setting
economics or building. I’d never
thought until then of how few games
to have a
are about resisting colonisation. The
idea lodged in my brain and started
realistic
communing with prior musings I’d had
about a deep, simultaneous-play co-op.
indigenous
positive. Not just “This has promise,”
but, “This was loads of fun and I want
to play it again, and let me go drag my
friends over to try it out.” I test a lot of
prototypes, and it’s unusual for a game
in this early, super-crude stage to get
that kind of reaction, even with friends.
It was a clear sign to focus on this one.
…RESEARCH
Spirit Island had three big questions
to research.
“What historical powers founded
colonies, and how did they do it?”:
I wanted players to be able to battle
against powers like England or France,
making them mechanically distinctive
that it managed to go even this low
grade of viral, given how much of a beast
the print-and-play version was to put
together; I salute all those testers and
inquisitive folk who’ve assembled even
one copy, let alone kept it up-to-date
through changes over the years. There is
a certain irony in the amount of paper I
went through prototyping a game about
not despoiling the wilderness. Thank
goodness for recycling.
…PUBLICATION
At Origins 2012, I was demoing Spirit
Island. One person who wandered by
to ask questions was a long-haired,
bearded fellow brimming with energy,

…PLAYTESTING
culture, in historically appropriate ways. I
found useful information... and that the
I noodled around with the idea on my
own, iterating rapidly with scrawled
but one all ‘send lots of people to settle’ model of
colonisation wasn’t the only one!
and simple prototypes of core systems
– nothing resembling an entire game
its own.” “What features are found in tropical
islands across the world?”: To struggle
as of yet – then fortified myself with against different powers, details of the
the enthusiasm of friends and spent setting shouldn’t pin it to a particular
days brainstorming page upon page part of the world or time period. For
of ways a nature spirit could thwart a instance, pineapples are a widespread
colonising force. tropical crop today, but the only
My first tests with other people islands they grew on prior to the
were at a local convention. I Age of Exploration were likely in
sought out friends to play, the Caribbean.
knowing how incredibly “What cultural details
rough the game are common in tropical
was: an arbitrary island societies across the
collection of world?”: I wanted the setting
powers, some to have a realistic indigenous
best-guess maps culture, but one all its own rather than
and the core appropriating details from particular
methods by real-life peoples. Fortunately, I was able
which the to locate some books on specific topics
colonists across wide areas, because making a
spread out deep study of thousands of individual
and hurt cultures would have taken a lifetime! I
the land. probably did as much research for the
Dahan as for everything else combined.
■ Spirit Island
may be fictional, …ITERATION
but it was “The more iterations the better” is a
inspired good rule of thumb in game design.
by real Fortunately, not only had several
places. friends put together testing copies of
Spirit Island
Island, but people they played
with contacted me to ask if they could
who became increasingly enthusiastic
about the game the more he heard.
This turned out to be Christopher
Badell of Greater Than Games, and by
the end of the con he said he wanted to
see the game published – perhaps with
Greater Than Games if they proved
the right fit, or with someone else if
they were better – so long as he could
play it! It wasn’t any sort of formal
commitment, but it was enheartening.
One month later, my first child was
born, and my design pace slowed
waaaay down. Still, by Origins 2013 I felt
ready to start pitching Spirit Island to
publishers. I was – foolishly! – overly shy
about setting up meetings beforehand,
so was limited to publishers who could
make the time for an impromptu look.
Christopher, however, had
contacted me a month or two prior,
and Greater Than Games was one of
the first two publishers I met with.
They were very enthusiastic and, after
a long conversation, I felt they’d be
able to do an excellent job.
…REVELATION
Becoming a parent while working on
Spirit Island limited my game-design
hours, stretching the process out over
multiple years. While this could be
frustrating, it also proved invaluable:
the extra-long baking time gave areas
for improvement the chance to rise to
the surface. ■

95

094_095_spiritIslandReviewAndInterview_v2 MJ.indd 95 25/09/2017 11:51

 PLAYED
BEARS VS BABIES
Build monsters to tackle the infant threat in this comedic card game
Bear Food | £29 | Hand management | 2-5 players
20 minutes | Age: 10+ | bearsvsbabies.com
B
ears vs Babies is covered in
fur. Thick, luxuriant faux
fur that covers almost the
entirety of its packaging. You’ll
end up stroking it, it’s inevitable.
As with the meowing packet of its
creators’ enormous debut party hit,
Exploding Kittens, this is a box that
knows how to make an introduction.
Unfortunately, Bears vs Babies turns
out to be all fur and no stuffing.
At first, it seems there's a slightly
deeper card management game here
than in Exploding Kittens' 'Russian
roulette but with cards' premise.
Players place down cards to stitch
together Frankenstein creations from
a mixture of animals, machines and
indiscriminate bits of don’t-think-
about-it-too-hard. Each starts with a
head – be it a shark, mantis shrimp or
uni-pug – and can gain a torso, arms
and legs, plus tools, building up their
strength using a very simple system
where each additional card increases
the creatures’ overall strength or
096_bearsVsBabiesReview_v2 MJ.indd 96
BOX CONTENTS – more rarely – adds a special ability.
◗ 107 cards The illustrations of Matthew
◗ Playmat
◗ FAQ sheet ‘The Oatmeal’ Inman are fittingly
◗ Rulebook icky and giggle-inducing in equal
measure, especially when it comes
to the growing armies of babies in
the centre of the table, which form
an absurd force of flabby and wide-
eyed horrors. It’s hard to forget the
Portuguese man o’baby or the surreal
fake baby made of a watermelon with
cutlery limbs as they prepare to do
battle across land, sea and sky.
Unlike Exploding Kittens, which
began as a generic card game before
being clad in its now iconic feline
dressing, Inman and his co-creator
■ Top: Players build Elan Lee originally came up the
their monsters from a design for Bears vs Babies based on
variety of amusing body Inman’s illustrations. It shows – it
parts, but there's little
impact on the gameplay. doesn’t take long for the humour to
lose its sheen, revealing the flimsy
gameplay beneath.
IF YOU LIKE EXPLODING KITTENS… TRY BEARS VS BABIES
Matthew Inman’s distinctive humour lies at the heart of these easy-going card games.
96
There's just not enough to stop going
on to stop the game's otherwise sound
concept of building funny monsters
from coming apart at the stitches. Past
an initial titter at some of the cards,
the game is all but devoid of laughs as
players yawningly either draw cards
or add one or two appendages to a
creation each turn. With so few of the
cards having a distinct power beyond
extra strength, it's a lifeless affair as
you bide your time before provoking
one of the facedown piles of babies
in the middle. Win or lose, all players’
monsters are sacrificed, meaning it
can be beneficial to send a force of
infants at your unprepared rivals and
claim the points – and frustrating
to have to slowly rebuild your army
from scratch if you’re wiped out.
The limited pool of actions is
too restricted to offer meaningful
decisions, while the languorous
pace means means Bears vs Babies
never gets close to the frantic speed
of Exploding Kittens, a shallow game
that nevertheless thrived on the fact
it never outstayed its short welcome.
There’s not enough strategy to make
the placement of monster parts work
in a satisfying way, resulting in an
outcome still largely dictated by luck
of the draw – a weakness highlighted
by the ability to pick up a specific card
from the discard pile, which comes
across as a tacked-on solution rather
than a meaningful gameplay element.
The comic elements end up straining
too hard to prop up the lacking
gameplay, scattering too widely
compared to the feline-focused jokes
of Kittens to hit with enough force.
Both Bears vs Babies’ hairy
packaging and quirky personality
quickly begin to moult, leaving
behind a bare card game that feels
like a stitched-together experiment
rather than a loveable oddity. ■
MATT JARVIS
CONCLUSION
The artwork is amusing for a few
minutes and the concept at its heart
might seem fun, yet Bears vs Babies
falls flat on its face when it comes to
gameplay – despite the efforts to bump
up the complexity from Exploding
Kittens. It’s a disappointment through
and through.
25/09/2017 10:08
 13 MINUTES: THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
Ultra Pro/Jolly Roger | £8.99 | Area control | 2 players | 13 minutes | Age: 10+ | ultrapro.com
T
he Cold War has inspired
plenty of complex, sprawling
board games that rate as
among the best the tabletop has
to offer. 13 Minutes needs only 13
Osprey | £21.99 | Co-op | 1-5 players | 30-50 minutes | Age: 14+ | ospreypublishing.com/the-lost-expedition
F
ew games manage to capture
the mystery, beauty and danger
of the jungle as evocatively
as The Lost Expedition. Inspired
by Percy Fawcett’s infamous
disappearance in the Amazon while
searching for the so-called ‘Lost
City of Z’ – a gripping tale recently
brought to the cinema screen –
designer Peer Sylvester translates the
innumerable threats and discoveries
of the rainforest to a deck of cards
stunningly illustrated by comic artist
Garen Ewing.
The main game mode (a
competitive variant is included)
097_13MinutesAndLostExpeditionReviews_v2 MJ.indd 97
cards, 13 minutes and two people to
present something just as gripping
and enjoyable.
The meat of the game is in
deciding which of the two cards in
your hand to play in front of you
each round. The Love Letter-like
flow is as easy and quick to pick up
and play as it sounds, but the genius
of 13 Minutes is in making such a
simple decision surprisingly tense
and meaningful.
Cards can either be played for
their face action (if it matches
your country, or the neutral UN)
or to place or remove cubes from
a territory, which shifts the cards
towards or away each player’s
personal sphere of influence. The
thing is, your rival has the option to
■ 13 Minutes cleverly execute any actions on cards you
distils the tension of the play that match their flag, Twilight
Cold War into a handful
of cards and cubes. Struggle-style, resulting in a careful
tightrope walk of handing as few
opportunities to them as possible
THE LOST EXPEDITION
involves laying down cards one at
a time to represent the morning
and evening journeys of three
adventurers. The first round
rearranges the numbered cards
into ascending order, while
the second keeps them in the
order they are played, subtly
but notably altering the strategy
required each turn – especially
when playing multiplayer, as
companions can’t discuss their
hand. The group then travels
from card to card, spending or
gaining food, ammunition and
health as required to progress. ■ The game is based
Forward planning on the real-life search
for the Lost City of Z.
is a must to keep
the explorers alive
as long as possible
– ultimately trying
to advance along
nine stage cards
that symbolise the
hunt for ‘Z’.
Each card often
presents a simple but
97
while increasing your influence in
the steadily increasing number of
shifting territories.
Having too many cards in front of
you can be risky, as after five rounds
scores are calculated based on
the total number of territories and
military strength controlled, with
draws settled by the location of cards.
In the game’s greatest twist, players
then compare the one card left in
their hands – if they match symbol
colour, they’re placed in front of their
owners, which can trigger instant
nuclear war and a devastating (but
not uncommon) loss.
It’s thrillingly tense, strategic
without being overwhelming and
it all sets up, plays and packs away
in the titular time – or even half of
that once you have a couple of duels
under your belt. Six-and-a-Half
Minutes just probably wasn’t as
catchy a title. ■
MATT JARVIS
difficult decision – for example,
spend food to gain expertise in
a particular skill or lose health
to move closer to the city. Some
actions are compulsory, many
decisions necessary but a few
choices optional, opening up a
variability and presence of skill
to counterbalance the luck of
drawing cards. The gameplay
events thematically mirror the
incidents occurring on the cards,
sucking you into the atmosphere
like a boggy swamp and getting
under your skin like worms. Oh,
god, the worms.
The Lost Expedition is a gorgeous
set through-and-through, yet backs
up its looks with gripping and
meaningful cardplay. It plays best
with smaller groups and is an ideal
solo experience, with the co-op
campaign the main draw but the
head-to-head mode an interesting
inclusion. Venture into its depths and
enjoy getting lost. ■
MATT JARVIS
22/09/2017 12:06
 @mutantdicegames
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• Tel: 01708 475051 • Email: tolehavenuk@aol.com
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p098.indd 1 19/09/2017 12:37


Knizia’s classic returns in a set you’ll want to hang on your wall
CMON | £29.99 | Bidding/auction | 3-5 players | 60 minutes | Age: 14+ | cmon.com/product/modern-art
D
espite being a game about
bidding on paintings you’d want
to display in a gallery, Reiner
Knizia’s Modern Art has become
notorious for its various unsightly
editions over the last 25 years. CMON’s
long-awaited re-issue of the first entry
in the designer's auction trilogy (which
also includes Medici and Ra) finally
does justice to the game’s hugely
entertaining gameplay with a striking
set featuring the works of four real-life
modern artists displayed on gorgeous
oversized cards, putting forward a
collection you wouldn’t be ashamed to
see framed in your own living room.
For some, the switch to genuinely
good illustrations will detract from
the amusement of seeing the value of
disgusting pictures rise as each artist’s
work becomes the most popular under
the hammer. Whether you’re after an
ironic showdown or a more earnest
battle to sign real talent, Modern Art’s
stripped-back auction setup shines
through above all.
Each painting dictates the style of
auction held, ranging from hidden
bids and single chances to see off your
rival collectors to classic last-one-
standing and fixed-price sales – plus
the chance to nab two paintings at
once in precious bundled deals. The
constant shifting of strategy required to
outbid your fellow curators means that
things stay unpredictable and amusing
throughout, especially as artists begin
099_modernArtReview_v2 MJ.indd 99
MODERN ART
to grow in standing over the course
of the four rounds, leading to tactical
auctions to bump up or undermine the
value of paintings.
There’s very little chaff to cut out of
Modern Art – in many ways, this is the
ultimate auction game. Other than the
varying worth of paintings, there are
BOX CONTENTS simply no other underlying mechanics
◗ Game board to distract from the clean joy of swiping
◗ 70 painting cards
a hotly-contested painting through
◗ Five museum screens
◗ 12 artist value tokens tactical bidding, fast-talking diplomacy
◗ 132 money tokens or even sheer dumb luck.
◗ Hammer token With so little needed to improve
◗ Rulebook
the way the game actually plays, the
new edition has only added to the
presentation, pushing the delightful
entertainment factor of the bidding
format. Each player stashes stacks
of satisfyingly chunky money tokens
behind their screen, with the folded
walls decorated to represent a gallery
from around the world – London Art,
the Sao Paulo Museum, New York Art
and so on. The rules in the manual take
up just a few sides, with the majority
of the 20-plus-page book dedicated
to bibliographies and examples of
the work of Ramon Martins, Manuel
Carvalha, Sigrid Thaler and Daniel
Melim – a definitive statement that this
is a set that has been put together with
the utmost thought and care. Sure,
IF YOU LIKE MASTERS GALLERY… TRY MODERN ART
After decades plagued by ugly editions, this new version of the beloved auction
game can finally hold a candle to the classic beauty of its spiritual spin-off.
99
PLAYED
the box could be smaller if you shrunk
down the rulebook and screens, but
that would go against the feeling that
Modern Art is finally a game to display
proudly in your collection, instead
of having to explain ‘it’s better than it
looks’ to every newcomer.
The changes made are ultimately
small tweaks, but they matter; this is a
box that oozes pleasure and fun from
the bespectacled eyes staring out from
the centre of an explosion on the box
cover downwards. Did we mention
that the player marker is a hammer
you can bang on the table at the end of
every auction? Well, it is, and banging
it on the table never ceases to be as
entertaining as it sounds.
A quarter of a century on, Modern
Art continues to prove that it’s the
gold standard of auction games. This
latest makeover might finally bring
the visuals into the 21st century, but
it’s also a reminder that Modern Art’s
gameplay remains timeless. ■
MATT JARVIS
CONCLUSION
Delightfully silly and yet utterly earnest at
the same time, Modern Art’s resurrection
is a joyous return for a classic long in
need of a new look, allowing the simple
auction setup to sparkle brighter than ever
thanks to the excellent presentation.
22/09/2017 12:06
 PLAYED
There’s no need to curse bad throws in this dice-rolling wonder
Brotherwise | £34.99 | Dice placement | 2-4 players | 25-50 minutes | Age: 8+ | brotherwisegames.com
U
nearth may well be one of
the most satisfying gaming
surprises of the year. It’s a
stylish, easy-going dice-placement
game that polishes a dependence on
randomness to a glimmering sheen.
From the box lid down, it’s hard not
to be sucked in by the clean and elegant
look of every aspect. Boasting isometric
landscapes to rival mobile games such
as Monument Valley backed by stark
2D artwork, the cards themselves vary
between tarot, standard and mini sizes,
providing a pleasing array of shapes
when laid out. Simply, it just looks good.
Video game players are likely to be
particular enamored – there’s more
than a hint of Minecraft in the blocky
stone hex tokens – but unlike previous
Brotherwise hit Boss Monster the visuals
aren’t here just to cash in on popularity
and nostalgia. The isometric style
complements the polyhedral forms and
angled faces of the dice perfectly, giving
the sense of a cohesive and unified
world to the deliberately fleeting
narrative involving tribes of mystical
Delvers seeking to rebuild their lost
empire from ruins and wonders.
Doing so is simple, as players roll
one die a turn and place it on one of
five ruins in the middle. Each player
is aiming to collect sets of cards that
either match their hidden colour or
form a complete run of all the suits
(which are worth far less). There’s
more, though: ruins aren’t claimed
by the highest roller until a total
100_101_unearthReviewAndInterview_v2 MJ.indd 100
UNEARTH
value is exceeded by the results of all
the dice on that card, meaning there’s
the opportunity to ‘outbid’ a rival by
re-rolling or adding extra dice, often by
deploying the power of Delver cards
gained when an opponent claims a
ruins your dice are sat on.
There’s an exhilarating sense of
tension as you roll to swipe a vital card
but, unlike so many dice games, very
little of the frustration from duff throws.
BOX CONTENTS To thank is the second half of Unearth:
◗ Four sets of five you see, this isn’t just a dice-placement
polyhedral dice
◗ 25 tarot-sized
game, it’s also a tile-placement game.
ruins cards Rolling low on a die is unlikely to win you
◗ Five tarot-sized ruins, but will potentially claim a stone
End of Age cards hex, that can then be arranged in front
◗ 38 mini Delver cards
◗ 15 named
of that player. Form a hexagon from a
wonder hexes certain combination of tiles and you’ll
◗ 10 lesser wonder be able to claim a wonder, offering up
tokens and card bonus points or, in the case of one-off
◗ Six greater wonder
tokens and card
named wonders, ongoing powers to help
◗ 60 hexagonal catch up with players by manipulating
stone tokens the luck of the die. Rewarding low rolls
◗ Cloth stone is a fantastic way of adjusting for luck
tokens bag
◗ Four player
without feeling out of place, and the
reference cards random selection of wonders means
◗ Rulebook there’s plenty of variety between games.
In a refreshing break from games
packed with dozens of d6s, players
have the choice between a four-sided
dice, eight-sided die and three
six-sided dice. This is a small but
significant point as you try to game
IF YOU LIKE MACHI KORO… TRY UNEARTH
Dare we say that we’ve found a easy-going dice-roller with an even better visual
style and absorbing gameplay than the charming Japanese favourite?
100
the odds in your favour; the lower-
value dice up your chances of landing
a stone, while the d8 is perfect when
going for broke on a high-value ruins.
Once a die is placed, it’s down for
good until those ruins are claimed or a
player runs out of dice and is forced to
start re-rolling those already on cards.
This makes choosing when to roll
which die and where to place it vital
to maximising your income of stones
and ruins, expanding the strategy of
Unearth without overcomplicating the
incredibly straightforward turn-to-turn
decisions. The entire game is packed
with clever decisions like this that keep
it easy to understand and smooth to
play without ever causing things to feel
repetitive, weightless or boring.
Unearth is a light game, but by no
means is it a shallow one. There’s plenty
here to dig into and enjoy when it comes
to interesting choices and strategy – the
stunning presentation is just a bonus. ■
MATT JARVIS
CONCLUSION
Unearth finds clever ways of making
its simple concept deeper than you’d
expect, without losing the smooth
turn-to-turn flow that makes it such a
pleasure to play. If you let its gorgeous
look pull you in, you’ll soon find yourself
sinking into its seriously satisfying dice
rolling with no regrets.
25/09/2017 10:10

Boss Monster co-creator and Brotherwise co-founder Chris O’Neal discusses
moving on from their retro video game-inspired debut with dice-roller Unearth
Unearth is your first new game
since Boss Monster, and your
second-ever original title. How do
the games compare?
Unearth is going to feel very
comfortable for fans of Boss Monster.
Like Boss Monster, it’s a lighter game
at first glance, but with a fair bit of
strategic decision-making underneath.
We try to make games that bring
everyone to the table, so we really wanted
Unearth to be a game you could play
with your non-gamer friends as much
as hardcore gamers. But beyond that
initial feel and comfort zone, Unearth is
a radically different game. The theme is
different. The emotion is different. And
the gameplay is very different. Whereas
Boss Monster was about balancing
attractiveness and deadliness in your
dungeon, Unearth is about bending
your luck to stay flexible in an ever-
changing competition for ruin cards.
What did you learn from making
Boss Monster that you kept in
mind while making Unearth?
For the past four years we’ve really
been learning how this industry works.
Boss Monster was a surprise success for
us as much as our fans, and we were
really flying by the seat of our pants for
a while. That’s one of the reasons we
went so long between titles. We knew
our second game had to be outstanding
to live up to the expectations that Boss
Monster had created.
Unearth was designed by Jason
Harner and Matthew Random,
rather than yourself and your
brother – Boss Monster co-creator
Johnny. What was it like working
with outside designers?
It was great, but mostly because Jason
and Matt are so great. The presentation
prototype that Jason and Matt showed
us instantly got our attention. We knew
the core mechanics were solid, but we
also had a vision for theme and look that
was a fair departure from what they were
proposing. Fortunately, they were willing
to let us run with the look we wanted.
We learned the importance of trust
in a designer-publisher relationship.
100_101_unearthReviewAndInterview_v2 MJ.indd 101
OH BROTHER
Interview by Matt Jarvis
They trusted us when we asked to re-
theme the game, and we trusted them
when they said no to some of our
gameplay suggestions.
Can we expect more games by
designers from outside Brotherwise?
I think I have to say, yes. Jason and
Matt are so great to work with, and
they’ve sort of busted the internal myth
I had created that we needed to do it
all ourselves to maintain the integrity
of our games. The reality is there are so
many great designers out there waiting
to be discovered; we’d be silly not to try
and find them and partner with them.
Boss Monster was inspired by
8-bit retro video games. Unearth
has a very different look, but is still
highly reminiscent of digital games,
particularly those on mobile. Was
this a deliberate choice?
The art choice was very deliberate,
and one we knew we wanted early on.
We’re big fans of isometric vector-
based games like Monument Valley and
Back to Bed but, more importantly, we
wanted an art style that would convey
the sense of melancholy that we were
looking for in this game.
Boss Monster taught us the power of
emotion in gaming. In Boss Monster’s
Monster
case, it was nostalgia. For Unearth, we
wanted players to start the game feeling
subdued, and even a little mournful as
they try to recover what was lost long ago.
Boss Monster was a card
game, pure and simple, while
Unearth introduces dice-rolling
mechanics. Is there another
gameplay style you’re interested
to explore in the future?
We don’t have a hit list of genres
we’d like to tackle, even though our
own gaming tastes run pretty wide.
Ultimately, we’re
more interested in the
approachability of a game.
We try to make games that
everyone can play, not
just gamers. That provides
a lot of opportunities,
but it does also introduce
101
some constraints. I think it’s unlikely
that Brotherwise will ever put out a
miniatures-heavy wargame, for example.
Boss Monster received a number
of expansions, plus a sequel. What
are your plans to support Unearth?
The initial buzz on Unearth is looking
really good, and we’ve already asked
“Boss Jason and Matt to get to work on a five-
to six-player expansion for the game.
Monster I can’t promise the number of
sequels for Unearth that Boss Monster
taught has, but we do think there’s a lot of
unexplored play space in the game.
us the
Do you have any more plans for
power of the Boss Monster series, or is this
Brotherwise moving on?
emotion Brotherwise is definitely moving on
to more titles and a bigger vision of
in our company, but that doesn’t mean
we’re leaving Boss Monster behind.
gaming.” Our current production schedule has
Boss Monster 3 launching in 2018,
and we’re tentatively planning a kids’
version: Boss Monster Junior!
What’s next for you as a designer?
During some time between Johnny’s toy
industry jobs, he and I designed some
new games with a lot of potential. One of
those games is now in final playtesting
and moving on to graphic design. We’ll
■ Unearth's art style
be announcing it with a Kickstarter
is designed to convey
the melancholy this fall, and we think it’s
of its world. destined for success. ■
22/09/2017 12:07
 PLAYED

CAVERNA: CAVE VS CAVE

We dig this two-player variant of Uwe Rosenberg’s dwarven hit
Mayfair | £27.99 | Action selection | 1-2 players | 20-40 minutes | Age: 12+ | mayfairgames.com

BOX CONTENTS That said, Rosenberg has adapted

◗ Action board the placement of rooms to introduce a
◗ 12 action tiles new tile arrangement dynamic to Cave
◗ 24 room tiles
◗ 12 goods indicators vs Cave. Furnishing vacant caverns can
◗ Additional cavern tile often be a tricky affair, with specific
◗ Seven walls wall placements required for many of
◗ Four action markers the higher-scoring chambers. Putting
◗ Starting player tile
◗ Two cave boards up walls in the right places – and, more
◗ Rulebook importantly, quicker than your rival – is
key to maximising your score but, with
a limited number of barriers, it’s just
as important to pull down used walls,
pocket the materials and hope to erect a
new partition on your next turn.
Carefully managing resources is a must
in order to keep quarrying deeper into
the hillside. While rooms cost a variety
of goods, you’ll find yourself commonly
trading most of them for food as the price
of furnishing a room increases during the
game. Stash that gold, though, as each
nugget is an extra point. This becomes
especially vital during the notable single-
player game, a great variant-on-a-variant
that happily involves trying to reach a
specific high score instead of aimlessly
collecting as many points as possible,
and features a rule set not too dissimilar

A
s he previously did with
farming masterpiece
Agricola, Uwe Rosenberg has
pared down one of his celebrated
worker placement Eurogames to
a pacey two-player version. This
time around, it’s Agricola spiritual
successor Caverna: The Cave Farmers.
Caverna: Cave vs Cave sticks close
to the mountain-mining setup of that
game, pitting two clans of dwarves
against each other in a race to build the
finest underground abode around.
Cave vs Cave does away with the
distraction of external forestry and
animal breeding, limiting the action to
two individual cave boards that must
be excavated and then filled with a
variety of rooms to earn renown by
the end of eight rounds. This makes
the game an easier beast to learn and
teach, compressing the tension down
to a relatively brisk 40 minutes as
players battle to collect resources and
build rooms before their opponent.
There’s a growing momentum
over the course of each game, as the
pool of useable abilities and number
of actions available to each player
gradually increases with each turn
– constructed rooms can also be
activated for bonus skills.
The room and action tiles are semi-
randomised, yet the game remains a
strategic Euro at heart; this is a worker
placement in all but components,
with the back-and-forth selection
of actions where the meat of the
showdown lies as each player denies
their rival certain abilities and swipes
rooms from the shared central stock.
While the theme of the cave-
farming dwarves lives on in the
exploration and expansion of the
internal habitat, the reduced scope
of the game means that it’s not quite
as immersive as its bigger sibling.
Similarly, while digging into your
mountain home square by square
can be engrossing, there’s quite
not as great a feeling of progression
– you’ll find no chance for crop
harvesting or breeding of animals (or
dwarves, for that matter) here.
from the head-to-head main mode.
Given how little is in the box for Cave
vs Cave (the creators even found room
to include alternate resource tokens if
you find the wooden tokens a little too
big), the dinky Caverna variant manages
to pack a whole lot of Eurogame
IF YOU LIKE punch. It’s not the deep, immersive
AGRICOLA: ALL epic of its namesake, but it’s far from
CREATURES BIG a watered-down hack job, either. It’s a
AND SMALL…
TRY CAVERNA: wonderful, strategic game in its own
CAVE VS CAVE right, with enough of that distinctive
Uwe Rosenberg Caverna Rosenbergness, combined
continues to with some unique tweaks, to please
produce excellent
two-player fans looking for a faster, travel-friendly
versions of his version, while also being thinned-out
complex titles that enough to attract those for whom the
play in a fraction heavy original is too rich a taste. ■
of the time, but are
just as rewarding. MATT JARVIS
CONCLUSION
By trimming away the more drawn-out
and complex parts of its predecessor,
Cave vs Cave ends up delivering a
strategic game that stands alone but
maintains enough of Caverna’s excellent
thinky decision-making to be a rich and
fulfilling experience – all in under an hour.

102

102_cavernaCaveVCaveReview_v2 MJ.indd 102 25/09/2017 10:42


DEADLINE
Crack cases in smoky 1930s New York in this co-op puzzler
WizKids | £44.99 | Deduction | 2-4 players | 45 minutes | Age: 14+ | wizkids.com
F
rom the pulp magazine cover
of its box down, Deadline is in
love with noir. Its detectives
are thinly-veiled homages to iconic
hardboiled writers such as Raymond
Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, its
cards feature literal symbols of the
genre – cigarettes, whiskey, bundles
of cash, revolvers and fedoras – and
its 'plot twist' events play off of classic
crime-fiction tropes, with skeletons
in the closet, threatening phone calls
and being tailed all part of the drama
hindering players in their efforts to
solve each of 12 unique cases.
The reason Deadline works quite
so well is because it is absolutely
aware of its roots. There are echoes of
the more exposition-heavy Sherlock
Holmes: Consulting Detective model
in the need to gather information
and answer a series of questions
at the conclusion of each mystery,
but Deadline deftly condenses the
process from Consulting Detective’s
endless paragraphs of text into a
series of concise clue cards. Each
burst of writing is enjoyable – it
occasionally becomes a little too
noir-by-numbers, but remains
solid enough to keep each mystery
103_deadlineReview_v2 MJ.indd 103
intriguing throughout the relatively
breezy sub-hour play time.
With a unique deck for each case,
these clue cards drive the thrust of
each story, yet they’re not the core
of the game. Rather than simply
picking a place and reading the
linked narrative, players must unlock
a selected clue by laying down lead
cards from their hand to achieve a
specific combination of symbols.
Cards must overlap and match
previously-played symbols – with
players unable to discuss specific
cards in their hand, a mixture of luck
and thoughtful placement is needed
to access each location and progress
the story. It’s a straightforward and
breezy setup that ends up bringing
a more active ‘gamey’ feeling to the
background deduction, balancing the
slightly less challenging conundrums
to make it far quicker and less intense
than Consulting Detective.
This also means some of the thick
atmosphere of Consulting Detective
is sacrificed for a more guided and
streamlined style of storytelling.
As the narrative is restricted to the
back of cards there are far fewer red
herrings to end up chasing, and no
103
need for a notebook crammed with
incidental details and questionable
evidence. All the information you
need is on the clue cards, which can
be referred back to once revealed,
making it far easier to keep track
of what’s important and reducing
the common frustration of illogical
logical leaps.
While the clue cards for each case
are unique, the symbols on the lead
cards are used for every scenario,
making them feel quickly repetitive
– a sentiment reinforced by the
disposable generic flavour text on
each. As they’re just the oil allowing
the narrative cogs to turn smoothly,
it’s not a major problem, but it does
detract a little from the atmosphere
of 1930s New York City.
While Deadline is not a particularly
tough or mechanically deep game – in
fact, it's best approached as a light
storytelling experience – there is a
gentle sense of pressure applied by the
ability to fail clue cards, forcing players
to suffer the negative effects of plot
twists and eventually start losing access
to clues – risking the inability to fully
crack the case. It keeps the tension up
without being punishing, a thankful
decision given the reliance on drawing
certain cards. The constant momentum
means it’s impossible to find yourself
stuck at a dead end, something that
hardcore sleuths may find slightly
disappointing but everyone else
should breathe a sigh of relief at.
For once, you should absolutely
judge a game by its cover. If Sherlock
Holmes: Consulting Detective is a
BOX CONTENTS verbose crime novel, Deadline is a
◗ Eight detective cards pulpy magazine: fast, easy, a little
◗ Three bullet tokens
silly and enjoyable to the last twist. ■
◗ Four hot tip tokens
◗ 45 lead cards MATT JARVIS
◗ 20 plot twist cards
◗ 12 case decks
◗ Detective badge CONCLUSION
◗ Case book Deadline has enough intrigue and
◗ Case questions book tension to hold together as an engaging
◗ Solution book mystery, introducing light cardplay and
◗ Rulebook the right level of guided storytelling to
feel satisfying without being completely
throwaway. It’s a joyful celebration of
crime fiction wrapped up in an enjoyable
and accessible game.
IF YOU LIKE WATSON & HOLMES…
TRY DEADLINE
Both games owe a debt to Consulting
Detective, but Deadline sticks with a
co-op setup versus the competitive
action of Watson & Holmes.
22/09/2017 12:10
 The Premier Gaming Store
Is there
Boardgames

www.UpToFourPlayers.com
anything we need for
gaming that they don’t Cardgames
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about the sequel to their tabletop masterpiece

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Words by Matt Jarvis
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p104.indd 1 22/09/2017 09:06


THE NETWORKS
Binge on this satirical card game about running your own TV station
Formal Ferret | £49.99 | Drafting | 1-5 players | 60-90 minutes | Age: 13+ | networksgame.tv
W
hen Netflix finally kills
television, it’ll be the feeling of
discovery that we’ll perhaps
miss most: that exciting moment during
channel-surfing when something
unexpected flashes up, managing to
somehow hold your attention for the
next half-hour or so. Or maybe the real
loss will be the comforting monotony
of trash TV: the home video clip
shows, absurd game shows and top
100 countdowns that raise groans for
a few minutes before sucking you into
their mundane drama and padded-
out exposition. The Networks respects
the difficulty involved in holding the
attention of millions as much as it mocks
what those millions find so engrossing,
and it makes for a card game worth
breaking out instead of watching Cats
Lick The Funniest Things again.
The satirical humour of the shows,
ads and stars on the cards is judged
well, the tongue-in-cheek titles and
artwork landing squarely on the nose
without punching you in the face and
giving you a headache. There are general
spoofs of trash TV and reality shows,
105_theNetworksReview_v2 MJ.indd 105
BOX CONTENTS plus the scattering of more direct topical
◗ 55 show cards references you’d expect: The Walking
◗ 48 star cards Dead, Breaking Bad, Dexter and more all
◗ 42 ad cards
◗ 62 network cards get their due. Some veer into distinctly
◗ Seven scoring American territory, but most are
track boards universally well-known enough to raise
◗ Five player boards some laughs from a British audience –
◗ Five wooden
scoring squares Doctor What is a fond favourite of ours.
◗ Five wooden turn Even funnier are the stars, which
order discs parody broader archetypes rather than
◗ 20 black specific celebrities and therefore dodge
wooden cubes
◗ Five 100/200-viewer the risk of aging very poorly, very
tokens quickly. You’ll be hiring performers
◗ 300-viewer token such as Shakespearian Trained Actor,
◗ 100 money chips Versatile Sci-Fi Actor and Sultry, Sexy
◗ Season marker
◗ Rulebook Lead as you try to pull in more and
more viewers, although the talent will
pick up a sizeable paycheck, too.
As with any comedy, the gags don’t
shine quite as brightly on subsequent
playthroughs yet, as they’re merely the
lighthearted dressing drizzled on the
delicious main course of the gameplay,
the flavour never begins to sour.
IF YOU LIKE HOLLYWOOD… TRY THE NETWORKS
The Networks offers an insightful look at how the magic of the small screen comes
together by using clever card drafting gameplay and a biting sense of satire.
105
PLAYED
Networks greatest achievement
The Networks’
is how deftly it captures the feeling
of swimming against a tide in the
business of television. Viewers will tune
in for the first season of your three shows,
with programmes sometimes pulling in
a few extra millions of eyeballs if they’re
broadcast correctly in the 8pm, 9pm and
10pm time slots. Some series may prove
to be sleeper hits that suddenly take off
in their second season, with audiences
keeping steady or even increasing if you
can afford to stick with them. Inevitably,
though, shows will begin to tail off as
they grow stale, forcing you to replace
them with new ideas, fresh faces and the
accompanying batch of adverts to keep
both people and the money rolling in.
As anyone who’s ever watched Dave
will tell you, though, dead shows never
truly die; cancelled shows are broadcast
as re-runs, attracting an extra few viewers
as they sound their death knell. It’s a
gloriously engrossing way of reflecting
the unrelenting popularity contest that
drives TV, while also justifying the need
for players to constantly sign new shows
and carefully consider what – and, more
importantly, when – they replace.
The Networks doesn’t try to capture
the complexity of running a TV station
in full, to its credit. The core set of actions
and decisions is tight-knit, focusing more
on the timing of the cardplay than the
nitty-gritty details. The two-player game
makes for a fun duel, but playing with
extra people enables a more cut-throat
experience thanks to the optional
interactive ability cards, which shift the
clash from a passive race to more direct
manipulations. There’s a purity to the
less interaction-heavy mode that may
suit those who enjoy the efficient score
chasing of Euros, while the interactive
cards are a chaotic addition for the
taste of those who prefer more thematic
competition. Either way, The Networks
holds strong as a tongue-in-cheek card-
drafter that deserves to find an audience. ■
MATT JARVIS
CONCLUSION
The humour is witty, the drafting
gameplay solid and the televisual theme
executed with aplomb; The Networks is
a smart, well-designed card game that
doesn’t try to overstep its mark and is
all the better for it. Tune in.
22/09/2017 12:11
 PLAYED

LOVECRAFT LETTER
AEG | £29.99 | Deduction | 2-6 players | 10 minutes | Age: 14+ | alderac.com/lovecraftletter

latest reincarnation of the the gleeful play of an opponent, each

ubiquitous card game, it’s far
more than just another reskin.
The new insanity concept
opens up each two-card
decision to include the
chance for advanced powers
to spark off with certain cards,
but it’s a risk-reward situation:
once one or more insanity
cards have been played, that
player must draw a number of
cards from the top of the deck
at the start of their turn. If any
have insanity effects, it’s an
instant elimination.
round moves so quickly it’s hard
to really mind, especially if you’re
already accustomed to Love Letter’s
delicate juggle of tension, frustration
and amusement.
You’ll need to be an existing fan
to pick up this set, too, as Lovecraft
Letter comes in at over three times
the price of its namesake. You get
what you pay for – the tarot-sized
cards are beautiful and include
custom protective sleeves, the
poker chip score counters are
delightfully weighty, and the box
itself is a charming faux book that

“A
n insanity mechanic?”
you say. “But Love Letter’s
elimination-by-luck
gameplay already drives me mad!”
In that case, Lovecraft Letter won’t
change your mind. Yet, while the ‘draw
one, play one’ heart of the original
continues to beat at the centre of this
■ A new insanity As with vanilla Love Letter,
mechanic can mean knockouts come thick and fast, even
being eliminated by
unlucky draws. with a slightly expanded deck (which
happily means up to six people can
take part, versus the standard four).
Although there can be a slight sense
of disappointment if you’re taken
out by an unlucky draw rather than
snaps shut with a magnetic clasp
– but it’s a hard sell for anyone not
already infatuated with Love Letter
or Lovecraft, especially when the
larger premium package diminishes
the original game's excellence as a
pocket-sized treat. ■
MATT JARVIS

FIRST DATES: THE GAME

Big Potato | £22.99 | Party | 4-8 players | 20 minutes | Age: 17+ | bigpotato.co.uk

T
aking the Channel 4 dating
show as its leaping-off point,
First Dates is ironically a
poor choice of game to play with
complete strangers – doubly so if you
intend on seeing them again.
Oddly enough, the simple
gameplay is more reminiscent of
another British TV staple, Mr. & Mrs.,
as couples separately choose who
from their pair fits each prompt best
and the rest of the group votes on
whether they will agree or not.
While the gameplay is little more
than a morsel, the presentation is
at least admirable, with wipe-clean
boards, pens and three separate
‘courses’ of cards: starters, mains
and desserts.
Running with the dinner theme
of the series, questions steadily
increase from fairly innocuous
dilemmas up to more controversial
decisions that you definitely would
not want to ask over a shared sundae
or cheese board. Who would win
in a rap battle? Who will have more
people at their funeral? Who is more
likely to sleep with their cousin? ■ The game's Some of the questions may raise
Who would punch their mum in the questions are divided a titter or two the first time around,
into three 'courses'.
face for £10,000? but the severely limited scope
It’s a setup that works best with means that unless you’ve somehow
close friends, as knowing someone’s never come across a modern-day
personality helps players agree on an party game, you’ll probably have
answer – and laugh off any unwilling had your fill after your first meal.
accusations. We actually found that You won’t be coming back for a
real-life couples aren’t always the second date. ■
best choice, as their relationship MATT JARVIS
voids several of the questions (or just
makes predicting that they will agree
too easy for everyone else).
The awkward explicit tone is pretty
typical affair for party trivia games
looking to surf in the wake of Cards
Against Humanity. First Dates wears
out its welcome faster than many of
those already fleeting distractions,
due to the lack of variation in the
subjects and answers.
The crass ‘humour’ is often more
exhausting than entertaining – a
couple of the prompts can lead to
insightful and amusing discussions
between friends, but most just result
in brief choruses of ‘ew’ before
everyone moves on.

106

106_107_lovecraftAndFirstDatesReviewAndInterview_v2 MJ.indd 106 25/09/2017 10:14


Seiji Kanai’s Love Letter has grown close to
countless players’ hearts over the last five years.
As its latest Lovecraftian reincarnation takes things
in a new direction, he looks back – and forward –
How did you come up with the
original Love Letter?
The origin of Love Letter was a
challenge called ‘The 500-yen Game’
that was held at the Japanese fair
Game Market. It was a challenge
to present a playable game at an
extremely cheap price, in order to
make them more accessible to players.
I entered that challenge with the
concept of ‘a game with just 16 cards’,
and it was rather successful. So while
the challenge itself had ended, I created
more of those, and Love Letter was the
third – the second was ‘R’, which now is
available as Brave Rats.
The two first games were only for
two players, and I wanted the third
to be a game for more players. Many
players and so few cards was what
spawned the concept of ‘one card in
hand’, and to let the small deck last as
long as possible, I came up with ‘guess
the opponent’s hand to have them
drop out of the game’.
On top of that, I added the lovely
backdrop of sending a love letter to the
princess and, voilà, there the game was.
Love Letter has had dozens of
different incarnations since,
from Batman and The Hobbit
to Adventure Time and Archer.
Did you ever worry that the
game’s popularity would mean
you wouldn’t be able to work on
other designs?
No, I’m not worried about that. It
wasn’t a commissioned design, and I
just create the games that I want to do.
However, it has passed my mind
that maybe I’m most suited to doing
106_107_lovecraftAndFirstDatesReviewAndInterview_v2 MJ.indd 107
MAN OF LETTERS
on the widely-adored series
Interview by Matt Jarvis
small games with a limited amount of
components, like just 16 cards.
Which is your personal favourite
version of Love Letter?
The one I’m most attached to is of
course the original version with
the art by Noboru Sugiura, that has
helped me so many times in the past.
Your other games also tend to
be short, simple card games.
Why are designs like this so
interesting to you?
Nowadays, there are a lot of small,
minimalistic games – but when I first
tried that, they were very rare and it
was a challenge to try them.
Ever since them, I find it’s a
wonderful challenge to use as
few pieces as you can, and try to
create a cheap game, and squeeze
as much as you can out of the
components.
Love Letter’s very simple rules
and small number of cards means
that it can be easily downloaded
online using unofficial themes
and artwork. How do you feel
about players who might use
print-and-play versions for free
rather than buying your game?
It’s a hard question. [He laughs] Of
course, as it’s something I sell for
a living, I do think the best way to
appreciate my design is to buy it.
But creating your own original
and having fun with that is boosting
creativity and, if more people can
have fun with the game, that’s also a
boon for the gaming world. I can’t say
107
I sincerely endorse it, but I don’t have
any intention of commenting as long
as it happens where I don’t see it, and
if no money is involved.
And, I mean, what kind of
human are you if you complain
about card decks that small kids
have done by themselves?
“It’s a Your most complex title is probably
wonderful last year’s Unicornous Knights.
Would you like to design more
challenge complicated games in the future?
I have always wanted to make
to use complicated games, and it was a great
experience to give birth to such a game.
as few Normally, I’m just doing the games
by myself, so it’s hard to make such a
pieces as big one, but I’d like to try again one day.
you can.” You made a sequel to Love
Letter, Secret Moon, in 2014,
and Lovecraft Letter also makes
changes to the original gameplay
with its insanity mechanics. Do
you have plans to make more
Love Letter versions that further
evolve the gameplay?
Thanks to all of you, games using
the Love Letter system are popular,
and there are many possibilities of
combining that simple system with
a limited amount of components. I
don’t have any concrete plans right
now, but I hope that I’ll be granted a
chance to work on such a game again.
It’s an honour that a game created
in Japan is being played by people in
England. I’ll go on doing games, and
will be happy if more eyes are turned
towards my games and those of my
fellow indie designers. ■
22/09/2017 12:12
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 PLAYED
CATCH THE MOON
We’ve caught the buzz for this amusing stacking game
Bombyx | £21.99 | Dexterity | 2-6 players | 20 minutes | Age: 6+ | studiobombyx.com
W
ho would’ve thought ladders
could be so much fun? After
playing Catch the Moon,
never again will steps be resigned
to memories of fetching Christmas
decorations from attics or clearing
leaves from gutters. Nope, instead
you’ll recall the time you managed
to somehow perch a tiny ladder on
top of a wobbly rung to become the
new highest point in the knitted web
of crisscrossing legs. Or perhaps the
moment you collapsed, head-in-hands,
as your carefully-positioned wooden
frame slipped from its seemingly secure
place between two upright supports
and clattered onto the table, causing
the moon to cry – and you to end up a
teardrop further from victory.
Catch the Moon is a simple game
that nevertheless excels at producing
moments of outright jubilation and
amusing devastation like these. It has
the physical delight of stacking classics
like Jenga, without the exhausting need
to labouriously reset things after a
single mistake or the frustrating feeling
of inevitable failure once enough bricks
109_catchTheMoonReview_v2 MJ.indd 109
disappear – the random shapes and
bendy diversity of the ladders means
that there’s almost always an option
to come out on top, even it takes an
unlikely wedge through a rung or
unstable balance along an edge.
While the climax of Jenga’s exciting
collapse quickly gives way to a feeling
of not wanting to set up the tower
again, some of Catch the Moon’s best
moments come as a risky or clumsy
play suddenly shifts the interwoven net,
with the whole group of players gasping
as rungs catch falling prongs, uprights
become horizontals and swinging feet
dangle closer and closer to the table.
The brilliance of using the
multifaceted shape of ladders is that
there is an almost limitless number of
combinations and structures that can
be formed by a combination of the
players and gravity, multiplied further
by the random placement of two
straight ladders in the base to begin
with, plus the use of a die to dictate
whether players must aim for the
highest point and how many ladders
their addition to the pile can touch.
109
It adds up to a 20 minutes as light
and gentle as one of the shrunken
wooden ladders. Amusingly, the
manual helpfully offers a selection
of named placements players can
execute during their turn – as if the
majority of turns aren’t completely
unpredictable chaos anyway. The fact
that these strategic positions sound like
a combination of skateboarding tricks
and entries in the Karma Sutra – ‘The
Foot Hook’, ‘The Sin of Pride’, ‘The Crazy
Diagonal’ – only adds to the hilarity.
The artwork and illustrations on
the box and manual are wonderfully
expressive of the dreamlike framing of
the game. Sadly, the components don’t
quite match up to that quality. While
the wooden ladders, blue moon tears
and die feel warm and comfortable to
handle, the thin rungs and legs can end
up snapping if things become a little too
tightly-tangled or lever in an awkward
way – especially as players start to cram
them in to survive later rounds (parents,
watch out). The main disappointment
is the base, a lightweight piece of
plastic modelled after a layer of clouds
that’s overly prone to getting grubby
and too often shifts around as players
manipulate the stack, with ladders
tumbling in this way ruining the fun
of cheekily wiggling in a ladder to an
BOX CONTENTS unexpected place of safety. For the
◗ 30 wooden ladders modest price, it’s hardly a surprise, but
(including three
straight ladders)
a more solid foundation feels like a sore
◗ Seven moon tears absence from such a relatively basic set
◗ Plastic base of components.
◗ Wooden die In the end, though, these minor
◗ Rulebook
disappointments can hardly take away
from the laugh-a-minute, gasp-a-
minute glee of stacking tiny ladders and
watching them tumble down. Catch
the Moon might not be a perfect game,
but it’s undoubtedly a good time. ■
MATT JARVIS
CONCLUSION
Although the bits in the box could be
better, it’s hard to deny the delight that
Catch the Moon inspires. The ladders
make for an inventive choice of shape
to stack and lead to the game’s best
laugh- and gasp-out-loud moments. A
simple joy, through and through.
IF YOU LIKE JENGA…
TRY CATCH THE MOON
Catch the Moon evolves on the
classic brick-puller by eliminating the
exhausting need to reset and adding
more hilarious unpredictability.
25/09/2017 10:17
 PLAYED
THE FOX IN THE FOREST
Foxtrot/Renegade | £14.99 | Trick-taking | 2 players | 30 minutes | Age: 10+ | foxtrotgames.com/forest
T
here’s a purity to card games that
use a standard deck of 52 playing
cards that makes them hard to
improve on. In the case of The Fox in
the Forest’s charming two-player take
on whist, however, it comes just about
as close as you can get.
The contents of the box are
essentially a three-suit deck, dropping
the royal face cards in favour of standard
numbers from 1 to 11 split across the
more whimsical categories of bells, keys
and moons. Each odd card is a character
with a special ability, evolving whist’s
basic game of trumps by introducing
simple powers – the fox changes the
current trump card, the witch counts as
a trump card regardless of suit and so
on. The abilities are pleasantly varied
and well-executed, offering a generous
balance of ways to undermine your rival
or boost your own score, opening up
■ Odd cards in each the previously one-note strategy.
of the three suits
The presentation all plays into the
introduce unique
powers to the whist- game’s fairytale framing, introduced
like gameplay. with a few sentences in the manual
PURRRLOCK HOLMES: FURRIARTY’S TRAIL
IDW | £24.99 | Deduction | 2-5 players | 30 minutes | Age: 10+ | idwgames.com
■ The game's cutesy
animal theme is one
of its strongest assets.
110_theFoxInTheForestAndPurlockHolmesReviews_v2 MJ.indd 110
and extended with a lengthier version
online. While it’s as light a dressing as
can be (there’s no mention of a bell, key
or moon at all in the full story), it ends
up sustaining the magical allure in a
way that works. A big part of this is the
game’s stunning artwork, which treads
the line between traditional fairytale
cliché and expressive, bold visuals. If
this were a full deck of playing cards,
you wouldn’t hesitate to pick it up.
Complementing the meaningful
changes to the gameplay is an interesting
scoring system that rewards risk-taking
– more tricks won means more points,
A
nimal puns have sunk their
claws so deeply into Purrrlock
Holmes that it’s a mystery why
the family-friendly guessing game
wasn't subtitled ‘On Furriarty’s Tail’.
That conundrum isn’t the only
puzzle you’ll be trying to solve, as the
feline detective and the inspectors
of Scotland Pound try to identify the
hidden suspects in front of them. Like
Hanabi, your friends know what you’re
looking for, but you’ll need to deduce
their identity and the time of the crime
by chasing two cards each turn that
are either close ‘leads’ (pun!) or dead
ends before taking a stab at
naming the criminal.
It’s as simple as
it comes – players
must tell the truth, so
there’s no room
for betrayal
here. You’re
technically
competing, but
there is a joint
110
but win too many and your score for that
round plummets to zero. Meanwhile,
win three or fewer and you’ll take the
maximum number of points. This slight
but shrewd tweak introduces an extra
layer of strategy and variety, where
tactically conceding rounds can be just as
beneficial as dominating your opponent.
It’s a shame that The Fox in the Forest
forgoes that fourth suit, as the lack of
flexibility is perhaps the only very minor
drawback here. As it comes though – a
lively two-player trick-taking game
with a winning charisma – it’s a joy. ■
MATT JARVIS
effort to catch the titular tabby before
he escapes – only one inspector can
take the glory though, so there’s a very
slight strategic timing element. Not
that it makes that much difference – if
Furriarty escapes, there’s no winner
and points decide a loser, but you’ll
probably name a winner anyway.
The Sherlock Holmes-meets-The
Aristocats theme is cute (unless you’re
not a cat person) – the zoological
criminals all have witty era-appropriate
street gangs, including the Charing Cross
Canards and Thames Toadies, illustrated
with amusingly gritty mugshots.
Purrrlock Holmes doesn’t stick around
long enough to use up the goodwill of its
theme or basic, luck-dictated gameplay.
Social deduction connoisseurs will find
it far too lightweight to stick with, but it’s
more than solid enough to be a gentle
introduction to the genre for kids and
those seeking a less intense brainteaser.
Don’t be surprised when you find
yourself purring with pleasure. ■
MATT JARVIS
22/09/2017 12:14
 THAT’S A QUESTION!
Czech Games Edition | £TBC | Party | 3-6 players
30 minutes | Age: 15+ | czechgames.com

W
hat would you miss more if it ceased to exist: board games
or cats? That’s just one of the decisions proposed by That’s
a Question!, a disappointingly disposable party dud from
otherwise reliable master designer Vlaada Chvátil.
That’s a Question!’s drama hinges on seemingly tough choices based
on three core questions, with a rotating interrogator putting forward
a choice of two possible answers from their hand as they grill another
player and everyone else votes on what they think the verdict will be.
It’s a simple setup that never becomes anything more meaningful.
That’s a Question!’s answers veer between being overly specific or too
toothless to spark much debate about a player’s choice, meaning the
game never manages to capture the perceptive or controversial insight
into personal opinions that it’s clearly aiming at.
This isn’t helped by the extremely limited scope of the three
questions, all of which essentially boil down to a generic ‘which is
better’ judgement and can only be matched with one answer on each
colour-coded answer card, killing the chance for any flexibility or
unexpectedly left-field dilemmas. Even Cards Against Humanity is
more likely to teach you more about your friends’ view of the world.
DONNER DINNER PARTY Strangely enough, despite the cutesy decoration of squirrels, acorns
and sunny meadows, many of the game’s questions skew towards an
Chronicle Books | £17.99 | Social deduction
older audience (the box has a recommended age of 15 and up) – there
4-10 players | Time | Age: 12+ | chroniclebooks.com
are several about cigarettes, drinking, working and other adult topics
that are best removed if you plan to play with children. Not only do

I
nspired by the ghoulish real-life events of the Donner-Reed Party in these darker subjects jar tonally with the lighthearted rest of the game,
the mid 19th-century, who resorted to eating their companions to but they come across as a cheap attempt to lead players towards
stay alive, Donner Dinner Party mixes interesting social deduction deeper debates that ultimately never surface.
with a jet-black dose of comedy. The presentation may be charming, but That’s a Question! can’t
The components boast fetching art, despite the fragile thinness of avoid an utter absence of personality, fun and consequence. Why
the cards, and the diddly metal frying pan used to track rounds on the waste your time here? Now, that’s a question. ■
oversized central campfire board is thematically charming, if a little MATT JARVIS
unnecessary for such a straightforward setup.
Donner Dinner Party leans towards the lighter end of the social
deduction scale, with a simple breakdown into two phrases where
players hunt for food – or sabotage the gatherings of others, if they’re
a hidden cannibal with poison to hand – and potentially vote to eat
someone, if there’s not enough food to go around.
Luck plays a significant role, with players only able to play from a
limited selection of cards. This can result in unpredictable twists as
cannibals are forced to help out or innocent pioneers turn up empty-
handed, which can be both exciting and frustrating compared to the
more deliberate motives of other games in the genre. It works in terms
of the harsh atmosphere, but dilutes the tension when outcomes can
be dictated by a poor draw – even when a limited deck of single-use
supply cards works to remedy too many unfortunate situations.
Increasing the drama is the chance for the changing camp leader
to see one card contributed to the middle each round, ratcheting up
the tension in a way that feels natural and well-paced as loyalties are
called into question. Player elimination is softened by the option to
include ghosts, who can veto votes of the living once, but it’s still not
particularly amusing to find yourself sat out of the action.
Donner Dinner Party is an interesting enough half an hour for those
new to deceiving their friends, but it doesn’t have the weight or spark
to match up to better entries in the genre. It’s an amuse-bouche –
nothing more, nothing less. ■
MATT JARVIS

111

111_donnerDinnerPartyAndThatsAQuestionReviews_v2 MJ.indd 111 22/09/2017 12:14

 PLAYED

LAZER RYDERZ
Greater Than | £39.99 | Racing | 2-4 players | 30-45 minutes | Age: 14+ | greaterthangames.com

W
hat do you get if you cross
Tron, X-Wing, Saturday
morning cartoons and VHS
tapes? The answer is Lazer Ryderz, a
game so thick with ‘80s nostalgia you
can practically smell the hairspray.
It starts with the box, perhaps one
of the downright coolest storage ideas
for a board game in a long while. Each
of the component sets for the racing
game’s four competitors is housed
in a faux-VHS tape sleeve branded
up with suitably OTT visuals and
flavour text and stored in a cardboard
Lazer Ryderz boxset complete with
pre-made scuffs and stickers. It’s not
hard to imagine that the Galactic
Waveryder, Lazer Shark, Super Sheriff
or Phantom Cosmonaut appeared
on television as you wolfed down a
packet of Space Raiders as a kid. The
fantastic idea is marred somewhat by
the inexplicable decision to make the
characters’ trays open at the bottom of
the sleeves, meaning the holographic
pieces will fall out as they’re removed
unless you know what’s coming.
Gameplay is a blend of the
light-cycle racing from Tron and the
dogfighting of X-Wing, as players shift
their characters up and down gears
before accelerating using movement
templates towards prisms scattered
across the playing field – which,
handily, is the size of whatever table
you’re playing on. Attempting a turn
means rolling a die, which at higher
speeds increasingly risks spinning out
or accidentally zooming straight into a
wall or a rival’s light beam, exploding
your rider and respawning them back
at the edge of the table – applying a
touch of lucky tension to the otherwise
rather one-note proceedings. The first
to three prisms wins.
While Lazer Ryder’s gameplay is fun
enough, it’s clear that the style is doing
the heavy lifting here. It’s thrilling to
narrowly veer away from a crash or pull
off a sudden turn as you zip around the
table, but the game can’t quite capture
the enduring charm or entertainment
of the era it clearly adores. ■ ■ Lazer Ryderz' gameplay can't
MATT JARVIS live up to its eye-catching style.

STROOP
Grand Gamers Guild | £17.99 | Party | 2-4 players | 10-15 minutes | Age: 13+ | grandgamersguild.com/our-games/stroop/

D
espite sounding like a Dutch
sweet treat, Stroop is instead
named after the psychological
effect that involves the mismatch of
written colours and the colour the
text is printed in (so, the word ‘red’ in
blue ink), making it tougher to name
the colour of the ink versus when the
word and ink matches.
Stroop is the breezy application
of this phenomenon to a card game,
expanding the brain-bending visual
trickery to include text size, style and
the number of letters in each word –
as well as words that read backwards
when the optional advanced deck is
mixed in. We’d recommend you do
so to weigh down the already light
gameplay, which could blow away
with the frustrated huff of a player.
■ Stroop takes its name It’s a diverting few minutes as
from the psychological players try to first play cards that are
effect that makes it
hard to name the described by a central card, before
colour of text when it switching to lay down descriptions of
spells another colour. the middle card in the second round,
changing the requirement with each
new card until someone can no longer
play, rather than exhausting their
hand. This rule feels a little awkward
at points, often putting the emphasis
more on luck of the draw than the
touted mental agility of players.
Similarly odd is the rule that starts
players with a draw deck on the table,
but the ability to draw as many cards
as they want into their hand from the
off – as long as they do so one at a
time, which simply appears to be an
attempt to give the impression that
there is more of a game framework
here than there actually is.
Despite having elements of a
fast-paced party game, Stroop only
plays up to four people and has little
to offer beyond the initial curiosity of
your first few plays. It’s an intriguing
psychological demonstration, but
that doesn’t make for a particularly
great game. ■
MATT JARVIS

112

112_dlazerRyderzAndStroopReviews_v2 MJ.indd 112 25/09/2017 10:18

 DUNGEONS &
DRAGONS CHARACTER
SHEETS PACK
Wizards of the Coast | £9.99 | dnd.wizards.com

K
ey to any roleplaying
campaign are its
characters. It’s player-
created heroes that are the
focus of this compact pack
for Dungeons & Dragons’
fifth edition, which offers a
tidy way to keep character GOTHIC TEMPLE AND
sheets together inside a
protective folder. WALLS SCENERY
The folder consists of a Game Mat | £22 (walls), £34 (temple) | gamemat.eu
simple single-fold sleeve,

I
made of thick card and n time for the return of The walls are an ideal
slightly bigger than the Warhammer 40,000, scenery complement to the separate but
A4 sheets it stores. The specialist Game Mat has similarly styled gothic temple
black, grey and red D&D released a couple of gothic – though it’s more of a raised
ampersand logo design terrain pieces that would look platform and altar than the
on the front makes for a just at home in the grimdark sci- complete building you might
striking look and the card fi universe as in the crumbling expect from the name.
is sturdy, but it certainly won’t outlast a tougher plastic wallet. What a remains of a fantasy landscape. The temple boasts a little more
standard wallet will lack, however, is the handy quick reference list for The set of gothic walls includes colour than the monochrome
player actions during combat and object interactions printed at the two each of the five different walls thanks to some gold angel
bottom of the book’s interior, which serve as useful guides – especially shapes, for a total of 10 individual statues and other lighter detailing,
for beginners (or those with a poor memory). sections of terrain. All of the pieces which joins the scattering of rocks
Inside the folder are standard A4 printouts of character sheets for measure 12cm long, and range in to add to the overall design of the
fifth edition. There’s a handful of different double-sided designs, which height from a shin-high jumble of terrain as a table centrepiece. That
play around with the layout and sizing of different sections to suit rocks up to the 6cm-tall remains of said, some of the rocks, especially
varying play styles – if you’re a ranger or barbarian, it’s probably best to a wall featuring a gothic window – those on the top of the arch, have
know your attack and AC at a glance, while sorcerers and warlocks will though the remainder are simply unrealistic flat backs that take
prefer to keep a tab on their magic. For some extra help, there are a few an assortment of plain barriers. away from the visual strengths of
sheets dedicated to recording known spells. All of the layouts won’t be There’s a good amount of the environment, especially as
for everyone, but there should be enough of an interesting mix for at detail to the solid pre-painted their unsightly edges face towards
least one to be useful. resin, which feels resilient and the temple’ main area.
Although the custom styles will suit those with at least a couple delightfully weighty and stable Despite the minor visual and
of campaigns under their belts best, some sheets designed to make when plonked on a gaming production quibbles, the gothic
creating and tracking a character easy for newcomers to D&D are surface. Although the sections collection offers a well-made
also included in the set. All of the sheets are printed cleanly and are painted effectively, there selection of ready-to-play
clearly – but with PDF character sheets available to download and remains the unfortunate presence terrain for wargamers looking
print for free online, it’s hard to justify the extra investment when of moulding lines on several of the to bring a little something extra
you could put together almost the same set for a fraction of the cost parts, which detracts from the to their battlefields. ■
at home. otherwise atmospheric finish. MATT JARVIS
There’s a healthy stock here to last for a number of sessions, and the
sheets can obviously be photocopied to produce more, but it’s a shame
the sheets are little more than plain A4 printouts. A laminated copy of
each would’ve been a nice alternative option – as well as providing a
little extra protection – especially given the pretty hefty cost for what is
essentially a few sheets of paper and a cardboard folder.
If you’re happy to cough up the price tag, it’s a tidy and relatively
quality package that would make for a decent gift for a first time
roleplayer. Otherwise, it might be worth sacrificing the eye-catching
artwork and putting your money into a longer-lasting way of storing
your tabletop alter ego. ■
MATT JARVIS

113

113_accessoryReviews_v2 MJ.indd 113 25/09/2017 12:15

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MWGsubsFP.indd 1 25/09/2017 11:03

 PAINTING GUIDE:

SCYTHE
Bring the gorgeous artwork and captivating alternate history of the modern
strategy masterpiece to life using our tips
Words and pictures by Andy Leighton

A
nother issue comes along and we
jump into another universe,
this time in the realm of
board games. We’re diving into an
alternate 1920s Europe in Stonemaier
Games’ Scythe.
Beautiful artwork by artist Jakub Rozalski
adorns every aspect of the game and it’s
hard not to be inspired and drawn into the
universe he has created. This is emulated to
a large degree in the figures included.
The models are simple one-piece plastics,
the kind you would find in the majority of
board games, but feel like they have been
pulled out of the artwork. The characters One thing that must be lauded is the quality much to paint as wargames do, so this guide
feature ample detail to be recognisable of the components – not just the miniatures, focuses on a few simple steps using only a
alongside the images depicting them, and but everything from the box to the player small number of paints. Hopefully this will
provide enough of a guide for the painting mats and board. allow someone just starting out to use the
process. The mechs look the part, with a For this guide I wanted to make it a bit guide just as well as someone who's well
distinct feel to each faction’s different type. more accessible. Board games don’t have as established in miniature painting. ▶

© Jakub Rózalski

115

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 HOBBY TIPS
PAINTS USED

Abaddon Black Doombull Brown Loren Forest Runefang Steel BASECOATING

ANNA & WOJTEK

Agrax Earthshade Dorn Yellow Lugganath Orange Russ Grey Skin: Kislev Flesh
Averland Sunset Evil Suns Scarlet Macragge Blue Screaming Skull Hair: Jokearo Orange
Baneblade Brown Fenrisian Grey Mechanicus Standard Grey Steel Legion Drab Dark Green:
Blue Horror Flayed One Flesh Mephiston Red The Fang Castellan Green
Castellan Green Gauss Blaster Green Nuln Oil Thousand Sons Blue Light Green:
Ceramite White Jokearo Orange Nurgling Green Thunderhawk Blue Death World Forest
Dark Reaper Khorne Red Pallid Wych Flesh Ulthuan Grey Teal: Dark Reaper
Dawnstone Kislev Flesh Rakarth Flesh Yriel Yellow Brown:
Death World Forest Leadbelcher Rhinox Hide Zandri Desert Doombull Brown
Metal: Leadbelcher
Wojtek:
Steel Legion Drab
STAGES

WASH
Apply a wash of
Agrax Earthshade
over the entire model.

HIGHLIGHTING
Each character is split up into four APPLYING A WASH SPOT HIGHLIGHTING Skin: Pallid Wych Flesh
stages, each with a list of colours and the This is a specific type of ‘paint’ that pools This involves adding a small dot or dash of Hair: Averland Sunset
corresponding paint that was used for it. in the recesses, giving a simple method a colour, generally in the same area as the Dark Green:
Each stage uses a different technique to of applying shadow. This is applied evenly previous highlight, but focusing on corners Loren Forest
achieve a similar effect on each element across the area. or where folds in cloth meet. For hair or fur it Light Green: Nurgling
but with different colours. involves adding a dot to the tip of each strand. Teal: Thunderhawk
HIGHLIGHTING Brown:
BASECOATING This stage involves applying a line of your If you find yourself unsure of where to Steel Legion Drab
Basecoating is layering on your colour colour along the hard edges and ridges of the apply the highlights or spot highlights, look Armbands:
until you have achieved a flat, even colour area. I would recommend using a fine brush over the images alongside the guide and Mephiston Red and
across the entire surface. and adding a tiny dash of water to your paints. compare that stage to the last. Ulthuan Grey
Wojtek:
Baneblade Brown
BASING

1 Begin by painting 4 Add some details to the SPOT HIGHLIGHTING

all of the base with base with static grass and Eyes: Ceramite White
Rhinox Hide. paint the rims with each and Abaddon Black
faction's colour: Hair:
Lugganath Orange
Polania: Ceremite White Dark and Light Green:
Gauss Blaster Green
Nordic: Macragge Blue Teal: Blue Horror
Brown:
Saxon: Abaddon Black Pallid Wych Flesh
Armbands:
Rusviet: Mephiston Red Ceramite White
Wojtek:
Crimean: Averland Sunset Pallid Wych Flesh

2 Apply a drybrush You can add an extra

of Steel Legion Drab. element to your bases
with some additional
scenic elements. These
also help highlight the
different scales of the
characters compared
to the mechs. For the
characters several leaves
were added with a small
dollop of PVA.

3 Apply a light On the mechs some

drybrush of clump foliage was
Screaming Skull. used to add small
hedgerows and bushes.
Add dots of Mephiston
Red or Thunderhawk
Blue to add the effect
of fruit or blossoms.

116

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 NORDIC MECHS
1 Basecoat BASECOATING 1 Basecoat

BJORN & MOX

POLANIA MECHS

the mech with Skin: the mech with

Castellan Green. Flayed One Flesh Macragge Blue.
Hair: Jokearo Orange
Blue: The Fang
Brown:
Doombull Brown
Metal: Leadbelcher
Mox: Steel
Legion Drab and
Screaming Skull

2 Paint the WASH 2 Paint the

metal areas with Apply a wash of metal areas with
Leadbelcher, Agrax Earthshade Leadbelcher,
and apply a light over the entire model. and apply a light
drybrush over drybrush over
the green. the blue.

3 Apply a wash of HIGHLIGHTING 3 Apply a wash of

Nuln Oil over the Skin: Nuln Oil over the
entire mech. Pallid Wych Flesh entire mech.
Hair:
Averland Sunset
Blue: Russ Grey
Brown:
Steel Legion Drab
Black:
Thunderhawk Blue
Mox:
Baneblade Brown

4 Highlight SPOT HIGHLIGHTING 4 Highlight the blue

the green with Eyes: Ceramite White with Russ Grey.
Nurgling Green. and Abaddon Black
Hair:
Lugganath Orange
Blue: Fenrisian Grey
Brown:
Pallid Wych Flesh
Black: Blue Horror
Mox:
Pallid Wych Flesh
and Ceramite White

5 Highlight the 5 Highlight the

metal using metal using
Runefang Steel. Runefang Steel.

117

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 HOBBY TIPS

OLGA & CHANGA

BASECOATING
GUNTER & NACHT

BASECOATING 1 Basecoat the mech

SAXON MECHS
Skin: Kislev Flesh with Dark Reaper. Skin: Flayed One Flesh
Hair and Yellow: Hair: Averland Sunset
Averland Sunset Red: Mephiston Red
Brown: Steel Green:
Legion Brown Castellan Green
Light Grey: Brown:
Mechanicus Doombull Brown
Standard Grey Metal: Leadbelcher
Dark Grey: Changa: Rakarth
Dark Reaper Flesh, followed by
Red: Mephiston Red a light drybrush of
Metal: Leadbelcher Pallid Wych Flesh
Nacht: Mechanicus
Standard Grey
WASH 2 Paint the WASH
Apply a wash of metal areas with Apply a wash of
Nuln Oil over the Leadbelcher, and Nuln Oil across the
entire model. apply a light drybrush entire model, except
over the blue. Changa's fur.

HIGHLIGHTING 3 Apply a wash of HIGHLIGHTING

Skin: Nuln Oil over the Skin:
Pallid Wych Flesh entire mech. Pallid Wych Flesh
Hair: Zandri Desert Red: Evil Suns Scarlet
Yellow: Green: Nurgling Green
Averland Sunset Brown:
Brown: Steel Legion Drab
Baneblade Brown Black:
Light Grey: Dawnstone Thunderhawk Blue
Dark Grey and Black: Changa: Apply
Thunderhawk Blue the markings with
Red: Evil Suns Scarlet a watered-down
Nacht: Nuln Oil Abaddon Black

SPOT HIGHLIGHTING 4 Highlight SPOT HIGHLIGHTING

Eyes: Ceramite White the blue with Eyes: Ceramite White
and Abaddon Black Thunderhawk Blue. and Abaddon Black
Hair and Yellow: Red:
Yriel Yellow Lugganath Orange
Light Grey: Ulthuan Brown:
Dark Grey: Fenrisian Pallid Wych Flesh
Black: Blue Horror Black: Blue Horror
Red: Metal: Runefang Steel
Lugganath Orange Changa:
Nacht: Highlight of Ceramite White
Thunderhawk Blue,
followed by a highlight
of Blue Horror

5 Highlight
the metal with
Runefang Steel.

118

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 CRIMEAN MECHS
RUSVIET MECHS

1 Basecoat BASECOATING 1 Basecoat the

ZEHRA & KAR

the mech with Skin: Kislev Flesh mech using
Mephiston Red. Yellow: Averland Sunset.
Averland Sunset
Brown: Doombull
White: Pallid Wych Flesh
Metal: Leadbelcher
Red: Khorne Red
Dress Pattern:
Watered-down Nurgling
Green, Russ Grey and
Zamesi Desert
Kar: Doombull Brown,
Steel Legion Drab
and Averland Sunset
2 Paint the WASH 2 Paint the
metal areas with Apply a wash of metal areas with
Leadbelcher, Agrax Earthshade Leadbelcher,
and apply a light over the entire model. and apply a light
drybrush over drybrush over
the red. the yellow.

3 Apply a wash of HIGHLIGHTING 3 Apply a wash of

Nuln Oil over the Skin: Pallid Wych Flesh Nuln Oil over the
entire mech. Hair: entire mech.
Thunderhawk Blue
Yellow:
Averland Sunset
Brown:
Steel Legion Drab
Red: Evil Suns Scarlet
Kar:
Baneblade Brown
and Averland Sunset

4 Highlight the SPOT HIGHLIGHTING 4 Highlight the

red with Evil Eyes: Ceramite White yellow using
Suns Scarlet. and Abaddon Black Dorn Yellow.
Hair: Blue Horror
Yellow: Yriel Yellow
Brown:
Pallid Wych Flesh
Red:
Lugganath Orange
Kar:
Pallid Wych Flesh
and Yriel Yellow

5 Highlight the 5 Highlight

metal using the metal with
Runefang Steel. Runefang Steel.

119

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 THE DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE TO...

BUILDING AN
PAR
FIVET

RPG CAMPAIGN
Our ongoing column focuses specifically on providing tips, guidance and advice to dungeon masters
as they create their own worlds to run campaigns in. Some of the advice will be specific to the latest
fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, but the majority of the concepts are applicable to any setting,
game or ruleset that you prefer. This is the fifth entry in the series and focuses on giving you specific
puzzles, riddles and other creative setups to pick and choose from for any existing or future campaign
Words by David Jagneaux

120

120_121_dungeonMastersGuide_v2 MJ.indd 120 22/09/2017 12:22


Image: Wizards of the Coast.
W
elcome to the fifth entry of The
Dungeon Master’s Guide to
Building an RPG Campaign!
In the previous fourth entry of this column
it was all about building on your established
ideas and crafting an adventure for your
players. As a dungeon master it can often
be frustrating how easy it is to get derailed
and have your players wander off the beaten
path. We talked about ways to make new
dungeons on the fly that can funnel players
back towards the plot or even just how to
map out and design a dungeon as players
are discovering it, room by room, instead
of drawing it all out beforehand. But now
we’re going to set our sights on an even more
specific area of being a dungeon master:
actual specific ideas for puzzles, riddles and
other obstacles.
When you’re designing an adventure or
dungeon for your players it’s easy to fall into
the habit of littering each and every room
with enemies to fight in different groups.
120_121_dungeonMastersGuide_v2 MJ.indd 121
Making a combat encounter interesting –
not just a way to level up and find loot – is
difficult. That’s why the best dungeons aren’t
just all about combat; the best kind of DM
offers much more for players to test their
mettle on than just how well they can roll a
die against a goblin’s AC.
In this column entry we’re going to give you
three specific ideas that you can leverage, edit
and customise to fit any dungeon or adventure
that you might be running. Have an empty
room to fill? Some time to kill? Throw one of
these situations at the players and see how
they respond. Write out some summaries and
have it handy in your DM folder so you can
whip one of these out at a moment’s notice.
THE MYSTERIOUS MIRROR
Of the three sample ideas that we’re covering
in this column entry this may be the most
versatile for any dungeon master to use.
The premise is simple: the players walk into
a room and all they find is a large, ornate
mirror. When a player stands in front of it
they see themselves, but something seems
off. From here you can get creative with it.
Perhaps the reflection is slightly altered,
like showing the player themselves holding
an object that they’re seeking, or it shows
something in the room that only exists in the
mirror but not in the real world. With puzzles
like this it’s best to consider a wide variety
of solutions and be sure to reward creative
problem solving when implemented.
For example, if a player shatters the mirror
trying to receive the treasure this probably
doesn’t qualify as creative problem solving,
but if a nimble halfling did a handstand to see
if a treasure chest might pour out its contents
into the real world you could consider that
counting as a solution.
RIDDLE ME THIS
The next idea is really a series of ideas that can be
used to spice up anything: riddles. A well-placed
riddle with the right surrounding context and
enough subtle hints can add a high degree of
interaction and interest to any adventure. For
example, you could add a riddle to the mirror
above to make it even more interesting.
Let’s cover three specific riddles, what
their answers are, and how you can establish
them in your world so that they don’t feel
out of place.
Riddle #1: You must keep it after giving it.
Answer: An oath. (Other answers: your
word, a promise, etc.)
121
Riddle #2: If you feed it, it lives. If you give it
something to drink, it dies.
Answer: Fire.
Riddle #3: I am always in front of you but
cannot be seen.
Answer: The future. (Other answers: your
decisions, your fate, your destiny, etc.)
Each of these riddles is vague enough to apply to
a wide variety of situations, but also thematically
poignant enough to not feel random. Describe
them well and with the right intentions and
your players will figure them out after giving it
some thought. You could also institute a penalty
for each wrong guess, such as a monster
spawning or some type of trap springing.
WORDS OF WISDOM
Finally, my favourite riddle/puzzle to
introduce into an adventure is a wall that I
like to refer to as "The Words of Wisdom".
This one is a bit of a hybrid of a puzzle and
a riddle into a single mega obstacle that I’ve
never seen approached the same way twice.
It's a straightforward setup: there is a
decorative wall with words written across the
top. The words may appear all the time, only
when triggered, or perhaps in a rare language
– that’s entirely up to you. But, regardless, the
wall reads:
“The key exists inside your head,
Use the key to paint me red,
But be aware of what you spurn,
For what was taken shall be returned.”
This should be enough to get your players
thinking about what to do. Basically, you
want them to put some blood on the wall. The
idea is that whatever blood touches the wall
will create a more powerful replica version
of that person or creature. For example, if a
player cuts their hand and puts their blood
on the wall, a more powerful clone of them
will spawn.
Half the fun with this puzzle, just like any
good puzzle, is the debate it creates amongst
your players if they have a good rapport. You
should use colourful language to evoke a
certain sense of dread and trepidation with
how they approach the situation because
you want to force deliberation and decision-
making between the members of the group. ■
Check back in the next issue for a new entry in
The Dungeon Master’s Guide to Building an
RPG Campaign. In that column we will focus
on how modern technology can be used to
enhance or supplement your game nights!
22/09/2017 12:22
EVENT REPORT
HANDYCON
Paul Harris talks about the second instalment of the welcoming
bi-annual meetup in High Wycombe and clashing with Gen Con
Interview by Matt Jarvis
When did HandyCon start and how has
it changed since it began?
I first had the idea for HandyCon after
the 2016 UK Games Expo, after seeing
how popular the gaming rooms were and
identifying that nothing like that really
existed in a southern central region. I thought
I’d give it a go.
I put out feelers and spoke to the venue,
Holiday Inn, who were keen – January is a
dead month for them. From then it just grew
and some of my friends volunteered their
support and helped me build it.
What was new for the latest show?
Two new tournaments – a Scythe tournament
and a Flamme Rouge tournament series. Each
with prizes. There was the return of the 18XX
room and the Friday- and Saturday-night
party games, and a Saturday playtest zone, but
the big change was that it was three days – not
two – and a bit, as we opened our doors at
9am on Friday until 8pm on Sunday night.
What makes the convention unique?
The sense of family and fun with non-stop
gaming, interaction with hundreds of friendly
people keen to help each other, learn new
122_123_eventReport_v2 MJ.indd 122
I do know of one couple that aimed
straight for a game of Eldritch Horror with
all expansions on each of the three days in
August though.
Do you have any special guests attend?
Barny Baker brought his CCG & Board Game
Social trade stand and is always accompanied
by Facebook-famous Martin Cubberley. Also
from the large Board Game Trading and Chat
UK, the esteemed Chris Bromley made his way
down from Manchester and we were lucky
this year to be joined by games designer Mike
Nudd with the opportunity to play new game
Dice Hospital.
Sadly, Paul Grogan [host of YouTube
tutorial channel Gaming Rules!] couldn’t
make it this year due to Gen Con happening
inconveniently close – seriously guys, try to
avoid big conventions like HandyCon – but
should return in January.
Other than gaming, what is there to do
at the event?
Is there anything other than gaming? No,
seriously, the hotel does reasonable food
games and meet new people. We work hard
to be as inclusive and accessible as possible.
You host two HandyCons a year, in
January and August. Why did you decide
to divide the convention like this? Do the
two events differ?
This was purely based on demand. I hadn’t
planned on doing so but must have received 30
to 40 requests during February to try something
in the summer, so thought ‘why not?’ and spoke
to the hotel who identified a weekend they
weren’t busy, and we built from there.
I hope to emulate the excellent The Cast
Are Dice convention that Shire Games have
run up in Stoke the last few years but sadly
had to discontinue this year.
The events themselves are very similar
but we have seen lots of returning faces and
having two events means people can make
new connections and builds the sense of
family and familiarity.
What are some of the most popular
games at HandyCon?
In January, Terraforming Mars, A Feast
For Odin and Great Western Trail were all
very popular.
122
22/09/2017 12:23
 and has a large bar area for chilled
gaming space or to unwind and then
there is a cinema multiplex and a
large Next two minutes walk away if
you get gamed out.
What’s the tabletop community like
in High Wycombe?
Growing! Chris Young runs a growing
group, The Bucks Board Gamers, who
meet at the Beech Tree in Hazlemere
and Michael Cule has an established
RPG group on Wednesdays in the
town centre.
Add that to several Marlow gamers
and my nomadic tendency to game
wherever I can with good friends in
Langley and St. Albans – and Yorkshire
because they ran away.
What can you tell us about your
plans for next January’s show –
and beyond?
I hope to make HandyCon 3 in January
the best one yet... with the return of the
infamous Paul Grogan. ■
■ Opposite:
HandyCon
is a highly
inclusive show.
■ Right, from top:
Some of the games
played during
the weekend.
■ Below: A group
of attendees take on
Battlestar Galactica.
UPCOMING EVENTS
FURNACE
SAT OCTOBER 7TH TO SUN 8TH
Having been running for more than a
decade, Furnace is a show focused
on roleplaying that sees more than 70
people pack into The Garrison Hotel in
Sheffield for a weekend of gaming.
furnace.org.uk
WYNTERCON
SAT OCTOBER 7TH TO SUN 8TH
Now in its fourth year, this strictly
non-profit event is a family-friendly
weekend in Eastbourne’s Princes Park
that covers the entire fantasy genre,
including an area for roleplaying.
wyntercon.com
ODDCONUK XI
FRI OCTOBER 13TH TO SUN 15TH
Priding itself as one of the UK’s most
inclusive get-togethers, OddCon
provides visitors to Telford’s Park Inn
with gaming, food, accomodation and
access to a 24-hour bar.
oddconuk.org.uk
GAMESFEST
SATURDAY OCTOBER 21ST
The one-day convention in
Hertfordshire’s Tring returns with
its friendly atmosphere for fans of
gaming, as well as comics, cosplay
and geek culture as a whole.
gamesfest.co.uk

SPAGHETTI CONJUNCTION
SATURDAY OCTOBER 21ST
Birmingham’s leading RPG convention
runs for one day in Geek Retreat
Birmingham. Tickets are £3 each, with
all profits going to charity.
facebook.com/
groups/1649755452002793

ESSEN SPIEL
THURS OCTOBER 26TH TO SUN 29TH
The world’s most prominent tabletop
show is back in its German home for
four days of huge announcements,
massive releases and thousands of
new games.
merz-verlag-en.com

SOUTH OXFORDSHIRE GAMING

DAY (SOXS)
SATURDAY OCTOBER 28TH
An all-around day of gaming, including
RPGs, this convention takes place in
Radley, Oxfordshire.
soxsgamingday.org.uk

JENCON
SAT OCTOBER 28TH TO SUN 29TH
JenCon is a Pathfinder Society
gathering in its fifth year that takes
place in Sheffield convention favourite
The Garrison Hotel. Entry is £15.
paizocon.co.uk/index.php/10-
newsflash/143-jencon-phwoar

GROGMEET
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 11TH
Manchester’s Mad Lab plays host to
this celebration of roleplaying.
armchairadventurerblog.com/
grogmeet-2017

123

122_123_eventReport_v2 MJ.indd 123 22/09/2017 12:23

 CLUB DIRECTORY
ABERDEENSHIRE
ABERDEEN WARGAMES CLUB
RGU Rugby Club, 86 Queens
Road, AB15 4YQ
Tue 7pm
OLDMELDRUM WARGAMES GROUP
Royal British Legion, Market
Square, Oldmeldrum, AB51 0AA
Tue 7pm to 11pm; One Sunday in
each month 10am to around 4pm
AVON
WESTON WARGAMERS CLUB
Unit 9UA, Elizabeth House,
30-32, Boulevard,
Weston-super-Mare, BS23 1NF
Mon, Tue and Fri
AYRSHIRE
NORTH AYRSHIRE WARGAMES CLUB
19 Volunteer Rooms,
High Street, Irvine, KA12 0BA
Sun 11am to 5pm
BEDFORDSHIRE
BASEMENT GAMING CLUB
Ahh Geek Out, Unit 1-4,
182 Camford Way, LU3 3AN
Fri 7pm to 11pm
BOARD GAMES IN BEDFORD
8, Lacock Abbey, MK41 0TU
Thu 8pm
BEDFORD BOARD GAMING
Tavistock Community Centre,
Princes Street, MK40 2SX
Wed and alternate Fridays
LEIGHTON BUZZARD
GAMING CLUB
North Street, Leighton Buzzard,
LU7 1ES
Wed 7pm to late
BERKSHIRE
NEWBURY & READING
WARGAMES ASSOCIATION
Fir Tree Primary School,
Fir Tree Lane, Newbury, RG14 2RA
Mon 7pm to 11pm
35-39 London Street,
Newbury, RG1 4PS
Thu 7pm to 11pm  Bournemouth, BH2 5RQ
WARGAMES ASSOCIATION
OF READING
Winnersh Community Centre,
New Road, Sindlesham,
Wokingham, RG41 5DU
Wed 6pm to 11pm; One Sunday a
month is an open day for all-day
gaming 9am to 5.30pm
BRISTOL
HALL OF HEROES GAMING CLUB
Beckspool Road, Frenchay,
Bristol, BS16 1NU
Thu 7pm
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
MILTON KEYNES
WARGAMES SOCIETY
York House Youth Centre,
London Road, Stony Stratford,
Milton Keynes, MK11 1JQ
Thu 7pm to 11pm
WYCOMBE WARBAND
National Film & Television
School, Station Road,
Beaconsfield, HP9 1LG
Thu 7pm
CAMBRIDGESHIRE
2D6 LODGE
Queen Ediths Way,
Cambridge, CB1 8NN
Fri 7pm to 10pm (summer);
Fri 5pm to 10pm (winter)
NEWMARKET KNIGHTS
GAMES CLUB
2nd Soham Scout & Guide Centre,
Gardeners Lane, Ely,
Cambridge, CB7 5HS
Alternate Saturdays
6.30pm to 10.30pm
PETERBOROUGH WARGAMES CLUB
38a, Cowgate, Peterborough, PE1 1NA
Mon 7pm to 11pm
CARMARTHENSHIRE
CARMARTHEN OLD GUARD
9, The Carmarthen Businessman’s
Club, Lammas Street,
Carmarthen, Dyfed, SA31 3AD
Wed 6pm
124_125_clubDirectory_v2 MJ.indd 124
TO LIST YOUR GAMES CLUB
TOWY VALLEY TYRANTS (TVT) CULLOMPTON BOARD ESSEX DARK WORLDS THOR’S HAMMER GAMING CLUB
Abergwilli Church Hall, Ismyrddin, GAMES GROUP BASILDON WARBOYZ GAMING SOCIETY Well End Activity Camp, Well End,
Abergwilli, Carmarthen, SA31 2JE Pye Corner, Cullompton, Riverton Hall, Bardfield, Northwest Community Centre, Borehamwood, Hertford, WD6 5PR
First Saturdays of odd-numbered EX15 1JX Basildon, SS16 4JW Henry Cort Drive, Tue 6pm to 10pm
months 9am to 9pm First and third Wednesday of the Sun 5pm to 10pm; Last Sunday of Fareham, PO15 6TL
month 7pm to 10pm the month 3pm to 10pm Tue 7pm Sun 6pm TRING WARGAMES CLUB
CHESHIRE Corpus Christie Church Hall,
ALTRINCHAM DARK STAR GAMING PLYMOUTH COLCHESTER WARGAMES FIRESTORM CARDS Langdon Street, Tring, HP23 6BA
WARGAMING CLUB 9, Moon Street, ASSOCIATION OPEN GAMING NIGHT Fri 7pm to 11pm
St George`s Parish Hall, Off Albert Plymouth, PL4 0AL Tollgate Hall, Villa Road, Stanway, Bell House, Bell Road,
Place, Altrincham, WA14 4PG Mon to Fri 5pm to late; Colchester, CO3 5RH Basingstoke, RG24 8FB WATFORD WARGAMES CLUB
Thu 7pm to 11pm Sat and Sun 12pm to late Fri 7pm to 11pm Wed 5pm to late 68, Langley Road,
Watford, WD17 4PN
CHESHIRE GAMERS EAST DEVON TABLETOP ESSEX WARRIORS FORDINGBRIDGE GAMING CLUB Wed 6pm to 10pm 
Alberts Corner, Prince Albert Street, & RPG GROUP 18, Writtle Village Hall, 63, Town Hall, High Street,
Crewe, CW1 2DF 133, The Three Tuns, High The Green, Writtle, Fordingbridge, SP6 1AS HIGHLANDS
Tue 7pm Street, Honiton, EX14 1HR Chelmsford, CM1 3DU Thu 6pm to 10pm (fortnightly)  DINGWALL WARGAMES CLUB
Tue 6pm Twice monthly on Sunday Dingwall Community Centre,
CONGLETON AND DISTRICT 9.30am to 5pm GARY DONALDSON Tulloch Street, Dingwall, IV15 9JZ
LIGHT BOARD GAMES GROUP EXMOUTH IMPERIAL Hart Plain Church, Mon 7pm to 10pm
Lion and Swan Hotel, Swan Bank, WARGAMES CLUB SOUTHEND-ON-SEA Hart Plain Avenue,
Congleton, CW12 1AH Community Centre, Prince of ROLEPLAYING SOCIETY Waterlooville, PO8 8RG KENT
Thu Wales Drive, Exmouth, EX8 4SW 1, Park Inn by Radisson, Church Sun 6.30pm to 10pm ASHFORD (KENT)
Wed 7pm Road, Southend-on-Sea, SS1 2AL BOARDGAMES CLUB
WARRINGTON BOARD Fri 7pm to 11pm PORTSMOUTH ON BOARD The Rose Inn, Faversham Road,
GAMES CLUB GAME NIGHT @ CARPE 01-03, Royal British Legion, Kennington, Ashford, TN24 9AJ
33, Church Street, 50, Carpe Diem, North Hill, FIFE Portsmouth South, Lucknow Street, Sun 7pm to 11pm
Warrington, WA1 2SX Plymouth, PL4 8EU DUNFERMLINE WARGAMING Portsmouth, PO1 1PT
Wed 7pm Mon 6pm to 1am AND ROLEPLAYING FELLOWSHIP Second and fourth Wednesdays of BEXLEY REAPERS
Dell Farquharson Community the month 7pm to 11pm WARGAMING CLUB
WINSFORD WARHAWKS PLYMOUTH ASSOCIATION Leisure Centre, Nethertown Broad Freemantle Hall, Bexley High Street,
WARGAMING CLUB OF WARGAMERS Street, Dunfermline, KY12 7DS RINGWOOD ASSOCIATION Bexley, DA5 1AA
St Chads Church Hall, Gladstone 324, Blindmans Wood Fri 6pm to 9pm OF WARGAMERS Mon 7pm to 11pm
Street, Winsford, CW7 4AT Scout Centre, Outland Road, Greyfriars Community Centre,
Tue 7pm to 10pm Plymouth, PL3 5TB EAST NEUK TABLETOP GAMES 44 Christchurch Road, CANTERBURY CRUSADERS
Sun 12pm to 5pm Dreel Halls (upper hall), High Street Ringwood, BH24 1DW Spring Lane Neighbourhood Centre,
CLEVELAND West, Anstruther, KY10 3DJ Mon Sussex Avenue,
REDCAR IRONBEARDS DORSET Second and fourth Sundays of the Canterbury, CT1 1RT
7, Memorial Hall, Coatham Road, SOUTHBOURNE TABLETOP month 1pm to 5pm  SOLENT WARGAMERS CLUB Tue 6.30pm to 10pm
Redcar, TS10 1RH & BOARDGAMERS 01-03, Royal British Legion,
Mon 7pm to 10pm Tuckton Social FLINTSHIRE Portsmouth South, GREENWICH & BLACKHEATH
Club, Tuckton Road, DEESIDE DEFENDERS Lucknow Street, BOARD GAMES AND BEER CLUB
CO ANTRIM Bournemouth, BH6 3AA Wings Social Club, Airbus UK, Portsmouth, PO1 1PT The Royal Standard,
DRAGONSLAYERS First Sunday of the month 10am Broughton, Chester, CH4 0DR Tue 7pm to 11pm 44 Vanbrugh Park,
Queen’s University, University to 5pm; Third Sunday of the Thu 7pm London, SE3 7JQ
Road, Belfast, BT7 1NN month 1pm to 5pm SOUTHAMPTON SLUGGAZ Alternating Tuesdays and
Tue 6pm FGC FLINTSHIRE GAMING CLUB Priory Road, St Denys, Wednesdays 7.15pm
WESSEX WYVERNS The Pavilion, Snowdon Avenue, Southampton, SO17 2JZ
CO DURHAM WARGAMES CLUB Bryn-y-Baal, CH7 6SZ Fri 6pm; MAIDSTONE
DARLINGTON’S DOGS OF WAR The Bridgehouse, 2 Ringwood Mon 6.30pm to 11.15pm  Alternate Wednesdays 6pm WARGAMES SOCIETY
The Voodoo Cafe and Road, Ferndown, BH22 9AN Linton Village Hall,
Bar, Skinnergate, Mon 7pm to 11pm GLASGOW WATERLOO TABLE TOP GAMERS Linton Hill (A229), Linton,
Darlington, DL3 7LX ANTONINE BOARD GAMERS Hart Plain Church, Hart Plain Avenue, Maidstone, ME17 4AW
Sat 11am to 4pm; WORLDS AWAY 77, Main Street, Torrance, Waterlooville, PO8 8RG Second and fourth Saturdays of
Wed 5pm to 10pm 22, The Triangle, Glasgow, G64 4EN the month 10am to 5pm
Third Tuesday of the month WESSEX WARGAMERS
DURHAM RAIDERS Sat 12pm to 4pm 7.30pm WINCHESTER MEDWAY AREA BOARDGAMERS
5, Croxdale Community Centre, Badger Farm Community Centre, 72, Union Street,
Rogerson Terrace, Croxdale, DUMFRIESSHIRE GLASGOW GAMES ROOM Badger Farm Road, Maidstone, ME14 1ED
Croxdale, DH6 5HJ ANNAN GAMING CLUB 36, Woodside Hall, Glenfarg Winchester, SO22 4QB Wed 7pm
Tue 6pm to 10pm; Last Sunday of Ednam Street Community Hub, Street, Glasgow, G20 7Q Tue 7pm to 11pm
the month 5pm to 9pm Ednam Street, Annan, DG12 6EF Tue 5.30pm to 10.30pm MERRYCHEST CAFE
Wed 6pm to 10pm HEREFORDSHIRE GAMING CLUB
DURHAM WARGAMES UNPLUGGED GAMES CLUB DICE AND DECKS Merrychest Cafe, Watling Street,
Vane Tempest Hall, Gilesgate, THE FIVE ARCHES GAMING CLUB 19, Norval Coffee Co, Skirving St Mary’s Church Hall, Church Row, Dartford, DA2 8AH
Durham DH1 1QG 345, Annan Road, Street, Glasgow, G41 3AB Ross-on-Wye, HR9 5HR Thu 6pm
Wed 7pm to late; Thu 7pm to late; Dumfries, DG1 3JR Sun 1pm to 5pm Fri 6.30pm to 10pm
First Sunday of the month Wed 6.30pm to 10.30pm MILTON HUNDRED
10am to early evening GLOUCESTERSHIRE HERTFORDSHIRE WARGAMES CLUB
DUNBARTONSHIRE GLOUCESTERSHIRE HEMEL HEMPSTEAD Phoenix House, Central Avenue,
GAMERS@HART DUMBARTON WARGAMES CLUB GAMES BUNKER GAMES CLUB Sittingbourne, ME10 4BX
102, Tea@Hart, York Road, 18, Church Street, Hatherley & Reddings Cricket Club Grove Hill Community Centre, Second and fourth Tuesdays of
Hartlepool, TS26 9DE Dumbarton, G82 1QQ North Park, Shurdington Road, Henry Wells Square, the month 6.30pm to 10pm 
Fri and Sat 6pm to 11pm; Sun Cheltenham, Gloucester, GL51 4XA Hemel Hempstead, HP2 6BJ
Sun 4pm to 10pm Wed 6.30pm to 10.30pm Every Tue at 7.30pm to play TONBRIDGE WARGAMES CLUB
EAST SUSSEX board games and run Magic: Lamberts Yard, Tonbridge, TN9 1ER
CO LONDONDERRY 1066 WARGAMING CLUB LINCOMBE BARN The Gathering tournaments; Second and fourth Mondays of
THE SIEGE BUNKER 130, Bexhill Road, WARGAMES SOCIETY The Magic usually starts at the month
The Bunker Cafe, St Leonards-on-Sea, TN38 8BL Lincombe Barn, Overndale 7.45pm and board games
Northland Road, Thu 7pm to 11pm Road, Bristol, BS16 2RW tend to kick off at 8pm WHITSTABLETOP
Londonderry, BT48 7JL Sun 2.30pm to 6.30pm 61, Oxford Street,
Most weekends 11am to 6pm EASTBOURNE ELEMENTAL HERTFORD BEER & Whitstable, CT5 1DA
1, Mana Gaming - The Old PORK CHOP GAMING BOARDGAMES Tue 7pm
CO TYRONE Print Works, Commercial Road, Church Street, Cheltenham, The White Horse, 33 Castle Street,
OMAGH WARGAMES CLUB Eastbourne, BN21 3XQ GL50 3HA Hertford, SG14 1HH LANARKSHIRE
Omagh Library Headquarters Mon 6pm to 11pm Thu 7pm to 10pm Tue LANARKSHIRE GAMERS
Building, Spillars Place, 1st Floor, Masonic Hall,
Omagh, BT78 1HL FAMOUS COLLECTABLES GWENT HITCHIN HERETICS Hope Street, Motherwell, ML1 1BS
First Saturday of the month 19 Western Road, Bexhill- GWENT REAVERS TABLETOP The Scout Hut, King George’s First and third Saturdays of the
9.30am to 4pm on-Sea, TN40 1DU GAMING CLUB Playing Field, Old Hale Way, month 12pm to 5pm
Thu 6pm to 9.30pm Big Picture Photography, Somerset Hitchin, SG5 1XL
CORNWALL Street, Abertillery, NP13 3DJ Fri 7pm LANCASHIRE
THE DICE AND DAGGER EAST YORKSHIRE Mon 4pm to 10pm BLACK TOWER WARGAMING
GAMING CLUB WOLDS WARGAMERS NORTH HERTFORDSHIRE Unit 3b, 260, Vicarage Lane,
Stratton Community Hall, Union 5, The Blue Bell, Riverhead, HAMPSHIRE WARGAMES CLUB Blackpool, FY4 4ND
Hill, Stratton, Bude, EX23 9BL Driffield, YO25 6NX ARBBL Scout Hall, Old Hale Way, Mon 6.30pm to 11pm
Sun 5.30pm to 10pm Last Thursday of the month 28, Gilliat Scout Hall, Marlborough Hitchin, SG5 1XL
Street, Andover, SP10 1DQ Alternate Sundays 10am to 4pm BURNEY WARGAMES
DERBYSHIRE EDINBURGH Sun 7.30pm to 10.30pm Club Social Centre, Ennismore Street,
DERBY ON BOARD GAMES EDINBURGH LEAGUE NORTH LONDON Burnley, BB10 3EU
21, The Bookcafe, Cornmarket, OF GAMERS BLACK HOLE WARGAMERS WARGAMES CLUB Tue 7pm
Derby, DE1 1QH 11, RAF Club, Hillside Crescent, St Peter’s Church Hall, St Peter’s YHA London Lea Valley,
Last Wednesday of the month Abbey Hill, Edinburgh, EH7 5EA Road, Petersfield, GU32 3HS Youth Hostel, Windmill Lane, DICED TEA
4pm to 10pm Wed 6pm to 11pm Alternate Saturdays Cheshunt, EN8 9AJ Holy Trinity Coldhurst Church Hall,
9.30am to 12.30pm Second and fourth Sundays of the Crompton Street, Oldham, OL1 2DB
DEVON SOUTH EAST SCOTLAND month 3pm to 7pm Alternate Saturdays 11am to 4pm
BARNSTAPLE SLAYERS WARGAMES CLUB CHINEHAM BOARD GAMERS
GAMING CLUB Royal Navy & Royal Marine Reading Road, Chineham, POTTERS BAR GAMES CLUB HARLEQUINS BLACKPOOL
Golden Lion Inn, The Square, Association, 1 Broughton Road, Basingstoke, RG24 8LT Oakmere House (Harvester), 302, Church Street,
Barnstaple, EX32 8LS Edinburgh Second and last Saturdays of the High Street, Potters Bar, EN6 5BT Blackpool, FY1 3QA
Mon 6.30pm to 10.30pm Thu 7pm to 11pm month 6pm Tue Mon 7pm to 11pm 
25/09/2017 10:24
 FOR FREE VISIT WWW.TABLETOPGAMING.CO.UK
HOUSE LANCASTER THE ROLE PLAY HAVEN WAR & PEACE GAMES CLUB SHEFFIELD BOARD GAMES STAY ON TARGET HALIFAX BOARD GAMERS
GAMING GROUP 98, Carpenters & Dockland Centre, 18, Grasmere Street, Sandiacre, In the room upstairs at The 56, Chertsey Road, 55, The Old Post Office,
The Three Mariners, Gibbins Road, E15 2HU Nottingham, NG10 5BD University Arms, 197 Brook Hill, Woking, GU21 5BG Winding Road, Halifax, HX1 1SJ
Bridge Lane, Lancaster, LA1 1EE Tue 7.15pm to 10.15pm Wed 7pm to 11pm Sheffield, S3 7HG Thu 6pm to 11pm Mon
First Sunday of the month 7pm Tue 7pm to late
THE ROLE PLAY HAVEN WILDSIDE GAMING THE WOKING WEIRD BOYZ KEIGHLEY TABLETOP COMBAT
PRESTON BOARD GAMERS Upstairs, The Lewis Club - 19-21, Wild Ways, The Red Deer, 18 Pitt Street, Mount Hermon Road, The Venue @ UAK, Green Head Road,
43, Fylde Street, Preston, PR1 7DP University Hospital Lewisham, Slaughter House Lane, Sheffield, S1 4DD Woking, GU22 7TA Keighley, BD20 6EB
Wed 7pm to 11pm Lewisham High Street, SE13 6LH Newark, NG24 1ER First Sunday of the month Thu 7pm Thu 6pm to 10pm
Wed 7pm to 10.45pm Wed to Fri 4pm to 10pm; 12.30pm to early evening
PRESTON’S GAMERS GUILD Sat 11am to 6pm TOLWORTH 1ST FOUNDING OTLEY BOARD GAMERS
The Adelphi, 43, Fylde Street, MANCHESTER SHEFFIELD WARGAMES St Paul’s Church Hall, The Yew Tree Inn, Newall Carr Road,
Preston, PR1 7DP TABLETOP MANCHESTER OXFORDSHIRE SOCIETY 280 Hook Road, Otley, LS21 2AU
Tue 7pm 6, Slate Wharf, Castlefield, M15 4ST ABINGDON WARGAMES CLUB Woodseats Working Mens Club, Chessington, KT9 1PF Mon 6.30pm
Mon 7.30pm 59, Neave Room, Ock Street, The Dale, Sheffield, S8 0PS Fri 7pm to 10.30pm
SALFORD & MANCHESTER Abingdon, OX14 5AG Wed 7pm WILTSHIRE
GAMING HAVEN MERSEYSIDE Fri 6.30pm; SUSSEX CHIPPENHAM BOARD
18-32 Welcome Centre, FORGEMASTERS GAMING CLUB Third Sun of the month 10am STEEL CITY WARGAMING BRIGHTON WARLORDS GAMES CLUB
Brentfield Avenue, Salford, M8 0TW Brimstage Forge, Brimstage Road, St James Parish Hall, 13-17, Marlborough Place, The Bridge House,
Wed 6.30pm to 9.30pm Higher Bebington, Wirral, CH63 6HD AMBROSDEN GAMING CLUB Tithe Barn Lane, Woodhouse, Brighton, BN1 1UB Borough Parade,
Wed 10am to 10.30pm Ambrosden Village Hall, Sheffield, S13 7LL Mon 4pm to 11pm Chippenham, SN15 3WL
SCYTHE BOARD GAMERS Merton Road, Ambrosden, Fri 6pm to 10pm Thu 7pm to 11pm
Scythe and Teacup Gaming Cafe, LIVERPOOL LION BOARDGAMERS Bicester, OX25 2LZ WARWICKSHIRE
61 A Kempston Street, 13, Earle Street, Liverpool, L3 9NS Mon 8pm (fortnightly) ZONE OUT GAMES CLUB BOARD GAME CAFE SUMMERFIELD DEVIZES & DISTRICT
Liverpool, L3 8HE Mon 6pm The Workshops, Coopers Terrace, Memorial Hall, WARGAMES GROUP
Thu NORTH OXFORDSHIRE Doncaster, DN1 2PX Summerfield Crescent, Scout Hall, Southbroom Road,
SOUTHPORT BOARD WARGAMING CLUB Tue and Wed 5pm to 10pm; Birmingham, B16 0EZ Devizes, SN10 5AD
THE LIVERPOOL WARGAMES GAMES GROUP Bowen Room, Dupuis Centre, Sat 9am to 4pm; Sun 10am to 4pm Last Monday of the month 6.30pm Sun 2pm to 6pm
ASSOCIATION (LWA) 347-349 Lord Street, 25 South Bar Street,
11, Davies Street, Liverpool, L1 6HB Southport, PR8 1NH Banbury, OX16 9AF STAFFORDSHIRE DREAMDEALERS GAMING CLUB WED KNIGHT GAMERS
Thu, Sun and most Saturdays Tue 6pm Wed 7pm to 10pm CHASE WARGAMES CLUB St Lukes Church Hall, Mill Stream Approach,
Burntwood Road, Rotherham Road, Castle Street, Salisbury, SP1 3TA
LEICESTERSHIRE MID GLAMORGAN OXFORD ON BOARD Burntwood, WS7 0JL Coventry, CV6 4FE Wed 5.30pm to 10.30pm
LEICESTER ALL SCARS BRIDGEND ROLEPLAYING Iffley Road, Oxford, OX4 1EA Thu 8pm Sat 1pm to 5pm
66, Tabletop Tyrants, AND BOARDGAMES CLUB Mon 7pm WORCESTERSHIRE
Bedford Street, Leicester, LE1 3JR 62 Robins Hill, Bridgend, CF31 2PJ LIBERAL GAMING CLUB GRANGE LIVE GAMING BROMSGROVE BOARD GAMERS
First and third Saturdays Wed OXFORD OUTRIDERS The Old Liberal, 5-9 Woodhouse Lane, 93-99 Holloway Head, 2, Finstall Road,
of the month 17, The Mitre, High Street, Tamworth, B77 3AE Birmingham, B1 1QP Bromsgrove, B60 2DZ
  CASTLE GAMERS BRIDGEND Oxford, OX1 4AG Tue Wed 3pm to 10.30pm; Wed 7.30pm
LEICESTER PHAT KATZ Gilead Chapel, Heol Spencer, Wed 6pm Thu 9am to 10.30pm;
Ukranian Church Hall, Coity, Bridgend, CF35 6AU LICHFIELD GAMERS AND RPG Fri 9am to 10.30pm; WYRE FOREST GAMERS
Livingstone Street, Leicester, LE3 0QY Sun 5pm SHROPSHIRE Duke Of York, Church Street, Sat and Sun 9am to 5.30pm St Ambrose Parish Hall, Leswell St,
Thu 8pm to 11pm BIG ORBIT GAMES Lichfield, WS13 6EB Kidderminster, DY10 1RP
MIDDLESEX Unit 3-9 Riverside Mall, Mon 7pm NUNEATON ALTERNATIVE Third Sunday of the month
SECTION 31 BATTLEUX WARGAMES CLUB Pride Hill Centre, GAMES ASSOCIATION 2pm to 7pm
01-03 La Vida Italian Restaurant (the Battle of Britain Club, Shrewsbury, SY1 1PH STAFFORDSHIRE Church Road, Nuneaton, CV10 8LJ
function room upstairs), Hillingdon Road, Every day WARGAMING GUILD Mon and Wed 6pm/6.30pm POSTAL ORDER GEEK MEET
Northampton Street, Leicester, LE1 1PA Uxbridge, UB10 0RY 38, High Street, Stone, ST15 8AS 18, The Postal Order,
Wed 6pm to 11pm Mon 7pm to 11pm SOMERSET Sun 6pm to 10.30pm SCIMITAR WARGAMES GROUP Foregate Street,
BATH GAMING GROUP Christ Church, Frankpledge Road, Worcester, WR1 1DN
SONS OF SIMON DE MONTFORT DICE CLUB Widcombe Social Club, TAMWORTH GAMES CLUB Coventry, CV3 5GT Mon 7pm
Beaumanor Hall, Beaumanor Drive, Battle Of Britain Club, Hillingdon Road, Widcombe Hill, Bath, BA2 6AA Central Methodist Church, Wed 7pm to 10pm
Woodhouse, Loughborough, Uxbridge, UB10 0RY Tue 7.30pm Aldergate, Tamworth, B79 7DJ REDDITCH WARGAMING
LE12 8TX Wed (except the second Wed of Wed 5pm to 9pm WEST MIDLANDS SOCIETY
Mon and Wed; the month); 7.30pm to late MID SOMERSET BIRMINGHAM WARGAMES Windmill Community Centre,
Regular all-day Sunday games WARGAMES CLUB THE VINE INN GAMERS AND BOARDGAMES CLUB Ryegrass Lane, Walkwood,
NORFOLK Seager Hall, Union Street, Sheep Fair, Rugeley, WS15 2AT AKA DRAGOON’S DEN Redditch, B97 5YE
THE LEICESTER WARGAMES AFTERMATH GAMING CLUB Wells, BA5 2PU Sun and Wed 6pm to 11pm 91, Moseley All Services Club, Tue 6.45pm to 10pm
AND FANTASY GROUP 219, Lazar House, Sprowston Road, Thu 7pm Church Road, Birmingham,
55, West Leicester Conservative Club, Norwich, NR3 4HX STIRLINGSHIRE B13 9EA YORKSHIRE
Westcotes Drive, Tue 7pm to 11pm; PIGMAR WARGAMING CLUB FALKIRK DISTRICT Fri 6.45pm to 11.45pm; BEYOND MONOPOLY
Leicester, LE3 0QU Second and last Thus of the month Salisbury & Conservative WARGAMES CLUB Second and fourth Sundays of 17-19, Blossom Street,
Tue 7pm to 11pm Club - Hawthorn House, Newlands Community Centre, the month 1.30pm to 11.45pm York, YO24 1AQ
London Road, Bath, BA1 6AB Montgomery Street, First and third Saturdays of
LINCOLNSHIRE KINGS LYNN RPG & Tue and Thu 7pm Grangemouth, FK3 8QR PLAY MORE GAMES! the month 10am to 9pm;
GRIMSBY WARGAMES SOCIETY WARGAMES CLUB Mon 7pm to 11pm; Last Sunday Unit 9 Parkgate, Stratford Road, Second and fourth Fridays
Sixhills Street, Grimsby, DN32 9HT 12th Scout Hut, Beulah Street, THE FROME BOARD of the month 10am to 6pm Shirley, Solihull, B90 3GG of the month 5pm to 9pm
Every night 7pm Gaywood, King’s Lynn, PE30 4DN GAMES CLUB Mon 6pm to 11pm
Sun 1pm to 6pm 5, The George Hotel, SUFFOLK HEADINGLEY GAMES CLUB
LINCOLN BOARD GAME GROUP Market Place, Frome, BURY ST EDMUNDS STOURBRIDGE & Heart Centre, Bennett Road,
6, Upstairs Function Room, NORWICH BOARD GAMERS BA11 1AF BOARD GAMING GROUP DISTRICT WARGAMERS Leeds, LS6 3HN
Union Road, Lincoln, LN1 3BJ 16, Charing Cross, Thu 7pm to 11pm; All day on the The Bennet Arms, Kingshall Street, The Church Hall, Vicarage Road, Thu 6.30pm to 10.30pm
Tue 7.30pm  Norwich, NR2 4AL second Sun of the month Rougham, IP30 9LH Amblecote, Stourbridge
Tue 7.30pm Meet fortnightly on Thursday (Opposite the Corbett hospital) HOLMFIRTH GAMING CENTRE
LOUTH STRATEGY GAMES CLUB TRINITY WARGAMING CLUB Fri 7pm to 11.30pm Above the Karate Centre, Albion
Holy Trinity Community Centre, NORTH YORKSHIRE 17, Trinity Street, IPSWICH BOARD GAMERS Mills - Unit 1 Second Floor,
Eastgate, Louth, LN11 8DB YORK GARRISON Taunton, TA1 3JG Cult Cafe, University Avenue, WEST SUSSEX Miry Lane, Thongsbridge,
Sun 5pm to 9pm WARGAMING CLUB Fri 6.30pm to 11.30pm Ipswich, IP3 0FS BOGNOR REGIS Holmfirth, HD9 7HP
The Folk Hall, Hawthorn Terrace, Mon 7.30pm GAMING ASSOCIATION Thu and Sun 5pm
LLANDUDNO New Earswick, York, YO32 4AQ WARGAMING@RADSTOCK Greencourt Drive,
CONWY WARGAMES CLUB Wed 6.30pm to 10.30pm; Prattens Social Club, MID SUFFOLK GAMING GROUP Bognor Regis, PO21 5EU LEEDS GAMING
Creuddyn Leisure Centre, Second Saturday of the month Westfield, Radstock, Wyverstone Village Hall, Tue 6.30pm to 11pm 28, Great George Street,
Derwen Lane, Penrhyn Bay, LL30 3LB 9.30am to 6pm BA3 4BD Rectory Road, Leeds, LS1 3DL
Last Sunday of the month Wed 6.30pm to 10.30pm; Stowmarket, IP14 4SH CRAWLEY WARGAMES CLUB Second Sunday of the month
12pm to 5pm NORTHAMPTONSHIRE Sun 10am to 4pm Second and last Tilgate Recreational 12.30pm to 7.30pm
BATTLEFIELD HOBBBIES CLUB Fridays of the month Centre, Pease Pottage Hill,
LONDON 17 Brunel Close, WESTON WARGAMERS CLUB Crawley, RH11 9BQ LEEDS NIGHT OWLS
CROSS GAMING CLUB Daventry, NN11 8BR Unit 9UA, Elizabeth House MID SUFFOLK Fri 7pm to 11pm 145-153, Cardigan Road,
68, Borough Road, Wed and Fri 7pm to 11pm; 30-32, Boulevard, WARGAMES ASSOCIATION Leeds, LS6 1LJ
Southwark, SE1 1DX Sat and Sun 9am to 5pm Weston-super-Mare, BS23 1NF Milden Cricket Pavilion DUNGEON CRAWL-EY GAMES CLUB Sun 10am
Tue 6pm to 11pm; Tue, Wed and Fri Church Road, Milden, 1st Langley Scout Hut,
Thu 6.30pm to 10.30pm THE BRACKLEY & 6pm to 10.30pm CO10 9SG Larks Rise, Crawley, RH11 7QG OVERSEAS
DISTRICT GAMERS (AKA Wed 9am to 5pm; Bi-monthly BIELEFELD WARGAMES &
HESTON AND EALING WARGAMERS THE BAD GAMERS) WSM BOARD GAMING CLUB Every third Saturday 9am to 5pm MODEL MAKING CLUB
Room 2, Northfields Community Centre, Bracken Leas Primary School, 358-360, Locking Road, SOUTH DOWNS SIEGEBREAKERS Building 43, Catterick Barracks,
71a Northcroft Road, Magdalen Meadows, Weston-super-Mare, BS22 8PD SURREY 13, High Street, Storrington, Detmolder Strasse 440,
Northfields, Ealing, W13 9SS Brackley, NN13 6LF Thu 6.30pm to 11.30pm HAMPTON COURT GAMERS Pulborough, RH20 4DR Bielefeld NRW, Germany, 33605
Tue 7pm to 10.30pm Imber Court Conference Room, Tue 6.30pm to 11pm Thursday and occasionally
SELWG SOUTH YORKSHIRE Ember Lane, at the weekend
37, St Laurence Church Hall, THE PIT GAMING CLUB BROTHERHOOD OF THE DICE East Molesey, KT8 OBT WEST YORKSHIRE
Bromley Road, Catford, SE6 2TS The Wesley Centre, College Street, Wilthorpe & Redbrook Community Sun 4pm to 8pm AIREBOROUGH THE CENTURIONS WARGAMING
Fri 7pm Irthlingborough, Wellingborough, Centre, Wilthorpe Road, COMMUNITY GAMERS Source Comics & Games,
NN9 5TU Barnsley, S75 1JR GUILDFORD GAMES CLUB Trinity Church Rawdon (in 2057 Snelling Ave. N,
TANELORN WAR GAMING CLUB Fri 6pm to 10pm Monthly 5pm to 10.30pm Park Barn Centre, Southway, the old hall), New Road Side, Roseville, MN, USA, 55113
Harvey Road, E11 3DB Guildford, GU2 8DU Rawdon, Leeds, LS19 6AS First and third Saturdays
Sun 2pm to 6pm NOTTINGHAMSHIRE ROTHERHAM WARGAMES CLUB Mon 7.30pm to 11pm Thu 7pm; Sat 1pm to late of the month
NOTTINGHAM BOARD The Masbrough and
THE PHOENIX GAMES CLUB AND TABLETOP CLUB Thornhill Community Centre, STAINES WARGAMES ASSOCIATION GAMING CLUB BRADFORD WARGAME CLUB
The Black Lion Pub, High Street, The Ned Ludd, 27 Friar Lane, College Road, Masbrough, The Social Hall, 114, Thornton Road, GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI
Plaistow, E13 Nottingham, NG1 6DA Rotherham, S60 1JE Harvest Road, Egham Bradford, BD1 2DX San Lorenzo, 17 Genoa, Italy
Thu 8pm Tue and Thu Sat 9am to 5pm Fri 7pm to 11pm Fri 5pm to 10pm Wed and Thu

124_125_clubDirectory_v2 MJ.indd 125 25/09/2017 10:24

SHOP SPOTLIGHT

■ The store has plenty of space to play!

INNER SANCTUM an online presence, and the price pressure

they place on the products in the market.
From the social space we provide on a

COLLECTIBLES
daily basis to the organised play events we
run and organise, down to the customers that
have become almost further extensions of
our own family, our overriding prerogative
As the Cambridge outlet prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary, has been to become a community hub for
founder Graham Henderson looks at the local gaming scene and the gaming community of Cambridge. This is
something the online-only stores can’t boast.
considers how UK hobby stores compare to their American cousins Every time you make a purchase from your
Interview by Matt Jarvis local brick and mortar games store, you’re
investing in your local gaming community;
you’re investing in always having the outlet
When did Inner Sanctum first open? I wouldn’t say the store has changed, more for the hobby or hobbies you love.
We opened our doors to the public in late it’s been refined over time. When we started
January 2008, but this was only the opening we only really had consumer knowledge of On that note, how do you feel about the
of the retail store. what we liked as gamers; a lot of the products trend of board game cafés?
we stocked early-on were leaps of faith – We welcome the diversification within the
How has the shop changed in some worked and some were mistakes. Over industry! Anything that brings the concept of
the near-decade since then? time, I guess the thing that has ‘changed’ social gaming to a more mainstream consumer
We’ve come a long way since opening, is the knowledge of the industry’s inner base is good for the industry in general.
and that’s really down to how the workings we’ve garnered as a company. Gaming cafés are providing a ‘gateway’
local community has responded and into the gaming industry for people that may
supported us the whole way. It’s all What are the biggest challenges well have never walked into a gaming store
down to their continued support and currently facing traditional brick-and- of their own volition in their entire lives. We
patronage that we continue to grow mortar games stores? see ourselves as the next step up that chain,
and expand in both our product and The most critical challenge facing our providing both a focal point for both retail
organised play offerings. industry is the onset of stores that only have sales and sanctioned organised play.

126

126_127_ShopSpotlight_v2 MJ.indd 126 25/09/2017 10:28


■ There are gaming
meetups every week.
■ Trading card games have
proved particularly popular.
126_127_ShopSpotlight_v2 MJ.indd 127
We’re taking the interest in gaming that
these cafés generate and trying to nurture
that interest into fully-fledged hobbies that
can last a lifetime.
What is the local gaming community like
in Cambridge?
If I had to describe the community in a word,
the most appropriate one would be ‘diverse’!
We’re very fortunate that our consumer base
comes from all walks of life and backgrounds,
making the store a real melting pot.
From the high rollers that come in and buy
seemingly whatever they want, whenever
they want, to the young kids dragging and
pestering their parents for a booster of the
latest card game that all their friends are
collecting and playing during breaktimes at
school, there’s one common thread that runs
through all of them: a passion for and a love
of gaming.
What events do you run for gamers in
the area?
As far as CCGs and TCGs go, we run in-store
events for Magic: the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!
and Force of Will, and work in conjunction
with a local Netrunner playgroup to run
organised play offsite with our blessing.
We also run weekly in-store RPG, board
game and wargaming evenings, all with
active player groups, and are always looking
to add events and organised play programs
to our calendar. We always want to offer
any support we can to help promote our
industry and, whenever a player base
supports us and grows, we always look to
lay on programmes wherever we can to
return that support.
How does the appreciation and health
of ‘friendly local game stores’ in the UK
compare to the US?
Socially, I think we’re really starting to catch
up and, some may argue, are now even on
a par with the US on how ‘geek culture’ has
become far more mainstream and accepted,
and that’s great for us as a business as it just
means more potential customers.
Unfortunately, there’s glaring differences
between how the US and UK models of a
FLGS can and do operate.
First is floor space: the US stores just
get more space in their retail units for a
comparable cost to us here in the UK.
Secondly, US stores have to have a
brick-and-mortar retail store in order to
do business with the distributors in the
127
marketplace. From what I’ve seen, this
creates a far more equal playing field
as far as day-to-day running costs go,
translating into a far more levelled-off
pricing of products for the end consumer
no matter where you choose to shop. In
the UK, there are relatively lower criteria
for a comparative relationship, creating a
real dichotomy in business approach for
certain sectors of the industry.
Thirdly, it is far more likely to find
retail businesses in the US that cater
almost exclusively for one sub-section
of the market, rather than stock and
promote the industry as a whole. Here
in the UK it’s far more likely that your
FLGS carries a more well-rounded
stock offering than its US counterpart,
but it’s also the way the US market
has seemingly shaken out, with stores
focusing on TCGs and ‘card shops’.
What games have proved most
popular this year?
Locally, we’ve been really impressed
how the Force of Will TCG player
base has consolidated itself and the
passionate support of the local players.
It’s shown a steady increase in both sales
and player attendance to events over the
course of 2017 so far and we’re hoping
that uptrend continues.
As far as our board games offerings
are concerned, TIME Stories and its
expansions, Santorini, Scythe, and
Terraforming Mars have all been really
strong sellers for us so far this year.
What are your future plans for
Inner Sanctum?
We have a lot of improvements in the
works. Our soon-to-be-available online
offering will be one of a number of
changes and improvements we’ll be
rolling out over the next couple of months.
We’re excited as a company about what’s
happening behind the scenes and what’s
soon to be unveiled to the public, but
we’re not quite ready to give away the
finer details just quite yet! However, I
can sum this up in three simple words:
improve, evolve and expand. ■
INNER SANCTUM COLLECTIBLES
6 Homerton Road, Cambridge, CB2 8NX
01223 240 333 
sales@innersanctumcollectibles.com
innersanctumcollectibles.com
25/09/2017 10:28
SHOP DIRECTORY
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 SHOP DIRECTORY
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p128_129.indd 129 25/09/2017 09:38

 Tabletop Time Machine
JUNGLE KING (1950S)
J
ungle King was a small-scale title published by
board game giant John Waddington Ltd in the
1950s. When I first played Jungle King I knew
nothing of its true origins. Rather predictably from
the game’s title it comes in a box with a majestic lion
pictured on the front and the subtitle: “A fascinating
game of skill to suit all ages.” Inside the box you will
find more impressive artwork for a game of this era.
The board is a grid of seven by nine squares over
an elaborate jungle scene and there are two pools
of water in the centre. At each end of the board is
a “den” which is surrounded on three of its sides
by “trap” squares. The game also comes with eight
thick cardboard counters that represent different
animals, with a picture and the number assigned to
each creature.
While this is a colourful and visually appealing
game for the 1950s, the mechanics of the game are
much older than that. Jungle King has its roots in a
Chinese game of unknown origin and age called Dou
Shou Qi – which literally means the “Animal Fight
Game”. Dou Shou Qi is played on exactly the same
layout of board and has various rulesets but they are
all very similar. Whichever version you look at, the
game has some great strategic elements created from
some simple basic rules that are easy to learn.
There are eight animal tokens per side. Each
animal is in a jungle hierarchy and given a number to
130_tabletopTimeMachine_v2 MJ.indd 130
■ The king of the jungle himself.
■ A detailed colourful board.
represent their position: rat (1), cat (2), dog (3), wolf ■ The den and trap layout.
(4), leopard (5), tiger (6), lion (7) and elephant (8).
Jungle King also uses these numbers on the board to
represent the starting positions, making setup very
simple. The most fundamental rule is that animals
with a higher number may capture animals with a
lower number – except for the rats who, having no
lower numbered opponent, can capture the elephants.
Rats can also move into the water, although they
cannot capture from there. The lions and leopards can
jump across the water. The aim is to get one of your
animals across the board and into your opponent’s
den, but the den is surrounded by traps that you must
cross. Once in one of your opponent’s traps then any
rank of animal can capture your trapped animal.
It’s a game suitable for all ages and can create some
interesting strategic situations, but it shines as a fun ■ Some internal box art.
introduction to chess-style games for younger players.
As a commercial presentation of a traditional
Chinese game, Jungle King is nicely produced.
Its cardboard contents and box mean that most Words Phil Robinson
copies show a fair amount of wear and tear, making Phil Robinson is a game
examples in good condition harder to find. Even historian and the founder
those in poorer condition are fairly scarce, so it may of the Museum Of Gaming
be worth adding to your collection if you are a fan (www.museumofgaming.org.uk),
an organisation that explores
of this type of game. More traditional Dou Shou and documents the history of
Qi games can be bought quite easily online from gaming through its collections,
Chinese suppliers. ■ exhibitions and research.
130
22/09/2017 12:25
 IN THE NEXT ISSUE...

STAR WARS
LEGION
Luke! Vader! Troopers! Speeder bikes! All-out Galactic Civil War!
We head to a galaxy far, far away for an exclusive look at
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FREE TICKET!
Including a free copy of Ticket to Ride
on PC, playable route card for the
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GAMES OF
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YEAR the best
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ask designers for their
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the last 12 months

INSIDE THE HUGE UNIVERSE OF TWILIGHT IMPERIUM | CHRISTMAS GIFT GUIDE

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131_nextIssue_v4 MJ.indd 131 25/09/2017 11:28
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p132.indd 1 20/09/2017 11:52