Review: The Captain Is Dead

The last time a board game immersed me this thoroughly in the story unfolding on the tabletop was Pandemic Legacy, Season One…But Legacy-style games have an almost unfair advantage over other games when it comes to telling a story and prompting everyone around the table to buy in. When you’ve already committed hours and hours to telling the story thus far, it’s easy to be invested in the characters, the world, and the outcome. The Captain Is Dead accomplished that within an hour and fifteen minutes. Continue reading Review: The Captain Is Dead

Review: Paladins of the West Kingdom

It doesn’t matter what type of media you’re talking about–video games, movies, television shows, books, or board games–there are always certain cultural milestones that come along and provide a sense of definition. They aren’t always revolutionary, incontrovertibly changing the landscape from that day forward, but they are momentous nonetheless, reaching such a point of near-universality that it can seem strange to those in the community … Continue reading Review: Paladins of the West Kingdom

Review: Bubble Tea

When something really unique and off the wall comes by, it has the ability to make people do a double-take and take notice. And that’s what Bubble Tea was for us. Amid heists and dinosaurs and sprawling story-telling games, suddenly we were looking at Aza Chen’s precious, vibrant artwork on the box of a game about boba: pearls of tapioca or chunks of coconut jelly, suspended in a sweet mix of tea and fruity flavour. Continue reading Review: Bubble Tea

Growing Pains

We both work at a FLGS. Among the many hats I wear, I help the owner sift through the pre-orders that our distributors post up on a weekly basis. I add every one of them to a spreadsheet that we use to keep track of what we’ve pre-ordered from whom: how many copies, what date it was ordered, what the wholesale cost from the distributor … Continue reading Growing Pains

Review: The Old Hellfire Club

Board games have taken us to all kinds of locales over the years–from fictional and fantastical lands, to the very depths and edges of the universe, to every conceivable period from human history…But I don’t know that we’ve ever found ourselves in the dim, smoky underground of a gin palace in Victorian England, telling tall tales tinged with truth in exchange for just a few pennies more. Continue reading Review: The Old Hellfire Club

Review: Chai

(Full disclosure: the copy of Chai we were provided was a prototypical review copy, and was not representative of the finished product, so while I’m happy to comment on the way the components worked together and the vision that Steeped Games has for their product, I can’t offer as concrete of a viewpoint of the design as I have on previously reviewed titles.) The relationship … Continue reading Review: Chai