“So…what did you think?”

Along with three members of my review crew, we had just wrapped up our first four-player game of Asian Tigers: A Story of Prosperity (2024, published by PYTHAGORAS and distributed in the US by Mayfair Games). There was a very long pause before anyone answered my question. I always ask other players for their opinion first before launching into my thoughts.

The opinions ranged wildly. One player loved it, another was still processing the rules load even at the end of our game, for reasons that we’ll come to during a discussion about the game’s scoring elements. The guy who won this first play was most conflicted of all. Winner’s bias is real, we all agreed, so he was in the best position to say whether he loved it or not.

“I really like this one,” he started. “There’s a lot to process with the rules, but ultimately I focused on the area control elements, and that worked out. I just don’t know how often I could see myself getting this to the table.”

This review of Asian Tigers: A Story of Prosperity has proven to be the toughest review I have written this year, in terms of determining a final score. For almost every element of the game that I liked, there are…

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I stopped by the Arcane Wonders booth at SPIEL 2024 to check out the new game Kraftwagen: Age of Engineering. I was excited about it from the get-go: the cover art looked great, and the box offered one additional stand-out detail—the name of the designer, Matthias Cramer.

That’s because Cramer designed Glen More II: Chronicles, one of my all-time favorite games. While other games use a rondel mechanism to dictate turn order, I think Glen More II does rondels better than any other game I have tried. The combination of Cramer’s name here mixed with the fact that Kraftwagen: Age of Engineering is also a rondel game had me pre-sold on the idea that this would be worth a look.

The new version is based on Cramer’s original game, Kraftwagen, published back in 2015. While I have not played the previous game, two other people in my network had, and both indicated that while that first game was pretty good, there were some elements that rubbed them, as hardcore strategy players, the wrong way.

One of those two people, my buddy John (he of the Dusty Euros series), joined me for a demo of the new Kraftwagen at SPIEL to see how it played. And after our three-player demo game, John and I both agreed…

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At the GAMA Expo in 2024, publishers from all over the country showcased their upcoming releases. One night, in a relatively small room, I had the opportunity to look over close to 150 games from large and small publishers alike. After making a circuit of the room to see what looked interesting, the Stalk Exchange (stylized as $talk Exchange) table from The Op was the first one I came back to, and the only one in which I sat down to play an entire game. I was impressed with the artwork, the simple gameplay, and the play time—around 30 minutes or so. So when The Op offered to send a copy for review, I jumped at the chance. And everyone who’s played it so far has raved about it, some going so far as to say, “This is what a market manipulation game should look like.”

So let me share the love for Stalk Exchange.

“Flowers don’t tell, they show.” — Stephanie Skeem

In Stalk Exchange, 2-5 players compete to build the best floral portfolio, a wealth of dahlias, daffodils, globemasters, snowdrops, and tulips. You do this by planting flowers from “the exchange” into the shared garden, and by trading flowers between the exchange and your hidden portfolio.…

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From the rulebook: “It was our darkest hour. All the warnings, all the screams of the desperates. Nobody wanted to hear them. Until it was almost too late. Until only burned soil was left. We couldn’t save ourselves, but the trees could. As if they knew that their time for action had come. They showed us what mattered. We understood them and connected with them. Now we know what to do and we support them as good (sic) as possible with the little technology that [is] left. But also with a new, more natural technology, the Arbors showed us. We need green energy and oxygen, to turn burned soil into live-giving green. You can find it everywhere in our new and promising world of Overgrown…”

In Planta Nubo, the players tend the sky gardens atop the canopies of the Arbors. Flower beds produce flowers which are harvested, carried away, and turned into the green energy that keeps civilization running. The soil left behind is fertile ground for planting new forestation which, in turn, creates the life-sustaining oxygen the planet so desperately needs. Each element of the system feeds into the next in a self-perpetuating cycle.

Zoomed Out - A Brief Overview of the Layout and Some General Concepts

At its heart, Planta Nubo is an engine-building game governed by…

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This might sound like a bad thing, but here’s a surprise: I like dice and I like charts. I also like simultaneous play which, for the most part, Lords of Baseball manages to pull off with aplomb.

Cards. Lots of Cards.

The game might be what some would call a CDG (card-driven game), but if you’re looking for something in the vein of Twilight Struggle or COIN, you’re likely going to be disappointed. LoB takes a more loosey-goosey approach to hand and card management.

Basically, it goes like this. You have a player board with your stats. You’ve got a money tracker, a tracker for prospects, a tracker for regular players, a tracker for your GM, Front office, and a few other stats. You add together these stats to determine your team’s quality, which we’ll come back to later.

The game is highly procedural. First, you get dealt “Spring Training” cards (3), plus additional if you have raised your farm system tracker. You can also turn in media tokens to get more cards, but you’re never going to have more than 5 going…

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Man, I love a good mobster theme.

That starts with my love for the mainstream Mafia movie canon. Sure, everyone loves the Godfather films…the classics are classic for a reason. Ditto for Goodfellas, Casino, and nearly everything done by Martin Scorsese. I have a preference for flicks like The Untouchables or newer takes like Gangster Town, The Departed (based on a Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs—which I think is the better film), Public Enemies, and any of the older flicks reminding us of Prohibition-era crime.

I love gang, mobster, and crime themes, to the point where my wife knows that if there’s a new TV show coming out that gives her “those ‘Narcos’ vibes” (her words), I’m going to watch it. Anything featuring illegal drugs, booze, drive-by shootings, and infamous real-world crime figures is a 100% go for my personal viewing tastes.

My appreciation for mobster themes carries over into board games. Whether it is Scarface 1920, La Famiglia: The Great Mafia War, Speakeasy Blues, or The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire, I am all the way in if a game gives me the chance to celebrate the music of the 1920s and 30s, force opposing gang associates to “swim with the fishes”, or drive a car bomb into a neighborhood.

Given this history, it should come…

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The thing I struggle with most when playing 18xx games over and over again? I love the system, the private companies, the merger opportunities, the operational interaction, and sometimes even the financial shenanigans. But the maps are static.

What if I could find a game that used an 18xx framework but is played on a modular map? That’s something I would throw my money at in a heartbeat.

Last fall, I found the crowdfunding campaign for Railways of the Lost Atlas, an 18xx game created by first-time designers Kevin Delger and Jacob Schacht of Asterisk Games. One look at the campaign page told me this was serious, and after throwing my money at these guys, my initial promise was rewarded with one of the most communicative fulfillment processes I have ever seen.

While I usually have to wait years and not months to get my copies of crowdfunded games, something weird happened: the game showed up on time, about nine months later. I had the chance to play Railways of the Lost Atlas at the 18xx gaming convention TraXX earlier this year, and after adding my two plays at TraXX to two more plays since my personal copy arrived, I have to say—

Bravo. Bravo, Asterisk, for rewarding our faith in your process. For keeping us abreast…

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For the first time in my 18xx career (which began about two years ago with a play of 1861: Railways of the Russian Empire), I found myself looking through the rulebook, playing games online, and then doing an in-person play only to still find myself realizing a sad truth.

I had no idea what I should be doing to win.

Yes, even with other 18xx games, I read the rules and had a sense of what I should be doing. Playing the games helped bring winning strategies to life and I always left the table having a better sense of what I should, and should not, have done during each game.

Now that I’ve played 25 different 18xx games, as well as lots of different stock manipulation and/or non-18xx train games such as Iberian Gauge, City of the Big Shoulders, Chicago Express, and others, I have a unique perspective on 1862: Railway Mania in the Eastern Counties—

It is not for me. That’s not because the design isn’t eye-opening, well balanced, or unique…gosh, 1862 is, without question, the most unique experience of the 18xx games I have tried. But I can’t grasp even basic strategy with this one, a minor frustration that became major by the sixth time I played it online before trying this in person.

1862…

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The Corporate Lunar Race

Lunar Rush is a thrilling simultaneous–play worker placement/bidding game for up to four players. In it, players take on the roles of megacorporations that have recently discovered the valuable crystals and ore hidden on the Moon. As they are wont to do, the corporations throw care aside in a mad dash to the moon to open shipping lanes, build moon bases, and ultimately increase their profits. 

Each round in Lunar Rush, players bid for initiative using bid cards. From highest to lowest, bidders win priority in turn order and pay the cost for their bids. Different routes will arrive at different times. Fast routes arrive almost immediately but can hold less cargo. Conversely, slow routes take a few turns to reach their destination but can carry more stuff. Then, in turn order, players choose any available route to claim. Routes are either moonbound or earthbound, referring to whether they are leaving to head to the Moon from Earth or vice versa. After everyone has chosen two routes, players simultaneously load up their ships on Earth with astronauts (workers) or items needed for modules and upgrades, and then they move their ships from Earth along the routes to the moon. Afterward, the moon phase happens simultaneously, with players building modules and producing resources. Each player begins…

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Terra Mystica is a sort of game design white whale — there have been dozens and dozens of imitators (Barrage, Horizons, Clans of Caledonia) and even when the designers of the original system have attempted to riff on their own design (Gaia Project), it often feels like some ineffable ingredient, some key to the special sauce, is missing.

I’ll tell you what I think that special sauce is in a minute, but I’m talking about Gold West here, and while Terra Mystica might not be the game design that immediately springs to mind, bear with me.

Gold West is a game by J. Alex Kevern, mostly known for Succulent, World’s Fair 1893, Passing Through Petra, and the under-rated Daxu. The game is relatively straightforward. Each turn, you generate resources, then you move on some tracks, buy an endgame scoring condition, and/or fulfill a contract card. After you’ve done that, you build a camp on the board, a settlement if you’ve got more resources, or you “loot,” which is where you gain resources but build nothing on the board.

The resource engine of the game is the defining puzzle of the enterprise. Many people have compared it to a mancala system like the…

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Over the course of several months, I led a group of six players through the Grand Campaign scenario from Europa Universalis: The Price of Power. For 4-6 hours a day, every other Sunday, we would convene around the gaming table, remind ourselves of where we left off, and get to the business of running the great nations of Europe in the 16th century.

All six players were acquainted with Europa Universalis IV (EUIV), the massive computer game that served as source material for this massive board game. Several of them had put thousands of hours into exploring its nooks and crannies. This isn't, I am told, unusual. EUIV is the type of game that consumes lives. It is one of PC gaming's largest sandboxes. “I mean, it's a Paradox game,” people would say over and over, the developer's name considered enough of an explanation.

The first EU computer game, released back in 2000, was itself adapted from a 1993 board game of the same name. Given that, a modern board game adaptation feels inevitable. It also feels ludicrous. The Price of Power…

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Wingspan is one of the most popular games in the world. As of this writing, BoardGameGeek has the base game listed as #27. It is interesting to note then, that if you look at the average rating for Wingspan Asia, it is actually higher than the base game. The Geek Rating, which is used to rank the games, is lower. I cannot speak with any authority as to why these are related like this. What I can say is that Wingspan and each of its expansions have been quite popular.

[caption id="attachment_302685" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Wingspan Asia has the lowest rating of the Wingspan expansions. That said, all of the expansions have higher ratings than the base game -- and the base game is #27 overall...[/caption]

In each expansion (including this one) the core game remains untouched; the basic gameplay of Wingspan is as it has always been. Thus, I will not be going into detail when it comes to how the game is played. If you want a primer on the mechanics and such, I suggest reading Mark Iradian’s review of Wingspan, or Tom Franklin’s review of the digital implementation.I will say that I am more of a fan of the game than either of them. That said, their…

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Typically, reviews of game reprints follow a predictable pattern. The author reminisces about their experience with the original edition or argues that it was an overlooked masterpiece. It’s a bit cliche and it works for the most part. I know this because I do this. However, in this instance, I'm unable to follow suit since I never had the opportunity to play the original version of Yokohama.

As shallow as this sounds, the only reason I never played the older edition is the graphic design. The original box cover art felt claustrophobic and the view looked like you were thrown down in an oddly shaped well. When I saw it at board game meetup groups, it didn’t bolster my confidence. Cards littered all over the table and the detritus of wooden cubes was simply too much.

After playing the newer edition a few times for this review, I must confess and say that I missed out. This is a great game that easily sits next to fantastic titles like Concordia and Puerto Rico. It’s the next step after being pampered by the starter trio of Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and Catan. Like any other game, it’s not perfect, but does far more right than wrong.

Setting Sail

With that…

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