I finished Lands of Evershade after completing The Song of Luada! Three 18 hour adventures have been complete, so what are my final thoughts on this Hybrid RPG campaign game from Awaken Realms? Can the game stick the story-driven, CYOA high fantasy ending? Especially since you are rolling the D12’s constantly throughout the game, but now there is more usage of the other dice, like D20s! How does your character’s variable progression fare, now that you have plenty of new actions and items? Is there end game balance, or did the game decide to favor story instead? Is the MSRP of $80 without minis still worth it? How will dnD players fare after playing adventure 1?
Table of Contents:
I beat Lands of Evershade! - (0:00)
TLDW and more Overview - (2:00)
Song of Luada Cool -(3:00)
Song of Luada Observations - (10:29)
Song of Luada Bad - (15:01)
Adventure Breakdown & Final Thoughts - (36:16)
Other games mentioned: ISS Vanguard, Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy 12, Tainted Grail: Kings of Ruin
We speedily review this fantasy war game made by an old MTG artist! Christopher Moeller’s Burning Banners has 2-6 players playing one of 6 asymmetric fantasy factions like orcs or dwarves, mostly to try to conquer each other. It has 4 included maps for variable scenarios, and has plenty of ameritrash ideas like dice rolling and critical hits off of rolling black dice. There’s a great amount of decision making with building and deciding how to use your many unit’s 1 actions, but that may cause problems in multiplayer…
Games mentioned: Twilight Struggle, Root, Pandemic Legacy Season 1, Tiny Epic Kingdoms, Sol: Last Days of a Star, War of the Ring 2nd Edition, Crusader of the Rex, Hammer of the Scots, Bloodstones
Table of Contents:
Overview - (0:00)
QUICK How to Play - (0:55)
QUICK Pros - (2:01)
QUICK Cons - (8:06)
Recommender Score - (10:29)
Alexander''s Personal Score - (12:25)
Ashton's Personal Score - (15:06)
After finishing Pandemic Legacy Season 1, a certain friend starts acting a bit differently.They just can't see normal board games the same way again! Perhaps it has to do with the emergent narrative and overall campaign structure of legacy games. But when talking about them, one must be careful to avoid spoilers...
Other games mentioned: Seafall, Pandemic Legacy Season 2, Twilight Imperium 4, Arkham Horror LCG, HeroQuest, Marvel Dice Throne
We delve into the entire campaign of what used to be the BGG #1 game of all time! This legacy game which is full of unlockables to manipulate the map over the course of 12 scenarios was extremely novel in the late 2010s. But how does it hold up in 2026? It still has the Pandemic core of cooperatively saving the world through manipulating the disease cubes while trying to set collect the right colors of hands by positioning accordingly. Pandemic Legacy has more variable player powers and multi-use cards as you open boxes depending on how the scenarios go! Can this Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock game about saving the world over dozens of hours of gameplay? Or maybe we were better off playing Fate of the Fellowship? This is not a review, and anyone who comments claiming this is a review should pay the consequences!
Table of Contents:
Pandemic Legacy Season 1 Thoughts - (0:00)
SPOILER Thoughts - (12:56)
Non-spoiler Additional Thoughts - (17:07)
Other Games Mentioned:
Pandemic Legacy Season 0 & Season 2, Brass Birmingham
We review the final release of Lands of Evershade, as we finished the first 2 campaigns (aka Adventures)! This Awaken Realms Gamefound game is a RPG + Board game hybrid, as it takes a lot of elements from games like Dungeons and Dragons, like character creation and emphasis on story, and puts it into a single box. Does the campaign over dozens of hours work with the narrative choices your party is constantly faced with? How does the D12 dice rolling system work with the fate system, as its for every single check? Do the miniatures plus storybook help immerse you properly into this world that is being destroyed by its sun? How does this compare to other dungeon crawlers, especially for the price point?
Other games mentioned: Twilight Imperium 4, Baldur’s Gate, Final Fantasy 15, Gloomhaven, Frosthaven, Pandemic Legacy Season 1, Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon, Tainted Grail: Kings of Ruin, Dragon Eclipse, Nemesis Retaliation, ISS Vanguard, Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era, HeroQuest, Elden Ring, This War of Mine, Imperial Assault, Mansions of Madness 2nd EditionLast Arc: Tactics Analogue
We got around to the 15+ player mega game, Touched by Darkness! It only took about 8 hours and to rent an entire event space. This mega game has teams of up to 4 players cooperating to survive while trying to do their team’s specific goals. However, everything is wrapped within the lightheartedness of roleplaying, or even LARPing! We didn’t see so much war gaming in our session, but there was the shadow attack that I did not participate in. There’s plenty of negotiation and worker placement to do, as you try to feed your people and also participate in the ritual. If you’re the servant of the dark one (traitor), you want to be part of the ritual and sabotage it!
Games mentioned: Twilight Imperium 4, Unfathomable, Lords of Waterdeep, Battlestar Galactica
Table of Contents:
Overview - (0:00)
What is a Mega Game? - (1:17)
Cool Stuff & Moments - (6:00)
Concerns & Improvements - (17:48)
Ashton’s Final Thoughts - (24:42)
We completed the campaign twice for this Star Wars big box, and are here to review all of that experience! Imperial Assault is a dungeon crawler with this sci-fi theme, where you still draw line of sight and chuck die, just with a lot of nice mechanical tweaks from the Descent 2nd edition system, like movement capabilities! On your turn, either rebel or empire player will go, and perform 2 actions with their miniatures. There’s even a skirmish mode to draft your armies to fight over objectives, if you don’t care about the ongoing campaign, or finished it! With a ton of modular board to to make the maps, and even Jedi to play, this box evokes a lot of strong story moments. Is this fight between the galactic empire and rebel alliance still worth it over a decade after release?
Other games mentioned: HeroQuest, Gloomhaven, Zombicide, Arkham Horror LCG, Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era, Arcadia Quest, Frosthaven, Jaws of the Lion, Project Elite, Mansions of Madness, Buttons and Bugs, Dungeons and Dragons
With our heavy Twilight Imperium experience, we came up with a variant of our own to fix the agenda phase! This Landsraad variant takes into account the ministers and a new law called “Lord of Rex” to deepen the political intrigue before and during each agenda phase. We also tested the galactic module Rapid Mobilization, which is from Thunder’s Edge, to see if that can actually make the game shorter. This doesn't change the asymmetry of the games at all, and in fact might help area control ideas.
Traditional game labels of Ameritrash and Euro are very useful, but how about 7 new types of labels? We used 7 varied fantasy Japanese Clans (from The Legend of the 5 Rings) to describe Top BGG games. This discussion doesn’t fret about area control or competitive/coop so much, rather just what the designers had in mind when creating it. Regardless of modern day kickstarter campaigns or expanding strategy games, these labels apply universally! Though there is room for some debate, just like how dungeon crawlers are a room of some debate on labeling!
Other Games mentioned: Star Wars Unlimited, Azul, Tokaido, Europa Universalis The Price of Power, Uno, Wingspan, 7 Wonders, Catan, Battlestar Galactica, Santorini, Alice is Missing, John Company 2nd Edition, Diplomacy, Unfathomable, Alice is Missing, Brass: Lancashire, This War of Mine
Table of Contents:
Intro - (0:00)
Background - (0:40)
Lion Clan - (1:27)
Crane Clan - (3:04)
Phoenix Clan - (4:21)
Dragon Clan - (5:06)
Unicorn Clan - (6:42)
Crab Clan - (8:33)
Scorpion Clan - (10:05)
Star Wars Rebellion (BGG #10) - (11:52)
Terraforming Mars (BGG #9) - (12:55)
War of the Ring 2nd Ed (BGG #8) - (14:38)
Dune Imperium Uprising (BGG #7) - (17:13)
Twilight Imperium 4e (BGG #6) - (20:44)
Gloomhaven (BGG #4) - (26:00)
Pandemic Legacy Season 1 (BGG #3) - (28:25)
Brass Birmingham (BGG #1) - (30:16)
Our Favorite Clans - (31:40)
We completed one 8 hour session of a JRPG TTRPG, of controlling heroes to go through a story! In Last Arc: Tactics Analogue you will craft a character (akin to DnD with D20 rolls) by choosing a class and the corresponding Technicks. You’ll even get money to spend on early equipment! With Alex’s Pathfinder experience of DM’ing almost weekly, we jump into this game and discuss combat, the setting we made, and the story that emerged. Will Gandalf the Green survive?
Other games mentioned: Imperial Assault, Heroquest, Dungeons and Dragons 3.5
Roll and move makes a comeback with this simple party game? We review this re-release by CMYK, of taking an asymmetric zany racer, and rolling a D6 on your turn to move! It has no hand management and little dice manipulation within the race, but you will be drafting and secretly selecting your racers for each race! And one of the maps has spaces to make you trip or go forwards/backwards. Is this a bargain at only $30, or does the gameplay have too little agency for what it is?
After playing with every Marvel character in this box, we review this version of Dice Throne! The fast-paced Dice Throne can be played 1v1, or more of a king of the hill method with 3 players (free-for-all). We did not test the team modes though. Also known as Marvel Dice Throne: Battle Chest, this box has popular hasymmetric eroes like Thor and Dr. Strange, then some villains like Loki! Ashton’s favorite to play is Black Panther. There’s plenty of take-that and hand management with the specific and generic cards. But fundamentally, this card is all about dice rolling and doing damage, where straights and 6’s will benefit you to do big damage! Ideally, you want to do damage that cannot be defended against, since that will allow your opponent to defend against it.
We bought every single UNO product at our local Target, and reviewed them! In total, we’re covering 16 items, from packs like UNO Bilie Eilish to UNO Golf. But are these games meaningfully adding onto the UNO formula of hand management and some dexterity through shouting UNO? After all, the color matching is the most important thing with minimal take-that through the draw 2 card. Admist all of the top BGG games we normally review, and even Exploding Kittens that we reviewed, can these games get a decent score? Can making UNO like a TCG with booster packs in UNO Elite, with drafting, improve it? A speed mechanic to increase the amount of cards played every turn? Or adding in a machine to spray out cards in UNO Attack? At the end of it, maybe you should just buy the $2 packs instead.
Other games mentioned: Golf (Playing Card Game), BS, Exploding Kittens, Catan, Flip 7, UNO Splash, Giant UNO, UNO Elite F1, Yugioh, UNO Zero
Table of Contents:
Intro/Overview - (0:00)
UNO (Base) - (1:58)
UNO Retro - (8:39)
UNO Reverse Pack - (10:48)
UNO Swap Pack - (12:32)
UNO Stack Pack - (13:56)
UNO Speed Pack - (15:23)
UNO Bilie Eilish Pack - (17:53)
UNO Attack - (20:17)
UNO Spin -(22:53)
UNO No Mercy - (25:46)
Liar’s UNO - (31:14)
UNO Party -(35:17)
UNO Teams -(38:50)
UNO Flip - (41:21)
UNO Elite - (44:22)
UNO Golf - (50:53)
Buying Guide & Final Thoughts - (57:07)
Stuff Used:
Kevin Macleod — Apero Hour, Big Drumming, Cloud Dancer, Ether Vox, Evening, Fox Tale Waltz Part 1, Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy, Jazz Brunch, Magic Scout - Cottage, Magic Scout - Manor, Paradise Found, Pleasant Porridge, Upbeat Sport Rock
We cover Exploding Kittens’ 10 year anniversary with the reprint of the card game and the exploding kittens board game! As well as 11 other entries, for a total of 13 games covered in this massive review! Admist all of the take that and hand management of these games, do have the depth we’d expect from our normal coverage of BGG games? In fact, the games are quirky with solid components, but their quality control with balance and rules may need some work. Still, there’s social strategy with alliances in something like Survivor: The Tribe Has Spoken, or educational elements in Monster Match! Just hope you don’t get eliminated too quickly in some of the longer ones! Even Tim Ferris and Jeff Probst are designers amongst all of these selections!
Other games featured: Flip 7, UNO, Throw Throw Burrito, Poetry for Neanderthals, Cards Against Humanity, Spoons, War, Codenames
Stuff Used:
Kevin Macleod — Professor and the Plant, Monkeys Spinning Monkeys, Adventures in Adventureland, Devonshire Waltz Allegretto, Grand Dark Waltz, Laconic Granny, Divertimento K131, Winner Winner, Farting Around, Casa Bossa Nova, Ambler, Dentaneosuchus Hunt, Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy, Starting Out Waltz Allegretto, Morning, Lords of the Rangs
The 4x video game experience now comes to the table! This massive war game plus Euro has all of the X’s (e.g. exploit) while piloting historical European powers like Castille. Players can use action points do perform actions, and also launch military campaigns which are resolved by dice roll. You can hand management your generals, and even develop your own provinces! How many ages will you play in your run of this? Will you lean harder into military or exploring the new world? How long will this Aegir's Games game actually take for you, since it makes other grand board games like Ti4 and Sid Meier’s Civilization 2010 feel like entry level experiences?
Other games mentioned: Cuba Libre, John Company 2nd Edition, Europa Univeralis 4
Table of Contents:
Intro - (0:00)
How to Play - (3:21)
Pros - (6:31)
Cons - (15:09)
Recommender Score - (23:05)
Ashton's Personal Score - (27:56)
Pranav’s Personal Score - (36:24)
Daniel’s Personal Score - (38:56)
Alexander''s Personal Score - (43:55)
Stuff Used:
Violin Concerto in F minor, RV 297 'Winter' - the modern chamber orchestra
Violin Concerto in A flat Major
Violin Concerto Gavottes
D. 960 - III. Scherzo (Allegro vivace con delicatezza)
Fantasy in C Major Op.15 D.760 'Wanderer' - I. Adagio
Fantasy in C Major Op.15 D.760 'Wanderer' - IV. Allegro
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 - 01 - Aria
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 - 03 - Variatio 2 a 1 Clav.
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 - 20 - Variatio 19 a 1 Clav. I.
Allegro moderato Orchestral suite no. 3 in D major, BWV 1068 - 1. Ouverture
Partita no. 2, BWV 826 - III. Courante Paul Pitman - Moonlight Sonata Op. 27 No. 2 - III. Presto
Polonaise in C minor, Op. 40 no. 2 Violin Concerto in F major, RV 293 'Autumn' - III. Allegro
Violin Concerto in G minor, RV 315 'Summer' - the modern chamber orchestra
March of the Eagles Calm, Battle
What of the 3 types of board game psychographics are you? We liberally borrow from the MTG terms (from Mark Rosewater) of Timmy, Johnny, and Spike, then place them into a board game framework. So, we have to factor in types of board gaming like solo board gaming all the way to large group gaming like Social deduction. Also, how do genres of games like area controls fit into this discussion? Or perhaps popular board game youtubers like Dice Tower's Tom Vasel and Shut up and sit down from 2015?
Games mentioned: Patchwork, Twilight Imperium, Risk, Risk Legacy, Wingspan, Cosmic Encounter, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, Arkham Horror LCG, Vantage, Ark Nova, Le Havre, Star Wars Rebellion, Brass Birmingham, Incan Gold
Table of Contents:
Intro - (0:00)
Timmy, Johnny, and Spike in Board Gaming - (0:43)
Guessing Board Game YouTubers’ Stats - (14:07)
Alexander’s Stats - (17:39)
Ashton’s Stats - (20:12)
We review Re:MATCH, an asymmetrical 1v1 fighting game with marbles! You try to reduce your opponent’s credits to 0 first! In this arcade-styled MATCH3 game by Brother Ming Games, you will take a set of connected marbles on your turn to launch an attack! There are 3 colors of marbles for 3 colors of attack for each player. But every time you take marbles, you can set up your opponent accidentally! We cover 6 different variable player powers in this box, with more on the way! How does this Marble Puzzle compare to other direct conflict card and board games? The marbles in this kickstarter are not just a gimmick, but perhaps aren’t for everyone…
Table of Contents:
Overview - (0:00)
How to Play - (1:22)
Pros - (3:44)
Cons - (15:15)
Scoring - (16:31)
Alexand’er Personal Score - (21:53)
Ashton’s Personal score - (26:00)
Anmelden
