Toy soldiers, part 1: Ronin

Seven samurai, painted and ready to fight!

British publisher Osprey has long been a staple in wargaming circles for their long line of excellent books on military history, covering armies, weapons, and battles throughout history with an eye towards the kind of detail that tabletop miniatures players would want for their games. More recently they've started putting out a series of rule books for miniatures wargaming. For the most part these are stand-alone books that don't come in a box with a bunch of figures, or require the purchase of specific packs of miniatures and accompanying stat cards and tokens. Rather, they are designed to evoke a particular historical period or fictional genre, and the players are free to use whatever miniatures they wish.

Having taken the plunge into miniatures gaming with games like 7TV, Doctor Who: Exterminate!, and Mythic Battles: Pantheon, I wanted to find a samurai themed game to indulge my love of Kurosawa movies, and Ronin: Skirmish Wargames in the age of the Samurai looked like just the thing, although it was another year after buying the rulebook before I got around to buying and painting enough samurai miniatures to play the game with.

After assembling some suitable terrain (mostly of the print-and-play, cut-and-assemble variety) we finally set up to play a game, a simple "defend the bridge" scenario with bloodthirsty bandits on one side and noble Koryu (sword fighting teachers and students) on the other.

The game aims for a "cinematic" style of combat, and does some interesting things that other games of this type don't really do. A game where the majority of the combat will be hand-to-hand could be quite dull -- once the figures have been moved into position, it could quickly devolve into die rolls back and forth, but Ronin opts for something different.

At the start of a hand-to-hand battle, each player secretly chooses a number of tokens based on the experience level of his characters. There are two different tokens to choose from: attack or defense. Once the die rolling starts, these tokens can be spent to improve a character's chance of attacking or defending successfully. What this amounts to is that players are forced to choose whether they want to focus on defense, attack, or try to balance out the two.

As with most games of this type, ranged attackers have the huge advantage of being able to attack from a distance (and in this game they get to attack first), but the game balances that by giving them fewer opportunities to increase their chance of hitting, and it also takes into account the slow reload times of ranged weapons from this time period.

Games are scenario based, usually with a specific goal for one side or the other rather than just "run to the middle and fight," and the game does a good job of allowing for narrative actions like looting bodies and picking up objects. It also has a whole system covering morale and the idea that if the fight is going badly, the troops might start running away.

We really enjoyed the game, and my only complaint isn't really a flaw in the game but an element that could be seen by many as a plus. The game doesn't come with pre-made character cards like its more commercial cousins tend to. Players are given example character types, with options for different weapons and abilities. Character stats are then copied onto a simple roster form for use during play. It works fine and is well suited to this style of game, but at the same time (and this is a very superficial criticism) it's an element of the game that is dry and uninteresting. Additionally, the hand writing and pre-game decision making makes it more difficult to just jump in and start playing, which means we won't get this game to the table very often.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) A great game system that works fine as-is, but could benefit from some more lavish support materials and a shorter prep time.

• Ronin: Skirmish Wargames in the Age of the Samurai official website
• Ronin: Skirmish Wargames in the Age of the Samurai on BoardGameGeek

Imperius: sometimes great artwork is enough

Imperius caught my attention entirely due to its striking artwork, which crisply illustrates a far-future interstellar empire (clearly based on Frank Herbert's Dune) where great houses vie for power through a combination of two-faced intrigue and raw military might.

Each player is given an assortments of cards in their color, representing characters such as nobles, bodyguards, and assassins. All the players' cards are shuffled together (along with a handful of event cards) and then redistributed by means of a card draft: each player is dealt a hand of 5 cards, keeping one and passing the rest to the next player until all the cards have been drafted. The strategy here is to balance taking cards you know you want with keeping powerful cards out of the hands of your opponents.

The thing that makes drafting a little different in this game is that you're not just drafting cards from your own faction. You're also looking at which of your opponents' cards you would prefer to have some control over; for example, if you want to make good use of your Noble, you may want to also draft your opponent's Assassin in order to keep it from interfering with your plans (more on how the cards interact in a moment).

Once players have drafted their cards for the round, they take turns playing them to various different location cards at the center of the board. Two cards can go to each location face down, but once that limit is reached, remaining cards are played face up, so you have to choose carefully which cards you want to keep a secret and which ones you don't mind your opponents knowing about. After everyone has deployed their cards, the cards that have been played to each location are revealed and resolved in a pre-determined order (not necessarily the order they were played in).

As cards are resolved, Assassins kill Nobles, Royal Guards protect Nobles from getting killed, Ambassadors and Nobles (if they survived the Assassin) score victory points, and Commanders place control points on locations, which in turn score points at the end of the game. Each character has a rating in strength and favor, which are used to determine who wins if, for example, two different players have their Noble at the same location.

What makes this really interesting is that you aren't always playing your own characters, so you might play an opponent's Ambassador to a planet that isn't worth many points, in order to keep him out of your way, or you may even be able to play one opponent's Assassin against another opponent's Noble, paving the way for you to sneak the location's victory points out from under them.

The game play describes a lot of dramatic intrigue. It might be a little bit more interesting if the game took place in a world that we knew more about, such as the aforementioned Dune or even Star Wars, but the evocative artwork paints a detailed picture of an interstellar setting that seems a lot deeper than it is.

Rating: 4 (out of 5): Imperius has some unusual concepts that can be a struggle to explain to new players, but once everyone understands the basic strategy it's a compelling mid-weight game with simple mechanics but a lot of depth.

• Imperius official website
• Imperius on BoardGameGeek

Roll Player: character developments

When you say it out loud, a whole board game about creating a D&D style fantasy character sounds silly. But how different is it from games where you're trying to build a western town, an expedition journal, or a space empire? And besides, there are many that would argue that building and developing your character is the most compelling part of playing Dungeons & Dragons, or indeed almost any role playing game.

Roll Player had intrigued me for some time, but it's done by a small publisher who primarily uses Kickstarter so availability has been spotty since it came out in 2016. I finally got a chance to play it at a convention earlier this year, and was instantly hooked, so much so that I bought a copy right then and there.

The game features a game board for each player denoting one of the standard fantasy races such as elf, dwarf, or halfling, plus a few more esoteric choices like minotaur or cat person. From there players are dealt a random set of character class cards from which they choose their profession, a backstory, and an alignment.

Game play revolves around randomly choosing 6-sided dice from a bag, rolling them, and then taking turns choosing which ones to add to the different statistics on your character sheet. The number rolled on the dice is important, but so is the color -- your profession tells you what range of numbers you want, and your back story (as well as other factors) tell you what color and where on the sheet you want to place them.

After dice are chosen, players choose from a row of equipment cards which further enhance their characters, with specific equipment and skills being more or less suited to specific types of characters. Among the choices are skill cards that adjust your character's alignment (their moral compass) when used, as well as trait cards that give a point bonus at the end of the game.

These two phases are repeated 12 times, at which time all the players will have a full player board. Points are awarded based on how well optimized the character is, with bonus points for placing the the right colors of dice in the right places on your sheet, acquiring equipment and traits best suited to your character, and getting your alignment marker placed in a way that suits your alignment card.

It's a well-designed engine-building game, and I find it a bit more compelling than empire-building games like Race for the Galaxy because I'm building and individual character and equipping him (or her) for adventure, rather than a more abstract empire of planets and starships. An expansion adds the ability to fight minor monsters, building up experience in order to face off against a big bad at the end of the game, but honestly I find that addition a little distracting; I would rather just spend time building my character.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) a terrific game that's compelling but reasonably simple to play and not overly competitive, making it a great choice for a casual game night.

• Roll Player official website
• Roll Player on BoardGameGeek

DinoGenics: there's a dinosaur cloning game for everyone

Crowdfunding, pre-orders and limited print runs are rapidly becoming the standard for game publishing, and it is because of this that I had to decide whether I wanted DinoGenics before I was able to play Dinosaur Island. Based only on information from their respective crowdfunding campaigns the two games look very similar, and honestly, how many dinosaur cloning games does one person need?

If I'd been looking at both games at the same time I most likely would have only chosen one, and that one would have been DinoGenics, based on its more conventional illustrations and graphic design -- the obnoxious look of Dinosaur Island remains one of the few things I don't like about the game. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I had to make a decision on DinoGenics after I had committed to buying Dinosaur Island, so I ended up with copies of both games. In the end I'm glad I did.

The two games are similar in that they are both worker placement games about building a zoo filled with cloned dinosaurs, but that's where the similarity ends. DinoGenics is a much more traditional worker placement game, with players competing for spaces on the board so they can get the resources they need to clone dinosaurs, build appropriate enclosures for them, and add enough support buildings to accommodate an increasing number of guests. And don't forget to feed those carnivores, or they'll break out of their enclosures and you'll likely spend a lot of your next turn making repairs...

The game design is solid if not overly innovative, but where DinoGenics really shines in in the quality of its components. The graphic design is excellent and does a much better job of evoking Jurassic Park than the much more stylized Dinosaur Island. The meeples are wood rather than plastic (in my opinion plastic meeples are a disturbing trend in game publishing and a scourge upon mankind), done in very nice greens, browns and greys that make it easy to tell the different types of dinosaurs apart. The cards and tiles are sturdy with high quality printing -- the only thing I don't like is that some of the text on the building tiles is very small and difficult to read.

If I had to choose between DinoGenics and Dinosaur Island, I would probably choose DinoGenics, although I do think the game play in Dinosaur Island is a bit more innovative. In the end the games are different enough that I'm happy to have both in my collection.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) This game features more traditional worker placement style game play than its competitor, but the much more lavish graphic design more than makes up for it.

• DinoGenics official website
• DinoGenics on BoardGameGeek

Into the tiny with Tiny Epic Galaxies

Tiny Epic Galaxies delivers on its promise: it has the feel of an epic exploration game, but it comes in a small box and doesn't take all day to play. Now, don't get me wrong, it isn't Xia or Star Wars Rebellion, but it still creates a sense of mighty space empires growing stronger as they explore and conquer new territory.

It's a dice placement game, a growing sub-genre of worker placement where players roll dice to determine what actions they can do in a given round. The actions here are moving a space ship between planets, acquiring one of the game's two resources (energy or culture), using either diplomacy or economy to advance colonization efforts on a planet, or utilizing an established colony's special ability for a game effect.

Players start with 4 dice and two space ships, and compete to exploit the resources of a row of planet cards at the center of the table. Landing on a planet conveys a one-time use of that planet's special ability. Orbiting the planet and taking the time to colonize it takes longer but adds the planet to your pool of colonies, meaning only you may use its special ability. Additionally, each planet provides either energy or culture, so spreading out your ships to take the best advantage of the acquire resource action is critical to having the resources you need to upgrade your empire, which gets you more ships and dice to use on later turns.

As with all the games in the Tiny Epic series, this one doesn't really offer anything truly original, but that's not the point. The accomplishment is that it offers something similar to what you normally only get from much larger and more time-consuming games. The amount of game that designer Scott Almes is able to get out of a minimum of components is astonishing.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) There's a lot more going on in this game than can be expected from a 5" x 7" box, that's for sure.

• Tiny Epic Galaxies official website
• Tiny Epic Galaxies on BoardGameGeek

Architects of the West Kingdom: idle meeples are the devil's tool

There are a ridiculous number of worker placement games out there, so it's unusual when one comes along that has something innovative about it.

Most worker placement games follow the same basic pattern: players are given a number of workers (usually four or five) and take turns placing them on spots on the board that give the player game advantages or resources. Once every player has placed all their workers, the board is cleared, the workers are reclaimed, and a new round of placement begins.

Architects of the West Kingdom, designed by Shem Phillips (of Raiders of the North Sea fame) does things a little differently. While unmistakably a worker placement game, with a lot of the same game elements (placing workers to achieve game effects), Architects does away with the round structure, instead making reclaiming workers one of the available actions in the game.

It may seem like a small thing, but its a huge shift in the way worker placement games are played. In addition to the normal concerns of gathering resources and spending them to put building cards into play, players must now look at their available pool of workers, and when it's the best time to either reclaim their workers from the board, or from the prison space where they can sometimes end up.

The prison space helps the players cultivate a sense of urgency. Various game effects will send your workers to prison, and at certain points during the game, whoever has the most imprisoned workers has to take a debt card, which causes point loss if it isn't paid off by the end of the game.

This brings us to the other interesting thing about Architects: the idea of virtue. The game board includes a virtue track that players will move up and down on, depending on their actions during the game. Being low on the virtue track has certain advantages (such as not having to pay taxes, which makes a lot of the in-game purchases cheaper), but also causes a loss of points at the end of the game. So manipulating your position on the track to your best advantages adds another strategic layer of the game.

It's a terrific game with a lot going on in spite of the relatively simple rules, with several different paths to victory and quite a bit more interaction between players than you normally see in games of this type.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) Shem Phillips knocks it out of the park again. Anyone who likes worker placement games should love this one.

• Architects of the West Kingdom official website
• Architects of the West Kingdom on BoardGameGeek