Couture, a surprisingly fun card game about runway fashion

Last year I backed a Kickstarter campaign for a set of four small box games. The two that I was really interested in were Chomp (dinosaurs, need I say more?) and Sail (a two player cooperative game about sailing and navigation). I could have just pledged for those two, but the price was only a little bit more for all four games. Couture, a fashion themed card game, was the one I was probably the least interested in, but it has turned out to be my favorite in the set, and I've played it more than any of the others.

Couture is an auction game in which each player starts with a hand of four cards: two basic cards with a value of one each, an "iconic pose" worth two, a "signature walk" that's worth three. Each round begins with a spread of nine cards from the main deck, in columns of three separated by tiles indicating which fashion-forward city they are in: New York, Paris, or Tokyo. Players will bid cards from their hand for each of the three cities, with the winner taking their choice of card, then the second place bidder, and so on. Of course, there are a few catches that keep the bidding interesting.

Cards from the main deck fall into two broad categories: bid cards and scoring cards. Bid cards are added to the player’s hand, sometimes at the expense of discarding a hand card. They tend to have higher values for future bids, but sometimes they carry a cost, for example, the Agent card has a bidding value of four, but causes the player to lose two points if they still have it at the end of the game. An Assistant card, on the other hand, is worth zero for bidding but adds one victory point. Part of the strategy of the game is to control when to retain and when to discard certain hand cards.

Scoring cards do just that, score victory points. These are worth points on their own, but some score more when collected in particular sets. Streetwear cards each have a matching card, with an immediate bonus given to the first player with a matching set, and a lesser bonus for the next players to do the same. Ready to Wear and Haute Couture cards award extra points at the end of the game to whoever has collected the biggest variety of brands and largest sets of individual symbols.

But beware the dreaded Flop cards, which subtract points for the players with the most, next most, and so on. How would you end up with a Flop? That’s one of the key points players need to figure out when deciding how much to bid in each city. Bidding is a single round and simultaneous, with players arranging their hand cards separated by city cards so that it’s clear which cards have been used in which city, without revealing how many cards have been bid for each. It is allowed to bid zero cards.

When bids are revealed, the player who bid highest gets the first choice for that city. Then the next highest bidder chooses, and so one. There are three cards for each city; if there are fewer than three bidders in a city, the winning bidder takes the remaining cards, and if there is only one bidder that player takes all three. So if there is even one Flop in a particular city, you have to be thoughtful in how you bid, as it’s often better to come in second or not bid at all.

While the theme isn’t something I’m particularly interested in, it doesn’t overwhelm the game, and the fashion design style illustrations are quite nice. I imagine players who are enthusiastic about high fashion will find it even more engaging, and in any case the more “grown-up” theme and relatively straightforward game play could make this a hit with non-gamer friends and relatives.

Rating: 5 (out of 5): Although it’s relatively simple, this is a very engaging and accessible game, great for playing at a noisy pub or family get-together.

Chomp! A game about herding dinosaurs

Why do dinosaurs seem to have such an enduring appeal? I think it’s the idea that, once upon a time, there was a world teeming with thousands of varieties of fantastical, dragon-like creatures, untouched by human mediocrity. And that world wasn’t dreamed up by a novelist or game designer. It was real, at least as far as the reasonably dependable science of paleontology can tell us.

I’m not sure if Chomp, a small box tile laying game published last year by AllPlay, quite captures the majesty of prehistory, but it is a pretty fun little game.

The game consists of 36 double-sided tiles, plus a handful of tokens and a lovely dry-erase board (pen included!) for keeping score. The tiles depict herds of carnivorous or herbivorous dinosaurs in different sizes, lush vegetation, nests, watering holes, and tar pits in various combinations of two, three or four shapes. Sometimes the different elements on a tile are separated by mountains, sometimes not. The idea is to draw and place tiles in order to form larger herds of same sized dinosaurs, making sure they are adjacent to food sources – vegetation for the herbivores and watering holes populated by unwitting prey for the carnivores. But you have to keep an eye out for tar pits, as they are certain doom for your dinosaur herds.

It’s the tile placement that’s particularly interesting in this game. Tiles can be placed overlapping other tiles, as long as the grid is maintained and individual elements are completely covered. This means you can pivot your strategy more easily than in most traditional tile-laying games, perhaps placing a tile that’s good but not ideal in the hopes of covering up some or all of it later in the game. 

On the reverse side of each tile is a bonus scoring condition, granting extra end-of-game points for things like having the most of a particular size of dinosaur, or even having the most uncovered tar pits among your tiles. At the start of each player’s turn there will be three face up and three face down tiles to choose from. Players can choose either on their turn, balancing the need for more layout tiles with the ability to score extra bonus points.

The game goes for eight rounds, after which each player has to check each of their herds to see if they are made extinct by an adjacent tar pit. Remaining herds must then be fed from an adjacent food source, with carnivores eating herbivore herds if no other prey is available. All adjacent dinosaurs of the same size and type, no matter how many, count as one herd. Each herd only requires one adjacent food source, so the challenge is to maximize the tile placement for large herds to take advantage of a single source of food. The bonus tiles provide some guidance for which types of dinosaur herds to go for and how best to try to lay out your tiles.

Any herds who can’t eat are made extinct, after which all the surviving dinosaurs are counted up for points. Larger dinosaurs count for more points than smaller ones, but also take up more space on their tiles and so are theoretically more difficult to place efficiently.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) Like most tile-laying games, Chomp has a fun puzzle-like quality to it, and I really like the idea that you can cover up some or all of your previously placed tiles if your strategy is moving in a new direction.

Call it what you want, it's Star Wars Pandemic

Pandemic took the board gaming world by storm when it came out in 2008, quickly unseating Settlers of Catan as the go-to game for bringing new players into the hobby. Its success is down to several factors: it's an enjoyable, well-designed game, the theme is relatable and not too nerdy (no wizards, space ships or tentacle monsters), and the cooperative nature of the game opened it up to a whole new group of players who may have been traumatized by too many overly competitive games of Monopoly when they were children. Additionally, 2008 was the start of a board gaming renaissance that saw board games move out of the toy and hobby stores to become a mainstream product with wide market visibility. You can now buy Pandemic at my local grocery store.

Re-skins with different themes were a logical way to expand the game's appeal, and although it hasn't got anywhere near as ridiculous as all the tie-in versions of Clue or Monopoly, a Star Wars edition of Pandemic was probably inevitable. What's weird is that it isn't called Star Wars Pandemic or Pandemic: Star Wars. It's just Star Wars: The Clone Wars, with a surprisingly small "Pandemic System" logo in a bottom corner of the box.

Other than the Fall of Rome version I haven't played much Pandemic -- the theme just never particularly appealed to me. I can't really talk too much about how Star Wars: The Clone Wars is different, but I can say that it is definitely, recognizably Pandemic. The world map has been replaced by a map of the Star Wars galaxy (although probably not a particularly accurate one), players play Jedi Knights rather than aid workers, and the diseases are now armies of battle droids. The way the cards work is a little different too, with a mission system replacing the set collection from the original game.

When setting up a game of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, players choose a boss villain to play against, either Darth Maul, Count Dooku, General Grievous or Asajj Ventress. Each boss comes with their own unique deck of 6 cards that dictate how they will behave in the game, so players will need to adjust their strategies depending on which villain they are facing.

A deck of location cards determines where groups of battle droids will appear throughout the game. If a planet would ever have more than three, it instead gets a blockade ship that must be destroyed before any battle droids. Additionally the threat meter advances by one -- if the meter ever goes past six, the players lose the game, so managing the number of battle droids is critical.

The main innovation over regular Pandemic is the addition of missions that the players need to work together to accomplish in order to win the game. Each game starts with a certain number of mission cards based on the desired difficulty level, anywhere from three to six or more, with two missions revealed at a time. Missions generally involve going to a particular planet with a lot of a certain kind of resource, either clone troopers or ships. Once the required number have been completed, the boss villain shifts into finale mode, giving the players one final objective in order to win.

The game evokes its theme very well, with Jedi Knights fighting off armies of battle droids as they swarm across the galaxy. If I wasn't already familiar with the basics of Pandemic I would think it had been designed specifically as a Clone Wars game. The missions help with this feeling -- episodes of the Clone Wars television series were often about the heroes trying to achieve some objective while the war rages in the background, and that's just the feeling you get as you try to mitigate the swarming droids while trying to get your missions done.

It's a good Star Wars game, and a good version of Pandemic. Like most cooperative games it can fall victim to the "bossypants" syndrome, where the player with the most experience (or the most aggressive personality) tells everyone else what to do rather than letting them decide for themselves. But, just like the original Pandemic, the game play is easy to understand, with a fair amount of strategic depth and meaningful decision making -- it should be a great game for Star Wars fans who might not be dedicated board gamers...yet.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A great use of both the Star Wars theme and the Pandemic game mechanisms.

• Star Wars: The Clone Wars official website
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars on BoardGameGeek

Race, crash and shoot your way to the finish with Thunder Road: Vendetta

How many racing games is too many? I'll let you know when I find out, but so far I don't seem to have reached my limit.

Restoration Games has carved a sub-niche within the hobby gaming world by refreshing classic board games with updated game mechanics, components, and graphic design. They worked wonders transforming Star Wars: Epic Duels into Unmatched, and now they've given their restoration treatment to Thunder Road, a fairly obscure post-apocalyptic racing game that was originally published in 1986.

I never played the original Thunder Road, so I can't tell you what has changed with the new Thunder Road: Vendetta, but the game play in the restored version is very smooth and simple. Each player gets three cars, one helicopter, and four dice. The board is made up of three randomly chosen tiles laid out in a row, with spaces laid out in a hexagonal pattern. Cars can move straight ahead or forward to the right or left -- never backward, this is a race after all. The road is littered with hidden hazard tiles as well as visible obstacles such as mud puddles and rock formations that can slow your car down or destroy it all together.

Each turn, players roll their four dice and take turns assigning them to their cars. The number on the die determines how far the car moves -- it must move the full amount, this is a race after all. The fourth die can be assigned to one of a few extra options, such as nitro boost to make the car go faster, repair to remove damage, drift to allow it to glide past other cars without crashing, or the dreaded helicopter.

Helicopters are able to appear anywhere on the board and shoot at your opponents' vehicles, or even your own if they are in the way -- this is a race, after all. What's more, if a car ends a move in the same space as a helicopter, it is immediately destroyed and removed from play.

After moving, if there is another car in front of yours, you can try shooting at it. Each player has 3 different sizes of cars, with the smallest being the hardest to hit but the easiest to push out of the way by crashing into them. Damage is dealt via a stack of tiles that will generally have a one-time effect and then linger as damage counters. If a car takes two damage it is immobilized until repaired.

Crashes are probably the most fun part of the game. When a car enters another car's space, it is placed on top of the other car and then two dice are rolled: one determines which of the two cars (top or bottom) is moved, and the other indicates what direction. In this way, cars can get knocked into other cars, causing a chain reaction of crashes. They can also get knocked into rock walls or off the board entirely, either of which results in elimination.

The aforementioned hazard tiles add even more chaos to the game. They're hidden until a car moves into one, and they can be anything from clear patches of road to land mines. Often a player will be faced with a choice of either moving into a hazard that could be harmless or even helpful, or taking a safer, more predictable path around. Just as often, there's no choice at all, leading to all manner of hilarity with mud puddles that slow your car down, oil slicks that send it careening off in a random direction, or wreckage that triggers more crashes.

As soon as a car reaches the edge of the third tile, a new tile is drawn and added to the track. Then, any cars that are still on the first tile are eliminated from the race, and that tile is removed from play. This continues until one player has had all of their cars eliminated. At that point, the edge of the third tile is the finish line, and the first player whose car crosses it is the winner. It's a great way to take the sting out of player elimination as a game-ender, since the eliminated player will normally only have to wait one round (often less) for the game to be over.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) Thunder Road: Vendetta is a little on the egregious and random side, but nonetheless it is a lot of fun, and makes for an excellent, low-entry-point alternative to more complicated games like Car Wars or Gaslands.

Note: I highly recommend the Carnage at Devil's Run expansion if you can find it, it adds new hazards and road tiles that push this game from good to great.

• Thunder Road: Vendetta official website
• Thunder Road: Vendetta on BoardGameGeek

Dive into yet another corner of the Star Wars universe with The Mandalorian Adventures

I never seem to get tired of "moving guys around on a map" games. One of the oldest games in my collection is Leading Edge's 1989 Aliens; Unmatched and Core Space are among my current favorites, and that's not even getting into "proper" miniatures games with three dimensional terrain like Star Wars: Shatterpoint or Gangs of Rome.

The Mandalorian Adventures is definitely on the light end of games of this type. It's a cooperative game that asks players to take on the roles of characters from the Disney+ series and work together to complete missions based on episodes from the first season of the show. The game makes use of a spiral-bound book, with each two-page spread consisting of a map and its game objectives plus any special rules needed. The missions tend to be fairly simple variations on finding a particular item from among several face-down tokens and then escaping off the edge of the map.

The game uses cardboard standees rather than plastic miniatures, presumably to keep the production costs down. Even as a dedicated miniature painter I didn't mind this at all -- the artwork on the standees matches the other game artwork, and it meant I could get playing without having to take extra time for painting.

Each character uses a unique deck of cards to perform actions in the game, with the number on the card determining how effective the action is. For example, play a four for movement and your character moves four spaces; play it for attack, your target takes four damage. Some of the cards also include special game text that is resolved if that card is used for a particular action -- this is what makes the different characters distinct from each other, with some relying on stealth, and others on greater mobility or simple brute force.

Enemies are represented by tokens on the board, each with a type (either a melee fighter, a shooter, or a sniper), a number of wounds required to eliminate them, and a special ability that resolves when a player character moves near them.

One of the game's more ingenious innovations is the game mechanic for activating the enemies. Each time a player uses a card to perform an action, that card goes in a pile that is specific to that action. Once the numbers on the cards in a particular stack add up to 5, a card is drawn that will cause a particular type of enemy to either move towards or attack the closest player character. If the total adds up to 6 or more, it also triggers a "crisis" event that is specific to the scenario being played, usually something  that will make things more difficult for the players. This forces the players to consider their actions each turn carefully: they'll need to try to spread out their actions as much as possible among the different choices, and also to consider when to play a particular action. Normally, game-controlled enemy actions are fairly arbitrary in cooperative games like this, but here the players can mitigate that with their choices. It makes the game a lot more interesting.

As "hobby" board games attempt to reach a wider market, designers are faced with the reality that their games might be a bit much for people whose only previous experience is with family games like the dreaded Monopoly. Many designers have chosen to address this issue by instructing players to start out with a series of tutorial games that dole out the game's concepts and mechanisms gradually. Normally I don't care for this sort of thing (although I do recognize its value), but The Mandalorian Adventures implements the idea well. The game includes a deck of cards in a fixed order that are meant to be worked through over the course of the first six games. Whether the players win or lose, after each game they are introduced to new content that will make the game a little more complex and improve its replayability.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A very fun little game that should be accessible to a much wider audience than something like Shatterpoint or even Firefly Adventures.

• The Mandalorian Adventures official website
• The Mandalorian Adventures on BoardGameGeek

Race to the finish with Heat: Pedal to the Metal

I'm a few years late to the party with regards to Heat: Pedal to the Metal, which is ironic given the game's subject matter. I've never been particularly interested in race cars or racing, but recently a few things have happened that may be changing my mind. One was Lacorsa, a beautifully designed racing game that lured me in with its deluxe components and simple but elegant game play. Another was Michael Mann's excellent film Ferrari, which is about the Italian car magnate and features a plot that revolves around a high stakes race.

It may be just as well -- Heat was extremely popular right out of the gate when it was released towards the end of 2022, so much so that stores around the world were having a hard time meeting demand. By the time I got to it, there wasn't any problem finding a copy as it has become a ubiquitous fixture at most local game stores. After I got a chance to get it to the table and play a few games, I could see why it was such a phenomenon.

It's a simple enough game, and mostly what you would expect. The board represents a race track (there are several to choose from) and the goal is to be the first to get your little plastic race car across the finish line after a set number of laps, usually two or three. Each player gets their own deck of cards that govern how fast and far their car can move. The faster your car is going (represented by what gear it is in), the more cards you play each turn. It seems simple, right?

The trick is that you need to slow down to get around corners, and this is where the real game lies. You have to look at your cards, and at your car's position on the track relative to the next sharp curve, and figure out how to slow down without falling behind the other cars in the race. Your deck consists mainly of cards numbered zero through five, and these are what you use to move. Each turn you have to play a number of cards equal to the gear your car is in -- no more and no less. Normally you can only shift up or down one gear at the start of each turn, but you can shift an extra gear by adding heat cards to your deck.

Heat cards are the primary currency of the game. Each player starts with six in their "engine," a separate pile next to their deck, and one already shuffled in with their other cards. Heat cards in your hand can't be used for anything, so they clutter up your hand and limit your options each turn. The only way to get rid of them is to cool down, which usually means spending a turn in first or second gear. The most important thing you do in the game is manage the back and forth of using heat, because...

Each corner on the track has a speed limit number attached to it, depending on how sharp the curve is. If your speed (the total of all the cards you've played at the start of the turn) is higher than the corner's speed limit, you have to take on heat cards equal to the difference. If you don't have enough heat, you spin out, which means your car stops at the beinning of the curve and is reduced to first gear. Plus, you have to take on stress cards, which make your speed unpredictable by generating a random number when played. The more stress you take on, the harder it gets to control your car.

The game is thrilling, in a way that not many board games are. The feeling of trying to decide how fast you can take an upcoming corner, or of knowing that you can't slow down enough, can't be a million miles away from what it's like to actually drive a race car. It's very easy for me to see why this game is so popular and well reviewed. It hits that sweet spot of being simple to play but extremely engaging.

Additional modules allow the game to be played with customized cars, weather conditions, and a multi-race tournament series. Additionally, the game has a simple but effective way to add non-player cars in order to fill out the track when you have a smaller player count. A recently published expansion adds new tracks, components for a seventh player, and rules for driving in the rain.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) A phenomenally well-designed game that brings all the excitement of racing whether you are a fan of the sport or not.

• Heat: Pedal to the Metal official website
• Heat: Pedal to the Metal on BoardGameGeek

Habitats, a game about good animals making good neighbors

I'm not overly interested in computer or video games, but every once in a while one comes along that catches my interest. In the early 2000s I was quite fond of Zoo Tycoon, a zoo-building game that covered everything from building well-balanced enclosures to managing crowds and balancing income and expenses. My favorite part of the game was building enclosures for the animals; you had to balance different kinds of terrain, topography, and just the right type and amount of trees and bushes to keep the animals happy.

A Zoo Tycoon board game came out last year, but I found it to be a little too fiddly and complicated to be enjoyable. I started looking around for another game that would scratch the same itch. Ark Nova is a great zoo game and includes some of the building element that I enjoyed in the Zoo Tycoon computer game, as do Dinosaur Island and DinoGenics, although they are more focused on cloning dinosaurs and stopping them from eating your park visitors.

I recently stumbled across Habitats, a game from a small publisher based in the Netherlands that has since been reprinted in the United States. And I must say, it is exactly the game I wanted.

In Habitats, you're managing a nature preserve rather than a zoo, so the thematic goal is entirely to create an environment that your animals will be . It's a tile-laying game with one really interesting innovation: the way each player picks up new tiles to play. The game starts with a grid of tiles in the center. Each player has a jeep meeple ("jeeple" just seems too precious) that moves around the grid, one tile at a time. On your turn, you can choose a tile that is ahead or to the left or right of your jeep. After choosing a tile you move your jeep into the tile's space, and then place a new tile in happy withthe space you just vacated. It means that you have a choice of three tiles to pick from each turn, but it also adds a lot of interesting strategic decision-making to the game. There might be a tile you really want that you need to move through a few less desirable tiles to get to, or you might be racing to a particular tile in order to get there ahead of your opponent.

Most of the tiles represent both an animal in search of a suitable habitat, and a type of terrain that adjacent animals might want. Tiles are played in a grid pattern in each player's tableaux. An animal tile will indicate one or more types of terrain, either water, desert, grassland, or forest, that need to be on adjacent tiles in order for that animal to be happy and score points at the end of the game. Other tiles represent watchtowers that score based on the tiles in various patterns around them; tourists that score depending on how your different terrain is grouped; and gates and campsites that earn points depending on how many tiles they are adjacent to.

The game becomes a puzzle-like exercise where you want to place your tiles so that adjacent animals can make use of each other's terrain as much as possible, and multiple animals can benefit from the same groupings of terrain. In addition to scoring your tiles at the end, the game is split up into three "years" composed of a number of turns (depending on the number of players), with two goals for each year that will award additional points to whoever fulfills them most completely. They are things like the most sets of different types of terrain or the longest unbroken line of tiles, and they give you something else to work for as you decide how to place your tiles.

An optional extra, available from the publisher's website, is a set of animal meeples that can be used to indicate when an animal tile has reached the conditions it needs to score points. They are entirely unnecessary (the base game comes with simple tokens for this purpose) but add to the tactile quality of the game and make it look that much more impressive on the table.

It's not a terribly complex game (the rules for the U. S. edition published by Allplay clock in at 4 pages), but it is very engrossing, giving you a lot to think about as you play but also requiring you to think on your feet and not get too attached to any one strategy or tactic. It's not quite Zoo Tycoon, but it definitely fills the same void, and in many ways it's more enjoyable.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) The highest praise I can give a game is that as soon as I'm done playing I want to play again, and that is definitely true with this one.

• Habitats (U. S. version) official website
• Habitats on BoardGameGeek

General Orders: World War II gets wargaming down to the bare essentials

General Orders: World War II, by Undaunted creators David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin, is an interesting game that abstracts two of the most iconic types of battles from that war to the point that it doesn't really matter which side is which. Players merely choose to play as either yellow or blue and start on opposite sides of the board, which the game even declines to name as a particular theatre of war, instead calling them either "alpine" or "island," depending on which game mode you choose to play.

The game is a mix of worker placement and area control, with a bit of card play thrown in for good measure. The boards are divided up into hexes, with the path to victory being to deploy and move armies in an advance towards the center of the board. The game ends after four rounds, with players scoring points based on which map hexes their armies occupy, but it can also end early if a player manages to occupy their opponent's headquarters space on the opposite side of the board.

Each hex has one or two worker placement spaces. Most of them are used to move armies into the hex, with a few offering different options like landing paratroopers or firing artillery into nearby spaces. The hexes in the middle of the board offer in-game bonuses for occupying them such as gaining extra troops, extending the range of artillery, or drawing cards. If a player moves into a hex occupied by the opponent's troops, the conflict is played out with a simple dice roll followed by an attrition mechanic that removes an even number of each player's troops until only one player's troops remain.

The game uses cards to add a little extra uncertainty to the combat, with cards providing advantages such as extra dice, rerolls, troop reinforcements, and even extra turns.

The alpine board is the basic game, with each side using paratroopers and artillery to fight over a village surrounded by mountains. The island board represents a beach assault adding planes that can drop bombs on locations and help control the areas they're flying over. Even with that added bit of complexity, the game manages to be wonderfully simple, distilling a war game down to being about as simple as it can be while still being engaging for the players. And, like all of Osprey's board game offerings, the graphic design, illustration, and component quality are all top-notch.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) a neat little game that strips out unnecessary historical detail in favor of getting down to the mechanics of combat in two of the most prevalent types of World War II battles.

• General Orders: World War II official website
• General Orders: World War II on BoardGameGeek

Top 10 board games published in the last 5 years

I haven't done a top 10 list since 2019, so I thought I'd take a look at my favorite games from the last five years. Looking strictly at the hours spent playing each game, tried and true favorites tend to have an advantage over newer games, so for this list I'll only be looking at games published since the beginning of 2020.

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10. Pan Am (2020)

I was initially attracted to this game due to the elegant, retro graphic design. As I shop for new games, I am finding that I have less and less interest in the fantasy and horror titles that used to grab my attention, so a travel-themed game that doesn't involve stabbing anyone seemed like a nice change of pace. It's a very clever design, and different from a lot of "empire building" games in that rather than claiming more an more territory on the board, the goal is to anticipate the air travel routes that Pan Am will want to buy from you at the end of each round, with the winner being the one with the most Pan Am stock. Read the full review.

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9. Star Trek: Away Missions (2023)

When I first looked at this game, the goofy looking miniatures were a turn off but I'm glad I reconsidered. Most "miniatures on map tiles" games involve a lot of fighting, but this one is much more about moving your characters to the right spot on the board for them to fulfill their missions, giving them advantages based on the cards you have in your hand. The different factions play very differently, with the Klingons more interested in openly attacking, for example, while the Romulans skulk about in the shadows and the Federation boldly go (or go boldly) about their business. And those miniatures really have grown on me. Read the full review.

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8. Star Wars Unlimited (2024)

I've always enjoyed the collectible card game format. I like the idea of assembling the right combination of cards to win the game the way you want to win it, and there is a definite thrill to ripping open random card packs hoping for that rare card you need for your deck. Star Wars Unlimited is the sixth such Star Wars themed game since 1993, and definitely the most playable. Read the full review.

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7. Ark Nova (2021)

Ark Nova is a bit of a rarity: a game about animals that doesn't feature any cute wooden meeples or other figurines. The game's somewhat dry appearance hides an absolutely fascinating game that combines card drafting, worker placement, and even tile laying. I always get a sense of accomplishment when the game is over, even if I didn't win. Read the full review.

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6. Tiny Epic Dinosaurs (2020)

As I struggle to find room for all our games, I find the Tiny Epic line more and more appealing. And honestly, a tiny box was the only way I was going to be able to justify a third dinosaur zoo game in our collection after DinoGenics and Dinosaur Island, both of which are major space hogs. It's a delightful little game about breeding and selling different types of dinosaurs, sort of a prequel to the larger zoo games that don't stress too much about where the dinosaurs are coming from. As with most of the other Tiny Epic games, this one does a lot with as little as possible, managing to be a full featured worker placement/resource management game in a very small package. Read the full review.

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5. Oltréé (2021)

I bought this board game (apparently based on a French-language roleplaying game) entirely on a whim. I was enticed by the gorgeous Vincent Dutrait cover artwork, and also by the promise of an adventure board game that might be a little smoother than Talisman and/or less fiddly than Arkham Horror, and I wasn't disappointed. Oltréé doesn't necessarily do anything new with this type of game, but it does it very, very well. Read the full review.

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4. Starship Captains (2022)

Starship Captains does Star Trek better than most licensed Star Trek games do. At its best, Star Trek should be about problem solving rather than fighting, and I'm always disappointed when a Star Trek game is too combat-centric, as many of them tend to be. Starship Captains has players assigning and managing their crew in an ingenious variation on the worker placement mechanism, and juggling ship upgrades in a way that would do Montgomery Scott (or Geordi LaForge) proud. Read the full review.

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3. Dune: Imperium (2020)

Combining different game mechanisms has become a popular way to design games, and this one mixes two of my favorites: deck building and worker placement. Most deck building games start each player with a small deck of cards representing basic resources, with the point being to spend those resources to get better cards, and eventually build up an engine of cards that can do whatever it is that needs to be done to win the game. Dune: Imperium takes that idea and adds worker placement, with cards dictating where workers can be placed, and a simple battle mechanism that functions as an additional resource to be spent. It's an elegant combination of elements, and it fits the Dune source material perfectly. Read the full review.

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2. Lost Ruins of Arnak (2020)

Like Dune: Imperium, Lost Ruins of Arnak combines deck building with worker placement, but manages to do it in a completely different way. Arnak has players gaining cards from two different decks, one of tools and items and the other representing archaeological artifacts. As the game progresses, the amount of available tools decreases, increasing the amount of artifacts that players can add to their card decks. Cards are played to gain resources, which are then used to move around the board exploring lost temples, with the eventual goal of moving counters along a track that gives out even more resources, and also eventually leads to victory. It's an amazing game with a lot going on. Read the full review.

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1. Star Wars: Shatterpoint (2023)

This was another one I wasn't going to get into because I didn't like the miniatures. Specifically, I didn't like the size of the miniatures, which are a bit larger than the standard 28mm size used for most wargames and roleplaying games. I don't know why we miniatures gamers are so obsessed with being able to mix and match our figures -- it's something we rarely if ever do, it seems that we just want to always have the option. Anyway, the miniatures for Shatterpoint are actually amazingly well done, and the larger size makes them a little easier to paint. Its an important detail considering that the average miniatures gamer is going to spend a lot more time assembling and painting their miniatures than they are actually playing.

But the game itself is fantastic too. It seems to specifically address a lot of the pitfalls common to other games of this time, avoiding stale game play by emphasizing movement and area control over just eliminating the opponent's figures as quickly as possible. In Shatterpoint it's rare that any figures ever leave the board -- the point of the game is to occupy areas of the board, and the tactical challenge is to be able to adapt when those areas move. It's a great game that really feels like Star Wars. Read the full review.

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Honorable Mention

Blade Runner: the Roleplaying Game

I'm never sure whether I should lump roleplaying games in with board and card games because the experience is so different, although that is changing with hybrid storytelling games like Detective and even some miniatures games like Core Space or Conan. Blade Runner doesn't use a board or miniatures, but it does include a whole slew of prop photos, brochures, and even a newspaper, physical components that aren't common in a lot of RPGs but were absolutely essential to this one. Read the full review.

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So there you have it, my favorite games from the past five years, at least for now. Ask me again in six months and it might be a completely different list...

Final judgment on the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game

I’m a huge fan of the Judge Dredd universe (well, maybe not the Stallone film) and I love miniature skirmish games, so I I really want to like this one.

The miniatures themselves are great. The resin material Warlord Games uses strikes just the right balance between flexible and durable, and it holds a high level of detail. In the five years since the game’s initial release, Warlord have expanded the range of figures to include a pretty good cross section of characters and vehicles from the Judge Dredd comics.

The game’s presentation is excellent. The rule book is beautifully designed, full color with a ton of artwork. The starter set comes with great looking plastic tokens rather than cardboard, plus a full color double-sided 3 foot by 3 foot map to play on. If you don’t believe me, check out OnTableTop’s unboxing videoOnTableTop’s unboxing video, it went a long way towards convincing me to buy the game.

My history with this game has been a little...conflicted. My normal pattern with miniatures games is that I get interested in a game, buy the rules and enough miniatures to try it out, and then if I like it I buy more miniatures and then either play again, or forget about the game for a year or more. That’s what happened here: I bought the Judge Dredd starter set in 2021, played several times over a period of about three months, and never played again. I seem to recall enjoying the first few games but then changing my mind, finding the last few games a little tedious and unsatisfying. So I decided to get the game and miniatures out of mothballs to make a final assessment on whether I want to continue with it or not.

The rule book, while beautiful to look at, is often vague and hard to follow. It was clearly written by someone who absolutely loves the source material, perhaps too much so. The rules are frequently bogged down in colorful descriptions of the setting and characters, what miniature gamers refer to as “fluff,” and while this sets the stage for the game, it also means that you can often find yourself wading through paragraphs of irrelevant background when trying to find a rule or clarification. It was enough of a problem that I went so far as to create a rules summary sheet to help with finding basic rules during play.

Unfortunately, my memory of the game play being a little tedious turned out to be more or less correct. The core of every skirmish game is combat between characters, so a good game needs a good system to resolve that combat. The vast majority do this via dice rolls: when my character attacks, I roll the dice, applying modifiers based on the abilities of the characters involved, and often the surrounding terrain. This can be a roll against a static target number, but in most games it’s an opposed roll, with my opponent and I both rolling the dice to see whether the attack hits or is successfully defended against.

In Judge Dredd, landing a blow is a multi-step process. First the attacker rolls, then compares the result to the target’s Cool rating to see if the target is pinned or not. Then the target rolls to see if they can dodge the attack. Then, if the target doesn’t dodge, the attacker rolls again to see how much damage is done, followed by the target rolling again to see how much of that damage they get to avoid. One attack, four rolls. Four chances to fail.

The target of the attack can come away unscathed, or pinned, and/or stunned or injured. If they’re pinned, they have to roll on their turn to see if they lose one of their two actions or not. If they’re stunned or injured, all of the six statistics that determine how far they can move and how many dice they get to roll in different situations are reduced.

Whew.

I don’t mind a complicated game if the payoff is worth it. In this case that would be an exciting story unfolding on the table, but that’s not what happened in here. Instead, the combat just seemed like a slog, and there wasn’t much else going on in the game. We played two games in a row this time around; the first game ended somewhat abruptly so we decided on a second game with more characters on each side, but towards the end we were both feeling like the game was dragging on, which brings us to my second issue with this game.

At its most basic level, a skirmish game will often come down to “everyone move to the center of the board and fight.” This can be fun, but the novelty of straight up combat wears off quickly. The best games get around this by using scenarios that introduce alternate objectives or win conditions that give players more to do than just pound the hell out of each other. It can be something entirely mechanical like controlling different geographical points on the board (Star Wars Shatterpoint does this very well), or something more story based like rescuing a captive or searching for a treasure.

The Judge Dredd rule book includes three simple scenarios, designed to introduce the game to new players using only the miniatures included in the box. Beyond that are six more that are meant to be the core of the game, offering different setups and objectives to give the game some variety. Unfortunately, these scenarios (at least the two we played, “Ambush” and “Heist”) don’t seem very well thought out. While they offer some interesting ways to start the game by starting one side in the middle rather than each side on opposite edges, the objectives for each player were uneven, making the game too easy for one player, to difficult for the other, and not much fun for either. Our first game ended really abruptly, and the other went on for so long that we called it without finishing.

The game uses cards as a way to inject variety and flavor into the game. Each player starts with a handful of “Big Meg” cards that introduce an unpredictable game effect such as a bystander stumbling into the path of the battle or a circumstance giving a free move or other action. These were sometimes fun but more often than not just annoying and egregious. In the end they didn’t make the game any better.

With the game not really working for me as-is, I am left with a few options. I could just give up on the game all together, but the miniatures are great and I love the Judge Dredd setting – I keep trying to come up with excuses to buy more of the figures even though I don’t like the game. I could try to house rule the game to get rid of its more tedious aspects. That seems like a lot of work, especially when there are so many great miniatures games out there that work fine right out of the box, but it would allow me to keep using the game’s great counters and dice. On the other hand, there are several “miniatures agnostic” games such as 7TV that allow you to use whatever miniatures you want – that seems more like the right direction to head in if I want to keep gaming in Dredd’s world. 

Rating: 2 (out of 5) The game isn’t as much fun as it should be, but the fact that I can find a use for the figures without the rest of the game keeps it from being a total loss.

• Judge Dredd Miniatures Game official website
• Judge Dredd Miniatures Game on BoardGameGeek

A short review of a short game: Dogfight!

Dogfight! Rule the Skies in 20 Minutes is the third entry in the 20 Minutes series originally published by PSC Games (and recently taken over by Floodgate Games). This time it's a different designer, so while the graphic design is consistent with Blitzkrieg! and Caesar!, the game play is entirely new but does retain some of the other games' basic elements, such as drawing tokens from a bag.

I used to play quite a bit of Wings of War, and my main complaint with it was that too much of the game was spent flying around in circles trying to get a shot on your opponent's plane. In Dogfight!, that's the entire game, but in a good way. Dogfight! distills World War One air combat down to its simplest form: the board depicts a simple loop of 8 spaces, plus two extra spots for a special maneuver. Players start their plane meeples on opposite sides of the loop, simultaneously revealing tiles that show a distance and a number of shots. Both players move their planes, then if one is behind and within 3 spaces of the other, they shoot.

It sounds simple, and at its most basic level it is. A special "loop" maneuver makes use of the two extra spaces on the board to allow the plane that's in front to attempt to loop around and get behind its opponent. An alternate board adds the concept of elevation in a very simple way, with different colored spaces restricting when a plane might be too high or too low to make a shot.

Additionally, the game includes ten different planes with different abilities, so once players have mastered the basics (which should only take a game or two) they can try adjusting their strategies based on their new plane's capabilities and drawbacks. Finally, the game introduces several scenarios that provide different win conditions beyond simply shooting down the other plane.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) While not quite a 5, Dogfight! is a little more involved than the other two 20 Minutes games while keeping the simplicity that sets this series apart.

• Dogfight! Rule the Skies in 20 Minutes official website
• Dogfight! Rule the Skies in 20 Minutes on BoardGameGeek

A short review of a short game: Caesar!

You could be forgiven for thinking that Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes is just an ancient Roman re-skin of designer Paolo Mori's Blitzkrieg! And it is, sort of. But not really. Caesar! is a very similar game, both in terms of the game play and the look and design. It's obviously meant to be part of a series that includes Blitzkrieg!, but the designer took the opportunity to change up a few things.

Where the game play in Blitzkrieg! is divided up into different theatres of war, Caesar! is more of a traditional area control game (a little bit like Risk). Players start with a bag of tiles, but this time they are divided between different symbols: swords, shields and spears, plus a laurel that acts as a wild card. Additionally, each tile features two numbers with a line between them. The board is a map of the Mediterranean sea and the surrounding area; tiles are placed on the borders between provinces, with the two numbers providing an amount of influence on either side of the border. Some are evenly distributed (2|2 or 3|3) but others are wildly different (0|6), requiring the player to make a decision about which provinces they want to concentrate their influence in.

Once a province's border spaces are full, the player who played the last tile there gains a one-time bonus such as drawing an extra tile, or getting an extra turn. The player who has the most influence in the province gets to place one of their control markers there. That player also gets to place a control marker on the border between that province and any neighboring provinces that they also control. The goal of the game is to be the first to place all 12 of your control markers, so the faster you play them out the better.

The strategy in Caesar! is very similar to Blitzkrieg!, with the main decision point being where to play your tile and when, keeping in mind that if you leave your opponent an opening to close off a province they will get the bonus, even if you get to place your control marker, which could give them the advantage they need.

The game includes two mini-expansions that add new tiles and province bonuses, and also a variant that rewards players for controlling key border spaces. No giant lizards this time though...

Rating: 4 (out of 5) If I did half-stars this would be 4.5 out of 5, simply because while the games are very similar I like the game dynamics in this one just a little bit better.

• Caesar! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes official website
• Caesar! Seize Rome on 20 Minutes on BoardGameGeek

Sabacc: a brief history of Star Wars poker

The idea that they play some version of poker in the Star Wars universe is first hinted at in The Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo responds "you lost her to me, fair and square" when Lando Calrissian asks after the Millennium Falcon. Sabacc was first given a name and described in detail by author L. Neil Smith in the novel Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu, first published as a tie-in to the release of Return of the Jedi in 1983.

The game that Smith describes in his book is a complicated affair involving electronic cards that change their suit and value at random intervals. It seems to play like a cross between stud poker and blackjack, with a slew of arbitrary face cards that sound like they're from a tarot deck. It reads like an attempt to describe something exotic and otherworldly, the card game equivalent of the holographic chess game seen in the original Star Wars.

The first attempt at a playable version of Sabacc came via the Star Wars Roleplaying Game published by West End Games in the 1990s. The adventure module Crisis on Cloud City called for a Sabacc game, so the publisher took the opportunity to include cards and rules to allow the roleplayers to actually play the game. I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy (copies of the module routinely sell for $200+ on eBay and rarely include the Sabacc cards) so I don't know how the game plays, but I suspect it leans towards being accurate to what is described in the book, rather than an actual playable game.

The game's prominent appearance in Solo: A Star Wars Story meant that some kind of commercial Sabacc game was inevitable, and this came in the form of the imaginatively titled Star Wars Han Solo Card Game which was later reimplemented as the souvenir Sabacc deck available at Disney's theme parks (also known as the "Corellian Spike" variant). Both versions attempt to take what we see in the film and reproduce it as a playable game. The film tries to approximate the game described in Smith's book, but does away with the electronic cards in favor of something more low-tech that will be easier to explain to the audience. Instead we have a more recognizable poker-like game played with normal printed cards, and dice to represent the random changes to the cards.

The problem in both cases is, this version of Sabacc has been "designed" by writers who need to tell a story -- the details are revealed through props and dialogue. It doesn't have to be playable or consistent, since it's not a real game that the audience will be familiar with. The commercially released Sabacc games are meant to be souvenirs first and playable games a distant second, so they are much more concerned with reproducing what we see in the film. As a result the game is pretty much unplayable, relying on a complicated and arbitrary hierarchy of hands to be "similar but different" to terrestrial poker.

When the (now sadly closed) Galactic Starcruiser attraction opened at Disney World, one of the obvious activities for guests was a Sabacc tournament. But the game would need a major overhaul if it was going to be played and enjoyed, and it received that in the form of Sabacc: Coruscant Shift, a variation of the game that was available exclusively at the Starcruiser but is now fairly easy to find on eBay or Etsy.

Coruscant Shift drops the original Sabacc's complicated hands in favor of a simple blackjack-like game. The deck consists of 3 suits of 20 cards each, numbered 1-10 and negative 1-10, plus two 0 cards that count as all three suits. Also included are two six sided dice, one with the suits on the faces and the other with different values: -10, -5, 0, 0, 5 and 10. 

The game starts with each player dealt five cards. After the cards are dealt, the dice are rolled to determine what the target value for the hand is, and what suit will be the tiebreaker. Players must then choose what cards they want to keep, playing them face down in front of them. They may then exchange their remaining cards for new ones, just like in draw poker. But here's where the game diverges: any or all of the new cards may be added to the player's existing hand, but none of the previously retained cards may be taken away. Once each player decides whether to add any of their new cards to their hand or not, they reveal their hands. Whoever's hand of positive and negative cards added together is closest to the target value wins the hand, with ties broken by the player with the most cards of the suit indicated on the die roll.

The rules included with the official Coruscant Shift deck don't include any rules for betting. In the Sabacc tournaments at the Galactic Starcruiser, each player started the game with 10 credits, and there was an ante and then a round of betting after the first two cards were dealt and then another before the final hands are revealed.

It's an excellent compromise. While it doesn't exactly reflect the game as described in the books or seen in the film, it's fairly close and is actually a playable and enjoyable game that will feel familiar to poker players but still seems like it could be from a galaxy far, far away.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) a great, easy poker-like game that puts you in the Star Wars universe -- it's easy to imagine playing this on Cloud City or at the Canto Bight casino.

• Sabacc: Coruscant Shift on BoardGameGeek