I struggled with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game. For all the inventiveness on display, as passionate a love letter to trick-taking as it was, Bryan Bornmueller’s commercial triumph left me cold. Too often, I said, that cooperative card game would leave players in the lurch, handing them combinations of characters and cards that were not winnable. Unlike its close cousin The Crew, something like half the hands in TLotR:TFotR-TTG proved unwinnable from the jump, save for an act of providence. I don’t want cooperative games to be easy, but I do want continuous losing to feel like a skill issue rather than RNG.

That’s the long and the short of it, anyway. And for what it’s worth, my criticisms of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - Trick-Taking Game are almost exactly the same as my criticisms of the first game. Critical decisions are made without crucial information. A lot of hands are dead from the jump and there’s nothing you can do about it. A few of the chapters here even sharpen my criticisms. It would be easy to get bogged down in an even more negative review, to dig into all the ways in which I continue to think Bornmueller’s game doesn’t work.

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From the rulebook: “Shadera is no ordinary world. A great cataclysm has shattered the world of the fairy creatures. Where once there were no borders, an impenetrable veil now divides the home of the gnomes, wolper-squirrels and mermaids into many different Shard Worlds. In order to be able to continue to exchange raw materials, make trade agreements, and visit old friends, the Portal Guild was created — an association of all those magicians who can use their magic to open portals between the worlds.

You are part of this guild: adepts who, after long and thorough training, have come together today to prove their skills. Your master has decided that you will compete against each other in a duel to show that you can gather enough energy to open portals through the veil to the Shard Worlds. The first person to complete 20 tasks will be awarded Shadera’s highest honor, the title of Portal Guard.”

If, having just read all that, you’re crossing your eyes trying to make sense of it, you’re not alone. The story is nonsensical. Somehow, though, it seems appropriate because Portals is a game that defies easy explanation, especially if you try to attach a story to it.

How It Works

Published in 2024, Uwe Rosenberg’s Portals puts the players in the roles of Portal…

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Wonder Boy, Hercules

I’m a fan of mythology in general. There’s a childlike wonder that comes from reading stories of epic heroism, self-sacrifice, memorable characters wrapped up in the hero’s journey formula. I remember when Disney’s Hercules came out in 1997, I was engrossed in the mania of toys, picture books, and even the promotional plates in partnership with McDonald’s (yes, back then McDonald’s had tableware!).

Fast forward to today, and while I don’t have kids of my own, the inner kid is always drawn to mythological stories. Though the actual story of Hercules and the 12 Labors is vastly different from the children’s cartoon, complete with graphic violence and other adult themes.

I was excited to link up with Mathue Ryann from Envy Born games last year, both over our mutual Friendsgiving of bourbon and board games, and at PAX U, where Hercules and the 12 Labors debuted. This title, with all the gold foiling and pizzazz, follows a format of grinding through a deck of cards in the similar vein of Kinfire Delve, One Deck Dungeon, and Witchcraft!

On a nice Sunday afternoon, I find myself playing solo games with a cuppa tea, and this…

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I have more than once mentioned puzzle-maker extraordinaire Blaž Gracar's work in the same breath as releases from Rush Hour purveyor Thinkfun. I have rarely mentioned them together as a matter of direct comparison. These are different products for different audiences. Gracar makes pencil-and-paper puzzle books that are only for the sweatiest adults, while Thinkfun cranks out charming toyetic brain teasers that keep children well-and-truly occupied. The connection comes from Gracar’s gift for imbuing his puzzles with a sense of discovery that brings me back to my childhood, when I had a massive collection of Thinkfun games under my bed. With the release of Herd, Gracar’s publisher Letibus and Thinkfun now warrant direct comparison.

Rather than drawing lines or shading in boxes, Herd has you shifting Shepherds around a grid. These delightful, hollow black cones have wonderful neutral facial expressions and a pronounced indifference to your failures. It’s a good thing, because in trying to get them from a designated Point A to a designated Point B, you will fail often. And fail. And fail again.

Herd is a patient exercise, though I wouldn’t necessarily call it meditative. There is a flow state to be found in moving the pieces about,…

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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 Druids of Edora, his 45th game. This marks his first team up with Alea Ravensburger since 2020’s The Castles of Tuscany. Remarkably, in that short time frame, Feld has added an additional 13 titles to his resume.

In The Druids of Edora, players take on the roles of druid clans competing for dominance and prestige against a mystical forest background ripped right out of a high fantasy novel. The forest is dotted with clearings, which contain shrines, and are connected to one another via a network of well-traveled pathways. Using their provisions, players will travel from shrine to shrine where they will perform various actions using their dice. It’s a Stefan Feld game so, it goes almost without saying, virtually everything you do is going to earn you prestige throughout the course of the game.…

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If you do even a little digging into my review portfolio, you’ll see how much I respect the work of Simone Luciani. So, anything he touches is a game I will happily get to the table.

Echoes of Time (2025, Cranio Creations) is a co-design between Luciani and Roberto Pellei. It’s a very straightforward tableau builder that asks players to draw and play cards in a fashion similar to the IELLO game Ancient Knowledge from a couple years ago. Using the San Juan concept of paying for everything using only the other cards from hand, Echoes of Time is so straightforward that I only needed one pass of the rulebook before getting the game to the table.

Echoes of Time is the solution for players who like more punishing games with tricky scoring conditions (even the Luciani release MESOS seems to fit here) mixed with unclaimed tableau artifacts like the “Places of Power” from Res Arcana. If you’ve ever wondered “is there a more interactive, possibly mean version of Ancient Knowledge that plays in about 45 minutes?”, then run out and buy a copy of Echoes of Time right now.

That is, if you are comfortable with a healthy dose of unbalanced cards. Let me explain.

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It’s easy, I think, to take a game like Duel for Cardia for granted, especially if you spend as much time in the board game trenches as I do. Faouzi Boughida and Mathieu Rivero aren’t doing anything exceptional here, by which I mean they aren’t doing anything that stands out if you’re constantly deluged with new game designs. Duel for Cardia isn’t flashy, and it isn’t trying to break new ground. It’s easy to underestimate a game that’s simply doing the work. I think I made this comparison a few years ago, but I will come back to it: Duel for Cardia is the board game equivalent of a good studio picture from back when studios were content to make $35 million on a film with a budget of $10m.

By that I mean, it is competently designed, charming, successful, tense, and you could play it with just about anyone. Both players start with an identical deck of 16 cards, draw a hand of five, and simultaneously reveal one. You can think of this as a lane battler with up to 16 single-card lanes if you want; you wouldn’t be far off the mark. The player who reveals a higher-value card wins a Signet. The player who reveals a lower-value card gets to activate their card’s ability. This process…

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At this point, it feels impossible to write about The Old King’s Crown without grappling in some way with the sustained level of hype that it has produced over the last year. Pablo Clark’s ambitious entrée into the world of board games, this lane battler on steroids, has made a big splash. How big that splash is, exactly, is hard to measure, but the small board game café where I work gets a call about once every two-to-three weeks asking if we have The Old King’s Crown in stock. This is an ungainly mess of a game, an initially unwelcoming and overwhelming thing. Catan this is not. For The Old King’s Crown to break hobby containment would suggest a Blue Whale has just surfaced.

These are not, in full transparency, my favorite reviews to write. I prefer unexpected surprises to the heavily foreshadowed. If a game has too much momentum behind it when it reaches your door, your only choices are to be bowled over or to step aside and let it pass you by. I don’t want to get caught up in the current of excitement, nor am I interested in writing a reactionary takedown.

Fortunately, life conspired to keep me from playing my review copy of The Old King’s Crown for quite a bit longer than anticipated.…

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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’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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Do You Like YROs?

Off the bat, the title of the game is, to me, funny. YRO…as in Euro? Why yes, yes it is. But it’s not a euro…? Also, yes.

I stumbled upon YRO at Origins in 2025. Though I’m a casual anime fan (stuff like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, DanDaDan, and Cowboy Bebop), I’m not really drawn to anime-style aesthetics outside the medium. But my interest came from the promise of a fun, quick tableau builder—and if you follow my writing, you’ll know that mechanic is one of my absolute favorites.

Designer Masato Uesugi has a bit of a following from previous titles like Paper Tales and Welcome to the Dungeon (and even a small Oink Games box: Durian). I’m always praising designs that come from Asia because they often bring a different approach to gaming—and as an Asian myself, it’s great to see that kind of representation getting a warm reception.

[caption id="attachment_327608" align="aligncenter" width="894"] Photo from Play to Z Games[/caption]

The 3x3 Road to 40

YRO is played over turns until one player has completed their 3x3 tableau or scored 40 victory points or more. Gameplay is relatively simple and straightforward, and it’s conveniently printed on everyone’s player board, which also includes a tracker for Magic and Technology.

…

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Five years ago, I reviewed the original Fantasy Realms with its expansion The Cursed Hoard. It was during my early years of committing to review writing, and if I'm going to be metaphorical for a moment, that feels like waking up and my feet just touching the ground compared to where I am today, two hundred reviews later.

What I wasn't expecting, besides still writing reviews, was Fantasy Realms becoming a staple of the WizKids line. The original version performed well enough to spawn Marvel: Remix, Star Trek: Missions, and even a deluxe remake of the original. Each version has its own spin, for better or for worse, and the new Greek Legends feels more like a refinement of the original than something wildly experimental.

The Pantheon Expands

The core gameplay loop of Fantasy Realms: Greek Legends hasn't changed much from the original. You still start with seven cards in your hand and draw from either a common deck or the discard pile. After drawing, you must discard one card from your hand face up. When ten cards accumulate in the discard pile, the game concludes and scoring begins.

The idea here is that each card scores differently and combos often interact with one another. The…

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For my money, 2025’s most underrated (and severely underreported) game was En Route, a “blank and write” game system from the team at CrowD. It landed on my top 10 games of 2025 and for a person who usually frowns at the chance to cover roll/flip/draw-and-write games, En Route was such a hit that one person literally bought a copy of it while playing the first few rounds of a review play.

Little did I know that CrowD plans to extend this system by using the same round structure and game mechanics on different maps based on interesting themes…so when I learned that the new game Innsmouth Travel Guide looked a whole heck of a lot like En Route (prompting my group to call this new title “En Route: Innsmouth”), I reached out to the team at CrowD to secure a review copy of this new expandalone title.

We’ll keep the proceedings here brief: buy this game, especially if you are a strategy gamer who wonders why blank-and-write games fall flat for you…this system is the solution.

“Is That a Monster?”

Innsmouth Travel Guide is a roll-and-write game for 1-4 players. Although it is a standalone product, Innsmouth Travel Guide uses most of the rules from the…

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12 Rivers (2025, Good Games Publishing) had a look to it that screamed “fun-looking production, probably not a great game.” A couple of friends who tried the game at Gen Con 2025 thought 12 Rivers was OK, but even I had to admit that I was shocked to learn that the game sold out well before the end of the show. The game’s table presence was handsome, but I was not exactly rushing to grab myself a copy.

Reading the game’s overlong rulebook didn’t help sell 12 Rivers either. I thought it would be interesting, but after doing my standard two-player walkthrough to ensure I had the rules down, I got the game in front of my review crew with expectations managed appropriately.

Then, I discovered a game that was MUCH more interesting than I initially credited. 12 Rivers is great, but it’s great because you can poke your neighbor by stealing their marbles and laugh your behind off about it later. If you are looking for a fun, accessible way to steal stuff from everyone around you, get yourself a copy of 12 Rivers right now!

“And, I’ll Take That One, Too!”

12 Rivers is a set collection game for 2-4 players. It plays in about an…

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There’s something about A Dragon’s Gift, Button Shy’s latest solo game from designer Scott Almes, that feels particularly pastoral. You can hear the opening strains of “Belle” from Beauty and the Beast as you open the Button Shy wallet and gaze upon these adorable illustrations. Then, just as the song explodes into hustle and bustle, the village's busybodies spring to life.

Every year, the citizens of Adragonsgiftopia (I assume) come together and honor the dragon who guards the town with a gift. Different citizens have different ideas. The baker suggests a treasure chest, which seems a safe bet. The bard wants to write a poem. Typical. The sorceress is in favor of a My First Chemistry set, presumably to encourage the dragon to pursue a career in STEM or to foster a general sense of curiosity and wonder about the world around it. You draw one of the six Gift Cards and set it aside faceup.

Once the gift is chosen, the town gets to work. The remaining 12 cards show the rest of the Village. Each card includes a winding set of roads around the periphery, a natural resource, and a business. The puzzle comes in lining up…

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