You’ve taken your chances, made your mistakes… and now, a final triumph!

Put it in a museum with your Archaeology: The New Expedition rules summary!

The once popular theme of Indiana Jones-like archaeologists plundering the world for ‘treasure’ certainly hasn’t aged well, and you can count me as one of the people who believes that in almost all cases, countries are entitled to display items belonging to their own history and heritage rather than have them stolen by colonialist powers and never returned. But I’ll get off my little soapbox now and say that Archaeology: The New Expedition, despite the slightly long-in-the-tooth theme, is a great little set-collection push-your-luck game that I’ve enjoyed as a light diversion for many years now (the original Archaeology: The Card Game from 2007, that is) and it’s great it got a revamp.

The latest version introduces a little bit more variety to the gameplay, with various monument sites you can set up that shake up the actual plundering part of the thematic framework, represented on small, solid tiles. The artwork is vastly improved and in fact the game is better all round, so it’s a no-brainer if you want a fun little card game to take with you on your travels. Most recently my partner and I played a lot of it on a trip to India, though I was frustrated by the fact she constantly seemed to win, despite the fact it’s a very luck-driven game!

By the way, because this is a very small sheet designed to fit in the box, I’ve put the Setup instructions on the flip side, in order to keep most of the game play information on the front. If you’re wondering …

One does not simply walk into Mordor.

Peter and Will are back with their most famous style of battle report – a War of the Ring one! Beer, laughs and banter ensue.

One day, when the Esoteric Order of Gamers finally comes to its natural end and all about it and concerning it is forgotten, one thing may be remembered – the battle report videos documenting games of War of the Ring between myself and my old gaming buddy, Will. It‘s been quite a while since I’ve had the opportunity to film one, but the day has finally arrived! So grab yourself your beverage of choice, get comfortable someplace where you won’t be interrupted by any non-gamer who just might not understand, relax, and enjoy this hugely fun new session of my favourite board game, War of the Ring!

So uh, what’s it like, having such a short life cycle?

Peter and Will play Epic Warpath over some really incredible Gale Force Nine terrain!

My mini-season of battle reports from Will’s recent visit continues, and this time it’s an incredible game on probably the most spectacular tabletop of terrain I’ve ever had the good fortune to play on. That’s mostly thanks to Gale Force Nine, who sent me several boxes of their amazing pre-painted Gothic Sector epic scale terrain. You can see my unboxing of it all in this video.

The game is Epic Warpath by Mantic Games, and I’ve got to say I’m really impressed with this pretty streamlined, easy-to-use, and fun system for epic-scale scifi wargaming. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on some different factions and painting them up too! While panting epic armies can be a bit of a chore, the results, as you can see, are undeniably stunning, and the scale makes for big, beautiful games. So enjoy this session, where we show off Epic Warpath at its absolute best, and have a lot of laughs at the same time!

But it is not this day! This day we fight!

Be victorious on the battlefield with your Kings of War rules & reference!

I’ve been covering a lot of Mantic Games lately (especially since a certain other company decided they didn’t want the support of content creators), and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by their offerings. The new Epic Warpath is a great system with a wide range of classic scifi factions to play with, and Halo: Flashpoint is coming into its own as the range of available models increases. But the one game of theirs I haven’t explored yet is Kings of War. It’s perfect timing then, because the new 4th edition has just been released!

Kings of War is a classic ‘rank and flank’ fantasy tabletop miniatures game, in the tradition of the old Warhammer Fantasy Battle (now Warhammer: The Old World). It’s been interesting to see these old regimental games enjoy a resurgence of popularity – Hobgoblin and Conquest: Last Argument of Kings are two others – and there’s certainly something very satisfying about pushing around trays of warriors in neat rectangular formations. Kings of War commits completely to the concept because you actually model the miniatures attached to the base, rather than have them individually standing on it. It may mean a lot more modelling – building and painting 10 miniatures to make a single unit is a big job – but it certainly looks spectacular when you have a full army on the field.

As for the rules themselves, they’ve been cleaned up from previous editions. I haven’t played yet (I’ve been busy painting, which is now all done – watch out for a tips video), but will film a game when I do so you can see how it goes; but Mantic have a habit of making very solid rules systems, so I have high hopes. The new starter set Claws in the Sand is a good introduction box for new players and features two unusual small armies – the aquatic Trident Kingdom and the Medieval Japanese-syled dogmen of the Xirkaali Kingdom.

In the meantime, here’s my rules and reference to make your games easier and smoother – and of course you can also find it in my rules app Tabletop Codex!

This is stupid. We should be f***ing and drinking by now.

Peter and Will play the hilarious drunk-ass orcs game, Space Gits!

Mike Hutchinson is one of the great independent creators who is putting the fun back into tabletop miniatures games, and giving us all alternatives to staid, old, boring, clunky games like those released by certain huge corporate companies that will go unnamed. Cough. Space Gits is a fast (gasp!), fun, hilarious game about drunk-ass space orcs grabbing caps on a planet when all the competent orcs are away, and it brilliantly combines tabletop miniatures and dexterity game rules! I was lucky enough to be sent an example of the new scenarios Mike is concocting for his new Kickstarter campaign, which expands the base game (and allows you to grab a copy of the original game if you missed out the first time). But enough of my lacking, watch the video, then go back the Space Gits: here Come The Bastards Kickstarter. You won’t regret it!

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

My Tabletop Codex app gets its first functionality update!

If you haven’t tried out my fantastic rules app Tabletop Codex yet, what are you thinking? Go download it now! And now is the perfect time because I’ve just invested more in it by adding a great functionality update. Watch the video to find out more, and find the easy links to download it for Android or Apple phones and tablets at tabletopcodex.com.

Where are you going, so full of hope? THERE IS NO HOPE!

In this fantastically cinematic tabletop battle report, Peter and Will play the Necromunda: Ash Wastes scenario Cargo Run!

Will is back! It’s been way too long since my old gaming buddy has visited me to play some games, but the day is finally here. Let’s kick off this mini-season of fun battle reports with a spectacular game of Necromunda: Ash Wastes.

Will and I have played quite a bit of Necromunda over the years, going way back to the time of the original edition. It’s a rules system that’s really showing its age, and if you ask me, Games Workshop is really missing a big opportunity to create a brand new edition that streamlines and speeds up the game, but it’s still possible to have a really fun game if you’re willing to play a bit fast and loose – as we do in this battle report!

I’ve been meaning to use my big Cargo-8 Ridgehauler model in a game for some time now, and this is the perfect opportunity. So start your engines, spray your face with silver paint, and let’s get rolling!

Sextus, you ask how to fight an idea. Well I’ll tell you how… with another idea!

Peter showcases the amazing range of epic scale Gothic Sector pre-painted terrain from Gale Force Nine!

I do love a bit of tabletop terrain, and if it’s pre-painted so I don’t have to do any extra work, so much the better! Gale Force Nine just sent me this incredible range of epic-scale terrain from their Gothic Sector range, and I’m blown away. At last, great trees and roads for games like Armoured Clash, Adeptus Titanicus, Epic 40,000, and Legions Imperials, and Epic Warpath. Check it out!

I ran away from a battle. I’ve been running ever since

Peter reviews the Sultanate Faction Battlegroup for Armoured Clash by Warcradle Studios.

The final Armoured Clash faction is here, the Sultanate, and it’s certainly impressive how much Warcradle has released for this excellent epic scale game over such a short period of time.

Remember to download my Armoured Clash rules & reference before playing your own games – it’s in Tabletop Codex too!

Now, there will be some shooting.

Remember the Reach with your Halo: Flashpoint rules & reference!

As mentioned in yesterday’s video, I’ve updated my Halo: Flashpoint rules & reference to encompass the two new expansions, Rise of the Banished and Feet First Into Hell! But if you were quick and immediately downloaded it, check again, because I discovered a keyword was missing and have updated it again to v2.1. Enjoy!

Nobody asks to be a hero, it just sometimes turns out that way.

Peter unboxes two new expansions for Halo: Flashpoint by Mantic Games!

It’s great to see more stuff coming out for Mantic’s Halo: Flashpoint game, and I’m especially happy to see more aliens on the battlefield. Check out the new stuff – Rise of the Banished and Feet First Into Hell!

Never set foot on the wrong side of history.

Conquer worlds with your Epic Warpath rules & reference!

It’s been a bumper time for fans of epic scale wargaming lately, and Mantic Games has got in on the act by Kickstarting an entire range – 8 factions – for their own epic system, Epic Warpath. I received the starter set, a couple of large resin models, and some epic scale building sets for review, and as I write the painting is finally done and I played my first game last week – and had a blast!

The rules are a nice mixture between old and new, using the command dice system from Deadzone and the order tokens pioneered in GW’s original Adeptus Titanicus and still used in their recent epic scale game Legions Imperialis. Order and combat tokens do a very nice job of tracking each unit’s current status during the game, so you can see what’s going on at a glance, and the combat system is straightforward and effective. It wasn’t long before the rules began to recede into the background during our first game and we could concentrate on what was happening on the table. The order of the rules in the book is a bit clunky however, and I’ve tried to improve comprehension with my rules & reference. Stayed tuned for a battle report video as soon as I get an opportunity!

The miniatures look great and there’s a minimum of fiddly construction, which is good to see. For me the big draw here over GW’s offering is the variety and distinctness of the available factions – and the fact they’re all available up front. While GW seems obsessed with their Horus Heresy, Mantic is having fun putting space rats, dwarves, zombies and weird aliens together on the tabletop, and to me that’s far more enjoyable than civil war amongst space marines.

To see what you get in the starter set, check out my unboxing. More to come!

They ate him! Can you believe that? They ate him!

Survive the night with your The Bloody Inn rules summary!

If there’s one thing that attracts me to a new game it’s a distinctive theme. Based on the true story of L’Auberge rouge (The Red Inn), where in 1831 the inn’s owners were guillotined for multiple murders, not to mention other dark deeds, The Bloody Inn is a great game that mixes dark humour with European gothic.

Definitely not the same old themes here then! Players are family members competing to make the most francs by hosting guests at the inn – though it’s far more profitable to just murder the guests and bury them somewhere in the yard. And you will have to bury them, because leaving bodies around is a sure way to get nabbed by any police that show up at the inn, though you can always bribe the local gravedigger to get rid of the evidence at the last minute.

There’s a lot going on here for a card game, but thankfully the cards fulfill multiple roles. You’ll discard cards to pay for accomplices, all of which have particular specialisations – bribing other characters, murdering guests, building annexes to bury the corpses under, and burying the corpses. But you’ll have to keep paying them to keep using them (though a couple of peasants will work for free, they’re discarded at the end of each round). To juggle this bunch of actions efficiently you’ll need to plan ahead, because you only get a stingy two actions per round. And this is where the real challenge kicks, in, because getting the cards to help you do those actions cheaply and actually doing the actions, is a tricky balancing act. On top of that, there are only so many francs you can accumulate before you’ll have to pass a turn and launder some of it into 10-franc cheques.

The Bloody Inn is one of those games where you always forget the rules each time you play it, so this rules summary should prove very handy for picking it up again quickly. But it’s always an entertaining game and its dark theme is played completely for laughs, like a 1970s comedy horror film. It’s all enhanced even further by the addition of The Carnies expansion which adds three modules to the game, including a bunch of disreputable folk from a travelling carnival.

That’s the last goddamn hitchhiker I ever pick up.

Escape the farmhouse with your The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Slaughterhouse rules summary!

Despite being a huge aficionado of horror cinema, I got around very late to watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – too late really, as unfortunately the transgressive, dangerous aura it had when I was young had long rubbed off by that time. This can happen as I finally get around to watching a few films that were once deemed ‘video nasties’, long past the cultural zeitgeist they were born in.

A lot of people would consider it their favourite horror film however, though my taste runs to the fantastical rather than slashers. Be that as it may, this board game version by the sadly defunct Prospero Hall studio could become a tabletop favourite. It’s a tight, lean, enjoyable horror romp in the old Sawyer house that nails its theme and provides lots of (nervous) laughs and tension alike.

One player plays the unhinged Sawyer family, the others the ‘trespassers’ – the clueless young people who stumble across the house and quickly learn the error of their ways. Most actions as a trespasser carry the risk of generating noise tokens that you may have to hand over to the Sawyer player as fear tokens, who can use them to power their actions. Not an original mechanic – The World of SMOG does something similar – but it works perfectly here.

The Sawyer player starts with just one character, but as the panic meter (a big cardboard chainsaw) increases, more characters emerge, culminating in the appearance of good ol’ Leatherface himself. At which point the trespassers are really in trouble. And while the trespassers can quite easily be killed (a clever system of drawing 4 different injury cards), attacking the Sawyers only reduces their number of actions. Everything reinforces the cat-and-mouse feel of the gameplay, as the trespassers uncover horror tokens throughout the house and can briefly hide in rooms for a brief respite from pursuit. The basic rules system is enhanced by several scenarios with different goals, plus a very simple legacy system that adds item cards left behind by previously killed trespassers to the common item card pool.

Unusually, there are no win conditions as such – the goal is simply to survive, which is thematic and all, but raises questions if one player is playing 2 trespassers, and 1 escapes – is that a win, or do you keep playing? One of the game designers told me players can come up with their own ideas about success, and that the goal was to make a game that felt like a horror movie. Which is fine, though this is still a game … anyway, it’s a small issue. There are also some omissions in the rulebook, but all that is fixed in my summary.

Overwhelmingly however, this is a huge success and a fitting swan song for the creative people at Prospero Hall, all of whom, I hope, are still gainfully employed in making more games that blend theme and gameplay with such success.

I can remake you, just as I was remade.

Control the city with your City of the Great Machine rules & reference!

This game was brought to my attention by a great review on Charlie Theel’s Player Elimination website, and as usual, Charlie didn’t steer me wrong (well, there was that Fate of the Fellowship review, but there’s always an exception to the rule). City of the Great Machine is one of those rare games I like so much in which mechanics and theme are inextricably intertwined.

It’s a one-vs-many struggle set in a steampunk city dominated by a mechanical overlord – sort of George Orwell meets H. G. Wells. Players are Revolutionaries trying to inspire citizens to riot against oppression; the Great Machine has time on its side and a legion of automata to quell the dissent.

City of the Great Machine blends hidden movement, resource management, and asymmetric gameplay in a wonderfully thematic package – and it can also be played solo or co-operatively. It’s a stunning production with an excellent artwork, a well-written rulebook and comprehensive support material, and some very nice miniatures as a bonus. I enjoyed this at 2 players, but I’m very much looking forward to to playing this at a higher player count so players can scheme amongst themselves in the presence of the Great Machine (the rulebook expressly tells you to refer to players as Revolutionaries or the Great Machine, in one of many thematic touches). And, dare I say it, its theme of revolution against autocratic technology is more relevant than the glossy layer of steampunk initially leads you to believe.

There’s a wealth of strategic material in the rulebooks, but this summary distills the rules into an easily digestible few sheets. And of course, it’s available on my app, Tabletop Codex!

Any man who must say “I am the king” is no true king.

Peter checks out Kings of War for the first time with the new 4th Edition!

It’s a brand new year – the 14th! – for the Esoteric Order of Gamers, and I’m kicking it off with a new project – Kings of War by Mantic Games! Will this be your new favourite game of fantasy battles? Stick with me over the coming weeks as I unbox, build, paint and play (and of course, make a rules summary for) this rank and flank fantasy tabletop miniatures game.

I am destined for greatness, but those in power only see me as a sword.

Peter and Dylan play Armoured Clash, the epic scale tabletop miniatures game from Warcradle!

Warcradle really hit this epic scale arame out of the park – Armoured Clash is a great game, especially with a design team including ex-Games Workshop designer James Hewitt. I’ve been meaning to film a battle report for the game and here it is finally. Enjoy!

Everything is awesome!

Peter unboxes the tower defence game with big pixels – The Last Spell by Tabula Games.

Tabula Games make some very interesting games, as I’ve said many times before, and their latest is something a bit different – the board game incarnation of a popular tower defence video game. It’s called The Last Spell and leans heavily into the retro gaming aesthetic, with big pixel art and lovely little miniatures. The game is broken into two distinct phases (that even have separate rulebooks): the day, when you build your defences, get your resources, and buy equipment, and the night, when hordes of undead greeblies pour out of the purple mist and try to ruin your evening in a very permanent way. I’m looking forward to trying this one out, but in the meantime, check out my unboxing of the base game and expansions, freshly delivered after the Kickstarter campaign!

You supply the ink. The soldiers supply the blood.

Peter reviews the Alliance Faction Battlegroup for Armoured Clash by Warcradle Studios.

Warcradle keep releasing the cool models for Armoured Clash, and this time it’s the turn of the Latin Alliance. There’s also more great news in this video, because they’ve announced the return of Firestorm Armada, the classic spaceship combat game originally by Sparta Games.

Remember to download my Armoured Clash rules & reference before playing your own games (and recently updated) – it’s in Tabletop Codex too!

On any given Sunday you’re gonna win or you’re gonna lose.

Season Three of Blood Bowl is kicking off!

I made a lot of videos for Games Workshop last year, but unfortunately this year they’ve seen fit to not send me a single thing up to this point this year. So it was nice to see Blood Bowl: Season Three land on the doorstep. This is a very nice new edition with two great new teams, some slight tweaks to the rules, and some very useful new status counters. Watch the video for a full rundown – and check out the painted miniatures!