There’s a problem with most hidden movement games, and I say that as the mechanism’s greatest devotee. Namely, they’re slow. So slow. Maybe it would be kinder to call them “deliberate,” but even that doesn’t quite transform the ding into a compliment. Stealth, in theory, can be deliberate. Stick insects are deliberate. But it can also be harried, adrenal, instinctual. Like a panther. Like an owl. Like me ducking out of a Super Bowl party before the uncles start complaining about the halftime show.

Burned occupies the untapped middle ground between those two poles. Designed by Jon Moffat, who gave us last year’s top game about poop carts, Burned is neither Mind MGMT nor Captain Sonar. Instead, it’s the closest a board game has ever gotten to making me feel like a highly-trained secret agent picking off mooks in broad daylight. Usually right before they tackle me to the ground and stomp me to death.

Picture with me, if you will, the moment in any spy thriller when the baddies are stomping up the stairs. Go ahead, close your eyes and picture it. Close them. Now open them. This ain’t no radio drama. You, the secret agent, can hear them coming. They’ll be on you in seconds. Not minutes. Certainly not hours. Seconds. They’re at the door. The wood is splintering. They sweep into the room, and you’re

gone.

Burned is about those split seconds. A session takes ten minutes, maybe fifteen at most, and comes across as no longer then five.

Which makes it all the more impressive that it isn’t real-time. Nothing explicitly hurries you along. The Burned Asset takes his turn. Then the Agency pursues him. Back and forth it goes, back and forth, until one side or the other has been planted.

Along the way, Moffat deploys considerable tricks to sell the illusion that the entire encounter is measured in heartbeats. For example, there’s the map. Unlike many other hidden movement games, which deploy geography in the most literal sense, the space in Burned is more impressionistic. Depending on the layout, the entire area might be confined to the square footage of a hotel. And not an especially large hotel. One card will be a courtyard; another, a terrace. One space is just “steps.” Another is a fountain. Stealth, then, is a matter of ducking out of sight, not putting miles between pursued and pursuer.

This sensation of proximity extends well beyond card titles. Both sides move the same way, either walking or running from one card to another. Walking means moving to a card that matches the color of the one you’re standing on; running means moving anywhere — literally anywhere at all — but incurring a penalty, whether announcing the color of the destination if you’re the Burned Asset, or putting your mooks at risk if you’re the Agency. Meanwhile, some cards show multiple colors. These are crossroads, spots one might pass between colors without having to tip their hand.

The effect is thrilling. Because every spot on the map is within reach of every other spot, there’s no such thing as outrunning your opponent. You can buy time, sure. You can duck away from a fight that’s getting too hot. But Burned is a chase scene in a confined space, not an entire cat-and-mouse flick. It’s like that moment in A History of Violence where one character outfoxes another by shutting a door in their face, or the single-take fight scene from Atomic Blonde that rolls through a single apartment block, or every other scene in a Bourne movie.

Of course, this wouldn’t work without Burned’s unusually high body count. Most hidden movement games offer a certain asymmetry of vulnerability, where the one being pursued is in danger of losing their life while the greatest risk to the pursuer is the loss of some time. I’m thinking of the Hunters from Specter Ops, who can be stunned but never put down for good, or even the shark from Kelp, for whom failure means missing out on dinner.

Here, nothing could be further from the truth. The Burned Asset is uniquely vulnerable because he’s alone. But the Agency, despite being the better-staffed half of this equation, is almost assured to suffer the greater casualties. When the scene opens, they have seven agents. Most of these will probably be run-of-the-mill operatives. Mooks, in other words, there to chase the Burned Asset and, in all likelihood, give their lives in the attempt. One or two might be spotters, relatively peaceful mooks who are better avoided than assaulted directly, or even canine units that are experts at sniffing out traps.

But the Agency isn’t untouchable. Their principal aim is to kill the Burned Asset, but they’re playing a double game. This entire shebang began as an ambush. So the big guy is here, the Director of the whole rotten apple pie, along with his body double. If the Burned Asset takes down the Director — and possibly the body double as well, depending on the order things shake out — then it’s curtains for the Agency.

The result is a chase in both directions. A highly lopsided chase, to be sure. A chase where one side is doing the bulk of the chasing and the other is usually the chasee. But it’s also a chase where the hunted can very rapidly turn the tables and become the hunter. With the application of a few bullets, a grenade, maybe a bear trap, anything is possible.

I suppose it bears mentioning that the Burned Asset is the harder role to play. Manpower counts for a lot, and seven to one makes for formidable odds.

In a game this kinetic, this cinematic, and this brief, however, it’s hard to consider that a shortcoming. I have complicated thoughts about balance in the first place — foremost that it’s overrated — and it strikes me as fitting that a contest between one man, no matter how well trained and outfitted, against seven other killers, should be a little tipsy on the scales.

More than that, though, many of my favorite moments in Burned were those that saw me failing to accomplish my objective. One instance in particular stands out. After setting up the map, I positioned myself at an intersection, an obvious hiding place with ready access to two major areas. Right away, the Agency zeroed in on my position. Within a single action, I had been injured. We’re talking twenty seconds into the game here.

But I had planned for this. All according to plan. I popped some tear gas, a single-use tool that stunned every agent at locations of my color. This just so happened to be every single agent in the game. And while two agents had fanned out to secure the area, the rest were clustered atop a single mezzanine.

That gave me a free move, completely unharassed, to do whatever I wanted. That’s an eternity in Burned. So I chose my next move carefully. I took careful aim at the mezzanine. Five agents in my crosshairs. And then I sprayed lead.

Hits in Burned resolve according to a simple deck draw. One by one, we went through the agents. The first one, an operative: DEAD. The next, the body double: DEAD. Third, another operative: MISSED. Who cares, my target is the big bastard. And there he was. The Director. It was entirely plausible that I might win the match within one minute of completing setup. We flipped the next card, and

MISSED.

Dammit. The other agent got away, too. I’ll type it out for consistency’s sake: MISSED. But, hey, that was fine. With so much of its manpower already bleeding out, the Agency was in a bind. I ran. Hid. Tried to regroup.

It didn’t pan out. A little while later, another agent found me and inflicted my second wound. I killed him back, but the exchange left me on death’s door. On the next turn, I shot the wrong guy. He turned out to be a spotter. Which meant whatever sniper was covering his location popped me next. Blammo. Lights out for the Burned Asset.

But the takeaway from this anecdote isn’t that I failed. It’s that Burned produces moments of effortless kino. Every duel feels close. Every shot, every flipped card, every knife duel, every booby trap, every reveal. Sure, the outcome was more The American than John Wick. Sometimes, that’s how the cookie crumbles. When I missed the Director after shooting his body double, I shouted. Yelped, more like. Woke up my friend’s dog. That’s how invested we were in that moment.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been excited about a tiny stealth game. I’m thinking about Fugitive, another box that can squeeze into your average jeans pocket. (Or slip comfortably into a cargo pocket, if you happen to be a person of high fashion and leisure.)

But what makes Burned remarkable is not only its size, not only its duration. It’s the way the game conveys cinematic action rather than deductive logic. This is one of those rare hidden movement games that’s about motion instead of movement ranges. At no point does anyone count spaces. There’s no fretting over doubling-back rules. In place of the mechanism’s usual trappings, one finds pure animation, pure punch, pure heft. Which is to say, it evokes feeling more than analysis, a rare strength in such an analytical medium.

In more straightforward terms, it handles like a weapon. It feels heavy and dangerous in my hand. It incites to deeds of make-believe violence. I missed my shot at the Director this time. Next time, and the next, and the time after that, the bastard is going all the way down.

 

A complimentary copy of Burned was provided by the designer.

(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 about which films I watched in 2025, including some brief thoughts on each. That’s 44 movies! That’s a lot, unless you see, like, 45 or more movies in a year!)

by Steph Hodge

I have been playing and hearing about a bunch of new editions for games getting reprinted with new artwork. This excites me because I love it when a game gets a boost, as it often means new gamers can discover and play it.

▪️ Floodgate Games just released a remastered version of Sagrada along with plans to release expansions as well.



The first expansion to be released is Sagrada: Panorama, which will include playing with up to 6 players as well as other new content:


I got permission to share this early.


▪️ CrowD Games had a very successful Kickstarter back in May 2025 for the highly anticipated Nippon: Zaibatsu. Nippon designed by Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro and Paulo Soledade, has been on my shelf since it was released, but it is also an example of a game that was very hard to get. Gamers are looking for this type of game revival. A hot, hard-to-find game with gorgeous presentation and streamlined mechanics.


[imageid=8820600 medium rep]
Nuno Bizarro Sentieiro and Paulo Soledade with Nippon: Zaibatsu pre-production copy at LeiriaCon - [user=deerstop][/user]


▪️ Allplay has been releasing a bunch of smaller boxed games each year, and there are always a handful of games being revived with a fresh new look. I am always in awe of all the games they are able to create each year. Here are just a few.

Piñatas by Reiner Knizia has been reimaged a few times before. Originally, it was known as Voodoo Prince , then later as Marshmallow Test. Piñatas has that burst of color that fits right in line with the other Allplay titles. This is part of the Allplay "Tricky Card Game" series, as it is a trick-taking game.

Another Knizia card game of interest might be High Society which has been through many iterations. The game was originally released in 1995 and has been a staple in many collections throughout the years. I am all in favor of bringing back classic auction and bidding games, as they are mechanics I highly enjoy and would always love to see more of. About High Society:


Container is a game that is always looking for more editions because it is so well-loved. This is an all-new edition releasing in Q4. Container first released in 2007 and then later in 2018 as Container: 10th Anniversary Jumbo Edition!. This is a highly sought-after game, so it is great for Allplay to make the game more accessible now.

Board game publisher Awaken Realms has responded to a wave of anti-AI art review bombing for its upcoming crowdfund, Concordia: Special Edition, by saying no AI-generated imagery will be used in the finished game.

The title is the latest seminal eurogame to be re-released in a spruced-up, premium edition by Awaken Realms – and also the latest to see the publisher come under fire for embracing generative AI software such as Midjourney in developing some of its games.

Awaken Realms is one of highest-profile tabletop publishers to confirm it uses AI image generators, with other notable adopters of the technology including Stronghold Games – which attracted significant ire for its use of AI art in its $2.2m More Terraforming Mars! crowdfunding campaign.

The technology has been widely criticised by artists angry that the models are built upon their work without licensing or recompense, in addition to outcry over its environmental costs and threats to jobs in the creative and other industries.

Almost all of the first few dozen ratings for Concordia: Special Edition posted by BoardGameGeek users gave the title ‘1’ – the lowest possible score – following its unveiling at the end of February, with the vast majority of those citing AI art as their rationale.

That was followed by a spate of users scoring the game the maximum ’10’ in an attempt to counteract the low scores – but the ongoing tussle has left it with an average of just 4.7, the lowest current rating of any Awaken Realms full game, and well below the 8-plus ratings enjoyed by many of the publisher’s prior releases.

BoardGameGeek’s suggested ratings guidelines say a ‘1’ review “Defies description of a game. You won’t catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken.”, while a ’10’ is suggested as “Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change”.

BGG’s current policy is that “users are allowed to rate games however they wish, as long as each person only rates a given game once.”

The original edition of Concordia, released by German publisher PD-Verlag in 2013, has a BGG rating of 8.1 from more than 45,000 users, and is ranked 29th out of the tens of thousands of titles listed on the site’s database.

Awaken Realms is yet to unveil many details about the upcoming special edition, with the Gamefound preview page currently only showing a box cover – which it has since described as a work in progress – and examples of two plastic miniatures set to be included in the game.

The company dedicated most of its first update on the Gamefound page to discussing its use of AI generated imagery, saying that it did not address the situation sooner because “we find this whole conversation extremely draining”.

It said, “We feel that the current situation is really not respectful toward our artists, who are really working hard on each project, and Concordia will be no different. They will be doing their best to pay tribute to this classic and elevate it to new heights.

“So, first things first – in this project, in the final game, there will be no AI art. Human artists will be involved in everything. This has also been clearly stated from the beginning in our contract with PD-Verlag.

“However, we do use some AI tools during prototyping, mock-ups, and various initial phases of concept work (and honestly, it is really hard not to, as eg, Photoshop alone, which is our artists’ main tool, has already tons of built-in AI features).

“This makes it easier to test the game visually, iterate, find the best solutions and compositions, and, from there, start working on the final assets.

“In different projects, we might have different rules and approaches. For example, you can see our other project – Grimcoven. There, we also had an update on the topic, as well as a chance to see the final result of how the game looks as it is produced and delivered to backers ;).”

Update March 27, 2026: Jan Philip Sommerlade, an editor at Concordia publisher and licensor PD-Verlag, wrote on BoardGameGeek: “In the games published by PD-Verlag, neither the graphics nor the text were created using artificial intelligence. We consider this to be problematic from a copyright perspective, at least when the AI models are based on artwork created by artists.

“It was therefore very important to us that artificial intelligence will not be used in the Concordia Special Edition either. In December, we paid Awaken Realms an extensive visit and discussed the details of the Special Edition at length. Awaken Realms has a large team dedicated to developing content, graphics, and illustrations, and we are confident that this collaboration will result in a very high-quality product. We have stipulated in our contract that the final product will not be created using artificial intelligence in any form.

“However, this does not apply to the use of AI for brainstorming and concept development, nor to the internal use of AI for creating prototypes. In the course of ongoing discussions, we have realized that this distinction may not be as clear-cut as we initially thought. Nevertheless, the fact remains: All graphics and text in the final product are created by real people.”

Other Campaigns

Grimcoven raised more than $5.1m across its 2024 Gamefound campaign and late pledges, and has so far avoided the heavy review bombing that has taken place for Concordia SE. Awaken Realms put out a similar pre-campaign update about its AI use for that title, calling it at the time “a ‘hot topic’ generating a lot of emotions”.

The publisher had come under fire online earlier that year for using AI in creating promotional images for its Puerto Rico 1897: Special Edition crowdfunding campaign – images it subsequently pulled from the crowdfunding page after being contacted by the game’s licensor, Ravensburger.

Despite online pushback against Awaken Realms for its decision to embrace AI generated imagery, its use of the technology has had little apparent negative impact on the success of its crowdfunding campaigns to date.

The publisher’s six most recent campaigns which it says made use of AI image making tools have raised almost €39m between them across their crowdfunds and late pledges, with Lands of Evershade the standout at more than $12.5m.

Awaken Realms Board Game	Total raised across crowdfunding, late pledges
Dragon Eclipse: The Grand Quest	€3,321,287
BELOW: The Asylum	€4,038,955
Agricola: Special Edition	€7,326,500
This War of Mine Second Edition	€3,730,079
Lands of Evershade	$12,576,991
Grimcoven	$5,136,331
Grand total	~€38,900,000

But some of those have also begun to feel the impact of anti-AI sentiment on their BGG ratings. Agricola: Special Edition is currently rated at 6.2, with more than a third of its 309 ratings scored as ‘1’, while the yet-to-launch Agricola: Dead Harvest campaign is rated 5.9, with almost 90% of its 104 ratings so far either ‘1’s or ’10’s.

The six most recent campaigns using AI imagery – which also include BELOW: The Asylum, This War of Mine: Second Edition and Grimcoven – all included a statement acknowledging that usage in the FAQ section of their respective Gamefound campaigns.

The stipulation to transparently disclose the use of AI in Gamefound campaigns was implemented by the crowdfunding site in March last year, and codified in an update to its terms of service at the end of last month.

Awaken Realms’ AI art statement in its Agricola: Special Edition campaign FAQ states, “We are using different technologies, including AI tools, to various degrees – from built-in Photoshop capabilities (intelligent brushes, advanced texturing, and some AI tools), Internal Stable Diffusion models, MJ[Midjourney] models, pixel correction, scaling solutions and so on. Everything we use is screened and accepted by our legal team as fully legal to use.

“Those are different tools that we use NOT to decrease cost and DEFINITELY NOT to replace artists but to bring better quality to our customers and enhance creativity by allowing faster prototyping and iteration.

“We are constantly growing our art team (in the last 12 months, we have hired six new artists), as well as yearly increasing wages and sharing profits by yearly bonuses. We really care about our team and are extremely proud of their work.

“We deeply believe that in any creative endeavor, human involvement is absolutely essential, and instead of just ‘talking the talk’, we have actually walked the walk and increased our artist count and wages every year.

“This is our statement on the topic and we are fully dedicated to supporting and growing our art team, as well as bringing the best quality to our backers. We believe that this approach is better than making big PR statements and then firing people with a week’s notice, as, unfortunately, can be observed all around the industry.”

It is not immediately clear which board game publishers Awaken Realms is referring to with the final part of that statement.

The Agricola Special Edition statement is very different to the AI art section of the FAQ for Awaken Realms’ most recent crowdfund, Labyrinth Chronicles – which, like Puerto Rico Special Edition, is published by Gamefound investor Ravensburger.

That statement said, “We also noticed a few questions regarding the creative process behind Labyrinth Chronicles and whether any AI-generated artwork was used in the game.

“We would like to clearly state that no AI-generated art was used in the final product. Every illustration, graphic element, and 3D model was created by our talented team of artists who worked on this project.”

That statement then goes on to list 24 artists, graphic designers, illustrators and 3d modellers who it said worked on the title.

Awaken Realms has taken great pains recently to highlight the extent of its art and design team – which it said in the Concordia: Special Edition Gamefound update now comprises 32 people across art, 2D layout, 3D sculpture and desktop publishing, out of a board games division of more than 100 people.

Gamefound was launched in 2015 as a Kickstarter pledge manager by Awaken Realms co-founder Marcin Świerkot, who is CEO of both businesses. The company transitioned into a full crowdfunding site in 2022, with Świerkot setting his sights on beating Kickstarter at its own game in the tabletop sector.

Awaken Realms, meanwhile, began life as a miniature painting studio in 2014, before expanding into board game publishing a couple of years later.

The company garnered early success with a Kickstarter for This War of Mine: The Board Game in 2016, before the £3m Nemesis Kickstarter campaign in 2018 formed a springboard for the company to begin creating ever more intricate and expansive miniatures-focused tabletop projects.

Awaken Realms raised more than $12.1m for its Nemesis Retaliation Gamefound campaign at the end of 2024, making it one of the biggest board game crowdfunding campaign of all time alongside Frosthaven ($12.9m) and Kingdom Death Monster 1.5 ($12.39m).

The post Awaken Realms vows “no AI art” for Concordia: Special Edition after BGG review bombing first appeared on .

Go from Star Wars to Middle-earth with The Return of The Queen's Gambit

Continue reading on Board Game Beat LLC | W. Eric Martin

First, there was a Point Salad. But after a Freak Accident, that salad became Point City. Tragically, a Frique Axident occurred while attempting to revert the aforementioned Freak Accident, and that City has become a Galaxy. Cue that last scene from Men in Black with Inception Music. Point Galaxy, from Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, and […]

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I didn’t know there was a market for players looking for a dinosaurus skirmish game rich with history…but then the team at Ion Game Design handed me a copy of Dino Dynasty, their 2025 release designed by Ion’s Chief Creative Officer, Jon Manker. About a year prior, Manker had led a small group of media members through a demo of the game, and the most striking part about that walkthrough was the stunning dino art from artist Johan Egerkrans.

The work of Egerkrans, the author/illustrator of the book Dinosaur Dynasties, is the real star and reason to give the game Dino Dynasty a look. The game is an impressively streamlined version of more complex skirmish games, especially compared to some of the more rules-dense wargames I cover here on the site.

But the real question for me is the audience—while we had fun with our plays here, I can’t for the life of me figure out who the target audience is for the product.

This Biome Isn’t Big Enough for the Both of Us

Dino Dynasty is a very snappy “troops on a map” game for 1-6 players. The game’s incredible level of customization starts with the setup: there are more than 20 different playable dinosaur clans, 30 double-sided…

The post Dino Dynasty Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Recently, I have been playing a lot of Paths of Glory: The First World War, 1914-1918 from GMT Games on the fabulous Rally the Troops! and these gaming sessions have got me thinking. Thinking about the uselessness of war and conflict and the ultimate negative effects of it all. But not just the loss of life, maiming and disfigurement that comes with war but also the emotional scars. And this got me thinking about despair and hopelessness. Despair! A word that evokes very dark and scary feelings in all of us because it gives the impression of a lack of tomorrow. The dictionary definition of Despair is “the complete loss or absence of hope”. In my opinion, this is a word that can be used to describe many historic battles and wars as they have spiraled into pointless affairs with no end in sight. World War I comes to mind for me and the years of bloody and brutal trench warfare, bombardment and use of deadly chemical weapons such as mustard gas. In this post in the Best 3 Games with… series, I want to share with you games that have despair as a main focus.

*As my Featured Image for this post, I used the painting The Scream by Edvard Munch (1895). He said about the piece that it felt like a “scream through nature,” and the painting features a distorted figure covering its ears, reacting to, rather than making, a sound.

3. Verdun from Dragon Dawn Productions

Verdun is a card game that is focused on the famous siege of Verdun during World War I. As player’s hands dwindle down as they play 2 cards per round but only draw 1, players will also have to play cards that help the other side, timing it strategically to minimize their own casualties. The teams alternate being the Attacker, and each card played leads to more and more deaths. You are fighting over positive victory points from trying to win several positions through over the top attacks that are worth a set amount of VP but that are hidden from view until they are taken so you never know if you are going for the high VP area or the low ones until you blow the whistle to initiate the attack.

A game of Verdun lasts about 16 rounds as players start with 12 cards, which they then play in a series of 12 tricks. When you win the trick, you gain the VP for the position but the winner will lose their lowest valued cards while the loser will lose their highest value cards to the dead pile representing mounting casualties. Low cards have fewer skulls on them representing deaths while higher cards have more. So even in victory you will be accumulating negative VP’s and this is one of the key aspects of the game…managing those deaths! Just like the high command.

In the end, the player with the highest score will win and this number will be very low or can even be negative. In our play of the game, my French defeated Alexander’s Germans by a final score of 3 VP to -14 VP. What a great little trick taking game! The really interesting part about the late game is that your hand has dwindled to being full of your worst cards as you have most likely used the good cards earlier to win tricks or cause losses to your opponent. The last few card plays just seem brutal and you are just hoping to not have to take a lot of skulls. This felt very fruitless and mimics the despair of commanders as they had to issue orders that they knew were not going to result in any positive gains but only the loss of life.

The game is also gorgeous with fantastic original period art used on the cards and amazing graphical layout and design. The images are very gritty and involve the feelings of the battle and create a very thematic portal for the players to experience the difficulties in the battle. Just a very slick little thematic game.

Here is a link to our video review of the game:

2. Paths of Glory: The First World War, 1914-1918 from GMT Games

Paths of Glory is widely thought to be a masterpiece on WWI and after just a few plays of the game, both in person and online on the fabulous Rally the Troops!, I can definitely see why people feel that way. Even though we are novices, the game is just that good and really tells the story of the fruitless efforts of both the Entente and Central Powers as they bashed their heads against each other over control of Europe. The game is long and you generally are going to have to play this one over a long weekend to get it all in and enjoy it properly but it is just such as great tool to understand the complexities of the struggles of trench warfare, supply and the balance of attacking versus taking a breath and regrouping. I really enjoyed the mix of historical events and the choices that I had to wage the war in a way that I felt was appropriate. But, my message to everyone who plays this game is beware of supply. Even in our few plays, supply has been an issue and we have had to make sure we didn’t make a few fatal mistakes that would get us in trouble. I want it to be clear here. I am not good at this game…at all and the nuances of supply and how to play have just eluded me as I continue to make the same errors game after game. But it is really good and I look forward to each new play with enthusiasm and am excited about the chance to get to learn more about this fascinating war that was so very fruitless.

With that being said, generally in every single game the Central Powers will start out by playing their Guns of August card. Guns of August is a crucial, high-stakes opening event for the Central Powers on Turn 1, enabling an immediate, powerful and historical offensive against France and Belgium. It kicks off the continual back and forth of trench warfare and frankly seems to never really generate a good outcome. Each attack is bloody, with both sides being brutalized by having to reduce units and the trenches make attacking more and more difficult as they evolve and grow to Level 2. Paths of Glory in a large part is about resource management and the constant pressure to continue offensive momentum and rebuild troops through the use of Replacement Points and events to bring on additional troops is a major problem for both sides. You can only attack for so long before you will burn yourself out and will have to spend time to recover and get ready for the next turn’s offensives. This process of back and forth will ultimately rarely see fruits on the Western Front and will devolve into stalemate as each side strengthens their defense and the Entente begin to bring in reinforcements from England to shore up the lines and nullify the early German advantage. But the real despair in this game are the decisions about how to play your cards. You can use them for their Ops Points to fuel attacks and movement on the board, use them for the printed event or play them for the Reinforcement Points located at the bottom of the card. This is the real key to the game and managing this process of maneuver, attack, shoring up defenses, buying replacement points and protecting supply lines is where the players lose their minds. You simply cannot continue a full out frontal assault round after round. If you do, you will grind your men to dust and dig their own graves as you will be unable to prepare for the next turn. This is a long game and this process wears on turn after turn and the first person that makes a mistake typically is the one that loses.

Here is a link to our initial impressions video of the game:

1. The Grizzled from CMON Games

The Grizzled is a special game. Not a big game. Not a complex game. And not a game for every one as it is different, focused on the friendship and bonds of a group of French soldiers caught in the trenches of World War I. The game is a cooperative card game set during The Great War, also known as “the war that no one in the U.S. really understands because we only ever learn about World War II”. Ironically, playing The Grizzled is somewhat of a rather peaceful affair, but our plays have found it to be quite challenging, sometimes unwinnable in fact, and that is where the despair comes in. No matter how well you play the cards you are dealt and no matter how hard you work together to overcome challenges, failure is a part of the game and winning is truly at a premium.

The cards represent threats to all of the men’s safety or a hard knock which impacts the player or their compatriots in some way. The goal of the game is to play through all of the Trials cards to find peace (literally a Peace card). A standard game starts with 25 Trial cards on the peace deck and the remaining 34 Trial cards are placed in a separate morale deck (a draw pile). Cards move from the Morale deck to the Trial deck at the end of a mission. The Morale deck sits on a card picturing a monument commemorating the sacrifices made in war. But if you ever see this Monument card, you’ve lost the game.

The goal of each mission is the same to play as many cards as you can before withdrawing from battle. Cards are played in one of two ways; placing a threat in No Man’s Land or placing a hard knock card next to your soldier. Every time you play a card, the group is one step closer to victory, but if there are ever 3 of the same threats showing on the table at any one time, the mission is lost but the game will continue.

Beyond playing a card, there are 2 other actions but they are rarely available. On each player’s character there is a Lucky Charm showing one of the 6 threats in the game. Playing the Lucky Charm as an action allows that player to remove a matching threat from No Man’s Land, making the mission a bit easier to continue. After you use your Lucky charm you flip your character card over and no longer have access to that action. The other action is to make a speech. There are a very limited number of Speech Tokens in the game – the mission leader will receive one after each mission until all the tokens have been distributed. When giving a speech as an action, you have to have the token and you have to choose one of the 6 threats. The OTHER players still active in the mission then remove ONE card from their hand that matches the declared threat. These can be useful but are not guaranteed to have an impact. Once played, a speech token is removed from the game. But, one of my favorite mechanic is when you withdraw and add a support token to your character. The token is, very thematically a cup of coffee. When the round ends, you will pass this coffee to a teammate as support. The teammate that gets the most support at the end of the round can remove two hard-knocks or recover their lucky charm.

While we love the game, and I find it to be supremely interesting, we have never won in over 20 plays. We simply seem to run the same course over and over again and never seem to gain much ground. And I really think that this is the point of the game. And where the despair comes into play. One of the other things that I love about the game is the tag line that appears on the front cover. It reads: Can friendship be stronger than war? This statement gives some pause and causes a lot of discussion in our group particularly with the concepts of the exhaustion of characters (using their Lucky Charm and turning them over), the speeches (removing a threat from the battlefield that you cannot get rid of because no one has the matching cards) and the cups of coffee (support). As if a cup of coffee can overcome anything…but you can always give it a go.

Now there are many games that could be included on this list but the games I have chosen perfectly evoke the level of despair that I was going for in this piece. I have played many other games that convey despair but feel that these 3 best demonstrate the level of hopelessness that I was thinking of. What are your favorite games that evoke despair?

-Grant

    Cat Between Us Designer: Sky Huang Publisher: the Op games Players: 2-6 Age: 8+ Time: 20-25 min Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3Hrv5eU Played with review copy provided by publisher LURE AND NUZZLE! The Purr-fect Challenge Awaits!! The mischievous cat … Continue reading →

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