We did it.

On June 4th, 2026, despite the considerable difficulty of coordinating regular play sessions with a group of six, I was part of a group that successfully completed a campaign of The Queen’s Dilemma. For 15 sessions over the course of about three months, we were the six nobles ruling in the queen’s stead. For 30-35 hours, we dealt with famine, a new religion, an influx of migrants, a religious schism, and put the matter to a vote.

It was time well spent. I was hanging out with five of my friends, doing what we do best: cracking jokes and selling one another up the river. It was easy to forget sometimes that we were playing a game. The Queen’s Dilemma, like The King’s Dilemma before it, is deeply social. The game melts away while you’re playing. That’s key to its magic. All games exist to engender some sort of social dynamic, but the more involved a game is, the more the game itself tends to insist on its own presence. You can’t play Agricola and forget there’s a rulebook. The Queen’s Dilemma is the world’s most involved party game; it wants to vanish. You spend so much of each session staring into the eyes of the other players and asking them what they’re thinking that you…

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When Restoration Games launched the Unmatched series in 2019, the system was praised for its diverse character roster, a claim that’s stuck with it ever since. At the time of writing, there are now 75 hero decks, based on fictional characters and real people from around the world, with a Hellboy set due imminently. With an average of just over 15 new heroes released a year, we’ll hit 100 heroes before the end of 2028. The future as tabletop’s most accessible and diverse miniature fighting game looks safe, right?

Back in 2020 Kathleen Hartin wrote an article titled ‘Representation in Board Games Matters’. In the article, Kathleen highlighted a lack of representation of women in board gaming, with compelling evidence including poor representation in game covers, rulebooks, designers and reviewers.

It’s nice to think the tabletop world has moved on; whilst not perfect, things are certainly better than they were. At the time of Kathleen’s article, Unmatched felt like a sign of things to come. The then-released sets (Battle of Legends Volume One, Bruce Lee, Robin Hood vs. Bigfoot and Ingen vs. Raptors) drew on Greek, Arabian, British, Asian and North American sources and included 3 female and 5 male hero decks (plus cryptid Bigfoot, whose gender…

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My friend Joe and I share an interest in logistics games that feature planetary rotation. I’m not sure exactly why he’s into it, but I like it for the interesting questions that emerge from having to plot movement in two dimensions: distance and time.

Plutocracy got me excited because it puts landing on moving planets front and center. Unfortunately, while many of the mechanisms within the game are clever, the process of playing the game is frustratingly obvious. It puts you in the unenviable position of both having to do a significant amount of analysis and then discover that the analysis you did wasn’t really worth it.

As the world(s) turn

The object of Plutocracy is to turn money into majority points. You fly your ship around a truncated map of the solar system (sans Mercury, Venus, and if you’re not a hater, Pluto) buying and selling various goods. Each planet buys one type of good and sells one type of good. When you buy, supply price goes up 1, when you sell, demand price goes down 1. The objective is to buy low and sell high, and also land on planets where you can turn money into planetary council seats, which gain you points in the “Plutocratic Council” when scoring happens 3 times during the game.

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It was easily the most shocking designer news I heard at last year’s SPIEL Essen event.

The designers of Devir’s new hidden role game, Berlin 1960—complete with cover art that made it look like a movie thriller combined with a wargame—were Flaminia Brasini & Virginio Gigli, co-designers of modern classics such as Coimbra and Lorenzo il Magnifico, some of the best medium-weight Euros of the last 20 years.

“The Lorenzo folks did a hidden role game?” I thought when I heard the overview. “This might be the biggest surprise of 2026!”

Berlin 1960 arrived at my house a few weeks ago, and I waited patiently for a game night when I had enough players to get a play rolling. That is a key component of this review…because the more players you can find, the better your experience will be. I’d frame it this way: Berlin 1960 is an eight-player game with variants that accommodate 4-7 players.

You should play this game at its maximum player count of eight…and, you should not play it with many less.

Gunshot Wound

Berlin 1960 is a hidden role game for 4-8 players. Players are individually assigned a role as a spymaster for either the KGB or the CIA, so…

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Over time, trends will shift in our glorious hobby. Take 2016 and the types of games hitting the table as an example. Arkham Horror was into its stride, a tense world of monsters and madness that only those who play vinyl backwards would feel cozy in. Terraforming Mars rocketed up the charts (sorry), but proved to be a challenging learn/teach, and not exactly an accessible entry to the hobby. Scythe, arguably the least conflict-heavy of these, presented a relatively grim 1920’s Europe of mechs and worker placement that was unlikely to feature in your dream holiday destinations. Excellent games? Yes. Worlds you’d want to live in? Maybe not.

Now, what are we playing today? Thick, tactile cardboard hexagons displaying sweeping rivers and lush forests cover the table. Someone pulls a screen-printed wooden token of a red panda out of a velvet bag. Instead of grim orcs or space marines, whimsical witches fly across the board on brooms as they make deliveries, or cozy pirates host high teas with fine silverware. Across from you, a player sighs with satisfaction as they tuck a beautifully illustrated card of a Cedar Waxwing underneath their player board. There is competition, sure - someone took the bear token you wanted three turns ago - but nobody is angry. We are chill.

…

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Canvas - K. David Ladage

My colleague, Bob Pazehoski, wrote a review of Canvas back at the start of 2023. His assessment was that the game was midline: not bad, not great, just sort of there (3 stars). My friend Steve came up over a weekend and introduced it to my wife and I. We both thought it was gorgeous, fun, and engaging. If you want a good overview of the mechanics, please read Mr. Pazehoski’s review. But check it out for yourself! 

The table presence of the updated board from one of the expansions is amazing (sorry, this was Steve’s copy and I do not know which expansion did what to this game). The added depth of the Signature Style cards (also added in an expansion) is amazing, while not increasing the game’s difficulty. And the mechanics of creating the perfect painting are exquisite.

In the games we played, all of us would spend time reminding ourselves that the paint swatches at the bottom of each card were the game element, not the beautiful painting elements. I had to force myself to put in a piece of art which scored more points, but which did not meet my own aesthetics a couple of times. In the end, all of my paintings,…

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