JOYRIDE DUEL: Next Gen is a bit of an oddity. It is marketed as the Mario Kart of racing games. That promises a certain amount of chaos and, indeed, chaos is what JOYRIDE DUEL has in mind. Rather than a fixed track, with the boundaries and prescribed routes such a thing necessitates, the board is open-world, with numbered gates you have to pass through in a particular order. There are exploding drones and flash grenades, oil slicks and mines that can be picked up on the track or acquired every time you pass through certain gates. The rules contain copious amounts of information concerning the collision of vehicles. Whether it’s a head-on or a side-swipe, you’ll know exactly what to do. The player dashboards have slots for damage, which slowly builds up and incapacitates your vehicle over the course of the race.

With all of these features in place, you too would assume chaos is the special du jour. Yet JOYRIDE DUEL is a surprisingly staid experience. Using a number of dice dictated by the gear you’re in, you zoom around the track, take corners, set up trajectories, and do your best to make it to the end, but it’s all much less dramatic than you’d expect. Across three races, I never added more than one or two pieces…

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I couldn’t tell you when I first heard about Neuroshima Hex, which was originally published in 2006 and predates my time in board games by just about a full decade. At some point, though, Michał Oracz’s tactical tile-layer set up camp on the periphery of my awareness, built a large fire, threw on a stew, and did the only thing it had to do: wait.

My interest in Neuroshima Hex was inevitable. The only trick? I couldn’t find a way in. There are several editions, and oodles of expansions, and it all made the game a bit daunting. Publisher Portal Games seems to recognize that themselves, so for the game’s 20th anniversary, they announced not only a new edition of the base game, but Neuroshima Hex: Battle, a starter box for two that lets the curious among us give the game a try without going all-in. $25 isn’t much in exchange for scratching a perpetual itch, is it? I couldn’t say no.

The sum of Neuroshima Hex takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which various factions are at war for resources and supremacy. You know, that kind of thing. Each player chooses a faction and its corresponding deck of tiles, then goes about attempting to systematically obliterate their opponent. The decks are made up of varying combinations of…

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Here’s a quick recap of Chapters One, Two, and Three:

Someone introduced me to Magic. Someone taught me how to play the wrong way. I sucked. Someone taught me the right rules and how to build a deck. I got good. I went broke. I got out. Then, Commander arrived. I got inspired by a Commander deck my wife bought me for Christmas and decided to build a deck of my own. I identified a potential commander amongst my plethora of cards. I made a few suppositions about what types of cards I might need in my deck. I realized the state of my card collection was in total disarray. So, I decided to get organized, and I did.

With my organizational woes out of the way, I can finally turn my attention to actually creating my deck.

But first, some ground rules.

Magic, as I’ve stated in previous articles in this series, is an absurdly expensive hobby. My intention with this deck is to only use whatever I already have at hand. I feel that, over the course of three decades, I have donated enough to the Magic coffers that I never want to spend another cent on this game ever again. That’s why I’m excited to build this deck. With access to over 8,000…

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Like many people, my first game of Warhammer 40,000 (40K) was played at a local game store. It wasn’t particularly organized. Armies weren’t optimized, rules were misunderstood or misremembered, and “take-backs” were given freely and without hesitation. The atmosphere was relaxed, social, and forgiving.

Games stretched on for hours and were rarely uninterrupted. Curious onlookers stopped by to watch or chat, breaks were taken for food and drinks, and plenty of conversation had nothing to do with the game itself. Most games didn’t even finish, and no one cared. Those hours were filled with laughter, questionable decisions, and learning. That casual environment is where I fell in love with Warhammer and the hobby as a whole.

Among my group of friends, armies were built around what people enjoyed playing or painting, not what was considered optimal. Some of us played to win, but nothing was on the line. The outcome mattered far less than the experience and the stories the games created.

Fast forward several years, and I found myself stepping into a very different environment - competitive Warhammer 40,000. Instead of a local store table, I was now under bright convention lights, surrounded by rows of identical tables laid out with carefully planned, symmetrical terrain. Don’t get me wrong, this environment is still incredibly enjoyable. The people are welcoming…

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My wife and I are always desperate to find things to do during the ridiculously-long stretch over the holidays when the kids are out of school for the Christmas-to-New-Year’s period. Recently, that stretch lasted 17 days.

So, my wife often buys 2-3 activities—art projects, workbooks, LEGO installations, board games—to help pave the way in-between all the TV watching, tablet gaming, meals, and sleep. (Sadly, that is often all my kids do during that time if we are at home!) One of the activities she picked up this year was the cooperative legacy board game Ziggurat, published by one of our family’s favorite activity makers, the puzzle company Mindware.

At first, I rolled my eyes at this one. Do I not bring in enough board games for this family to play every year? But then I noticed the names on the box: Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock, two of the legends of the genre and the creators of the greatest legacy game of them all, Pandemic: Legacy Season 1. Then I flipped the box over and fell even harder in love with the concept—Ziggurat is a six-chapter legacy game and looked like a great time for the kids.

I was mostly right.

Stick Rule D Here After Completing Chapter…

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I enjoyed my time with Corps of Discovery Duo, Joy Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim’s two-player version of Corps of Discovery. Or, at least, I would have told you I enjoyed it. I certainly had a nice time playing this cooperative deduction game for two. But when it came time to write this review, I found I didn’t have much positive to say at all.

It feels unfair, but it also feels right. Prior to writing about Corps, I had been having an excellent day, so I know I wasn’t moody. I even re-read this draft after taking a nice walk. I gave myself a little treat. I hydrated. I took a nap. When I returned, I found that I couldn’t argue with anything I’d written. Corps of Discovery Duo did not work for me in any meaningful sense.

As Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, or York, two players have to work together to map their way west. In practical terms, this is done by playing cards with one of ten different items on them out onto the table, following both public and hidden rules for each item while doing so.

Here we hit our first bump. Why are we arranging items? Why aren’t…

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Hello and welcome to ‘Focused on Feld’. In this series of reviews, I am working my way through Stefan Feld’s entire catalogue. Over the years, I have hunted down and collected every title he has ever put out. Needless to say, I’m a fan of his work. I’m such a fan, in fact, that when I noticed there were no active Stefan Feld fan groups on Facebook, I created one of my own.

Today we’re going to talk about 2025’s The Sandcastles of Burgundy, his 44th game. The Sandcastles of Burgundy (Sandcastles) stands out from all of Stefan Feld’s other designs in two notable ways. Firstly, this is Feld’s first foray into designing a children’s game. Secondly, this is Feld’s first co-design with his wife Susanne who, as an elementary school teacher, brings her professional experience with children to bear, working with Feld to simplify the game down into the experience it is today.

In Sandcastles, a foreign dignitary, Queen Crab, has announced her intention to come visit your kingdom. As a way to show her gratitude for you being such a gracious host, she has sent ahead some beach-themed decorations from her kingdom and has asked that you decorate your village in preparation for a beach party that she plans to throw when she arrives. Sandcastles…

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I’m a big fan of weird dueling games—Ortus Regni is one of my all timers—and if they allow for multiplayer silliness, all the better. Etherstone manages to be a complete product, thoughtful, novel, and at times, surprisingly clever. If nothing else, it gets props for not just being a blatant money-grab, instead offering a self-contained and compelling game that has a lot of depth.

The conceit

The lore of Etherstone is not that compelling, mainly because the art is so expressive that I don’t really end up caring much about whatever the story is. It’s evoking druids and biopunk—wild and crazy characters collecting various blobs of mana and using them to bring in more characters so you can battle shared threats, etc., etc.

Mechanically, at the beginning of the game you’ll select a leader card from two that you’re dealt randomly. This will give you a starting distribution of resources. From there, you’ll draft seven cards from a large deck. Once you’ve done both of these things, it’s time to duel.

Etherstone captures one of my favorite underutilized mechanisms in gaming—the point buy. Though it’s a standard card draft that you see in many games, the fact that you’re only getting seven cards to play the entire session with…

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For the most part, the team at Mighty Boards has never done me wrong.

After a middling experience with their recent release Red North, I didn’t rush their other SPIEL Essen 2025 release, Pinched!, to the table until recently. But after doing plays at three, four, and five-player counts, I’m excited to share that Pinched! was a blast. Save for my thoughts on how the game’s random card draw can affect scoring and notes on a specific player count, I highly recommend giving Pinched! a look.

“I’ll Take That”

Pinched! is a hand management and set collection game of bluffing and thievery for 2-5 players. Over a series of turns, each player (taking on the role of a thief in a gang of them) will serve as the Mastermind for a given turn. Using a hand of location cards, the Mastermind will select a heist location from amongst the 3-5 locations available in that game.

The Mastermind plays this card face-down into the center of the table, then each other thief will play a card from their own hand of location cards in the hopes of matching the location selected by the Mastermind. During the reveal, two things could happen. If the Mastermind picks a location that…

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I’ll admit it: my wife and I got a little too comfy.

After some of the best experiences in the one-shot, mystery gaming arena with the KOSMOS series Masters of Crime, I expected my fourth run to be another blowout. Masters of Crime: Vendetta, Masters of Crime: Rapture and Masters of Crime: Shadows are the height of the category; one of those titles was on my top 10 games of 2025, but all of them could have been, if I had just sprinkled the titles across the entire list.

What those games got right is why I recommend them to everyone I know. The scenarios are fantastic, you’re always placed in the shoes of the villains, not the cops, the puzzles are tough but fair, and the endings always made logistical sense after working through all the bread crumbs dropped during the investigation.

Masters of Crime: Incognito was the next game on my list. I created a draft for this review and had a 5.0/5.0 placeholder ready to go before I played the game. I was sure Incognito would be another banger; why wouldn’t I? My wife and I set up a date night for a Friday evening play. I made the cocktails; she grabbed our note-taking components, laid out the game, and read the…

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One of the best discoveries I made last year in my town was a silent book club. It seems like an oxymoron, but for us introverts it's an easy, low stakes way to meet new people without being overwhelmed.

The premise is this: everyone brings a book to read to the event. (Unlike a regular book club, this is a book of your choosing. Not everyone is reading the same book.) Most events follow a similar structure: Thirty minutes of chit-chat at the beginning, an hour or so of silent reading, and then some more chit-chat at the end. The chit-chat can be structured so that each person talks a little about the book they've chosen, or it can just be a discussion of "whatever." Some people don't even stay for the after-chat, preferring to just read and go. Events are held at restaurants or bars. Others are held in libraries, bookstores, or private homes.

The biggest positive I hear over and over about the silent book club is that, in a busy world, the meetings provide a guaranteed chance to slow down and get some reading done. Meeting new people in a real-life, low-stress environment is a close second.

After loving my local silent book club, a light bulb went off in my head. Why wouldn't the same thing…

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If you’ve played the game Pixies and liked it as much as I do, then you’ll be pleased to hear that Pixies has returned, better than ever, with an all-new expansion. Consisting of just 14 new cards, the Pixies: Flower Power expansion introduces even more intriguing mechanics and adorable critters into the mix. Before continuing, if you’re not familiar with how the game is played, I recommend you go check out my review of Pixies so that the rest of this review will make sense. It’s a small game, so it’ll only take you a few minutes.

Each card in this expansion is bi-colored, which means it’s easier than ever to create large color zones. This is the first new change. Beware: the bi-color nature of this expansion comes with a dark side. Many of the cards will score you negative points for having particular colors in your display. Bi-color cards count as two colors, so it’s very easy to get yourself into trouble if you’re not careful.

[caption id="attachment_328324" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Image credit: BGG User @rainalyn[/caption]

The second big change is that, during end-of-round scoring, face down cards are worth five points apiece, and there are even some cards that will earn you extra spirals for having face…

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I approached Telephone in a dark, isolated room, far from where prying eyes might see us and ears might hear us.

“Telephone, I’m going to make you deal.”

He didn’t say anything. I knew he wouldn’t. Telephone had survived in proximity to the Supreme Socket by being a good listener. I took a drag from my cigarette, its red light dimly reflecting off the gold accents on the walls.

“Neither of us are replacing the Supreme Appliance. You know it and I know it. We don’t have to like it, but we have to face the facts. You’ve turned too many people off, and I...”

“You’ve burned too many people.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

A long pause. Not even a dial tone. He really knew how to draw you out.

“We both like Toaster,” I ventured.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“We both know how to handle Toaster.”

“Sure. I know how to keep my bread from getting burnt.”

“Blender and Radio are disorganized and at one another’s throats. Let them waste their energy. If we work together to back Toaster…”

“It works out better for both of us.”

“Exactly.”

“I see your point. You have a deal.”

For now, at least. So it goes. A temporary truce is better than a permanent war. I turned to leave.

…

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Five Families doesn’t quite work. Let’s get that out of the way at the start. Friedemann Friese’s latest big box game had a lot of promise. It mixes together a strange and confrontational auction system with area control scoring, it has wonderfully straightforward rules, and it has cute li’l mobster meeples, but none of these admirable traits can save it. Its joys are undercut by its runaway leader problem, the impact of the capriciousness of the card draw, and, worst of all, monotony.

Still, at least Five Families respects its audience enough to be one of the more interesting letdowns I’ve experienced in a while. I don’t think it’s a good game in the commercial sense, but I wish every game that didn’t work could manage to fail like this. It is something equally or possibly even more valuable than “good”: Five Families is worthwhile.

Married to the Mob

The Five Families are the five principal branches of the Mafia as it operates in the United States. If you’ve seen The Godfather, you know who these guys are. While the idea of the Five Families feels irrevocably tied to mid–20th century America—probably, come to think of it, because of The Godfather—the…

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TantrumCon 2026 took place on February 5-8 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The event was held at a downtown Marriott hotel, making use of its cavernous main hall and many side rooms. Two of our contributors, Tom Franklin and Will Hare, attended and have this report for you.

Tom Franklin

Having done craft shows for 16 years, the first night, Thursday evening, felt less like the end of a rousing first day and more like a pre-setup time. It reminded me of weekend shows that allowed vendors to set up their booths the night before the show starts so they’ll be fully ready when the doors open to the public the next day.

A few groups of 3-4 people played games in the Learn to Play room. Through body language and positioning, I got the impression these people came to the convention already knowing one another.

By Friday, vendors had set up and were teaching their games to an interested public. The biggest and best display I saw was from AllPlay Games. There, I spoke with Danique from AllPlay, learning about some of their latest games. Later, I returned to their booth where Damian played several of their small card games with me, including Slambo!, 3 Witches, and French Toast. For a volunteer, he did a great…

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All Aboard!

Trains are a core pillar of the board gaming world. It'd be hard to find a gamer who hasn't played a train game of some sort, whether that's the gateway-friendly Ticket to Ride, a crunchy 18XX title, or the industrial majesty of Brass: Birmingham. It's one of the hobby's most enduring themes, equally at home in the classic era and the modern renaissance. Something about locomotives just clicks with gamers: the routes, the networks, the satisfying logic of getting from here to there.

Most train games revolve around route building, delivering cargo, or some variation of the two. The formula is well-worn, and for good reason. It works. But it's rare to see a "train" game genuinely spin the genre into something truly different. Usually, the chrome changes; the bones stay the same.

Enter Whistlewood Express, a two-player game that uses only cards and a single, handsome wooden locomotive. To my surprise, it plays more like hand management than a traditional train game, and it comes with a mysterious spiral notebook tucked in the box: the Freightmaster's Logbook. That notebook turns out to be more important than it first appears.

2P Train

The base game is played over a series of turns in which…

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When I saw Xenology, I was immediately piqued because it reminded me of a friend’s prototype, a game about studying humanity from the perspective of an alien race. I wanted to see the track a different design mind might do with a similar idea—one of my favorite pastimes.

Unfortunately, Xenology doesn’t capture the weirdness of my friend’s game, nor does it capture the magic of the foundational eurogame elements it deploys across its own design. It’s a “do A so you can acquire C so you can do B and score some points” sort of game, nothing more, nothing less. It has the trappings of a much more interesting game, that resolves into something whose end result feels arbitrary and mushy, and ultimately just fades in with a broad swathe of other games in spite of the unique setting.

Alien bureaucrats demand RFPs

In the game, you’re an alien trying to advance in the alien hierarchy by studying human beings. The process by which you do this is reasonably straightforward.

In the center of the board there’s an action cross of sorts, at the intersection a center action (Mission Control) with four actions that are arranged around it in an offset cross. You start with three alien meeples (cute)…

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Glimmering

I have a soft spot for “flip-and-writes” (and X-and-writes in general). They’re quick, snappy, and they fit perfectly into those “we’ve got an hour (or less) and a cozy table” game nights with my wife. Give me something that sets up fast, plays clean, and still leaves room for a little cleverness, and I’m in. The Hobbit: There and Back Again and Welcome to… are two of my go-tos for exactly that reason.

And yet, I’m a heavy Euro gamer at heart. Engine building is my comfort food. There’s no greater feeling than building efficiency and reaping the rewards. The twist with Glimmerdeep is that it looks like it’s going to live firmly in that lighter flip-and-write lane, but hits you with “What if we hid a whole resource conversion machine down here in the dark?”

Glimmerdeep isn’t the kind of flip-and-write where you’re simply coloring in shapes, adding up points, and calling it a night. As I read through the rules, I was delighted to see that this is, in fact, an engine builder. This is another testament to the old saying, “you don’t judge a book by its cover.”

I Dig It

Glimmerdeep plays over five rounds, following a steady rhythm of digging, building,…

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[caption id="attachment_328066" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Good for home, as a filler, or for a game on the go.[/caption]

Cards and Points

If you have read my interview with Earl Patterson, you know how we met. Congress of Gamers has been a fount of good times, good games, and good connections for me ever since I moved to the DMV (the D.C., Maryland, Virginia area). Meeting Mr. Patterson was a joy. The first game we discussed was Make Your Words Count! and it takes very little time to discover that this is his baby.

The game is relatively simple. From a deck of letter cards, players are dealt 5 or 7 cards (decided at the start of the game). They also determine the score goal; recommended is 100 points, but players can decide on a shorter or much longer game if they wish. In the center of the table are Community Vowels, one each of “A”, “E”, ‘I”, “O”, and “U”—these are each worth 0 points and are usable by everyone every round to ensure that there is always something the player can do. Note that there are standard vowel cards in the main deck that are worth 1 point each.

On each player’s turn, they take the letter cards from…

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Once Upon a Time…

Since August of 2023, I would say that an almost disturbing number of my gaming stories have started with the phrase “I was at Congress of Gamers, and…”

This is not a bad thing! From the time my family and I moved from Iowa to Maryland, the three or four sessions of Congress of Gamers each year have been a regular part of our calendar. This is a truly wonderful, small gaming convention.

Well… I was at Congress of Gamers, and relatively early on the first day, I spotted a gentleman setting up his vendor area and the first thing I saw was a vast field of Hot Wheels cars. I figured this could not possibly be what he was here for, so I went closer. Looking over the material he had for sale, I could see he was into Word Games.

[caption id="attachment_328057" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Make Your Words Count is a great idea and an interesting implementation of the word game.[/caption]

I am no stranger to Word Games, be they on a board (Scrabble, with or without the Monopoly elements), with dice (Boggle), or with Cards (Quiddler). Still, when I looked at this table, it felt like something was different. So, I spoke…

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