Are you a new painter? The world of miniature painting can be a daunting one to step into. Where do you start? What brands do you buy? What even is a contrast paint? Below, I have compiled a list of what I consider essential buys for you to think about the next time you whip […]
About a month ago, I received a text out of the blue from a friend I hadn’t heard from in nearly two years:
“Have you played Dark Pact by Tom Lehmann? I’ve played it twice and I think it might be the greatest deck-builder.”
A grain of salt must accompany these words as they travel down your gullet. The sender of that text is an avid Lehmann-head. He loves Winter Court, a novel sentence in the English language. He is constantly trying to bust out New Frontiers at parties. He carries a complete set of Dice Realms at all times, just in case the mood strikes.
I get it. I will never play another game as much as I have already played Race for the Galaxy. It would be untrue to deny that Lehmann’s spell has won me over from time to time. I would not go so far as to call myself a disciple, though. I find most of Lehmann’s games too dry. They are mathematically precise in a way that suggests an awe-inspiring understanding of the numbers behind the fun, but they are often that at the expense of, well, the fun. It has never before occurred to me that Lehmann and Reiner Knizia can be thought of as opposite sides of the same…
The post Dark Pact Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.
Financially-troubled board game publisher CMON is pinning its future on a push into video game development and blockchain-based projects, beginning with a $2.1m investment in NFT game maker Blissful Link.
CMON’s board said it planned to transition its titles such as Massive Darkness and Super Fantasy Brawl Reborn into “high-quality digital assets”, adding that it believed integrating its board games with digital and Web3 technologies “would enhance the long-term commercial value of the group’s portfolio”.
The company has kicked off that shift by agreeing to acquire a 2.2% stake in Blissful Link, which operates Capverse, a play-to-earn video game built on blockchain technology in which players buy NFT ‘Sumer’ characters to battle with online.
CMON’s investment values British Virgin Islands-incorporated Blissful Link at more than $95m. Blissful Link made a loss of about $197,000 in 2024, on revenues of just over $408,000, and had net liabilities of about $889,000, according to unaudited figures provided by CMON. It did not include finances for 2025.
A statement from CMON’s board supplied to the Hong Kong stock exchange, where the board game publisher is listed, said, “Over the years, traditional board and other table top games have merged with digital ones providing digital convenience, offering online multiplayers, automated rules and apps that enhance physical play.
“The company believes that in order to continue to be relevant in the games industry and to expand the group’s revenue stream, the group would need to conduct digital transitioning and venture into video game development and Web3 projects.
“Digital transitioning would have the benefits of enhanced visual effects, have apps that handle scoring, timing etc, would enable a diversified number of players and are more accommodating to players not within the same vicinity.
“Added to this, entering into Web3 projects often emphasise social responsibility and ethical practices such as transparency and fairness on decision marking. By participating in Web3 projects, the company can demonstrate its commitment to social responsibility and sustainability.
“However, the group would continue to supplement this digital transformation as physical games would still offer a ‘screen break’ for individuals as well as foster direct face to face interaction.”
Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are digital assets which represent specific items – such as an illustration, trading card or piece of music – each with an individual signature stored via blockchain technology, which includes information such as who created it, who owns it, who sold it and for how much.
NFTs, which emerged out of cryptocurrency technology such as Bitcoin, exploded into the public eye in 2021 thanks to big-money speculative purchases – such as an NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet selling for $2.9m.
That speculative bubble had already burst a year later, however with many of the digital assets involved losing more than 90% of their peak value. The Dorsey tweet NFT, for example, received a high bid of $6,800 when it was put back on the market in April 2022.
Other board games that have pushed into NFTs are few and far between, with one of the highest profile examples being SolForge Fusion, which allows players to mint decks as digital assets in addition to playing the game in physical form.
Two years ago CCG project Wonders of the First had to pull a $1.4m campaign from Kickstarter after falling foul of the crowdfunding platform’s ban on NFTs. The game went on to raise about $1.2m after relaunching without NFT content.
CMON, a long-time heavyweight in board game crowdfunding thanks to games such as Zombicide, Blood Rage and Cthulhu: Death May Die, slumped to a loss of more than $3m in 2024 due to falling sales for its crowdfunding campaigns.
That loss was almost double CMON’s total profits from the prior three years – but the figure was dwarfed by the $19.9m annual loss the company announced in its 2025 financial results.
CMON’s $23m losses across 2024 and 2025 are now almost 5.5-times larger than its profits from the preceding nine years combined, and have pressed the company into a string of asset sales as it attempts to fulfill more than $14.3m of as-yet-undelivered crowdfunding campaigns.
Those IP sales included parting with its most famous and profitable title Zombicide – which has raised more than $40m on Kickstarter since its 2012 launch – to Asmodee, as well as Blood Rage, Rising Sun and Ankh to Tycoon Games.
It followed those by selling the IP for former Mythic Games titles Anastyr and Hel: The Last Saga to Don’t Panic Games in September, and parting with the lucrative Cthulhu: Death May Die IP to Asmodee a month later – the latter a series which has raised almost $10m from backers to date.
Last month an independent auditor hired by the company questioned whether it CMON had the resources to stay in business for the foreseeable future, saying the publisher’s $19.9m annual loss, its net liabilities of more than $3.5m and contract liabilities of over $7.5m “indicate a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt about the group’s ability to continue as a going concern.”
CMON’s directors had a different view, however, saying in the company’s 2025 financial report that it “should be able to continue as a going concern” thanks to a trio of factors.
They include financial support from some of the directors “sufficient to finance CMON’s working capital requirements”, the roughly $2.4m proceeds from selling its Singapore office that it received in January, and about $1.25m of gross proceeds from a successful share sale in February.
CMON’s hefty liabilities are largely due to its eight undelivered crowdfunding campaigns, which are not recognised as revenue on the company’s books until they are fulfilled to backers.
They include DC Super Heroes United, which raised more than $4.4m, and DCeased, which brought in over $2.5m. Both campaigns were initially due to be delivered last year, but are now expected to be delivered in Q4 of 2026, according to CMON’s latest estimates.
CMON also has several undelivered pre-order campaigns on its books, including Dune Desert War and the Assassin’s Creed Role Playing Game.
The company pulled the plug on crowdfunding launches and new game development just over 12 months ago, citing the economic uncertainty created by US tariff hikes – which at the time had reached 145% for China, where the vast majority of hobby board games are manufactured.
But CMON announced last month that it plans to relaunch its halted crowdfunding operations later this year.
The post CMON to invest $2.1m in NFT video game maker, says digital shift needed to expand revenue, remain ‘relevant’ first appeared on .
The February 2026 Monthly Debrief Video, which is the 2nd episode in Season 6 of this series, saw us discussing the Twilight Struggle Family Tree, which covers games that have spawned from or followed closely the tenets of the Card Driven Game system used in Twilight Struggle from GMT Games. We both love the Card Driven Game mechanic and also very much love TS.
Also, as usual, we covered the games we played in February, as well as the games we plan to play in March.
We will remind you here that we are fortunate to be continuing our relationship with Noble Knight Games as the sponsor for our Monthly Debrief Video series. In case you don’t know, Noble Knight Games specializes in hard to find games but also carry all the new releases. But what makes them truly unique is that you can find some of the rarest games, long out of print games, hand made games, imported games from overseas, etc. Thanks to them for their sponsorship and we hope that you will consider them first when looking for the games we cover.
-Grant
The complaint requests relief due to defamation, false light, and more
I don’t know what I expected Tom Lehmann to design next, but Dominion on Adderall wasn’t on the list. That’s as short a summary as I can muster for Dark Pact, and it’s a surprisingly apt comparison, right down to the action limits and buy phase that marked Donald X. Vaccarino’s genre-defining title. Like the version of Dominion you’d get if a moody teenager popped a double dose and spent six hours scribbling demons in their spiral-bound notebook.
Is it good? Yeah, it’s good. Is it great? Hm. It sits somewhere near Res Arcana in Lehmann’s ludography, sans that game’s brevity, plus a bit of Justin Gary’s Ascension in its flowing market and excessive tallying. Great might be a stretch. Perhaps it would be fairest to say that it contains moments of greatness.
An old-fashioned (but not that old-fashioned) card market.
At a setting level, Dark Pact is about striking a bargain with a demon. I don’t have any experience in such a discipline, but it seems as close to otherworldly binding as Dominion was to Medieval villages. There’s a moment in the game, usually about five minutes into a session, when I can still appreciate Dug Nation’s woodblock-styled illustrations. Five minutes after that, those illustrations have faded from view, along with the remainder of the game’s trappings. All that remains is the machine I’m hopefully streamlining into something aerodynamic enough to drag two dozen cards into motion.
If you’ve played Dominion, you can play Dark Pact. By now the five-card hand has become industry standard, but even a few of Dominion’s other hallmarks return intact. By default you only receive a single action. That’s one card played to the table to activate its effect. Often that card will provide another action. Then its followup provides another two actions and some draws. Then the next card lets you retrieve something from your discard pile and, baby, you’ve got a stew going.
Also returning is Vaccarino’s market phase. After your actions are done, you’re allowed to play as much treasure as you can and purchase new cards. There are a few wrinkles this time around. For one thing, there are none of Dominion’s limited buys. If you want to split up your gold to purchase five cards, well, go nuts. For another, the market is now an ever-shifting offer rather than Dominion’s static display. What you see this turn may well disappear into your opponent’s deck before you get another stab at it.
Turns eventually spool into madness. Seems fitting.
Unsurprisingly, this is where Lehmann dives in with full gusto. There are cards aplenty to grab, with heaps of effects, and all of them are useful for one objective or another. But there are two in particular that transform Dark Pact from spooky-art Dominion into something that feels distinctly Lehmann-esque.
The first is the pacts. The dark pacts. Of Dark Pact fame. There are thirteen in all, all of them shuffled into the deck, and all offering a game-winning condition that initially sounds impossible. You might, in the course of your demonic experimentation, uncover a dark pact called Diverse Learning that will let you win if you have 15 unique cards in play. Or perhaps you’ll pursue Secular Power, the card that wins if you enter the market phase with 40 unspent coins. Or Great Potential. That one wins if you have 19 cards in hand.
For Lehmann-heads, dark pacts aren’t far off from the monuments and places of power in Res Arcana. It’s just that they’re hidden in the deck like your average demon-summoning ritual or cursed ring, get shuffled into your deck, and present conditions that let you win outright rather than offering spills of points. If their targets sound intimidating, that’s deliberate. When the game opens, most dark pacts are well out of reach. Especially, remember, because you only get one action per turn, five cards per draw phase, the usual limitations.
That’s where the second special card comes in: multipliers. They’re… multipliers. No spooky gauze this time. Just a simple 2x or 3x. These also circulate through your deck, and can be attached to any card to amplify the effects of its printed numerals. Gold coin? Now it’s worth two or three times more. Summoning circle? Now you can nab a card worth 16 or 24 coins rather than a measly eight. Generous spirit? Enjoy your six extra actions and nearly your entire discard pile popping back into your hand.
Things really get bonkers when you discover that multipliers multiply multipliers. Before long, some turns are transformed into those obnoxious order-of-operations social media tests. (“Only one in thirty people can solve this equation!”) The effects can be staggering. Thanks to multiple 3x cards stacked atop some silver, I once generated something like 70-ish coins in a turn. I wasn’t even holding the pact that let me win from having so many coins. It was so much that I could have bought out the entire market. I didn’t do it, of course. Winnowing is every bit as worthwhile in Dark Pact as any other deck-builder. It’s possible to over-stuff your card pool, so I reined myself in. But I considered grabbing all ten cards on offer for the lifetime accomplishment award.
Another day at the office.
At its best, these cards result in a deck-builder that’s incredibly familiar, to such a degree that it feels like a throwback to 2008, while also chucking everybody down a slip-n-slide to see who can break the game the fastest. In those moments, Dark Pact is Lehmann in top form. All the broken combos of Res Arcana. All the busted dice-assembling of Dice Realms. All the recursive triggers of Race for the Galaxy. All of it and more, wrapped in a tidy package that barely asks deck-building veterans to learn anything new. Truly, it’s impressive how smoothly the game riffs on the genre’s basics. When I say you can play Dark Pact if you’ve played Dominion, I mean it.
At the same time, Dark Pact sometimes feels one or two elements shy of a summoning ritual.
The biggest issue is duration. Basically, it’s often too slow for its own good. Turns are anything but simple, with one power begetting another, often after drawing from the deck, retrieving from the discard pile, and refreshing a segment of the market, all of which make it difficult to plan during one’s off-turn. It might sound like the exception to have a dozen cards trigger in sequence, but that’s the goal of Dark Pact, which makes turns sprawl more often than not. Even with only two players, the downtime and duration can be formidable. At three or four, they grow interminable. I would play the heck out of this game via an asynchronous app; on the table, it needs optimal conditions to thrive.
Meanwhile, I’m sure much will be made of the card balance. Multipliers are powerful, that goes without saying, and the early game often feels like a race to secure an economic engine that will springboard your longer-term plans. Fortunately, Lehmann offers a few solutions to sidestep the usual deck-building snares. Purchased cards go straight to your hand rather than first cycling through your discard and deck, and everybody begins with a few cards in their own private grimoire that can be purchased at their leisure, including, crucially, a deck’s second 2x multiplier. It’s a clever move that eases the whims of the flowing market without totally erasing what makes it interesting.
Personally, I’m more interested in the dark pacts. These don’t need to be balanced. I would go so far as to say they oughtn’t be. For all I know, they’ve been painstakingly playtested and algorithmically tuned. But some of them feel like a breeze compared to some others. Is this a problem? Only insofar as you make it one. It’s an open bar. If somebody nabs a pact that’s more reasonably completed than one you’ve taken, maybe it’s time to run interference. But there are some, maybe two, that feel so comparatively easy that I’m always going to give them priority. In a game this muscular, even the slightest flab seems especially visible, like a world-class bodybuilder with one sagging boob.
When nobody is sure which pact to buy, the market tends to clog with them.
Sagging boob or no, Dark Pact is fascinating for how Lehmann has taken a familiar formula and made it new again. This is Dominion, but rather than coming across as goofy when the optimal deck consists of seven sentries and four throne rooms, Dark Pact’s flowing market and sheer busted nature make the process feel vibrant and alive. It’s funny to get excited about trashing a card after all this time.
Which is to say, yeah, there are downsides. Some cards feel mistuned. The downtime is considerable. Four players? Forget about it. But Dark Pact once again showcases Lehmann as a master at work. In his hands, cards become more than cardstock. They’re components in a machine, one that sputters to life with every shuffle, draw, purchase, and winnow. The game is its own demon, and whatever dark pact Lehmann has struck to summon so many bangers in one lifetime, let’s hope the price never comes due.
(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read my first-quarter update of 2026: the best board games, movies, books, and more!)
Yesterday I announced the Euphoria Essential Edition, which combines the core game with the expansion and includes some revised rules/components, particularly the board layout. It will be on the Stonemaier Games webstore, ready to ship, starting on May 13.
While discussing the game on yesterday’s livecast, I started to reflect on the factors that result in us considering an “essential” version of an existing game (e.g., Viticulture, Between Two Cities, Between Two Castles, and now Euphoria). I mentioned a few then, and I’ve added a few more to this list:
What do you think about these reasons? Is there anything else you would like me to consider for future essential editions (none of which are in the works)?
If you’re curious to learn more about the inception of Euphoria Essential, I’ve included the latest design diary post below.
***
April 23: The Inception of Euphoria Essential Edition
In March 2025, almost exactly 13 years after finishing the design for Euphoria, it was time to reprint the game. We’ve reprinted Euphoria a number of times over the years–a reprint is simply printing more of the same exact game–but this time I reached out to Morten (who had designed the Ignorance Is Bliss expansion) with the idea of updating Euphoria with everything I’ve learned about the game over the last decade.
Here’s what I proposed to Morten:
[end of message to Morten]
I’ll cut to the chase on a few of these elements: The final result was that we consolidated information onto player mats, we combined all recruits (102 total: asymmetric abilities that each player has), and we combined all market tiles (34 total: worker-placement actions to construct on the board). This essentially results in Euphoria plus the Ignorance Is Bliss expansion, offering a ton of variability with everything seamlessly integrated into a single box.
What do you think about this inception story? Join us tomorrow to dive into the core elements of the Essential Edition’s board, including a few minor-but-impactful rule changes! You can also click here to get a May 13 launch notification (followed by shipping later in May).
I love Arkham Horror: The Card Game. It’s probably one of my “desert island” games, thanks to the sheer amount of content and replayability. The game has evolved into an entire franchise, aptly named the “Arkham Files,” expanding into video games, novellas, tabletop RPGs, and even comic books published by powerhouse Dark Horse Comics.
Last year, the game’s storyline concluded with a great calamity in The Sinking City campaign, leading into the “soft reset” in 2026 with Chapter 2. Not only does this create a fresh launching point for a new storyline, but it also gives new players an ideal place to jump in.
Fantasy Flight’s vision for Arkham Horror breaks down into a “legacy environment,” in which all existing and past content can be used alongside future content, and a “current environment.” The current environment has a smaller card pool, and future campaigns are structured around mechanics in that evolving meta, though what exactly that will look like, we’ll have to wait and see. Presumably, this is meant to reset deckbuilding to a more even playing field. With so much existing content, it’s easy to build an overpowered deck and breeze through what should be a challenging experience.
The post Arkham Horror: The Card Game Core Set Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.
Toy and game maker Hasbro has delayed its quarterly results by almost a month after suffering a cyber attack, but said it expects to post Q1 revenues of up to $985m thanks to continued strong performance of Magic: The Gathering.
Hasbro said it identified “unauthorized access” to the company’s network on March 28, but believes that access has been “contained” – adding that Magic’s shipments and release cadence had continued unaffected.
The company expects Q1 revenue to be between $970m and $985m, a rise of between 9% and 11% compared to the same period last year – while operating profit is expected to reach $235m to $245m, a 38% to 44% jump.
Those preliminary results are expected to be solidified when Hasbro eventually releases its full Q1 financial report, which is now scheduled for May 20.
Magic continues to underpin Hasbro’s fortunes, with the veteran trading card game’s revenue having soared 59% last year to mark its strongest annual performance yet.
Hasbro saw its wider 2025 revenue rise almost 14% to $4.7bn, driven by a record 45% growth in its Magic, D&D and digital gaming division Wizards of the Coast, the company revealed in February.
Magic’s record-breaking year was capped off by a storming fourth quarter, which saw revenues from the game up 141% compared to Q4 2024 on the strength of the Avatar: The Last Airbender and Final Fantasy releases.
That stellar performance of Wizards, and Magic in particular, was in stark contrast to Hasbro’s consumer products segment – which includes Nerf guns, Transformers and Peppa Pig toys.
That segment saw revenues drop 4% last year “amongst macro and retailer volatility brought on by tariff announcements in Q2″ – and unlike for Magic, Hasbro said that the cyber incident would likely impact second quarter revenues and operating profit in consumer products due to expected order processing, shipping and invoicing delays.
Hasbro added that it still expects full-year revenues to rise between 3% and 5% in 2026. Hasbro CFO and COO Gina Goetter said in February that the company expects Wizards of the Coast to deliver mid-single-digit revenue growth in 2026, “supported by a healthy release cadence and continued engagement across the Magic ecosystem”.
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John Poniske is a prolific designer and we have enjoyed several of his games including Revolution Road from Compass Games, Plains Indian Wars from GMT Games, Bleeding Kansas from Decision Games, Hearts and Minds from Worthington Games and Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars 1845-1872 from Legion Wargames. We also own several of his designs but have not had a chance to get them tabled yet including King Philip’s War from Multi-Man Publishing and Pontiac’s War: Frontier Rebellion, 1763-66 from Compass Games. We have done several interviews with John over the years and I always enjoy this thoughts on the subjects that he decides to cover. In this entry in the Best 3 Games with…Series, I take a look at 3 of John’s designs that have spoken to me.
Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars, 1845-1872 from Legion Wargames is a game that uses as a background the uprisings that took place between 1845 and 1872 due to British colonial incursions into native Maori lands on the North Island of New Zealand. The ensuing conflict over a period covering nearly 30 years involved the destruction of a number of Maori villages, Pas, which are fortified villages that featured intricate trench-works and some colonial settlements. The war introduced the British to a very skilled and strategic combatant who used a strategy of ambushes and bush raiding to catch off guard and frustrate the professional British ranks. The hallmark of the game is that it is highly playable by featuring low counter density, a play time of under two hours for most of the scenarios and easy to understand rules.
Playing as the British, players will have to deal with swinging tribal loyalty and will need to master the rivers and seas to move their more powerful troops and gunboats around while the Maori player will be focused on bush-raiding, which allows the Maori to move units temporarily off the board and out of harms way, but then to later bring them back in a more favorable strategic location of their choosing. The asymmetry in the fighting styles is really very good and I like the way it factors into account the history.
Maori Wars is a great game with some really beautiful art, not only on the board but also on the counters. The game is a slugfest between the mighty British and their Queenite allies against the inhabitants of the island in the various Maori tribes that resisted their colonial oppressors. The tribes have lots of tricks up their sleeves and use the land and their knowledge of it to great advantage as they conduct bush raids regularly and are very difficult to bring to decisive battle.
Here is a look at our unboxing video for Maori Wars: The New Zealand Land Wars, 1845-1872 :
We also did a video review and you can watch that at the following link:
Bleeding Kansas is a very well designed 2-player game that deals with the violence and politics of pre-statehood Kansas from 1854-1861. The game focuses on the tensions between pro-slave and abolitionist parties and their attempts to win over emigrants to Kansas to their cause and thereby influence the outcome of elections to move the state toward their leaning on the issue of slavery. The game has four elections that players will fight over trying to have the most influence in Kansas counties to score victory points. At its heart, the game is an area control game that has splashes of election dynamics that feels very Euro-like as it uses cubes to represent forces.
The core mechanism in the game is the cards. Each of these cards is tied to an historical event, important person or other factor involved in the conflict and allows players to choose their actions for that immediate turn. The game proceeds as players alternate the play of one of the cards from their hand to take various actions from symbols that appear on the cards. These symbols provide actions such as influencing new settlers to the region to join their side in the conflict, build up forces for the coming battle, take control of counties by moving these forces around or displacing those of your opponent, attacking the opposition, burning down their population centers, enticing settlers to migrate to their areas or request intervention from the Federal Garrison stationed at Leavenworth. The cards carry out the plans of players and create a historical narrative of the conflict.
The game really is pretty simple mechanically but don’t let the game’s simplicity fool you. This is a knock down drag out bare knuckle fight for supremacy in the Kansas Territory and will test you’re meddle as you fight back and forth undoing what your opponent has just done. The game boils down to staying the course and playing your cards smartly to gain the upper hand in elections. You have to be able to judge where control stands as you play each card and you have to plan as scoring elections can really sneak up on you if you are not paying attention.
Here is a look at our unboxing video so you can get a good look at the components:
Here is a look at our video review of the game:
Here also are links to a series of Action Points on the various aspects of the game:
Action Point 1 – Burn and Skirmish Actions
Action Point 2 – Movement and Influence Actions
Action Point 3 – Politics, Migration and Cooperation Actions
Action Point 4 – Election Track and Election Process
We also did an interview with designer John Poniske that you can read on our written blog at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2019/07/08/interview-with-john-poniske-designer-of-bleeding-kansas-from-decision-games/
Devil Dogs: Belleau Wood 1918 is an easy to learn, fast-playing card-driven game for 2 players. The play map covers the historical French battlefield geography and the 300 counters and markers represent the historical units and incidents involved along with chits that determine initiative and order choice. The game is unique in that it captures the tension and high rate of casualties without ever casting a single die, relying more on planning and issuing orders as the active or reactive player. Each side will have a 30 card deck that is faction specific.
I love Multi-Use Cards in a game and this one uses faction specific decks that can be used in several different ways. The combat system is also quite unique as hits are not calculated by a die roll and reference to a CRT but by the combat strength of the units attacking determined by the play of a card and then in what terrain the targets are hiding. The best element of the game though was having to play a card to each sector on the map without knowing what your opponent will play and then seeing how you did. Really interactive and interesting game and this one was a big hit with both of us! Although the rules were a bit challenging in their format and presentation but nothing that we couldn’t handle after a few turns into the game.
Here is a link to our video review of the game:
There you have it. My Best 3 Games with…Designer John Poniske! He has done so many good games and the narrative and historical immersion of all of them are top notch.
What are your favorite games from John Poniske?
-Grant
Extraterrestrial settings are popular for board games, possibly because they avoid the potential geopolitical quandary or insensitivity of area control, settlement, and resource/worker exploitation inherent to games of more Earthly environs. Thus, designers are free to escalate conflict without offense, such as in titles like Moon Colony: Bloodbath, Moonrakers, and Skymines. This is where 2023’s […]
Explore five card games old and new, including 15th Stamp and All Mine!
by Steph Hodge
A heavy hitter today with these new releasesThere was a moment late in my first game of the medium-weight strategy game Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock where I pretty much landed on my final thoughts about the game.
I had just taken a turn that felt pretty dope. That turn began when I took the Construction action, and spent four resources to construct the second-to-last piece of the month dial on the big clock at the center of the board. That netted me eight points, for the gold, two wood, and paint I had spent to build it. Then I placed one of my workers on the clock, and thanks to adjacency rules, scored four more points. Then I got a bonus based on the position of that completed space on an outer wheel that surrounds the clock, a track that lists bonuses on what is known as the Painter track.
That bonus gave me a free apostle. These apostle tiles are earned and placed in one of two storage slots on each player’s personal board. As a free action, I took that new apostle and placed it in a column on my personal, 12-space apostle board. It was the third apostle in one of the columns, which earned me another bonus: an Assistant tile, which went into the newly vacated storage space where that apostle…
The post Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.
I love it when game designers give us a unique take on mechanics that have been around for a long time. Fight 5 gave us a new spin on the card game war, Samurai Spirit channeled its inner blackjack, and quite a few games have pulled from the ancient game Mancala, notably Five Tribes. Today, […]
The American arm of high IQ society Mensa has unveiled the latest crop of board games winning its Mensa Select seal, which are voted on by hundreds of organisation members during an annual four-day gaming marathon.
Alex Cutler and Peter C Hayward both saw two of their creations win the seal this year, including their co-design Critter Kitchen, Hayward’s Things in Rings and Cutler’s A Place for All My Books – which he co-created with Michael Mihealsick.
Things in Rings publisher Allplay also saw its title Twinkle Twinkle, designed by Ammon Anderson, pick up a Select seal, while other winners this year included Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rosset’s Fromage, Yoann Levet’s Got Five and Tomáš Holek design Galileo Galilei.
Entries to the annual Mensa Mind Games are judged on aesthetics, instructions, originality, play appeal and play value, Mensa says, with the award aiming to highlight games that are original in concept, challenging and well-designed.
Not all games released during the past year are eligible for the award, however – entries carry a fee of several hundred dollars each, and games up for consideration need to have an average play time of 90 minutes or less.
Barnes & Noble and other major retailers have previously given special consideration to games bearing the Mensa Select seal, while winning games are also featured by American Mensa’s official online retailers and on its website.
Fromage is the most decorated of this year’s seal winners, having previously won the Origins Award for best light strategy game, as well as picking up nominations for medium game of the year, most innovative game and best artwork in the 2024 Golden Geek Awards.
Things in Rings was previously nominated in both the Golden Geeks and Origins Awards in the best party game category.
Last year’s Mensa Select seal winners included Agueda: City of Umbrellas, Diatoms, Hutan, In the Footsteps of Marie Curie and Farms Race: Deluxe Edition.
This year’s Mensa Select seal winners in full:
The post High-IQ society Mensa reveals its top board games after annual four-day judging marathon first appeared on .
With this My Favorite Wargame Cards Series, I hope to take a look at a specific card from the various wargames that I have played and share how it is used in the game. I am not a strategist and frankly I am not that good at games but I do understand how things should work and be used in games. With that being said, here is the next entry in this series.
2040: An American Insurgency is a card driven game that attempts to simulate a near future US civil war in the 21st century. In this 2-player game that plays in less than 3 hours, the blue team is the Federals representing agents of the government in Washington. The red team are the Rebels including militia groups trying to seize control of states, highways, and cities. The conflict spreads across the entire continental US, from Miami to Seattle and from Los Angeles to New York.
This game is not perfect and it has some issues and the graphics are not that great frankly. As I played the game, I actually felt like it was a pretty decent game, with some very interesting mechanics covering an interesting topic. I know it isn’t perfect and in some ways the designer was so careful not to offend anyone in the game that he really didn’t get to say anything about the situation and its causes, and the game somewhat suffers from that. But it was interesting and I believe that we are about the only ones who played the game.
In this post, I will be taking a look at a Neutral Card called Open Borders. Remember, that each event is either friendly, enemy, or neutral. Friendly events help you; enemy events help your enemy while Neutral events can help either player. Gray cards such as Open Borders have no identifying side’s markings in the bottom right corner and when you play a Neutral Card, you may choose to do the Ops or the Event. Open Borders is a very good Neutral Card because it is a 3 Ops card and can be used to take various standard operations, such as raising
troops, fundraising and attacking. The card also is identified as a Momentum Card, which means that if played as the event, the effect will persist until a time specified in the text of the Event or, if none, until the end of the game. With Open Borders, the spaces of Mexico and Canada become playable areas on the board. These areas typically become a way for the Rebels to build and develop bases from which they recruit fresh insurgent units and then cross over the Open Borders to attack those States that border these areas eroding their Order and creating chaos and Revolt. The Open Borders Card allows this but also allows the Federal player to respond by crossing over the border and attempting to squash these recruiting centers.
The other effects of the Event provides both sides with a bonus when they take certain actions such as Tax for the Federals and Recruit for the Rebels. When the card has been played and is in effect, the Federal Tax Action will provide an additional $4 worth of income from the action. This is an effect of open borders and the unrestricted use of free trade and cross border commerce creating new jobs, providing additional sources of income and employing workers who ultimately pay income taxes on those improved wages. The Rebel Recruit Action will gain an additional Militia unit per space where taken. This reflects the stoking of anger at home as illegals and other bad actors are able to pour across the borders unfettered. I very much like this card for its game effect but also for the questions and concerns that it raises in this debate. Such an interesting economic spin on this issue through the game and I think is a very well done part of the design.
The concept of open borders highlights a fundamental tension between national security, economic openness, and civil liberties. Post-9/11, critics argue that porous or “open” borders allow terrorists to exploit security gaps, while proponents of open borders emphasize that excessive restrictions hurt economic freedom and that security should be managed through intelligence rather than isolation. The biggest concern regarding open borders is that unvetted, irregular migration through porous borders can be exploited by extremists to enter countries and perform acts of terrorism, sedition or general mayhem. To manage the tension between security and economic openness, many nations have turned to the concept of biometric borders. This involves using risk profiling and digital identity such as fingerprints and facial recognition to separate “civilized” business travelers from “illegitimate” and bad actors. This use of these high tech instruments in surveillance, data tracking and technology to distinguish between legitimate travel and potential threats has raised more concerns with civil liberty and privacy. This debate often pits “secure borders” against “open doors,” with officials grappling with protecting citizens without sacrificing the democratic principles of open societies. In one of the most famous quotes from history about privacy, Benjamin Franklin stated “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety“. Where do you land on this issue of Open Borders?
Here is a link to our unboxing video showing the components:
Here also is a link to our full video review:
I also posted an interview with the designer Edward Castronova on the blog and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2023/04/04/interview-with-edward-castronova-designer-of-2040-an-american-insurgency-from-compass-games-currently-on-kickstarter/
In the next entry in this series, we will take a look at The Second Funnel from The Hunt from Salt & Pepper Games.
-Grant
Anmelden
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