In Elizabeth Hargrave’s latest game, Sanibel, players take turns walking down the beach and stopping to collect a variety of shells and shark teeth. You’ll score points by dropping these treasures into your bag so they ‘fall’ in alignment with other items already there. Have the most points at the end of the walk, and you win the game.

Setup

To start, unfold and line up the three sections of the board. On the left, place the section with the beach chairs; to the right, place the section with the lighthouse. The section without a special area at either end goes in between these two.

Players then take a token of their chosen color and the corresponding board with a bag printed on it. You’ll place everyone’s tokens in random order in the upper left corner of the central board on the right, just above the beach chairs. Place the Wave token to the far left of the player tokens.

Shuffle the zig-zag-shaped pieces and deal two to each player. These are your Lighthouse tiles and will offer additional scoring opportunities once you reach the Lighthouse midway through the game. Read these carefully, as they may help you determine which shells you want to concentrate on.

Above the shoreline…

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I didn’t know there was a market for players looking for a dinosaurus skirmish game rich with history…but then the team at Ion Game Design handed me a copy of Dino Dynasty, their 2025 release designed by Ion’s Chief Creative Officer, Jon Manker. About a year prior, Manker had led a small group of media members through a demo of the game, and the most striking part about that walkthrough was the stunning dino art from artist Johan Egerkrans.

The work of Egerkrans, the author/illustrator of the book Dinosaur Dynasties, is the real star and reason to give the game Dino Dynasty a look. The game is an impressively streamlined version of more complex skirmish games, especially compared to some of the more rules-dense wargames I cover here on the site.

But the real question for me is the audience—while we had fun with our plays here, I can’t for the life of me figure out who the target audience is for the product.

This Biome Isn’t Big Enough for the Both of Us

Dino Dynasty is a very snappy “troops on a map” game for 1-6 players. The game’s incredible level of customization starts with the setup: there are more than 20 different playable dinosaur clans, 30 double-sided…

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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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Flatout Games loves their unique themes: quilts for cats, turning playing cards into salad, wizard foxes, bee kingdoms, and of course the Pacific Northwest. Now they’re back with a crunchy roll and write that will have you traipsing around the countryside looking for good eats.

Take a walk with me through the woods as we play Forage.

The Bounty of Nature

Many years ago I read a book by famed author Barbara Kingsolver called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, a memoir about how she and her family relocated to Virginia and committed to living off only what they could grow, forage, or trade for in the local community. It was fascinating because it introduced me to so many plants that I’d never heard of before. Fiddlehead ferns…you could eat them? Morel mushrooms that some people call “miracles” because it’s a miracle if you find them?

While I never did anything with that knowledge, it really captivated me, and led me to even more books on the same topic like The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America, about people who can make tens of thousands of dollars taking a single trip into Canada to forage for mushrooms.

…

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4X games have come a long way since 2011, when Space Empires 4X was released, and while many of these games contain deeper backstories, more complicated systems, and elaborate plastic miniatures, for me the pencil, pad and cardboard counters of Space Empires remain the gold standard of 4X. With GMT Games sending me the final expansion, fittingly titled All Good Things, I was excited to get the game back to my table to see if it still holds up after all these years.

Don’t Fix what isn’t Broken

There’s been a recent trend to update older titles with more modern elements, beyond just artwork and theme–games like Skymines and Brass: Lancashire come to mind–and that can sometimes be a mixed bag. Caylus is a masterpiece but was in desperate need of a visual refreshment. Caylus 1303, while it looks great, also fundamentally changed how the original game plays, for the worse in my opinion, in its attempt to cater to a broader audience.

GMT and designer Jim Krohn understand what makes Space Empires 4X special and are able to revamp while avoiding these kinds of pitfalls with each new expansion. Much like the previous expansions, Close Encounters (which added variable player powers) and Replicators (introducing co-op…

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Oh, the back half of this adventure was heavy, my friends…heavy!

After playing Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles—Episodes 1 & 2 in 2024, I reached out to the team at Mindclash Games to get a review copy of Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles—Episodes 3 & 4. The box was predictably massive and showed off everything Mindclash is known for as soon as I opened the box.

If you are new to the Perseverance adventures, check out my previous review to get a feel for the series. We aren't doing a massive rules explanation here, because that would take hours!

I’m also not going to spend much time here telling you about the ridiculous components in the box. It’s a Mindclash game, so IYKYK. Suffice it to say that Mindclash produces bits as fancy as anyone in the tabletop business, and that trend line continues with the Perseverance sequels. I will say this much–I didn’t think the world needed board games with dinosaur saddle pieces…and, I was wrong.

Let’s dive right in: is the back half of the Perseverance saga worth your time?

Episode 3: It’s Hard to Saddle a Thunderhorn

Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles—Episode 3 picks up after the events of Episode 2. Perseverance is now a decent place to live, and…

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War, Trade, and Extremely Long Evenings

For some board gamers, Twilight Imperium (TI4) is a bucket list game. Not because it’s rare or expensive, but because reliably gathering six busy, willing, and able adults for 9 to 12 uninterrupted hours already feels like an achievement. Add in a sprawling space opera full of political intrigue, shifting alliances, and the occasional spectacular betrayal, and you start to understand the mystique.

I had been in the board game hobby for years before a friend invited me to play TI4 for his birthday. I was giddy at the chance to sit down with the behemoth finally, and I’ve been lucky enough to get it back on the table many times since. I enjoy Twilight Imperium a lot, but I don’t live and breathe it. There’s another kind of TI4 player: the kind who plays in rated leagues, travels for tournaments, and can recite every faction’s abilities and tech paths from memory. That’s not me, and that’s not the perspective this review is written from.

[caption id="attachment_327184" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Please ignore the precariously placed Coke Zero.[/caption]

With the Prophecy of Kings expansion, Twilight Imperium already feels remarkably complete. It’s one of the best examples I can think of of a lavish expansion retroactively improving a…

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Training Montage

I struggle to get excited when someone says “train game.” The moment “18XX” hits the table, my brain checks out. I’ve enjoyed a few—Chicago Express, Age of Rail: South Africa, Iberian Gauge, and currently Ticket to Ride: Legends of the West (okay, not really 18XX but still a train game!)—but my bias remains: they all feel the same. Learn one, learn them all, right?

And while that may be true, it takes more than a new map to get me on board. I’m not great at market speculation or company valuation, which already puts me behind. But dress the system up with a new flavor, and I can be coaxed to the table. Dinosaurs in Cretaceous Rails? Bag-building in Lightning Train? A fresh spin goes a long way for non-train gamers like me.

Space Rails

Enter Stellar Ventures, a spacefaring economic game from newcomer designer Pontus Nilsson. At a glance, you might think you’ve sat down at Gaia Project, but look closer: this is an investment-and-network puzzle that tests your galactic bookkeeping.

[caption id="attachment_327002" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Stellar Ventures at PAX Unplugged.[/caption]

Crack open the Corporate Handbook and you’re greeted with midcentury-style product ads hyping expansion, investment, and tech development. Then comes the twist—aliens.…

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