Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 93 i Tabletop Gaming

Perhaps it’s the Olympics that has us thinking about competition, but whatever the reason, we’ve been diving into everything competitive (or the opposite and why!) this issue. From the new Star Wars: Unlimited set and ways to play, to the World Series of Board Gaming with a huge cash prize in Vegas, it’s been a fun experience. We’ve spoken to those who favour cooperative games instead of competitions, those making competitions less competitive, and so much more! Plus as always, we’ve got some fun adjacent and regular features – from a look at Megagames, to the upcoming Disney Lorcana set (more on that in the next issue!), and our great stack of reviews, consisting of THREE must-play games. We’ve got some exciting plans on the horizon too, so stay tuned…

ALL THE TYPES The Pokémon Company International this month revealed the next expansion of the Pokémon Trading Card Game to be Stellar Crown. Due for release on September 13th it will feature the introduction of Terapagos from the Indigo Disk DLC from the Scarlet & Violet videogames as a Stellar Tera Pokémon, a brand new kind of card. Stellar Tera Pokémon ex will each have a special stellar attack with gemstone-inspired names, that cost three different types of energy to use. Lapras, Cinderace and Galvantula have also been confirmed to be coming as Stellar Tera Pokémon ex. Stellar Crown will feature the usual assortment of blister packs, elite trainer boxes and booster bundles and seems to be largely equivalent to the Japanese expansion Stella Miracle. Although the new Stellar Tera…

Designer: Josh Wood | Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group Does the thought of planning the perfect holiday fill you with joy? Do you tremble with anticipation at the idea of scheduling day trips, selecting restaurants or taking a stroll around new locations? Perhaps you love booking train travel to get you from place to place and squeezing as much as possible into a week-long holiday. Well, this could be the game for you! In Let’s Go! To Japan (as the name might imply) you’re planning a dream trip to Tokyo and Kyoto. The problem is that you’ve only got six days to cram in a whole host of activities, like eating the best food, visiting shrines, experiencing the nature of Japan and, of course, buying a whole bunch of manga collectables…

Designer: Grégory Grard, Matthieu Verdier | Publisher: Sorry We Are French The work of Charles Darwin is undoubtedly some of the most important scientific literature of all time, and the game In the Footsteps of Darwin asks the question “could you have done it better?”. Navigate the Beagle around the world and create a scrapbook of colourful creatures, scoring points for sets, groups and families that you acquire. In this simple game, players take turns grabbing an animal tile from the board, adding it onto their own personal “research journals” and then moving the Beagle marker around to allow the next player to do the same. Animals are scored based on completing rows of specimens on your player board, or for collecting many from the same region. Some actions will…

Designer: Scott Nelson, Anna-Marie Nelson | Publisher: Tabletop Tycoon A third edition of Scott Nelson’s and Anna-Marie Nelson’s 2015 game Healthy Heart Hospital tasks players with, as the name suggests, running a hospital. It’s not an easy job, the waiting room fills quickly as do the spaces in the morgue! Doctors’ healing capabilities are the luck of the draw - drawing colourful disease cubes from the bag, that is, although doctors can get some training to improve their chances of miracle healing. There is a lot of admin work to do and occasionally there will be a spare minute to research improvements for the hospitals. With new patients pouring in through hospital doors each round, players will have their work cut out for them. Luckily, they will be working together,…

Designer: Ledger Gibbs, Emily Hogan | Publisher: Skybound Set in a not-so-distant dystopian future where our woolly friends are under constant threat from otherworldly attacks, these farmyard heroes have taken serious measures for survival. They’re hiding in plain sight, behind an array of costumes fit for any primary school theatre performance. Your job is to herd pirates, Vikings, detectives and various other definitely-not-sheep into matching groups before your opponents do. Underhand tactics are encouraged, with yoinks, yanks and exposures leaping around the field. These rival shepherds are causing more chaos than the actual enemies. It’s a beautifully simple family card game that nevertheless reliably descends into chaos almost immediately. Each player starts with a hand of five cards made up of sheep cards and action cards. Any time you have…

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Designer: Mark Herma | Publisher: GMT Games Back in 2018, prolific wargame designer Mark Herman crafted the innovative Gettysburg, a small title that was packaged as part of C3i magazine number 32. It focused on the famous American Civil War battle of the same name, and was heralded due to its intriguing take on movement and battle. The success of this design would lead to GMT’s fully-featured Rebel Fury, a 2024 release that expands upon its predecessor’s concepts and increases the scope to encompass the battles of Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville, and Fredericksburg. What’s remarkable about this system is how it captures elements of simulation accompanied with thoughtful strategic considerations, while utilising a very straightforward and minimal ruleset. Unlike many of its peers, this is a relatively clean and…

Designer: Iori Tsukinam | Publisher: Moaideas Game Design Joraku is a game of territory-holding, trick-taking and point-gathering set before Japan’s Edo era. Can you unite Japan or, at least, rule over all the other lords? To gain the all-important Reputation points, you must progressively seize areas of the board with your army of Samurai. Blending several common mechanics into one tight little game, Joraku is a unique and refreshing experience; quite unlike anything else I’ve ever played. The board is split into seven areas, beginning with Kyoto at 0, then moving up in number order. Play starts with each player getting assigned a number to place their “Daimyo” (a regional feudal warlord). This location is important, since the Daimyo counts as two pieces for the purposes of holding a…

Designer: Shem Phillips | Publisher: Garphill Games At the start of the rulebook for Shipwrights of the North Sea: Redux there’s a message from the designer apologising for the flaws in the original version, a rare insight into the mind of a creative revisiting his past works. Shipwrights: Redux aims to be a tonic, smoothing out the issues and bringing it into line with the rest of the series. Rounds are split into two phases. First, a draft where you can choose exactly what cards you’ll be using this round. The early picks are a lunchbox of treats with many options, leading into the end of the phase where you’re just trying to make the best of the scraps left behind. Secondly, the action phase, use your drafted cards to…

Designer: Jordan Goddard, Mandy Goddard | Publisher: Renegade Game Studios The old saying goes that you can’t judge a book by its cover, and the same has been said for games. It stops you from making assumptions about something from how it looks, and prevents you from writing something off before giving it a chance. On the other hand, both industries dedicate a ton of research, talent and money to making it as easy as possible for you to do just that. With Lotus, they have succeeded. The box art shows a feminine character surrounded by colours and petals, with flowers in their hair, breathing in the magic of a flower floating in their open hands. Beautiful and calm, natural and enchanting this game is everything it says on the…

Designer: Kevin Schluter & team | Publisher: Renegade Game Studios Vampire the Masquerade is an interesting beast. Relatively light in mechanics, but very heavy on interpersonal conflict, morale choices and lore. In that respect, it is almost the opposite of Eat the Reich (see our review on page 70); since it’s very hard to convince yourself that you are playing “the good guys” in a game of Vampire. Instead, you are hidden horrors in a World of Darkness, forced to do terrible things, as you unstoppably prey on humanity just to continue your unlife. This latest Players Handbook is an expansion which very much requires the core book. That could be better explained; it took me until page 18 to realise this isn’t a slimmed down quick start! Unlike many…

Designer: Saverio E. Spagnolie, Mathieu Johnson, Corey Graham, Aman Matthews | Publisher: GMT Games Many of us in the UK can’t picture the history of the Indian subcontinent before the British Empire enters stage left and starts popping statues of someone called ‘Queen Victoria’ about the place. Which is a shame because this feels like the Mediaeval Indian period is a setting that could spawn hundreds of games if given the attention of hobby games studios. Luckily Vijayanagara offers us a glance at a rich and intriguing history. In Medieval India the Delhi Sultanate wishes to extend its influence to the rich Deccan kingdoms and empires of the south – and gain tribute from them. Naturally, these two factions aren’t interested in that. Players take one of the three powers;…

Setting up a league can be a great way to take your enjoyment of a game to a different level. It’s also a brilliant opportunity to share new ideas and gameplay styles and to build up a core group of people who want to get stuck into the game just as much as you. Plus… there will be lots of opportunities to make a spreadsheet! WHAT TO PLAY? The classic games that lend themselves to tournaments are reasonably short, abstract games; things like Backgammon, Go and the obvious classic: Chess, which has been played in tournaments since the first ever in Leeds in 1841! Others that lend themselves thematically and mechanically to long-form competition are “sports” games like Blood Bowl or Heat: Pedal to the Metal. These often have league…

269 moves were made in a contest at the Yugoslavia Chess Tournament, the most of any game. $1,000,000 is the largest cash price for Magic: The Gathering Tournament players. £10,193,400 represents the largest total ever won playing baccarat. 1,790 points is the highest score of any Scrabble game, but the word benzoxycamphors is still yet to be played in any official tournament. 80 hours marks the longest marathon playing a competitive board game. 1995 sparked the very first international Warhammer 40K tournament. 1977 was the legendary start of the D&D Championship series. 322 games of backgammon were played at the same time in a tournament, the most ever played simultaneously. 43,157 participants took part in the largest board game tournament. 530 people took part in the most letter tile games…

Gateway Game A game that is easy to learn, fun to play, and gets new players hooked on the hobby. Borrowing a term from the world of narcotics is a little on the nose for many gamers. Much like gateway drugs, gateway games can change your life. Your social circle dwindles in part, and expands in new directions, as does the way your mind works. Both cut a sizeable chunk out of your bank balance. Taking the metaphor back to its origin, these are the games that draw you in. The ones that you take off the shelf for a little fun and find it wasn’t just a shelf, it was one of those doors in glamorous libraries. Suddenly you find yourself through the gateway, wading into a wonderland of…

So far in our epic tabletop journey we have encountered two out of the three Baltic states situated in Northern Europe; Estonia and Lithuania. This month we return to tackle the third and final state, Latvia. Sandwiched between the two aforementioned countries, Latvia has been populated for over five-thousand years, initially by the ancient Latgalians alongside three other Baltic tribes. Later, rule of the country was tossed around between Germany, Poland, Sweden, and Russia before gaining independence in 1918. Despite this tumultuous ‘ownership’ of Latvia over the centuries, the country has retained its Baltic identity. Of particular note is the survival of the Latvian language - one of just two surviving Baltic languages - plus the incorporated Latgalian and Livonian dialects. Jolanta Keiša is a philologist and designer of Cipierkstneits;…

Designer: Kamil ‘Sanex’ Cieśla, Robert Plesowicz, Łukasz Włodarczyk | Publisher: Awaken Realms Lite In Tamashii: Chronicle of Ascend players are transported into a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk universe where an evil AI Ascend is trying to wipe out the humanity. Players take on the role of Tamashii, who are able to transport their minds into different bodies and attempt to stop the Ascend. To do this, they will complete a series of scenarios based around the tiled modular board, fighting and hacking their opponents, searching for clues and information. The main mechanism of the game is programming which takes place on the players’ individual gridded boards, called the launchers. Each round they will pull out a number of data tokens from their data bag and place them on the board. They will…

Designer: Mike Gnade | Publisher: Rock Manor Games The title Maximum Apocalypse doesn’t lie. This card game drops players in pretty much any end of the world scenario one can think of. Want to see if you can survive a zombie plague? Or maybe a vicious mutant attack? Can you avoid being abducted by aliens? Or shot by robots? In this cooperative scenario-based game, players are trying to complete objectives by exploring a map composed of randomly dealt tiles, fighting monsters, looking for equipment and trying not to starve to death. At the beginning of each game, players will choose a character, each with their own unique deck of weapons and abilities. They will then pick a scenario – which will include their choice of the world-ending adversary – and…

Designer: Yu Wang | Publisher: Moaideas Game Design Social deduction games are all the rage in the UK, even more so since The Traitors was on television. During the Euros football tournament, we even heard the England players’ goal celebration was based on one of their backroom staff member’s reactions when playing Werewolf. I was eager to try out a new social deduction game. It was a sweltering summer evening when we gathered in our Friendly Local Game Shop Cafe to witness the battle of Blades & Rose. We were hot off the back of some now infamous games of Blood on The Clocktower in which half of the players had proven themselves to be relentless and brilliant liars. There was a lot at stake. And it didn’t disappoint. Blades…

Designer: Grant Howitt & Will Kirkby | Publisher: Rowan Rook & Decard We all love vampires, right? Just about as much as we all hate Nazis. Eat the Reich is, thus, the perfect game for all of us. A rules-light game of comedic bloodshed and nazi-destroying adventure, this is probably the funniest game I’ve played this year. Created by Rowan, Rook and Decard, the near-legendary indie design studio that has brought us Spire, Goblin Quest and Heart, this beautiful game has definitely come from the sillier end of the spectrum. The basic pitch is this; it’s 1943, and you are a team of hand-picked vampire commandos, ready to be dropped into occupied Paris. Once there, your ultimate job is to hunt down Hitler and kill him - ideally by drinking…

Designer: Francesco Nepitello, Marco Maggi | Publisher: CMON The recent Dune films have sparked a new appreciation of the classic Frank Herbert science fiction book series. A surge in franchise-related material was inevitable, and a modern board game in the War of the Ring-style equally so. CMON duly delivered, bringing a typically minis-rich mega box to market with a price tag rivalling that of the spice itself. This raises the question, is it worth fighting for? While the game is solid at one to four players, I’m going to walk through it as a two-player experience and add a little about the solo and three/four-player modes at the end. The game feels like a twoplayer game to me, which is where differences between it and the likes of War of…

Designer: Darin A. Leviloff | Publisher: Victory Point Games Ottoman Sunset is the sibling game to Hapsburg Eclipse, a game I reviewed in this very magazine in a previous issue. Instead of a setting in the colder East, this game takes place in central Europe, and it surprised me how much difference this adds to the feel of the game. To me, as a British person playing, I felt more of an affinity with what happens in the game. That’s not to say it like “I remember when I was there”, but the game being set in places we see as tourist destinations now is both jarring and familiar, especially if you know little of the game’s setting. Ottoman Sunset is set at the outbreak of the First World War,…