Another bug hunt

Aliens, James Cameron's 1986 sequel to Ridley Scott's horror masterpiece Alien, is one of my all time favorite movies. The scenario of a group of strung-out marines trapped in an enclosed environment with a horde of bloodthirsty monsters is ideal fodder for gaming, so it's no surprise that the film has been mined for game material since it came out, both official (Aliens, Legendary Encounters: ALIEN) and unofficial (Argo, Nemesis, Space Hulk).

Leading Edge's Aliens (sometimes known as This Time It's War) game has long been one of my favorites. It has a simple, elegant tactical movement system and tense game play that effectively simulates the action from the film. The only thing wrong with it is its low production value, with bland graphic design, paper maps, and cardboard standees in lieu of miniatures (the publisher did offer upgrade packs of metal miniatures, but they were way outside of my price range in 1989).

So when Gale Force 9, publishers of the excellent Firefly board game, announced that they were doing an Aliens game, I got very excited. My hope was that they would do something similar to the Leading Edge Aliens, or even a reskin of their own Firefly Adventures, a cooperative tactical movement game that does some innovative things with non-player controlled enemies.

Somewhat surprisingly, Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps isn't really either of those things. It's similar to Leading Edge's Aliens in that it is a cooperative game where the players control Ripley and the marines in an attempt to survive and escape rather than defeat all the Aliens (an impossible task). It's similar to Firefly Adventures mainly in that the rule book is confusing and poorly organized, managing once again to make a relatively simple game seem overly complicated. But that's pretty normal for rule books these days.

The components are definitely light years ahead of the Leading Edge game, with heavy cardstock boards and detailed plastic miniatures. There have been a fair number of complaints in various forums online about the fact that the miniatures require assembly, without any warning on the box, but they include detailed instructions and I didn't find it particularly difficult. The only poor design decision here is that the Aliens have long, spindly hook-shaped tails that were a little challenging to attach, get in the way during play, and make the miniatures difficult to store (remember Barrel of Monkeys?). They're nice looking miniatures though, and as far as I know, this is the first time the actual human characters from the film have been represented by official 28mm gaming scale figures.

The game uses miniatures, gridded tiles, cards and dice to recreate the key scenes from the film. Each player takes control of a single character, and any remaining characters remain in the game as "grunts" that the players can order around, but without complex game info to keep track of. This means you always have the same number of characters on the board, but your team has more interesting abilities if you have more players. Of course, that also means the game will be more challenging.

While the game is played out on a grid with miniatures, the core game element is the Endurance Deck, a stack of 60 cards representing weapons, equipment, events, and hazards. The deck is used as a timer (when the deck runs out the players lose the game), a currency to pay for game effects (by discarding cards from the deck), a way to generate random effects and give players extra tactical choices (by drawing or revealing cards). It also contains a few Hazards, negative effects that must be resolved when the card is drawn or revealed. It's very similar to the way the old Star Wars Customizable Card Game worked, but honestly the idea is so good that someone should be using it.

At the end of every turn, the players draw several "Blip" cards to determine where the Aliens appear. Aliens start out as blip tokens, unseen until they move into proximity to the human characters, at which point the tokens are replaced by one or more Alien miniatures. It's a neat effect that mimics the tension-building motion trackers from the film, and allows for some uncertainty as you don't know how many Aliens are approaching until they're in the room with you.

The details of the different scenarios allow for some variety, but ultimately the goal is always to escape the board with as many survivors as possible. This leads to some agonizing tactical decisions: do I take the time to weld that door shut, or just run for it? Do I keep my marines near the door to cover each other and all escape together, or is it better to risk some of them so that others can get out for certain?

If anything, my only complaint is that if too many Aliens are on the board all at once it can get to be a bit of a grind, both with the sheer number of Aliens you're moving around each turn, and also with the repetitive rolling to try to shoot Alien after Alien. But it's a good game that definitely simulates the action and tension of the film.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) I'm docking this game one star for the murky, hard to follow rule book, and another in acknowledgement that my overwhelming affection for the source material makes this game more fun for me than it might be for others.

• Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps official website
• Aliens: Another Glorious Day in the Corps on BoardGameGeek

Rocketeering

The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future is a small board game that was published in 2022, and I'm not really sure why. It's based on the 1991 film, but it's a year late for the film's 30th anniversary, and in any case there wasn't much of an anniversary celebration that I'm aware of. But none of that really matters. I bought the game because The Rocketeer is one of my favorite films, based on one of my favorite comic books.

The game was designed by Prospero Hall, the design collective known primarily for what I call "Barnes & Noble games," light strategy games based on recognizable film and television properties that you would expect to see tastefully displayed at your local mall book store. This is not a criticism. These types of games frequently serve as gateways to get new players into the board gaming hobby, and to do that effectively, these games need to be easy to play, visually stunning, and remind players of the the intellectual property they're based on. The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future does all of that very well.

It's a two player game. One player controls the heroes: Cliff Secord, his girlfriend Jenny, and his irascible mechanic friend Peevey. The other player controls the villainous Neville Sinclair and his henchmen, gangster Eddie Valentine and hulking brute Lothar. All the memorable characters from the film are covered. The game consists of playing cards that move the various characters along the board, where they gain resources, fight to take possession of the plans to the fabulous rocket pack, and most importantly, draw Finale cards that provide victory points based on where everyone is at the end of the game.

Once you get past the theme, the actual game play is a bit too simple to be really interesting. If it weren't based on a beloved film, the game would be mediocre at best. But that's the point. It is based on a beloved film, and it evokes that film at every turn, from the 1930s style graphic design to the stunning artwork that reflects the characters without looking too much like the actors -- the decision not to use still photos from the actual film was a good one, as the artwork plays on hazy memories of the movie rather than the possible reality that it may be a little dated and not quite as good as we remember it being.

The real stroke of genius, though, is that the movie's plot is essentially about the characters running around to to different locations and fighting over the plans to the fabulous rocket pack. While it may not be a brilliant game in and of itself, it is an excellent simulation of the film. And that's all a game like this needs to be.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Not an overly compelling game, but I'll play it any time I want to be reminded of the Rocketeer film without actually taking the time to watch it.

• The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future official website
• The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future on BoardGameGeek

Buy low and sell high with Vikings on the Volga

Vikings on the Volga is a very simple game from the designer of Leaving Earth. This comes as a bit of a surprise, as Leaving Earth is by far one of the most complex games in our collection. The themes are broadly similar; both games are about planning a voyage in the most efficient way possible. But where Leaving Earth is a very complicated yet oddly compelling game about weight-to-thrust ratios, fuel consumption, and making certain you have enough food for the return voyage, Vikings on the Volga is a much simpler game about delivering the right commodities to the right city at the right time, and avoiding the dreaded Golden Horde.

The board is pieced together randomly out of very nice wooden tiles representing the Volga river and the cities that sit on it, as well as empty overland spaces that ships can travel over if they're willing to take extra time to do it. Each city has a corresponding pass that players can invest in; be the first to buy the pass for a particular city and all the other players have to pay you each time they want to enter or pass through it.

The game revolves around three different trade goods (amber, fish, and furs), each of which can be purchased in one city. There will be a number of public contract cards in play that determine which cities will buy which goods, and the price they sell for is determined by the number of cities that have been burned down by the Golden Horde (more on that in a moment). The bulk of the game is spent buying goods in one place and then selling them in another, hopefully along the shortest route possible.

While all this buying, moving, and selling is going on, there are two non-player pieces that move around the board: the aforementioned Golden Horde, and the Price of Kiev. Any player can give up their turn to move either the Horde or the Prince. If the Horde moves into a city, they burn it down, which will prevent buying or selling there. Also, when there are 5 burned cities in play, the game ends. If the Prince moves into a city, he puts the fire out, so moving the Horde and the Prince to help yourself and slow down your opponent is a key tactical move in the game.

It's a pretty basic pick up and deliver game, but the variable tile setup and the way the Horde and the Prince affect the game makes it a little more interesting. The graphic design is unusual but excellent, with understated colors, bold text that's easy to read, and lovely wooden tiles and player pieces that are much nicer than the punched cardboard you would normally expect from a game like this.

Rating: 3 out of 5. Gameplay alone is fairly mediocre, but the surprising production value is enough to make this game a little more noteworthy.

• Vikings on the Volga official website*
• Vikings on the Volga on BoardGameGeek

*Note: this game is made by a very small publisher who appear to print to order and do all the manufacturing in-house, so orders can take several months to be filled. I can't recommend ordering direct from the publisher unless you are extremely patient.

Going to war with Undaunted: Normandy

There's no denying that we're in the middle of a major renaissance for table top games. There have never been more titles available, the standard of quality has never been so high, and the hobby is more mainstream than it has ever been. With the vast proliferation of games currently hitting the market, game designers are forced to think more creatively in order to have their game stand out. One way to do that is by combining different game mechanisms.

Undaunted: Normandy features one of the more unlikely combos, mixing deck building (a relatively modern and extremely popular game type) with old-school counters-and-maps wargaming.

Wargaming has a long and storied history that I won't even attempt to go into here. These types of games have always emphasized accuracy and detail over aesthetics and accessibility, and only a few (such as Twilight Struggle) have managed to get much attention in the wider world of gaming, outside of their dedicated player base. Undaunted: Normandy attempts to rectify that by updating the classic wargame with elegant, streamlined rules, simple but well-designed components, and much nicer artwork.

The game is scenario based, running through a series of historical World War 2 battles each with its own board setup and asymmetrical victory conditions. The board is composed of tiles representing different terrain types such as forests, rivers, and open fields. These tiles are easily rearranged to depict a wide variety of different European battlefields. Each player starts the game with different types of units such as infantry or commanders, each with different abilities. Attacking opposing units is done by rolling dice, with the tiles providing a target number based on distance and cover. It's a very elegant system that is easy to remember during play, requiring very little (if any) looking up of complicated rules.

The real brilliance of the game, however, is the way it incorporates the deck-building mechanism. In most deck building games, players begin with a rudimentary deck of basic cards, and then add better cards to their deck as the game progresses. The same is true here, with the cards representing the different units on the board. Cards are played to move and attack with those units, and also used to keep track of how much damage a unit has taken. When one of your units on the board is hit by an attack, you take one of that unit's cards out of the deck and placing it out of play. You can mitigate damage by adding more of that unit's cards (purchasing them from a supply row, a common feature of most deck building games), but eventually you will run out of a specific unit's cards, and when you do, that unit is destroyed.

Additionally, the game uses "Fog of War" cards to track the unpredictability of warfare. These are essentially blank cards that players are forced to add to their decks at various points during the game, with each one decreasing your chances of drawing the unit card you need during your turn.

The deck building element is elegantly incorporated and solves a lot of problems with battlefield simulation games such as keeping track of damage, limiting how often a particular unit can act, and determining when reinforcements are available. Combined with the location tiles that keep track of often difficult game elements like cover, range, and line of sight, we have a wargame that is intuitive and easy to play.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) It may not offer a pinpoint-accurate combat simuation, but Undaunted: Normandy gives us a modern, accessible WWII battle game, ingeniously combining deck building with an updated move-and-attack wargame.

• Undaunted: Normandy official website
• Undaunted: Normandy on BoardGameGeek

First impression: Doctor Who Nemesis

In Doctor Who: Nemesis, players take on the roles of iconic villains from Doctor Who and attempt to win by succeeding at their nefarious schemes before the other players do. Each villain has their own unique victory condition, and while the game is primarily a race to complete a particular combination of plays first, players can also interfere with the other players by playing hero cards designed to slow them down.

It is primarily a card game, with a small board worker placement element. Each player has their own board with four spaces representing different combinations of actions, mainly drawing and/or playing different types of cards, and a worker pawn that must move to a different space each turn. A lot of the game's decision points rest with which space to move to that will allow the player to play the type of cards they need to play that turn.

From the above description, Doctor Who: Nemesis sounds exactly like the Villainous series of games, which comes in Marvel, Star Wars, and classic Disney flavors. So exactly that it seems lucky for the designers of Doctor Who: Nemesis that the common wisdom is that it isn't possible to copyright game mechanisms. At the very least, comparisons between the games are inevitable.

I will concede that the games are extremely similar (with the caveat that I have only played Star Wars Villainous). The overall game structure is identical, but the card play in Doctor Who: Nemesis is quite different -- it reminds me a lot more of classic collectible card games from the 1990s, specifically Decipher's Star Wars and Star Trek CCGs. Cards in the game represent characters, permanent conditions, and temporary advantages. Character cards play to specific locations, and can be used to block your opponents' ability to use the actions on their board effectively, resulting in battles where the value of each player's characters at a location are totaled and compared, with the loser losing their forces but the winner having had to spend time fighting off the invaders instead of working on the scheme they need to play out in order to win. It adds a lot of player interaction that's missing from Villainous, and makes the game seem a lot less like double solitaire.

Where Doctor Who: Nemesis really improves on Villainous is in how the forces of good are included in the game. In Villainous, each character has a separate deck of hero cards that can be drawn and played by opponents in order to slow down that player. It works, but it's a little disjointed, and doesn't allow for any real strategy as you're drawing two cards, immediately playing one, and discarding the other. In Doctor Who: Nemesis, each player is given two randomly chosen Doctors at the start of the game; each of those Doctors comes with 4 cards that are shuffled in to that player's deck. The Doctor cards can be used to slow down the opponent by blocking their action spaces, and some of them offer alternate victory conditions that either player can work towards. It's a much more elegant solution and works well with the game's theme: it's easy to imagine Daleks and Cybermen competing for universal dominance, only to have the Doctor come along and foil everyone's plans.

The game was fairly easy to learn, with a surprisingly well-organized rule book and consistent graphics and reminders on the cards and boards. The only thing we found a little awkward was the turn structure. On your turn, you choose your action space, then play & move your characters and resolve battles, then do the actions on the space you've chosen. We found it to be a little counterintuitive to choose an action, then do something unrelated before resolving that action.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) All in all we enjoyed the game quite a bit. Yes, it borrows a lot from Villainous, but we thought it was a more interesting game.

• Doctor Who: Nemesis official website
• Doctor Who: Nemesis on BoardGameGeek

Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game: good enough for now

I love deck building games. These card games that usually involve each player starting with a basic deck of cards that they use to purchase newer, better cards towards an eventual goal of defeating a villain (or the other players) or just accumulating victory points. The format gives me a lot of what I like about trading card games, but without the massive investment of time, energy and money, and has become so ubiquitous as a game mechanism that it has become just one of many design elements in recent (and immensely popular) board games such as Dune: Imperium, and Lost Ruins of Arnak.

Like most people who were children in the 1970s, I love Star Wars. Although the franchise has seen its share of ups and downs over the years, I have enough nostalgic affection for it that I'm prepared to forgive its occasional excesses, and I think its current owners have started to figure out what works and what doesn't, and it's still pretty spectacular when they get it right.

So imagine my relief when Star Wars: the Deckbuilding Game turned out to be a pretty good, if not fantastic, game.

The game's theme has invited a lot of comparisons to Star Realms, but honestly both games borrow their core mechanisms from games like Legendary: cards generate one or more different currencies (in this case, resources, attack, or Force) which are then used to attack your opponent or purchase from a center row of available cards. The game adds two new elements to the deck building game formula: a tug-of-war Force track, and the ability to attack unpurchased cards in the center row.

The Force track is a simple board with several spaces and a marker. When players play cards that generate Force, the marker moves towards their side of the board, and their turn starts with it all the way at their end, they get an extra resource to spend. There are also a handful of cards that have additional abilities if the marker is on one side of the board or the other. It's a game element that's not all that developed, but given the absence of major force-wielding characters like Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi from the game, I suspect this will be further developed in an expansion.

Normally in deck building games, players purchase new cards from a common pool or row of available cards, but how do you address that in a world as unambiguously black-and-white as Star Wars? It doesn't really work to have Han Solo working with a squad of stormtroopers, or Princess Leia and Grand Moff Tarkin suddenly resolving their differences and teaming up. The game solves this problem by having all the cards marked as Empire, Rebellion, or neutral. Anyone can buy neutral cards, but rather than the Rebel player being able to buy Imperial cards, or having them just sit there in the row taking up space, each player can attack their opponent's cards, giving them a short term reward and freeing up space for (hopefully) one of their own cards to become available.

The ultimate goal of the game is to destroy your opponent's bases, anywhere between 3 and 5 depending on the desired length of game. Different bases have different in-game abilities, and players can defend their bases by putting capital ships into play -- these horizontally formatted cards stay in play from turn to turn (unusual for a game of this type) and soak up damage directed at their players' bases along with supplying other resources and abilities.

Thematically the game sticks to content from the original Star Wars trilogy and Rogue One, which is set at the same time. In addition to the aforementioned Force-users, the franchise's droid characters such as R2-D2, C-3PO and K2-SO are missing from the game, which makes me think they've been held back for a possible expansion that would introduce additional mechanisms, which would be a good idea -- while the game is perfectly entertaining and playable as-is, it is a little on the simple side and could eventually benefit from some added content to keep players interested.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) A game that is perfectly entertaining, especially if you're a Star Wars fan, but lacking the depth of more involved deck building games like Legendary.

• Star Wars: the Deckbuilding Game official website
• Star Wars: the Deckbuilding Game on BoardGameGeek

Ark Nova: the race to build a better zoo

Ark Nova is an extremely well-designed game that elegantly combines several different game mechanisms and successfully straddles the line between being complex and being just complicated. The zookeeping theme stresses the importance of balancing research and conservation with commercial appeal, and the game has the potential to be a great gateway game à la Settlers of Catan or Pandemic...except that it's saddled with a somewhat high price tag and an overwritten, poorly organized rule book, making the game a little difficult to learn for all but the most experienced tabletop gamers. But it's an excellent game otherwise, well worth it if you can make it through your first few games.

The core mechanism is relatively straightforward. You have a row of 5 cards in front of you, each occupying a space numbered one through 5 and representing an action you can take in the game: build structures such as animal enclosures or kiosks, play animal cards from your hand, use worker placement to claim partnerships with zoos and universities or contribute to conservation efforts, play sponsor cards for immediate or ongoing benefits, or draw cards from the deck. The position of the action card in the row determines how effective it is, and once you've used an action it moves back to the "1" position, causing all the other action cards to move up one spot. Right away you have a wealth of meaningful, strategic choices to make: do you take the lesser action now, or wait until its card has moved and you'll get more out of it? If you need an action to move up in the row, you need to play the actions that are in front of it, even if they don't benefit you right now. The interplay of the different actions and positions is fascinating.

Along the way, certain actions will cause a charming little coffee cup marker to move along what is called the break track. When it gets to the end, an end of round reset occurs, where players retrieve their spent workers, gain income from their zoo's appeal value,  refill their hands of cards, and reset the row of available cards to draw. A key part of the game is the attempt to control when this happens, or at the very least to position yourself so that you're ready to take advantage when it does.

The point of building enclosures, placing animals, supporting conservation efforts, and soliciting sponsors is, of course, to earn the victory points you need to win the game. Players need to make progress along three tracks: appeal, conservation, and reputation. Appeal represents how exciting your zoo is, and determines how much money you get to spend (mainly on building structures for your zoo). Conservation measures how much your efforts are supporting animal preservation; moving along this track gives you access to bonuses such as extra workers and better versions of your action cards. Reputation shows your standing in the scientific community, with more gameplay benefits and also access to a wider range of animal cards. Creating synergy with what animals and structures you place, how you lay out your zoo, what partnerships you go after and what conservation projects you support will gain you points on the various tracks, but there's a catch...

The conservation and appeal points are on the opposite ends of a single track, and the trick to getting a good score is to make sure your conservation keeps up with your appeal. The game ends once a player's markers pass each other (meaning that their conservation and appeal values are roughly equal). After this point, all the other players get one final turn, a mad scramble to finish whatever they are trying to do to maximize their scores, and if they find that they've spent too much game time on increasing their appeal and not enough on conservation, they risk ending up with a low (possibly even a negative) score.

It seems like a lot, and as I mentioned, the rule book doesn't explain it very well, but it really is a smooth system of interlocking game mechanisms, and once you've played a few times everything does kind of lock into place. The best thing to keep in mind while playing is that while it looks like an engine-building game, where you're trying to get just the right combination of elements into play, it's actually a race to see who can get their conservation value to pass their appeal value first. So it's best not to focus on waiting for that perfect card, but rather to just do the best you can with what you have in front of you at the moment.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A really good game that stops just short of being a great one.

• Ark Nova official website
• Ark Nova on BoardGameGeek

Batman Miniature Game: Gotham's tiny reckoning

I won't lie to you, the Batman Miniature Game by Knight Models is not an easy game to get into if you're a North American gamer. The publisher is based in Spain, and has a reputation for being difficult to work with, so you don't see it on many store shelves, or even in many US-based online stores. On top of that, the game is currently in its third edition, with some pretty drastic rules changes between editions, and the game's introductory set is frequently out of print and usually pretty expensive, and the current version of the game relies on the use of a smartphone app that is buggy and incomplete. Now pile on the usual barriers to entry for tabletop miniatures games such as the time it takes to assemble and paint the miniatures and terrain, and it starts to seem like the bridges into Gotham City are barricaded, just as they were in 2012 Batman film The Dark Knight Rises.

The game's rulebook can be downloaded for free from their website, as can all of the cards you need to play (which will also allow you to bypass the aforementioned app), so as long as you have a robust printer and are able to get your hands on some miniatures and terrain, you can play the game, but it's an awful lot of DIY work in this age of self-contained, pre-packaged games like Conan or Mythic Battles: Pantheon.

But, once you get past all that, there is a really interesting game here.

Like most games of this type, each player assembles a force of 7-10 characters. In this case each team consists of a hero, a sidekick, a handful of henchmen such as thugs or policemen, and possibly one or two free agents to round everything out. Forces are generally limited to a particular faction, so Batman can't team up with the Joker, but there are a few neutral characters such as Catwoman who can join anyone's team.

The game is played out over 4 rounds, which doesn't seem like much, but there is quite a bit each character can do on their turn, so the time goes by quickly and the game usually feels finished by the end of round four. At the start of each round, each player chooses four of their characters to assign Audacity markers to. Characters without those markers will only get one action during the round (usually either a move or an attack), but those with Audacity will get three actions: one move, one attack, and one special action, which usually represents a character's unique ability, such as Batman using his grappling hook or Harley Quinn distracting her opponents with clownish antics.

The real meat of the game, and the thing that makes it more than just the usual slugfest, is the Objectives system, enacted in the game by Objective cards in a player's hand, and Suspect tokens on the board. Each player starts the game with a deck of 20 cards which form their objective deck. These cards are what adds story elements to the game, representing goals and maneuvers such as gathering evidence, stealing loot, taking or rescuing hostages, or (especially in the Joker's case) generally causing chaos.

Objective cards frequently interact with Suspect tokens, which represent civilians, loot, bombs, or anything that needs to have a physical presence on the board. During their turn a character can forego an attack to instead interact with a Suspect token, either placing one on the board, removing one of the opponent's, or moving them into strategic positions.

Objective cards are also the way each player scores points in the game, often making combat with the other player's miniatures secondary to fulfilling the conditions a card might call for. A lot of miniatures games have tried to add card-based mechanisms as a way to spice things up, but this is the most integrated and interesting system I've ever seen. The cards are an integral part of the game rather than a tacked-on extra.

My only major complaint about the game (other than how difficult to find and expensive the miniatures are) is that characters tend to have far too many special abilities. This might seem obvious for a super hero game, but I often find it difficult to keep track of the large number of game effects and when they're supposed to resolve, and sometimes trying to figure out how different abilities interact with each other can lead to some head-scratching moments.

While it is pretty complicated and tends to take a long time to play (we've had games go on for five or more hours), the game really does feel like a Batman story unfolding on the table.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) I'm marking it down a point due to the fairly unreasonable barriers to entry, but the game play itself is a solid 4 out of 5.

• Batman Miniature Game official website
• Batman Miniature Game on BoardGameGeek (not very active)
• Batman Miniature Game Facebook group

Blade Runner the Roleplaying Game: too good not to talk about

I don't normally review role playing games here. I do spend a fair amount of time playing them, but I feel that the experience of playing an RPG is so vastly different than that of playing a board or card game that I honestly don't think the two types of games have all that much in common, the fundamental difference being that in a role playing game, the game mechanisms serve the story being told by the players, while in a board game, the story (if there even is one) is secondary to the game mechanisms.

However, Free League's Blade Runner: the Roleplaying Game is just too good not to talk about.

Swedish publisher Free League has a much deserved reputation for high end design and production value, and that is certainly on display here. The rulebook is beautifully designed and illustrated, using entirely original artwork by Martin Grip and Gustaf Ekelund rather than stills from the Blade Runner films, and the starter set comes with a wide variety of maps and other props created to the same high design standard.

The starter set contains an absurd amount of material: a condensed rulebook, four pre-made characters, two sets of engraved dice, a giant poster map of future L. A., a mountain of player handouts, and one of the best-written roleplaying adventures I've ever seen.

The game takes place in the year 2037, roughly midway between the two movies. Players take on the roles of replicant-hunting Blade Runners in a world that has just recently reintroduced a replicant work force and is still wary of them, in spite of assurances that they will obey every command. The starter set gives players two human and two replicant characters to choose from, and drops them into a murder investigation where they will need to interview suspects and witnesses, gather evidence, and make some interesting moral choices along the way.

The game system is a variation on the Year Zero game engine that forms the backbone of most of Free League's games, modified here to focus on gathering clues and pursuing investigations, with short bursts of violent combat that are very evocative of the setting. Dice rolling to accomplish tasks is very straightforward, with a system for rerolling failures that supports dramatic storytelling. One of the game's more interesting features is a card-based system for resolving chases, something other role playing games often struggle with.

 In place of experience points, players are rewarded with promotion points as they uncover vital pieces of the story's puzzle, and also humanity points when they make choices that favor compassion and humanity, or when they interact with important background characters. Characters can get into combat situations and take damage, but more interestingly, they also take on stress, and the game has a whole mechanical system for how they spend their down time, whether it's drinking in the local bar or relaxing at home with a beloved (and most likely artificial) pet.

In addition to the starter set, Free League has published a core rulebook that provides rules allowing players to create their own characters and case files in order to continue the adventure, but honestly, after how excellent the starter set adventure has been, the idea of having to come up with my own material for the game is daunting to say the least. Hopefully they will continue to publish further adventures and maintain the game's current high standard.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) Playing through the starter set adventure has been the most fun I've had with a roleplaying game in quite some time.

• Blade Runner: the Roleplaying Game official website

Unmatched: Now that's an epic duel

“A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.” -- Bruce Lee

To the best of my knowledge, there is only one tabletop game that lets you determine the winner in a fight between Bruce Lee and a tyrannosaurus rex. That game is Unmatched, and it deserves your respect.

Unmatched began its life as a Star Wars game called Epic Duels, published in 2002 by Milton Bradley and sold primarily in the toy store market. As a grid-based tactical combat game, Epic Duels was quite a bit more interesting than the usual toy store fare of the time, with players invited to imagine match-ups between characters from across the Star Wars timeline (as it existed in 2002, anyway), and realize those battles with a unique game system using miniatures, dice and cards. It was an interesting little game, especially by the standards of the time, but its nature as a piece of mass market movie tie-in merchandise meant that it didn't stay in print for long.

Robin Hood fights off a pack of hungry velociraptors

Fast forward to 2019. The core structure of Epic Duels has been revised, refined, and freed from the chains of the Star Wars license. Each player takes control of a character drawn from a wide range of mythology, literature, and popular culture, featuring everything from the aforementioned Bruce Lee to King Arthur, Sherlock Holmes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, and even a selection from the more obscure side of the Marvel comics universe such as Moon Knight and Ghost Rider. The game then uses miniature movement and card play to imagine a duel between whatever unlikely combination of characters have been chosen.

Most games of this type such as Heroclix or Firefly Adventures use a reasonably large board or map printed with a grid to determine movement and distance. Unmatched instead employs a small board illustrated with a series of connected, color-coded circles to establish each character's position. Miniatures can move along the connections between circles, and the circle's color indicates areas where ranged attacks can be made, eliminating the pesky line-of-sight arguments that are the bane of most miniatures games' existence.

Character actions are determined by a deck of cards, unique to each character. Cards represent attacks, defenses and special abilities that can be employed throughout the game. When combat ensues, the attacker plays an attack card with a numerical value face down on the table, then the defender plays a defense card, also face down. Both cards are revealed simultaneously, and the defender takes damage equal to the difference between attack and defense. Most of the cards have an effect that takes place either before or after the attack, which spices up the game and gives players a lot of tactical options to consider, both when attacking and defending. Damage is tracked using a simple dial. It's a wonderfully elegant system that handles attack and damage in one play, and eliminates the egregious "luck factor" of dice rolling.

Apart from the simple yet elegant game play, each Unmatched set is a class act from start to finish. The game is sold in stand-alone sets of 2, 3 or 4 characters, which allows players to try out the game with minimal investment, and also to stick to only the characters that they find interesting. Are you a Marvel fan with no interest in Little Red Riding Hood or Bigfoot? No problem, Unmatched has you covered. The boxes all come with a high quality plastic tray for all the components (a rarity these days), and while the cards are plenty durable, the trays will even accomodate sleeved cards. The miniatures don't come pre-painted, but they do come with a wash applied that brings out the details of the figure, and also a colored ring for the base that makes it easy to tell each player's characters apart.

The artwork on the cards is all original (even for the characters from licensed properties) and consistently excellent, and the graphic design is slick, contemporary and (most importantly) easy to read. The rulebook is well organized (also a rarity these days), but honestly, once you have the basics down you will rarely need to look at the rules -- the game design really is that good.

Ghost Rider artwork from the "Marvel: Redemption Row" set.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) Not just a great dueling game, but a great card game and a great miniatures game all rolled into one.

• Unmatched official website
• Unmatched on BoardGameGeek

PARKS: the magical quest game

PARKS (I don't know why the title is always in all caps, it just is) stands out in the overall world of hobby gaming for two reasons: its high end graphic design, and its theme, which avoids the usual wizards, goblins and Marvel superheroes who still seem to have a stranglehold on the industry. I don't want to say it's a game for adults, but it's definitely a game that should appeal to those who might be a little turned off by the more juvenile trappings of the gaming hobby.

The game is about hiking through the national parks of the United States. Each player has two pawns which move along a path, with spaces representing different types of terrain such as forests, or lakes, collecting resources that are spent in various combinations in order to pick up cards representing different national parks, with stunning artwork from the Fifty Nine Parks print series. Along the way, players acquire equipment such as trail guides and water bottles that make collecting cards easier, and take photos for extra points. after four "seasons" of play, the player with the most points worth of parks cards and photos wins the game.

As I mentioned earlier, the sedate theme, amazing illustration and design, and high quality components make the game stand out from the pack, but in terms of game design, it still has its roots in "quest" style adventure games like Talisman, which in turn call back to "move around and pick up stuff" classics like Monopoly or Clue. You're still moving around a board collecting treasure, which you then use to make the game play easier, with the ultimate goal of earning points to win. The only real difference is that in PARKS, your thematic goal is to take a nice hike and see some amazing scenery, rather than defeat the dragon king or whatever. It's a tried and true game concept, the innovation is in making it appeal to a new audience. And the amazing artwork builds a world just as compelling as middle-earth or the Marvel universe, with the added bonus that the world it describes is real.

As I understand it, this game is widely available in national park gift shops and the like, and the publisher has done a good job of getting it into mainstream venues like Barnes & Noble and Target, which is great for the hobby -- it brings in new players rather than competing for the existing ones with more of the same.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) While it's not necessarily a game of subtle complexities, it is a gorgeously designed game with an extremely solid, dependable structure.

• PARKS official website
• PARKS on boardgamegeek

Dice Throne: more than just battle yahtzee

Dice Throne is one of those rare animals, a Kickstarter game that not only made it to retail, but made it to retail in a way that is very accessible to new players who might want to try it out without spending $100+ on it. By their nature, games produced using the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform tend to be bloated, expensive affairs -- the producers of these games know that they have a captive and obsessive audience, and they want to try to sell that audience as much stuff as possible in one shot. Retail buyers, on the other hand, will often buy on a whim, but aren't as likely to pony up for a huge, deluxe game, and the makers of Dice Throne have solved this problem by splitting up the full boxed game into four smaller boxes. Each one works perfectly well as a stand-alone game, but buy all four and you have everything that comes with the Kickstarter version (other than a handful of promotional cards).

The game itself is a delight. It's a fairly straightforward combination of Yahtzee (without the math) and Magic: the Gathering (without the deck construction and collectability). Each player chooses a character to play as, which comes with a set of 5 dice, a deck of 30 cards, a playmat describing all the character's abilities, and assorted tokens used during the game.

I want to pause for a moment here to talk about the staggeringly high production values on display with this game. Whether you have one of the retail packs of two characters, or the eight-character "battle chests" that come direct from the publisher, each character comes packaged in its own separate plastic box that includes all the components for that character, plus spares of some of the tokens and even extra space in the box in case you want to sleeve the cards. The components are of extremely high quality, with gorgeous artwork and durable, well-printed cardboard components.

The core gameplay involves rolling dice in an effort to get specific combinations of numbers or symbols with which to attack your opponent's character. Your playmat describes all the different attacks you can make, based on how your dice come up. You get two re-rolls each turn, but you can also play cards from your hand to modify your dice rolls, make your attacks stronger, or interfere with what your opponent is doing. Additionally, each character has an assortment of tokens that they can play, either on themselves or their opponent, which grant various gameplay effects. It's just the right combination of the luck of the dice and the ability to modify that luck with your cards and tokens.

Any one of the two-character sets is a good dueling game by itself, but the choice of characters is a lot of what gives the game its variety. The first series consists mainly of basic fantasy archetypes: barbarian, elf, paladin, monk, ninja, and so on, but the second series adds some more interesting and esoteric characters like a gunslinger, pirate, and tactician. A recent Marvel Comics themed set adds well known characters like Thor and Black Panther, and last year they even put out a Santa vs. Krampus two-player set for Christmas. Can the barbarian beat the ninja? Is Doctor Strange a better sorcerer than the Pyromancer? Who would really win in a fair fight between Thor and Loki? These are the questions that can only be answered with Dice Throne.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) Quick, engaging gameplay plus top-notch production value combine to make this one of the best dueling games (or versions of Yahtzee) out there.

• Dice Throne official website
• Dice Throne on BoardGameGeek

Lost Ruins of Arnak: the days of hybrid adventure

Like Dune: Imperium, Lost Ruins of Arnak is a hybrid of two game types: worker placement, where each player is given a set number of pawns, which are placed on the board in order to gain benefits, and deck building, where players start with a deck of relatively simple cards, and then add better and more effective cards to their deck over the course of the game. 

The two games are similar enough that they get compared on a near-constant basis, and debate over which one is better is both extensive and inconclusive. We started playing both at around the same time, and quickly concluded that yes, they are similar, but they are also different enough to justify keeping both in our collection.

The game consists of three elements: a worker placement board representing explored and unexplored locations; a card row populated by two different types of cards for players to add to their starting decks; and a research track, where players spend resources in various combinations to advance along the track, gaining bonus points and other benefits. What makes the game especially fun is the way these three elements interact with one another.

There are several different types of resources: coins and compasses, which are used for buying cards, and tablets, arrowheads, and jewels, which are used in different combinations to advance along the research track. Placing workers at locations is the main way to gain resources, but the more lucrative locations are unknown quantities until someone places a worker there for the first time. A temple tile is revealed, which tells you what treasure (resources) you find there, but there is also a guardian tile, a monster that must be defeated by discarding a particular combination of resources. If you don't defeat the guardian by the end of the turn you gain a Fear card, which goes in your deck and is worth negative points at the end of the game. Defeating guardians will gain you various one-time benefits as well as additional points.

In order to place a worker, you have to play cards from your hand with matching travel symbols -- the more remote the location, the more travel symbols it costs to get there. Most of your starting cards also provide either coins or compasses, which are used to buy better cards, but you have to choose whether to use a card for travel or for its resource, you can't do both.

The thing that makes the card-buying row more interesting than in a lot of deck building games is that there are two types of cards: tools and artifacts. Tools tend to have simple, practical game effects, while artifacts are more powerful and worth more points, but also cost more resources to use. At the start of the game, the card row consists of 1 artifact and 4 tools, but each round the number of artifacts increases and the number of tools decreases, substantially changing the nature of the available cards over the course of the game.

It's a great example of a game whose different elements interact with each other in such a way that you have to pay attention to everything that's going on, but the game play is smooth enough to keep this from being overwhelming. There are only five rounds in the game, which doesn't seem like enough in the early rounds when you're only able to do a few actions, but the point of the game is to build up your deck so your cards give you longer and more efficient turns. It's very satisfying, and sufficiently different from Dune: Imperium that I don't see a problem with owning and enjoying both games.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) Lost Ruins of Arnak has been a huge hit for us: it hits the table regularly (which is a struggle when you own 200+ board games) and we always have a great time with it.

• Lost Ruins of Arnak official website
• Lost Ruins of Arnak on BoardGameGeek

Splendor Marvel: everything is better with Spider-Man

Everything I said in my original review of Splendor is still true: it's a great game that never would have caught our attention if it hadn't made so may "best of" lists, and we probably still wouldn't have bought it on our own. The theme is just...well, let's just say not very interesting. A friend got it for us as a gift, and we played it quite a bit and really enjoyed it, but the theme is still...well, let's just say not very interesting.

Reskinning old games with new, flashy properties is nothing new, but it can be a bit of mixed bag in terms of success. The game play in Revolver, for example, doesn't make any sense at all until you realize that it started out as an unlicensed game based on the 1986 film Aliens, but on the other hand, the Legendary card game series has adapted itself extremely well to multiple genres and properties, and there seems to be no end to the viable versions of Love Letter (I even made my own unlicensed version based on the aforementioned Aliens film, thus bringing us full circle). It tends to work particularly well with games whose themes are a little on the thin side, which brings us neatly to Splendor: Marvel.

The game play is more or less identical to the original Splendor, with only a few minor variations: one dictated by the need for a sixth gem color in order to keep with the Infinity Gauntlet theme, and the other an interesting but not obtrusive Avengers team theme, where a bonus point tile goes to whichever player has the most Avengers characters in play.

I would argue that, unless you actively and passionately dislike Marvel, the re-theming makes the game better, or at least more accessible. The replacement of the original game's renaissance gem cutters with comic book characters shouldn't really matter to players who enjoy the game's abstract strategy, and the  much more exciting artwork might better hold the attention of younger (or young-at-heart) players, although as a lifelong fan I often find myself going after favorite characters even if they don't particularly help my strategy. The vast majority of the characters featured are ones that have appeared in the movies and TV shows, but there are a few deep cuts like Beta Ray Bill and Spider-Woman.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) the Marvel re-theming doesn't quite bump this game up to a 5, but it makes a solid, simple game that much more interesting (for us, anyway).

• Splendor: Marvel official website
• Splendor: Marvel on BoardGameGeek

Dune Imperium: worker placing and deck building to keep the spice flowing

The vast majority of deck building games use a simple economy at their core: the cards you play generate resources, which you then use to buy better resource-generating cards from a common pool, repeating until you've generated enough resources to accomplish the game's end goal. Competition tends to be indirect, with players vying for the same cards but not directly attacking each other (although there are a few exceptions to this, such as Star Realms).

The structure of most worker placement games is nearly identical: players compete to place their workers on the most advantageous spaces on the board, which then generate resources that are used in various combinations, ultimately earning the points that will win the game when it comes to an arbitrary conclusion, usually a pre-determined round limit or the accomplishment of a game-ending goal.

It was only a matter of time before someone had the bright idea to combine these two popular game mechanisms. I don't think Dune: Imperium was the first to do it, but it does it very well, creating a game that gives players enough strategic decisions to make them feel like they're at the head of an interstellar political family.

Like most deck building games, players start with a deck of fairly mediocre cards, with the goal of using them to buy better cards that will give them the resources they need to have more efficient turns. And like most worker placement games, players start with a few workers that they take turns placing on the board in order to generate resources. What makes the game especially interesting is how these two separate mechanisms work together during play.

In order to place a worker on the board, you also need to play a card with a symbol that matches the space you want to play to, and which will often have an additional effect when you play it. The spaces on the board generate the world of Dune's much- needed resources such as spice, water, money, and political influence, and also troops which are used in a conflict phase later in the turn. Any cards left in your hand after you've played out all your workers can be used to buy new cards, but some will instead give you other of the aforementioned resources, or increase your strength during the conflict phase.

At the end of each round, players compare the number of troops they managed to generate over the course of the turn, combined with any bonuses from leftover cards, with the winner gaining a prize, usually more resources, control over the board's locations, or the victory points needed to win the game.

The game gives you a lot to think about, but the different resources and economies all flow together in a very elegant game design, with rules that rely on smoothness and consistency over the dozens of sub-rules and exceptions that can plague games of this complexity. Add to that some well-produced components and beautifully illustrated cards that still manage to be easy to read, and you have an epic, satisfying game.

Since the game's release there have been two expansions that do exactly what expansions should: they make the game better without making it more complicated. In this case, some of the underdeveloped and less interesting sections of the worker placement board are replaced with new game mechanisms, and of course more cards are added to the deck building selection.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) A great variation on both the worker placement and deck building genres that fits the theme like a glove.

• Dune: Imperium official website
• Dune: Imperium on BoardGameGeek