F A MIL Y G A M E S S T R A T E G Y G A M E S C A R D G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S MINIA T U R E S G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 51 At first glance, Monster Inn appears to be a reverse bidding-style game, a la No Thanks. A tableau of monsters and humanoids are laid out in order from worst to best. You can either take the worst card in the display and sit out the rest of the round, or pay a treasure to stay in. If there’s already a treasure in the central pool, you have to pay a treasure of that type (either gold or gems) to stay in. But it’s not that type of auction, because no one gets the treasures. If you pay one, it’s just spent, gone from the game’s economy. So instead of the lovely push-pull of a reverse bidding game, where bids mitigate the acquisition of whatever undesirable thing you’re paying not to take, or the ramping tension of Brag-style betting, where each payment into the pot raises the ultimate prize. It’s just a series of short, anticlimactic and rather miserable-feeling micropayments. Whoever goes first is usually at a disadvantage, unless their opponents have run out of a type of treasure that they have lots of. There’s a bit of tension, because humanoids come facedown with only the range of their strength on the back, so they may or may not defeat the monster you place them under when finally revealed. Taking a humanoid does grant you a treasure of your choice, meaning there’s that nice bit of compensation for having a bad round and no one is likely to dominate. Unfortunately, no one is likely to care much either. The forty cards throw up few variations, meaning that each round – and ultimately each game – feels much like the last. This is precisely the genre where a few silly jokes on cards or events are welcome. Purists to the last, the designers apparently felt such fripperies would compromise their vision. I’m reluctant to ever suggest a game has no place in anyone’s collection, but given the wealth of pretty-good-andbetter small box games with either a sword-and-sorcery theme, a bidding mechanic, or both, it’s difficult to conceive why this game exists, except perhaps as the result of unwise business dealings made in a tavern. TIM CLARE MonsterInn casts players as the controllers of – presumably rival – dungeons who have gathered in a local tavern in an attempt to recruit the best monsters to populate theirlair. Each round, you will offer treasures and either get the strongest monsters, or, if the auction doesn’t go so well, powerful humanoid adventurers who may end up killing off your finest acquisitions. At the end of several rounds of bidding, the player with the most powerful surviving monsters wins. The art for Monster Inn is… acceptable? Dungeons & Dragons style fantasy art is so well-trodden it has to be exceptional or take some sort of stylistic risk to stand out. Here, it’s merely competent – the trolls and kobolds are standouts – but the humanoid adventurer cards – which make up half the deck – are rather lacklustre, phoned-in representations of generic heroes. However, the physical gold and gem tokens are a welcome inclusion. Onto the actual game experience. If you’re getting Boss Monster vibes from the theme, I am sorry to say here is where reality must bonk you on the head like a troll’s knobbly club. This is substantially less of a game, in terms of thematic immersion, the range of options, the depth of gameplay and interestingness of the decisions you’re faced with. And Boss Monsteris pretty light! This tavern is full of boos MONSTER INN Designer: Roman Pelek | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗20 x monster cards ◗20 x humanoid cards ◗25 x gold tokens ◗25 x gem tokens 20-30m 3-5 8+ £14.99 TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED BOSS MONSTER A charming and fun little pixel art card game about building a dungeon and luring in heroes that better delivers on its theme than this one. ❚ PLAY IT? N O Monster Inn feels like a deeply perfunctory and frankly unnecessary exercise in generic theme meets hastily thrown together rules.
52 September 2023 MYCELIA PREVIEW ALL’S Geo F rge Ba A rker sat I dow R n with Jac I k N N eville to disc L uss O his debut game of feuding fungi Words by George Barker Atree falls in the woods. The once proud oak softens and decays into forest mulch. Amidst the decay, a new cycle of life begins. The damp and crumbling log provides ideal conditions for spore germination, eldritch-like strands emerging to colonise the nutrient-rich environment. The further this Mycelium spreads, the more nutrients it gathers in preparation for fruiting and the emergence of mushrooms across this rotting body. Mushrooms erupt across the log in their disquieting beauty, releasing new spores so the cycle may begin again. Mycelia, the first game from new publishers Split Stone Games, puts players in control of this cycle, as they compete to propagate their mycelia and grow the best mushroom kingdom in this fungal take on the area-control genre. Ahead of Mycelia’s Kickstarter campaign, I went to the board game café ‘Dice’ in Worthing and sat down with designer, illustrator and Split Stone Games founder, Jack Neville, to find out more. GAME PREVIEW Jack rattled through the rules in around five minutes. The aim? Score the most points by developing the best mushroom kingdom.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 53 Each player places their mother mushroom on the board, draws a hand of 3 mushroom cards and play begins. The core loop of the game is spreading your spores across the board, building up your mycelial networks. These networks provide the resources to fruit new mushrooms, adding to your score and expanding your control of the board. Spores are added to the board with a die that simulates wind scatter, meaning rival networks quickly become intermeshed. Controlling a tile (either with your mother mushroom or a fruited mushroom) not only denies other players access to their spores on it, but lets you spend them instead. This light area control element adds a nice tension to the game, as you balance the tempo of your resource generation to fruit and decay mushrooms with moving your mother mushroom to interfere with the networks of your opponents. Mushrooms eventually decay, granting access to a unique ability: either an instant effect, a passive buff or an upgrade to future mushrooms in that slot. These abilities are all fairly simple and the game seemed more about managing your presence on the board than building up a particular combo. You have five slots for fruited mushrooms and the moment a player has a decayed mushroom in all of their slots, the game ends. Turns whipped back and forth and we finished in 40 minutes. At two players, it was a race to work out how to quickly rush out waves of spores and hasten the decay of your fungal crop, whilst all the while looking for opportunities to steal spores or block tile access. It constantly keeps you on our toes and interested in everyone’s progress. The experience felt very accessible and it was a joy to turn over cards and reveal the next piece of mushroom art in all its greeble beauty. It’s a similar feeling to exploring the world of birds in Wingspan. Mycelia could occupy a similar space in your collection, it’s quicker to play and easier to learn but has more teeth if you fancy something with more direct conflict. OVE AND SPORE INTERVIEW WITH JACK NEVILLE GB: When did you begin the design for Mycelia? JN: I had the first ideas for the game at the end of 2019. Lockdown gave me a bit of time to think about it, ever since then I’ve been constantly improving the artwork with each stage, tweaking the game, because there’s always mechanical issues which you have to play test a lot to work out all those kinks. You’re a graphic designer by trade, how did it feel moving from your day-to-day work to working on a board game? Well, I think all design is visually solving problems and finding elegant solutions. When I would play other board games, there’d be an urge for me to go ‘I think I could design this better.’ Not so much the game, but sometimes you see the artwork or the type and think it’s a bit clunky. It’s a great game, but I’d be enjoying this better if it looked even more amazing. I guess by seeing where others have gone slightly awry helped inform me how to make my game be as beautiful and efficient as possible with its design. My ethos is less is more; I want my games to be as simple as possible, but still bring beauty. Are there any particular games that you feel inspired you? Oh, loads! Inis, Cyclades, I like a lot of Stonemaier games like Scythe, Wingspan and Viticulture. I do like Everdell and I’m a big fan of Keymaster games too; Caper Europe and Parks, their iconography, typography and illustration style all just fits together very succinctly. I enjoy very lovely games, with beautiful artwork and components, something I want to emulate with my own work. What aspects did you begin your game design with? I started the mushroom theme and one idea for a mechanic, which was the triangle tiles. You don’t really see them much in board games, everything is hexagons. The other mechanics came from the theme itself, through researching about mushrooms: Their lifespan, sporing, decaying, networks, it was quite easy to work in mechanics around the science of it basically. One of my original inspirations came from looking over old botanical illustrations, that kind of Victorianesque style. I wanted to create within the game that kind of almost hard-nosed science look at the fungi world, something that’s quite scientifically accurate, but also fun. How reflective is the conflict in the game of real-world mushroom networks? Mycelia is a bit more aggressive and close quarters than in real life. Certain mushrooms only grow around oak trees or grow off beach trees, so there’s definitely territories within the fungi Kingdom. I’m not sure how much they really fight. They’re probably good friends underneath. What was the biggest surprises for you during the design process? Some ideas and mechanics almost came out of the game itself, some of which I wasn’t
54 September 2023 MYCELIA PREVIEW expecting. One thing I’ve noticed is that, depending on an individual’s play style, it can really affect how the game progresses or how people feel about playing it.If you’re quite aggressive, you can get up into each other and conflict, or you can kind of do your own thing and spend the game having a nice time growing mushrooms. When you play something like Catan, you eventually know what people are always going to do, it becomes quite predictable. With Mycelia, it’s always slightly different.It changes overtime and with different players, which was a nice surprise to me. Was the automata/solo mode something you knew you wanted to include from the start? It came later. The more I spoke to the board game community, especially the Worthing board game group and people online, the more I realised how big solo board gaming was. I thought I should try and include that in my game and have really enjoyed doing it. It’s a whole new puzzle: making a solo game is a game in itself, because you have to work out the problems and work out an efficient and fun way of doing things. It’s had a few iterations too. One of the first solo variants had invasive fungi attacking your kingdom, but it turned out I had just made Pandemic by accident. How has it been playtesting the game and getting it in front of people? Really good. Playtesting always starts with your partner or your very close family and then it spreads out to friends. I then asked friends of friends, people who don’t know you well enough to protect your feelings, who can just tell you if it’s a terrible game or not. Because you know, when your family go “oh, it’s great, it’s fun,” you’re not sure if they’re just being kind. We’ve also had some great playtest evenings here at Dice, but the big test was UKGE (UK Games Expo), when it was just hardcore board gamers coming up and playing it and it seemed to pass the test, which is encouraging. How did Split Stone Games start? Once I had an idea for a game, I started thinking about how I would pitch it to publishers and dabbled with that a bit. After a while, I decided that I could try to could do it all myself, ‘cause I’m a mad man who thought I could handle it all if I tried. By having everything done in-house, it’ll hopefully open some doors in the future, if the crowdfunding goes well. Was environmental impact something you considered when planning how to produce Mycelia? I did have grand ideas of metal tokens and all these extras, but then I just thought, no. Because it’s a natural theme, I want everything to be card and wood. I’ve been speaking to production companies trying to get a sustainable source of wood and keeping plastic to a minimum, with no needless plastic wraps around cards and stuff like that. There is a plan I’d love to do which really depends on how the Kickstarter goes. One of the stretch goals I’ve set is quite expensive to do, but it’s to make the game tray out of actual mycelium. You can make packaging from mycelium as a sustainable alternative to moulded plastic. It’s really cool and I’d love to do it, so hopefully it’ll happen! What, if anything, would you’d like people to take away after playing Mycelia? I would like to inspire people to look into fungi, because they’re such fascinating organisms. There’s just so many amazing things that they can do and there’s so much that we don’t know about them. I’m sure they could solve a lot of our problems, problems that humanity has created. There are mushrooms that can eat plastic or survive around Chernobyl and nuclear fallout. They’re so good at adapting, it’s really impressive. Thinking ahead to the future of Split Stone, do you have any long-term dreams or ideas? I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, as I want to see how this game goes. I’ve been toying with some ideas for expansions of Mycelia and other potential games. I don’t want to pigeonhole myself and have every game I design be nature-based, but I’ve had some very, very loose ideas around a game about beetles. One release at time! Finally, what’s your favourite mushroom in Mycelia? I’m gonna go for Destroying Angel, just because it’s a cool name. There’s a lot of great ones like Slippery Jack or Golden Spindles. I aimed to include a good mix of mushrooms that are either really beautiful, or have a great name. * Mycelia launches on Kickstarter on 7th September. Search online or go to www.splitstonegames.com to find out more.
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56 September 2023 P L AY E D Ace in a Day UNDAUNTED: BATTLE OF BRITAIN Designer: Trevor Benjamin & David Thompson | Publisher: Osprey Games WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗116 Cards ◗31 Map Tiles ◗4 D10 ◗58 Tokens ◗Rules and Scenario Booklets 45-60m 2 14+ £40 Battle of Britain focuses much more on the board than on your deck. How you move (and divisively what you roll) are more important than ever. Higher lethality, smaller ‘health’ pools and the value of drawing duplicates make the bolster action more important. In previous titles, the bigger scenarios came with the decision of which units should be brought onto the battlefield during the mission. The choice of unit composition is absent in Battle of Britain and the decision space around how you manage your deck is generally smaller, which is a welcome change of pace to the series. As with the previous entries, some scenarios do feel stacked in favour of one side, which can be frustrating. However, the core flight system is so quick and satisfying that replaying a scenario is more appealing than any previous entry. Yet again, Benjamin and Thompson have turned out another winning entry. Battle of Britain’s new spin on the formula gives long-time fans reason to add another box to their collection, but remains as accessible as ever, making it another great entry point for new players. GEORGE BARKER Undaunted: Battle of Britain leaps to the skies in this fresh twist on the already classic series. Players battle it out as the Royal Air Force and Luftwaffe across 11 scenarios that depict the fall of France, the Battle of Britain and the beginning of the Blitz. For anyone unfamiliar with the series, Undaunted is a deckbuilding game that offers an accessible entry to the world of historical wargaming. Each turn you’ll play a hand of cards to control your units on the battlefield (or in this case, your aircraft in the skies). Combat cards control your aircraft on the board while communications cards represent ground control providing assistance via radio. As aircraft take hits, you’ll permanently lose cards from your deck, while the chaos of the battle might add discord cards to your hand, making it harderto reliably control your units. However, you can also bolster your deck with new cards from the supply and use your communications cards to remove discord. Winning Undaunted requires you to both manage your deck and make the best moves with the cards drawn. In previous titles, movement wasn’t so much a tactical puzzle but a strategic consideration. You worked out where you needed to send your units and then tried to build your deck around getting them there as fast as possible.In contrast, every turn of Battle of Britain is a constantly evolving puzzle, as you balance attack runs against incoming threats. Can you line a plane up to shoot on your next turn? Will that position leave you vulnerable? What’s more, planes in the same section need to stay within communications range of each other, or you’llrisk adding discord cards to your deck.The choice between breaking formation for an opportunistic attack or keeping wingmen in comms range forthe long-term benefits adds an extra layer of depth. Battle of Britain does a fantastic job of conveying a sense of speed and dynamism through its simple flight system. With each combat card you play, you must choose between shooting and manoeuvring. Movement is always mandatory and shooting means you must move in a straight line. To turn the aircraft, you’ll have to forgo shooting to manoeuvre, letting you adjust the aircraft’s heading instead. This core decision between lining up a shot or pulling the trigger not only rewards good positioning, but forward thinking; draw multiple copies of the same aircraft and you’ll get to zoom it around the board, all guns blazing. TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED: WINGS OF GLORY Battle of Britain distils the same satisfaction of dogfighting down into a simple system that combines perfectly with Undaunted’s other core elements. ❚ PLAY IT? M U S T - P L AY After the ruins of Stalingrad, the azure skies and verdant fields of Battle of Britain are as refreshing as the new combat flight system in the most dynamic entry to the series yet.
S T R A T E G Y G A M E S C A R D G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S MINIA T U R E S G A M E S F A MIL Y G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 57 configuration of guards scattered about the locations influences this strategic decision. Afterthe players have selected their movement, the Great Machine takes their actions,repositioning their own figures and attempting to anticipate the protagonists’ schemes. It’s a delightful game of Cat& Mouse, where the playerin the role of the artificial intelligence tries to climb into the head of their human foes and understand theirthought processes. Successful predictions result in laying raid tokens on districts and hamstringing any resistance members that wanderin. Failing such an ambush means discontentrises in the city as the citizens witness the militant lockdown. There’s an immense balance found on both sides of the table. You must be careful not to overextend and be caught off guard orreaching, but you also must shy away from the more conservative and obvious destinations, lest you be too predictable.The rebels are trying to identify citizen tokens at the various locations so that they can properly time their climatic riot actions.If they succeed in fomenting three successful riots, they win the game and the Great Machine is overthrown. The core loop is simple and easy enough to internalise.There is solid cognitive weight here, as you must keep straight several special city location actions, as well as engage in relatively thoughtful tactical planning. All discussion between players must happen out in the open, which results in the resistance members showing each other cards and trying to speak in code to confuse the Machine.It’s delightful, but it’s also the moment the game can stumble, as this planning process can eat away at the clock.There is, fortunately, a degree of satisfaction in watching the players fumble about trying to communicate. You sit there, smiling and watching.This fuels the allusion to the deep state and government oppression, as the Machine is always listening… There is absolutely a wonderful element of social commentary here. Society is currently in the thick of a battle between the rights of artists and theirintellectual property, versus the freedom afforded to AI and its process of scraping inputs to assemble its own Frankenstein creations. We feel our inalienable rights, our very spark of humanity, slipping away to technology and progress.It’s infuriating. City of the Great Machine allows us to take a sledgehammer and smash this invisible foe’s skull.It can be utterly satisfying. Even more so when the therapeutic activity is nestled in a very tense and gripping thriller of a board game. CHARLIE THEEL Typically, expectations lead us to disappointment. City of the Great Machine is a rare case of the opposite: a game which I assumed the bare minimum, but instead I experienced one of the finest titles of 2023 so far. The setup is a dark portent of our own possible future: In an alternate steampunk reality, a clockwork artificial intelligence has seized so much power, it has enslaved the world that created it. One player assumes the role of The Great Machine, acting as the antagonist and attempting to push forward the doomsday clock to signal the end moment, when any possible shred of resistance is snuffed out. The rest of the players work together as a rebel cell, intent on convincing the controlled populace that the overseer AI has devoured society and that the hushed voices need to stand together. Cue a soundtrack of Rage Against the Machine. You could vaguely describe this game as belonging to the hidden movement genre. No one is writing secret manoeuvres on sheets or hiding their miniature, but instead, each player secretly selects a location card they will move to each round.The layout of the city–a massive entity of floating platforms with defined entries and exits between districts–as well as the current An Artifice of Anarchy CITY OF THE GREAT MACHINE Designer: German Tikhomirov | Publisher: CrowD Games WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗Progress Board ◗9 District Tiles ◗107 Tokens ◗21 City Event Cards ◗Wooden Progress Marker ◗17 Solitaire City Event Cards ◗9 Miniatures ◗6 Hero Cards ◗Assault Die ◗Escape Die ◗12 Mission Cards ◗18 Wooden Guard Figures ◗18 Directive Cards ◗9 Wooden Special Guards ◗13 Servant Movement Cards ◗3 Servant Action Cards ◗11 Reference Cards ◗Reference Guide 120m 1-4 14+ £52 TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED NOT ALONE… Great Machine features a similar hidden planning phase to Ghislain Masson’s Not Alone, but it takes that core idea and layers atop a heap of ambition. This experience is a cut above Not Alone, and something wholly special. ❚ PLAY IT? M U S T - P L AY One of 2023’s most brilliant designs. Inventive and unique, presenting a set of clean mechanical systems that result in incredible drama and delicious tension.
58 September 2023 P L AY E D It’s time to point the way out MAZESCAPE: LABÝRINTHOS Designer: Pablo Céspedes & Víctor Hugo Cisternas | Publisher: Devir/Iello WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗7x Maps ◗Wooden Pointer 15-30m 1 8+ £12 the entire set still only takes around an hour and a half. Replayability would be limited without allowing enough time for allow your brain to empty itself of the solutions. And yet,Ithink that misses a little of the magic in this bite-sized brain tease. Mazescape is unassuming; it knows exactly what it is and what it isn’t. There’s no pretence that this will beThe Last Game You Ever Play™ -it wants to jump into yourlife momentarily to delight, frustrate and entertain you, then disappear again.I’m not going to start playing Raid: Shadow Legends any time soon, butIthink Mazescape will sit in my bag forthe moments I want to distract myself with something palpable and impermanent. CHRIS LOWRY L ook, I understand why phone games exist.Irarely play them myself- probably out of some kind of self-righteous snobbishness and a hatred of the very idea of microtransactions - butI understand why they exist.They are solo-friendly, with instant setup and short, bite-sized play lengths. All things that board games often aren’t. Even when I’m in the mood for solo games, they are often a bit too fiddly for me; too many cardboard tokens and mechanical bits ‘n bobs to emulate the absent opposing players. Sometime I wish that there was an option closerto the mobile game phenomenon… and with Mazescape Ithink I’ve found it. Mazescape: Labýrinthosis a small box solo game from Iello and Devir Games. Setup consists of unfolding a single piece of paper, a game lasts 2-5 minutes and it’s very accessible (although it progresses to punishingly difficult.) The underlying mechanic a paperbased puzzle map, where you must find a route to the exit. Gameplay consists of placing a cute wooden pointer on the starting ‘Compass Rose’ symbol and tracing your way along white paths, continuing until you eitherreach the ‘Impossible Triangle’- or become too annoyed to continue. During your exploration, you can fold the pages of the maze that the pointeris not currently occupying.This regularly leads to a back-and-forth manoeuvring, travelling from one side, unfolding a section, nipping back over, folding the other side; all to gain access onto otherwise inaccessible paths. The mazes feature a progressive difficulty, adding increased varieties of folding, teleportation and coloured keys and gates. Early maps took me only a few attempts, but later ones took some concerted thought and brain convolutions. The whole experience reminds me of SNES era games likeThe Legend of Zelda: A Link ToThe Past orthe Mega Man series: Lots ofratherrepetitive jumping between screens, hunting for access to blocked routes and searching forthe correct keys.In Mazescape, however, thatrepetition is helpfully curtailed by the small scale of the maps. The box is attractive and nearly small enough to be pocketable.It uses magnet closure that always feels both efficient and almost decadently luxurious to me - although it’s worth noting that it elevates an otherwise paper and wood game into a less recyclable package. The included wooden pointeris a piece of design perfection for me - one could just use a pen lid or a finger, but the petite wooden piece absolutely seals yourrelationship with the maze. When holding the pointer, it somehow traps you with it, a tactile imprisonment onto the folded pages itroams. On the one hand, Mazescape is quite a limited premise.There are seven labyrinths included in the box. Whilst there are additional objectives and a finalrun through, which involves running through each maze again to light up the lamps; playing through TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED MICROMACRO: CRIME CITY Both games involve an unusual level of physical fellowship with printed maps; I suspect they will appeal to similarly wired brains. ❚ PLAY IT? Y E S If you enjoy puzzles, Mazescape: Labýrinthos will worm itself into your brain for the moments you interact with it; it’s moreish enough that you may finish it in one sitting.
S T R A T E G Y G A M E S C A R D G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S MINIA T U R E S G A M E S F A MIL Y G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 59 sets and you’llrelease an apostle to position round the table. To add difficulty, only one card can be played each turn, making for a slow-moving deck.This is overcome by buying a Mahane card or acquiring a 33 AD card. Although single use, these have coveted actions, such as inviting friends to the dinnerforfree orthe holy grail: swapping table places. Gaining a 33 AD card is rather endearing: gift a favour (one of eight tiles with benefits: ‘Two bread, ‘Two fish’ etc.)to an opponent and get a card in return.It makes a feel-good contrast to all the table-side backstabbing. Favours are further incentivised with a separate tracker: the more selfless you are, the more points you’ll get. Same goes forthe parable sideshow – listen to enough stories and it could win you the game. Points are dished out lavishly in Ierusalem: Anno Domini, alongside resources, which is largely welcome.The latter can prove problematic, however, as each player’s ‘warehouse’ has finite storage space, so resources must be carefully managed. This can be turned into an advantage by weaponizing favours to overload opponents with stuff they don’t want. Kill ‘em with kindness and a pious expression. There are three factors that stand between Ierusalem: Anno Domini and a ‘Must Play.’The first is the main board’s layout, which lacks logical storytelling. Locations are on top of each other – mountains and lakes next to desert. The table itself is curiously positioned too: rather than being the largest, most central aspect, it is squished up top with a lot of empty space on the right. Yet these sore points are easily resolved with a careful reskin. The second problem – a devilish amount of stickers – is also rectifiable later down the line. Jesus and his apostles are worth peeling off, but the 180 resource stickers? No thanks. The third issue is a dealbreaker: theme. Knowing Christianity ensures you can fully appreciate the game. The theme is so devoutly threaded throughout it comes off as preachy (even scripture litters the rulebook). But whatever your opinion on Christianity (or religion in general for that matter) there is one thing everyone should agree on: this is an accomplished first effort. Especially as it also includes additional solo and two-player variants. JENNY COX J erusalem, AD 33. Trouble is brewing. There’s a man down the chip shop who swears he’s the messiah, but the bigwigs say he’s just a very naughty boy. All you and your fellow followers care about is a seat at his next dinner party – preferably next to the man of the hour. Getting there will take ruthless patience in Ierusalem: Anno Domini, an engaging and neatly conceived debut about area control. The first step is moving followers off your individual playing board one at a time and onto the central board locations. The desert, mountain and lake offer resources – stone, bread, fish – that will buy you a seat. Get the most followers in a location and you can join the table. Once there, seats next to JC carry the most points, with apostles being the next best thing (apostles need to be released from the waiting area first). This means followers often arrive at the table first, running the risk of getting stuck near less valuable apostles or, worse still, Judas. Keeping company with Ol’ Kissy Lips will mean negative points. However, get the right action and you can switch places with an opponent. How do actions work? Fluidly, via a small symbolled deck.The candelabra unlocks travel to locations, a coin generates money and so on. Play symbols in the right sequence to build A seat at the table IERUSALEM: ANNO DOMINI Designer: Carmen G Jiménez | Publisher: Devir WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗Main board ◗4 Player boards ◗4 Illumination tiles ◗4 Blocked warehouse tiles ◗3 Blocked location tiles ◗32 Favour markers ◗28 Parable tiles ◗50 Offering counters ◗15 Location symbol tiles ◗60 Denarii coins ◗15 Sanhedrin’s Judgement tiles ◗25 Barabbas cards ◗50 Starting cards ◗4 Favours fulfilled markers ◗23 Mahane cards ◗10 33 AD cards ◗6 Help cards ◗Jesus tile ◗12 Apostles ◗60 Followers ◗30 Stone tokens ◗30 Bread tokens ◗30 Fish tokens ◗4 Score markers ◗Sanhedrin marker 90m 1-4 12+ £60 TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED: VILLAGE Resource management. Area control. Vying for top spot. The church. Impending death. Village could be mistaken for Ierusalem’s neighbour if it wasn’t such a quaint English idyll. ❚ PLAY IT? Y E S A tidy area-control and set-collection game with an abundance of resource and point-grabbing opportunities, Ierusalem: Anno Domini turns a deadly night out into great entertainment. Heathens beware: the Christian theme is delivered with such conviction, it might put you off the food.
60 September 2023 P L AY E D WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗3 Envelopes ◗36 Puzzle-piece Ring Segments ◗The Shelley Volumes Leaflet ◗Introductory Letter Puzzling the origins of a monster MOTHER OF FRANKENSTEIN: VOLUME ONE Designer: Terry Pettigrew-Rolapp, Tommy Wallach | Publisher: Arcane Wonders 4-6h 1-6 14+ £33.99 Defining the ideal player count for Mother of Frankentstein is tough. On one (hastily sewn on) hand, the leisurely perusal of personal letters lends itself to solo play; piecing together a story from these documents and formulating one’s own atmospheric narrative is a process heightened by the luxury of time. Indeed, deep immersion in this fractured but growing story finds fertile ground within a solitary mind. On the other(morbidly recycled) hand, the puzzle process feels considerably more manageable - and consequently, more enjoyable - with company. Work (and this does often feel like work) can be divvied out, discussed and decided upon. In fact, due to each envelope not needing to be solved sequentially, players can work on entirely different puzzles, periodically relaying snippets of narrative to one another and experiencing the game in a very different, but certainly possible, manner. Whilst the puzzles here are enjoyable, it’s really the emergent narrative that’s the real star here. But it’s not perfect.This first volume does well at conjuring empathy, but overall feels as if it’s merely setting the scene forthe remaining volumes.There’s not much in the way ofrevelatory drama here, but the near-voyeuristic process of unpicking context from private letters at leastresults in characters possessing a depth rarely seen in board games. CHAD WILKINSON Geneva, June 1816. A group of lovers and friends take shelter in a storm-bashed villa, under a cosy blanket of wine and laudanum. Encircled by towering Swiss peaks and oppressive weather, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron tell ghost stories, with Byron ultimately proposing they each write their own. In this moment, ‘Frankenstein; Or The Modern Prometheus’ was born, with Mary its devoted mother. The Cotswolds, July 2023. A board game reviewer seeks respite from the cacophony of an extended-family holiday. Clutching a volume under his arm, he retires to a dimly lit corner, unfurls its contents and begins to read. Gradually, curious onlookers gatherto decode the arcane miscellanea flooding the table. Soon, a story emerges. Mother of Frankenstein is an ambitious puzzle game with escape room style elements divided across three volumes. Its story works under the pretence that the volumes have been recently discovered and contain a number of puzzles created by Mary Shelley herself for her son Florence to solve. Alas, Florence never opened them, so now the task of discovering the truth behind the legacy of Mary and her monster falls to us. As you might imagine, this isn’t your typical escape room style game. It should perhaps be best viewed as a puzzle-based, storytelling game, but even this falls short of encapsulating Mother of Frankenstein’s format and function. At its simplest, the game recounts the earliest days of Mary’s and Percy Shelley’s affair, in the form of their letters to one another. Much like Frankenstein, this is an epistolary story, conveyed through correspondence, but interspersed with various other resources such as poems and celestial maps, to create the main puzzle element of the game. The game is split into four parts comprising of envelopes labelled ‘Poetry’, ‘Astronomy’ and ‘Music’, alongside the ‘Letters’ found within each of these. Accompanying each envelope is a corresponding ‘ring’ constructed from twelve interlocking pieces. Players must prise the order in which these uniquely illustrated pieces must be assembled from each envelope’s puzzle. Ultimately, players will be left with a concentric trio of rings which must then be manipulated in accordance with the riddles on the reverse of each letter. TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED CRIME SCENE: LONDON 1892 Bigger puzzles, bigger narrative, and a touch less grisly. ❚ PLAY IT? M AY B E Its pace may put off more general audiences but seasoned puzzle fans should find much to like in this unique, escape room-like game.
S T R A T E G Y G A M E S C A R D G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S MINIA T U R E S G A M E S F A MIL Y G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 61 The game’s biggest strength is the interaction between heroes, with some potent pairings that really pack a punch. One of you can prime an enemy, another can empower a nearby hero, who can then launch an attack. Yes, you will often be reliant on dice rolls to decide action successes, but your hero will have its own on-theme traits to mitigate somewhat against luck. Co-operative games often rely more on scenario than on character, yet Marvel D.A.G.G.E.R. has the advantage of fully fleshed characters that we’ve seen bought to life in countless comic stories and movies. Players can draw on catchphrases and backstories to really assume their hero’s identity, so you’ll probably want other Marvel fans to join you at the table. Here, who you play with is just as important as who you play as. The game’s biggest weakness? A skinny plot stretched over a lengthy running time. Things are genuinely exciting for the first four or five rounds, but it soon becomes wearing with the one-note arrival of more bad dudes showing up for another fist fight. Aside from unlocking a couple of extra powers, which can frequently go back out of use again, you don’t get to really develop your game or feel like you are gaining much – you’re ultimately just having the same, seemingly never-ending brawl while watching your hero become increasingly battle scarred. Staring at the board for three hours also doesn’t help matters. Although it’s understandably designed with a Stark Enterprises look, it is nevertheless still a pity not to see hints of Wakanda’s beauty or New York’s skyscrapers on the identikit circle locations. There’s also a strong possibility your favourite character/s isn’t/aren’t included – after all, the Marvel universe is a sprawling one. That was certainly the case during test plays, where Wanda, Vision, Quicksilver and Hawkeye were missed. Is that a whiff of expansion potential in the air? If expansions do follow, fingers crossed they come with more hours in the day. It’s worth factoring in the lengthy set up and pack up time of this game too, which poses a deterrent against regular plays. And it’s this factor that ultimately works against Marvel D.A.G.G.E.R.. Despite the considered character interaction and potential for replayability, the repetitive plot can outstay its welcome – leaving players longing for the endgame. *Defense Alliance for Global and Galactic Emergency Response, in case you were wondering. JENNY COX Marvel D.A.G.G.E.R.* is a co-operative in which friends and family join forces to take down a selection of bothersome nemeses. There are 10 heroes to choose from, each with two incarnations. This means, for example, if Black Panther T’Challa dies, Blank Panther Shuri slips into a vibranium-laced costume. Players also pick an aspect board from a list of six – such as Justice, Protection, Leadership – which offer specialised actions. The four nemeses (Red Skull, Loki, Thanos and Ultron) come with their own unique set of powers too. Mash these variables up and you have got yourself some high replayability. The gameplay is pretty familiar co-op stuff: 1. Achieve the overall objective (beat the nemesis). 2. Complete side missions (kill minion bad guys). 3. Defend locations from being overrun (those minion bad guys again). 4. Embark on herospecific missions (unlock weapons and abilities). 5. Keep a watchful eye on hero health levels (or face the consequences). It’s on this last point where you’ll be able to swap out for your secondary character if the primary hero dies. This takes the sting out of defeats and can be quite the compensation if you prefer the flip-side hero – Miles Morales and his multiverse being far more interesting to some than Peter Parker’s SpiderMan, for instance. Infinity war. Literally. MARVEL D.A.G.G.E.R. Designer: Dane Beltrami | Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗Game board ◗20 Hero standees ◗4 Nemesis standees ◗60 Enemy standees ◗6 Aspect stands ◗1 Nemesis stand ◗13 Plastic stands ◗5 Hero dice ◗10 Double-sided hero sheets ◗4 Nemesis sheets ◗6 Aspect sheets ◗10 Team-up cards ◗40 Support cards ◗28 Enemy cards ◗42 Event cards ◗5 Reference cards ◗20 Hero mission cards ◗20 Side mission cards ◗12 Nemesis mission cards ◗6 First Strike mission cards ◗1 Threat tracker ◗1 Threat target tracker ◗1 Team-up tracker ◗30 Aspect tokens ◗20 Double-sided combo tokens ◗44 Progress tokens ◗41 Damage tokens ◗5 Mission tokens ◗5 Overrrun tokens ◗1 First player token ◗1 The Iliad token ◗3 Suppression tokens ◗1 Stun token ◗1 Bifrost token 3-4h 1-5 12+ £90 TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED: MARVEL UNITED Fellow co-ops in crime, Marvel D.A.G.G.E.R. is worth considering if Marvel United felt too short. ❚ PLAY IT? M AY B E A legitimate excuse to assemble Marvel-loving besties, the lack of storytelling and long running time may prove monotonous.
62 September 2023 P L AY E D Toss some coins to your witchers THE WITCHER: OLD WORLD Designer: Łukasz Woźniak | Publisher: Go On Board, Cd Projekt Red WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗Game board ◗90 Action cards ◗50 Starting action cards ◗20 Witcher trophy cards ◗28 Potion cards ◗72 Exploration cards ◗56 Event cards ◗8 Attribute trophy cards ◗28 Monster cards ◗20 Monster fight cards ◗10 Help cards ◗Solo help card ◗10 Witcher Poker dice ◗35 Gold tokens ◗Closed tavern token ◗18 Location tokens ◗28 Monster tokens ◗5 Scoring tokens ◗15 Name tokens ◗5 Player boards ◗5 Witcher miniatures ◗5 Colour bases ◗25 Wooden cubes ◗5 Wooden shield markers 90-240m 1-5 14+ £80 of their turn, when they must choose a new card from the display, paying the relatively small cost in cards that would otherwise have been available for their movement phase next turn. All the game’s mechanisms click together neatly, servicing the evocative and superbly illustrated theme. However, each three-phase player turn can really stretch on, leading to some unwelcome downtime and a play time that starts to feel gruelling at higher player counts; for all its plus points, it really is a cumbersome experience with four-plus participants. The flipside of that, however, is The Old World does make for a great one-shot-adventure solitaire game – even if it means you don’t get to beat up any other witchers. DAN JOLIN Centuries before Geralt of Rivia stabbed his first nekker, mutagen-enhanced witchers roamed the Continent doing what they did best: hunting monsters, quaffing potions, having testy encounters with the locals, gambling in pubs and occasionally beating the crap out of each other. All this is precisely what you’ll get up to in The Witcher: Old World, which, despite being co-produced by CD Projekt, ignores The White Wolf and his chums entirely, serving up five of its own monster-botherers for you to choose from. Each witcher comes with their own player board and, in a nod to asymmetry, their own specialisation. You might be a School of the Wolf witcher, who excels in swordsmanship; or from the School of the Bear, giving you greater defensive capabilities. During the course of each game, you’ll be aiming to level up your special skill through training, along with the three basic stats of Combat, Defence and Alchemy. If you max out one of these stats, you earn a trophy card which awards you a bonus ability and provides an important step towards victory, as the winner is the first to claim your four trophies. More usually, however, you’ll win trophies by killing monsters, with the process of tracking and attacking these beasties forming the meat of the action. The main board is dominated by a beautifully rendered map of the Continent, which you’ll traverse by playing Action cards. Primarily, these cards depict a combat manoeuvre, but they also show a terrain icon: mountain, forest, or water. This must match a connecting location in order for you to move there. On arriving, you’ll be able to perform an action specific to that location, such as boosting a stat (so long as it’s not already higher than your character’s overall level), gaining a potion, playing Poker Dice (a mini-game that’s basically Yahtzee) or tracking one of the three monsters on the map (a mini-quest that, once completed, will give you initiative for your next monster-scrap). Then you can either draw an encounter card – which provides a fun narrative vignette with an either/or option at the end– or attack another player who’s on the same space, or get stabby with a monster that might be lurking there. Combat is one of The Old World’s most satisfying elements, relying on chaining combos with your cards, a la Tainted Grail. Each kind of Action card manoeuvre is colour coded; if a played card has a tab of the matching colour, you can connect it to form a combo. The more cards you chain, the more powerful the attack. Of course, it’s not totally random, as the mechanical core of the game is deckbuilding, meaning you should be constructing your deck to best optimise combo-creation. Your deck also represents your witcher’s life pool, so you must balance it being lean and effective with being thick enough to survive tougher fights. Each player’s deck is beefed up at the end TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED: LOST RUINS OF ARNAK With its mix of deckbuilding and exploration, The Old World brings to mind Mín and Elwen’s competitive adventure game, even if it does lack the workerplacement aspect. ❚ PLAY IT? Y E S If you can swallow the length of the player turns, then there’s much to enjoy here, from the narrative elements to the combo-centric combat.
S T R A T E G Y G A M E S C A R D G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S MINIA T U R E S G A M E S F A MIL Y G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 63 few cards to get expeditions on the way, with players submitting single or two-card sets to get the boulder rolling. As soon as those first steps have been made, things begin to slow and become more contemplative. You just need one more green card to complete your five-card set, but you keep drawing endless blues and yellows. Every extra card drawn is only going to fuel your opponent’s plans, as the moment you return all unused cards to the display, they’ll be snatched away like vultures descending on a barbeque buffet. Knowing when to call it quits and when to push on is crucial, especially when the first idol appears and now there’s no telling how many cards you have left to draw. The game comes with 12 different roles, of which you’ll use half of in any single playthrough, ensuring a variety of strategy and mechanical considerations every time you play. It even comes with six set-ups recommended by the designer for good combinations, but encourages players to try randomised or even drafted setups once you’ve gained familiarity. These roles each have their own unique twist, from the Pilot who will let you advance anywhere provided your expedition size meets the requirement to the Linguist who adds a secondary board players can advance on to gain additional bonuses. There’s so much to consider when putting together your team of eggheads that finding the best combinations with what you have is more important than being lucky at drawing (though the latter will always be helpful too.) I really appreciate the game’s reinvented visuals from its fantasy spiritual prequel Ethnos, with the turn of the century ‘Tales of Adventure’ aesthetic adding a classy charm whilst avoiding the tropes common to the theme (especially when the cast of characters are a diverse range of people instead of a bunch of burly men carrying different props.) Having all the components being ecofriendly is wonderful to see too; more cardboard boxes and wooden hot air balloons in games please! The simple mechanical nature of the game might deter some players but I really appreciated the ramping tension of racing across multiple paths pursuing prestige. A great game full of novelty and charm that, if it can win you over, will provide plenty of adventures again and again. MATTHEW VERNALL Some games struggle to find a way to combine beautiful visuals with an elegant straightforward mechanic, but then not all games are Archeos Society, an archaeology-themed set collection card game for 2-6 budding explorers. Across six continents (sorry Antarctica) are various historical sites, where you can send out expeditions to earn prestige. On your turn, you can either draw a card to find another member for a future expedition, or play a set of cards from your hand. All cards must either be the same colour or role with one card designated as your expedition leader. Each continent is split into multiple steps. To progress on each, you need to play an expedition led by someone with a matching colour and a minimum number of cards listed on each step. Whilst you can gather up to ten cards into your hand, once you play an expedition all remaining cards are put in the display, ready to be snatched up by others. In addition to these face-up cards, you can draw from the deck, but might end up revealing one of the three golden idol cards. These cards are shuffled randomly into the bottom half of the deck, with the season/round ending once all three have been drawn. The game becomes a mixture of pushing your luck whilst planning ahead. Early progress requires very Worth Rediscovering ARCHEOS SOCIETY Designer: Paolo Mori | Publisher: Space Cowboys WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗Score Track ◗6x Double-sided site boards ◗159x Cards ◗54x Wooden vehicle tokens ◗49x Cardboard Tokens ◗6x Museum Boards ◗Linguist Track 60m 2-6 12+ £45 TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED: ARBORETUM While not as cutthroat as the tree cultivating card game, both games encourage you to plan ahead and consider denying your opponents as much as creating your own point earning combos. ❚ PLAY IT? Y E S The ‘draw or play’ mechanics might come off as too simple for some but it’s an incredibly realised and evocative game, full of replay value if the mechanic or theme appeals to you.
We take a looksee at some of the biggest trading card game news of the month and discover what’s on the cards… THE C RDS TIME AND RAPPERS DELIGHTING IN SUCCESS Magic the Gathering continues to showcase some of the most beloved Sci-fi and fantasy licenses this year with the reveal of Universes Beyond: Doctor Who. Due for release on October 13th , the set will feature Doctors, Companions and Foes from the entire run of Doctor Who, a series that dates back to November 1963. Wizards of the Coast have also revealed the themes behind the four Commander decks, featuring all 13 Doctors and some of their greatest villains, as well as Collector Boosters with Showcase frames, foils and all kinds of fun designs. In other Magic news, the 1/1 “The One Ring” card that was the real showpiece and talking point from the recent Lord of the Rings expansion was sold to American rapper Post Malone for a reported 2 million dollars, making it, by a huge margin, the most expensive Magic card ever sold. MOVE INTO THE LIGHT Legendary Studios announced the new Flesh and Blood expansion Bright Lights this month, set for release on Friday 6th October and featuring new heroes, new game mechanics and over 250 new and fan favourite cards. The set will focus on the “Mechanologist class of heroes, driven by the pursuit of alternative energy sources to take the city of Metrix to the reaches of tomorrow and beyond” and will bring gameplay innovations such as the first ever equipment that starts the game in the player’s deck, which can transform base equipment into “countless possible mech suit combinations.” Also revealed was a new way to play the game: the 3-pack casual play format that’s billed as being easy to jump straight in called “Crack, Shuffle, Play.” Removing deck-construction entirely, players will open 3 packs, choose a hero and weapon, shuffle up and get right into a game. This will make it easier than ever for new players to join in the fun. TIME TO AWAKEN The new One Piece TCG expansion, OP-05 Awakening of the New Era has been revealed by Bandai and this is one which One Piece fans should be very excited for. This set is celebrating the 1st anniversary of the One Piece TCG and will feature a Special Anniversary Luffy card drawn by One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda himself. Op-05 will be based on the Skypia Arc and Revolution Army characters, showing parts of the One Piece story not yet covered by the TCG. The set is due for release in English in December 2023 and given One Piece expansions have so far been identical to the Japanese sets, we have already seen exciting cards, like the first ever Enel leader and the debut of characters such as Koala and Belo Betty. YOU LOOK DIFFERENT... Jasco Games, makers of the Universus Collectible Card Game have rebranded to UVS Games and announced a series of new expansions for their flagship game. Although recently the game has focused on My Hero Academia (the website was, before the rebrand, play.mhacardgame.com) three new sets have been announced featuring a variety of IPs. My Hero Academia: Jet Burn will continue the adaptation of the beloved manga and anime to the tabletop and releases later this year, joined by Challenger Series: Trigun Stampede and Challenger Series: Cowboy Bebop, giving fans of those franchises a way to play as well. DID YOU JUST EVOLVE? Two new Digimon TCG expansions have been revealed, although little has been officially revealed of the English sets. EX05 Theme Booster Animal Colosseum is slated for release in January 2024 as the latest EX set, outside of the standard numbered sets. Before that though, we’ll see the release of Blast Ace in November. From the Japanese release we know that this will feature ACE Digimon that let you evolve for free as a counter play, but cost you memory when they leave the field. Words by Ross ‘The Wossy’ Gilbert tabletopgaming.co.uk 65
66 September 2023 Ahush falls overthe hall. At the North side of the NECBirmingham, 426 players are waiting forthe judges to commence the timer, with one person sitting on the sidelines with theirround one bye. The timer starts and there is a cascading sound of card shuffling that heralds the start of the tournament to determine the UK’s first ever Flesh and Blood Calling Champion. Flesh and Blood has always been designed with competitive play in mind. Created by New Zealander James White, this was always planned to be collectable card game that tested players to prove their cardplaying prowess. Whilst an unfortunately timed release led to a bumpy start for their competitive scene (the game’s second set released on March 27th 2020), as the world has now properly opened up again Legend Story Studios has rolled out a series of tournaments across the world, culminating later this year in Barcelona at the World Championships. Entry for that tournament is available to the highest placed players at Birmingham, in addition to the cash prize of $5000 (a little under £4000) to first place, with anyone ranked 32nd or higher still earning at least $250. With the chance to make history, earn their place at the World Championship and serious cash prizes on the line, you could feel the buzzing energy emenating from the hall, as players prepared for the battles ahead over the two-day event. For those who weren’t ready to answer the call (or who had been unsuccessful and dropped out from the tournament early) there was still plenty to do. Artists Othon Nikolaidis and Tomasz Jedruszek were in attendance, signing cards and selling art prints of their most well-known illustrations from the game, Saturday saw the cosplay contest with the winner an exclusive version of the hero ‘Taylor,’ a card only available As England prepared for its first ever Flesh and Blood Calling tournament, we followed the action to find out who would be crowned the first UK Champion Written by Matthew Vernall ABOVE: Congratulations to Jodie Dorling for their winning costume of Ira performing the action “Whirling Mist Blossom”. FAB CALLING: BIRMINGHAM
through participating in official FAB cosplay events. There was also a wide variety of stall vendors buying and trading cards with players eager to complete their dream decks or looking to offload their collections to raise funds for side events. With a full timetable running alongside the main event of the weekend, players could experience other popularformats at a competitive level, from special sealed events like Shapeshifter(where class and talent doesn’t need to match your hero, leading to all sorts of wild card combinations)to other popular constructed formats like Commoner(played using only common ortoken rarity cards) and Ultimate Pit Fight(a fan made multiplayer format where players can only interact with opponents on theirimmediate left orright, whittling away until one hero is left standing.) After twelve gruelling hours of play across the two-days, it was on Sunday afternoon that eight players faced a single-elimination bracket to once and for all determine the UK’s first Calling Champion. tabletopgaming.co.uk 67
68 September 2023 FAB CALLING: BIRMINGHAM THE TOP 8 The players in the Top 8 represented the wide spectrum of experience found in FAB, from first timers to this level of play like Samuel Braben, to FAB’s first ever Pro Tour Champion, Pablo Pintor. Players hailed not just from the UK, but all across Europe, including Italy, Spain, Denmark, Croatia and Switzerland alongside three plucky Brits, who faced steep competition to try and win on their home turf. THE QUARTER FINALS What made the chances of a UK finalist even slimmer was two of them immediately facing off in the quarter finals, as Ash Sanaty battled against the George Keys, using the comboheavy Ninja Katsu and the Switchblade Assassin Uzuri respectively. “When we played earlier in the tournament, Ash managed to engineer an absolutely massive combat chain,’ says George. “He was able to perfectly sequence a four-attack combo with Surging Strike, Descendant Gustwave, Bonds of Ancestry into Dishonour, obliterating my character’s abilities and winning the match. I knew that this time, I had to keep him on the back foot to avoid the same blowout turn.” Whilst Ash did manage to get some decent licks in, cards like Censor and Shake Down constantly interrupted his combo chain, giving George enough time to pile on the pressure forthe win. Although Ash was out of the tournament, he left with no regrets. “George is an excellent player and very familiar with this match-up,” says Ash. “Since Katsu has been my main hero for over a year,Ifelt most confident using him and was very happy to have exceeded my target goal of placing 17th or higher.” Ralph Schlauri had also qualified with Katsu and now faced the top placed player of the tournament Sebastian Grøndal, who was striking hard with the Guardian Bravos. Sebastian had only lost one game in the qualifying rounds in a mirror match with fellow Top-8 competitor Pablo Pintor. “Going into this match,” says Sebastian, “I had planned on blocking a lot to slowly pivot into a strong hand of high resource cards. That way, I could set up a massive attack with a crush effect. “However, I changed my approach when Ralph’s Zephyr Needle broke.” In a prime example of how a single mistake can have massive consequences, Ralph accidentally attacked with his brittle dagger whilst Sebastian could put forward a high defence card, causing it to shatter even after Ralph empowered the blade. “I was so concerned about being hit with a crushing attack, thatI misunderstood how my weapon worked, destroying my precious needle.” says Ralph. “I was originally thinking on playing the whole turn differently where I wouldn’t have used it, which maybe could’ve made the difference.” With the Ninja down to one weapon, Sebastian seized the opportunity to change tactics. “I played the way Oldhim [another Guardian hero] decks used to work; blocking and preparing defence reactions, letting Katsu wear himself out.” After an hour-long match, Bravo’s constant shielding and repeated hammer blows battered down their opponent. “Sebastian played that match-up so well,” says I like to play tempo decks and being able to use my equipment to manipulate my deck. In FAB, it’s really important to play a deck that you feel confident with. LEFT: Your Top 8 Competitors from top left clockwise: Sebastian Grondal, Luka Kramarić, Stefano Meoni, George Keys, Ralph Schlauri, Pablo Pintor, Ash Sanaty and Samuel Braben.
Ralph. “Ijust couldn’t get through his defence! I’m still super happy with how the tournament went, it was so great having the support of my wife and friends throughout the weekend and we all had a blast in Birmingham!” It was a good quarter-finals for Bravo as Pablo Pintor was also able to bring the hammer down, this time facing off against the bowwielding Ranger Azalea controlled by Stefano Meoni. “I played Oldhim in the past, but now that he’s a Living Legend, I couldn’t use him in the tournament.” Says Stefano. “A lot of people were talking about Lexi [another Ranger who, despite being the most played hero in the tournament, was not featured at all in the Top 8] but I’m not a fan of her playstyle, so instead I’ve been testing a lot with Azalea. I like to play tempo decks and being able to use my equipment to manipulate my deck. In FAB, it’s really important to play a deck that you feel confident with.” That confidence certainly helped to bring Pablo down to four life, but this match was always going to be hard for the archer to win. “Sadly, Azalea struggles against decks with so much defence and disruption.” says Pablo. “I was also running Warmonger’s Diplomacy, which really hurts her [as it forces them to make weaker attacks that can be easily blocked.] Stefano played a brilliant game and got me real low, but he didn´t have enough cards left in the deck to finish the job.” “My teammate Antonio plays Bravo, so I knew that the match up was not good for me.” says Stefano. “I was not prepared to fight Bravo fatigue and Pablo is an amazing person; I really liked being able to play him, despite the defeat. I just hope we can have a rematch soon!” The last Bravo of the Top 8 run by Luka Kramaric had a frosty encounter against Samuel Braben’s Ice Wizard Iyslander. Luka had previously come first in Battle Hardened: Bologna and was confident going into the match. “Playing as Bravo always feels thrilling, as almost every game is a close one with little to no blowout matches.” “Bravo is quite a good match-up for Iyslander,” says Samuel. “You just need to play for value. If you can sneak in a frostbite effect when they overextend on an all-out attack, you can shut him down completely. “Luka started off strong with an immediate Crippling Crush attack, costing me 8 life.The game got very dicey as he continued to threaten to pummel me using his weapon Anothos.I managed to claw it back by blocking for 10 with a Fyendal’s Fighting Spirit, letting me gain a little life back so I could keep my defences up.” tabletopgaming.co.uk 69
70 September 2023 FAB CALLING: BIRMINGHAM “When I drew a hand with low resources,” says Luka. “It gave Samuel enough time to fight back. I was able to put in some more hits but it wasn’t enough. He fought very hard and deserved the win!” THE SEMI-FINALS As four competitors left the tournament earning a not inconsiderate $750 (which would certainly help cover the costs for hotels and travel) we prepared for Pablo competing with George and Samuel facing Sebastian. “I played against Bravo twice in the earlier rounds,” says George. “Where my plan had been to send out my aggressive go-again cards to keep him blocking. This worked the first time, but I was thoroughly dismantled by Sebastian before the Top-8 cut. Knowing that Pablo was on a similar deck, I scrambled a bit to form a strategy. I needed to whittle his life down while preserving some of my more powerful cards, to finish him off during the second cycle.” “Uzuri is a great deck, but she relies a lot on surprise attacks.” says Pablo. “As Bravo, you can block the attacks with on-hit effects until she has no threats left. George was really smart and saved a lot of power for the second cycle of the game, but even with cards like Codex of Frailty (which usually allows you to regain tempo), Bravo can dish out a lot of damage and disruption if he has access to most of his hand.” Despite George successfully executing his plan of attack, Bravo showed his indomitable spirit as Pablo played nearly all of his healing cards, widening the gap between the two life totals. Whilst on his final point of life, George swung with both blades and even threw one of them for good measure, but it wasn’t enough and Pablo brought down a dominating Choke Slam to win. “After seeing how other Uzuri players handle Bravo, there’s a few adjustments I can make to my strategy,” reflects George. “Even so, it a tough matchup against an exceptional player. Making Day Two had already exceeded my expectations, so getting to the Top 4 was a very welcome surprise.” But who would face the Pro-Tour champion in the finals? Both of the other semi-finals had face Pablo previously this tournament, but would it be a rematch for Sebastian to avenge his previously perfect winning streak, or could Samuel have the chance to beat him again and take home the tournament? Yet again Samuel started off on the back foot, with Sebastian also dealing out a turn 1 Crippling Crush. Even with this early lead, Sebastian knew he couldn’t let up. “I have a bit
tabletopgaming.co.uk 71 of a love/hate relationship with Iyslander. Her level of interaction is powerful and playstyle very unique. She has a good matchup against a lot of decks, Bravo being one of them. The best Iyslander players tend to be very good at understanding disruption tactics, knowing all of the minute details which give them small, but incremental advantages.” Samuel was able to push through with enough arcane damage to weatherthe storm of hammer hits, taking the victory. “Because Sebastian only had one equipment with Arcane Barrier,I was able to set up big hits like Emeritus Scolding followed by AetherIcevein, forcing lots of unblockable damage in short bursts.I’d also researched his deck ahead of time so I knew he didn’t have any surprise ways of preventing damage, letting me attack with confidence.” It was a hard-fought match that both players learned a lot from. “I fell that I might need to find room in my deck for Zealous Beltings, as they would have improved both my mirror and Iyslander matches.” says Sebastian. “However, the list was already running on a very thin line to battle against the Lexi fatigue plan. Alas, it’s just not possible to have access to everything. That’s what makes the game so great!” THE FINAL After over fourteen hours of play across the weekend and from 427 participants, we were now down to two. Pablo Pintor, seasoned veteran with plenty of high-level experience, against Samuel Braben, who had started playing FAB less than a year ago and was now a finalist at his first major event. “At this point, all of the Bravo decks were melting together in my mind.” says Samuel. “I couldn’t remember how much Arcane Barrier Pablo was running, only that he preferred to play long, so I had to make sure to keep some cards like Frost Hex and Insidious Chills ready for the late-game.” “I would say Oldheim vs Iyslander is the matchup I have played the most (from both sides) in all of FAB,” says Pablo. “While Bravo is not as powerful or resourceful as Oldheim, the strategy is pretty similar: it’s a race to get damage in before she can get set up.” Samuel went first, with a lucky opening hand letting him play out a Frost Hex, permanently improving all of his Frostbite effects. Pablo fought back with series of big swings, making great use of the Dominate ability to force some major damage. As a third attack came in, Samuel countered with an Emeritus Scolding for major Arcane damage, before completely blocking Pablo’s attack. A similar back-and-forth played out over the next few turns: Pablo would swing big with a 10 or 11 power attack, leaving him vulnerable for Samuel to sneak in some arcane damage, each hit further empowered by that Frost Hex. Despite having less than half the amount of life Pablo had, Samuel held on hope. “I started to feel confident when Pablo blocked my first Enlightened Strike with two defence reactions.I was quite low on life, so if he had a large attack in hand, he could have taken the damage and used all his cards to attack. Because he blocked,I knew he was only going to attack in with his weapon, letting me set up an AetherIcevein that stripped him of cards.” This flurry of icy blasts brought Pablo’s life total down to 13, but Samuel was still in a precarious position with 3 life left. Both players were showing the skills that had brought them to this final, demonstrating mastery of their own decks and knowledge of their opponent’s decklists to reliably predict what might come next. Samuel unleashed another Enlightened Strike, again forcing Pablo to heavily block, leaving him exposed for a follow-up Wounded Bull for 8. After finally getting Pablo down to single digits, Samuel cast Insidious Chill, forcing Pablo to expend more cards every turn. After another powerful Aether Icevein, Samuel set up an Ice Bolt ready to activate in Pablo’s turn. After using the last of his resources for one final hammer blow, Pablo was beaten to the punch by the bolt of ice and a blast of arcane energy from Samuel’s Waning Moon weapon. With that, Samuel Braben became the UK’s first ever Calling Champion! A NEW CHAMPION Even in defeat, Pablo is nothing if not gallant and jubilant. “It´s incredible that I have been lucky enough to get another great result, I´m on a really good streak! I’m extremely happy with how I did, me and Sunflower Samurai teammates have worked hard to prepare for this tournament, so seeing it pays off has made us really proud. “Itook the gamble allowing Samuel to go first, trying to take the tempo of the game.It backfired quite spectacularly when he immediately played Frost Hex. But it was still a really good game and a Samuel deserved that win, having blasted every Bravo on his path to finals.” Samuel, his phone was blowing up with friends sending him congratulations, was beaming at his success. “I felt so grateful to have had so much support from my friends and family. I had a fantastic time against all of my opponents across the weekend. I didn’t have a single bad player experience once. “Whilst I wasn’t originally planning to go to World Championship, I certainly am now!” * I feel so grateful to have had so much support from my friends and family.
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74 September 2023 P L AY E D Disney Magic | System: Disney Lorcana LORCANA: THE FIRST CHAPTER Designer: Ryan Miller and Steve Warner | Publisher: Ravensburger WHAT’S IN THE SET? ◗216 Cards with set code “1” ◗12 Enchanted ◗12 Legendary ◗18 Super Rare ◗48 Rare ◗54 Uncommon ◗72 Common 30m 2-4 8+ £5+ down, ready to use immediately. This mechanic solves the problem faced by Magic and Pokémon; as almost any card can be turned into ink, your chances of not being in a position to play anything are dramatically reduced, whilst further increasing the odds of drawing playable cards when you need them most. There are other means of circumventing costs or limits to keep things interesting. Some items or abilities will reduce the cost of played cards or let you put the top card of your deck immediately into your inkwell, whilst song actions can be played either by paying their ink cost, or by exhausting a character of equal or greater cost to ‘sing’ the song card, a flavourful way of offering value and deepening play considerations each turn. Some characters can also ‘shift’ onto existing versions of themselves, letting you immediately spring a more powerful version into play at the risk of losing two cards at once. With a hundred years of animation to choose from (yep, Disney is now a century old) The First Chapter has This was always going to be noteworthy. The biggest media property on the planet making their first collectable card game, a system designed to tap into that primal gathering desire, was going to print money. But whilst hype will help you make headlines, without a solid game to back it up, it won’t sell a system. Fortunately for Lorcana, this first release manages to do both. The story goes that you are an Illumineer in the realm of Lorcana, who can channel your powerful imagination into the creation of Glimmers, versions of beloved Disney characters who add a treasure known as Lore to the realm. Together you race to gather lore, as threats loom on the horizon that might put this realm’s existence in jeopardy. Players of Lorcana are competing to be the first to gather 20 lore. To do this, you will use your 60-card deck comprised of cards selected from up to two of the six available inks to create characters and items as well as perform magical actions. You’ll use these three card types to generate lore, with the majority of character cards having the ability to create at least one lore by questing (turning them sideways.) You can also use characters to activate various abilities (such as drawing cards, healing others or singing songs, more on that later) orto challenge your opponent’s characters. Any exhausted character can be challenged, with each card involved in the challenge dealing damage equal to their Strength and being banished (sent to the discard pile) once theirtotal damage taken equals their Willpower. Aside from being unable to use a card the moment its played (the ink has to dry after all) you’re free to play and use cards in any order you want, offering strategic depth in how you sequence. In order to play out new cards you exhaust ink, face-down cards that are added to your inkwell. You can add up to one card from hand to the inkwell each turn, by revealing the card to prove it has an inkwell icon around its cost (more powerful cards often lack this icon as a means of balancing their power potential) before putting it face
S T R A T E G Y G A M E S C A R D G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S MINIA T U R E S G A M E S F A MIL Y G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 75 Amethyst makes for a more controlling deck, exhausting and returning your opponent’s characters as you steadily grow in power. Given that all ink can be used to play any card they had to find a way to limit players from trying to smash everything into a single deck, but even with that consideration a lot of effort has gone into planning each pair, with everything more than capable of working with another ink, just to different styles of gameplay. Getting into Lorcana is simple: the three starter decks each offer a great balance of core staples and fun rares from which you can branch off and customise your own decks. I love that each deck also comes with a booster pack; you can instantly start adding your own personal twists from the first game. The product range will be familiar to anyone who has collected Pokémon, but this isn’t a negative: avoiding too many options will ensure players can buy to the level they’re comfortable with and not have to worry about missing out if they don’t buy in booster boxes. Having two rares guaranteed each pack (there’s also a foil that could sometimes be rare or higher too) should help keep card prices accessible, with a lot of the big money going to the special full-art Enchanted versions of cards. I never have a problem with any system offering luxury versions, provided that a cheaper option is available. sprinkled beloved characters from across the wide timeline, from newer hits like Moana and Frozen to the very first animated classics like Steamboat Willie and Fantasia. The designers have gone out of their way to showcase a bit of everything to appeal to Disney fans young and old, whilst also featuring your favourite heroes and villains across multiple inks, letting you play the characters you love alongside the strategies you prefer. Each of the six different inks has its own personality and play strategy too: Amber characters look out for one another and have singers who can perform higher value songs for extra value; Emerald characters evade attacks can manipulate your opponents into charging reckless or even returning to hand; Amethyst has lots of magical characters and ways to gain specific advantages; Ruby character have daring abilities that steal lore or cause massive shifts to the board; Sapphire includes many ways to manipulate items or gain extra ink in a turn; and Steel has some of the sturdiest and mightiest characters, in the game. What’s also great is how each possible pair then has its own character, infusing aspects of its inks for a more developed strategy. Ruby and Emerald excel at evasive characters, who can quest for lore without being able to be challenged back, combining Emerald with TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED: POKÉMON TCG Another franchise beloved by many, both games reward players who learn the system well and collectors who just want to have a beautiful array of cards. ❚ BUY IT? A S B O X E S With accessible rules, variable player counts and enough tactical consideration for competitive play, you might be looking at the next big CCG craze. I also love the multiplayer rules: when playing with more than two players, simply pass turns clockwise. It’s perfect. Having cards mention ‘each opponent’ shift their power for these games, letting you revalue a card for different player counts if you desired, but not needing specific decks for various formats. If you want to get someone into the game, you can have them join in whilst you’re already playing, with the more experienced players helping them out as they now fend off two opponents. It’s a brilliant way to get people playing and gives the game a more welcoming vibe. So far, every experience I’ve had with Lorcana has been fantastic. I feel that I’m learning more with each game I play, being able to customize my strategy without overly relying on rarer cards (though there are certainly some legendaries that will be expensive, have those card sleeves at hand.) I will personally be attending my local store to play in the Organized Play events (already planned from launch with prize support) as it’s the right balance of easy to start playing, capable of playing casually but also offering a slight competitive potential that fits within my lifestyle. Here’s hoping they can keep that momentum up. MATTHEW VERNALL
76 September 2023 P L AY E D Competent Card-play LOST EMPIRES: WAR FOR THE NEW SUN Designer: Brad Pye | Publisher: Kolossal Games WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗128 x faction cards ◗48 x damage tokens ◗28 x drain tokens ◗20 x artifact tokens ◗12 x elite tokens ◗8 x command tokens ◗8 x gate tokens ◗4 x faction hive tiles ◗3 x objective tiles ◗2 x 10-sided dice ◗4 x reference cards ◗2 x supply tokens ◗1st player token 45m 2 14+ £27.99 As you can imagine, this makes for some swingy moments. You can thunder in with overwhelming force and get completely stymied thanks to a lucky roll from your opponent. All card battlers are games of variance disguised as games of skill to an extent, but it feels particularly obvious in Lost Empires. Having all damage nullified by the result die feels unsatisfying, especially given how every other part of the game is framed as this deeply tactical, positional dance. At the end of each round, you check the various objectives to see who has control based on accumulated strength of units, with the winner in each location getting an artifact token. If you have four tokens you can exchange them to flip one of your Wormgate cards. Flip all four and you’ve constructed your big portal and planet 581 is yours. While far from revolutionary, the artwork is high-quality and evocative – think grimy mechs and mysterious, futuristic ruins. The four factions have distinct feels and tactics and you can customise decks once you’ve tried out the suggested starters. Lost Empires contains few original ideas. The dice combat can be frustrating and the ticking clock of the artifacts mechanic (very reminiscent of Keyforge) often results in endgames where the result is all but a foregone conclusion. But despite that, I kind of dig it? It’s thematic, each game is quick, the price is right, and when it works, it works. TIM CLARE L ost Empires: War For The New Sun takes the player-vs-player card battler experience and squeezes it down into a single, compact box. Alien artifacts have been discovered on a distant planet and four factions are battling in the ruins of Earth for the chance to colonise this new planet. The race is to be the first to construct a Wormgate – a gigantic portal – through which to transport your troops and take control of the new planet. To do this, you’re going to seize control of objectives – key locations – and exploit the artifacts there to reconstruct the gate. There are four factions included in the box: The Feng, anti-corporate guerrilla fighters who favour a rush strategy; Terra Corps, an alliance of Earth’s biggest corporations with an emphasis on powerful, hard-hitting units; the Neo Human Republic, a coalition of researchers who rely more on defence and setting up a big board state; and the Scion Imperium, a dark force of trans-human theocrats, who rely on melee and disruptive control effects. Compared to other card-driven combat games your decks are small – just eighteen cards apiece, with two copies of each card in the suggested starter decks for each faction, meaning your entire strategy rises out of nine unique cards. A lot of the core mechanics here will be familiar to seasoned card battlers. Cards fall into two broad categories: units and support. Units are the people, creatures and vehicles that you play onto the battlefield to fight for you, whilst support cards have one-off effects, such as drawing you more cards or affecting units on the battlefield. Units that move or attack become ‘drained,’ meaning they can’t act again this turn (yet another entry to the long, cumbersome list of proprietary alternatives to ‘tapped’ to avoid incurring the wrath of Wizards of the Coast’s lawyers). Combat is resolved by comparing the attacker and defender’s respective offense and defence stats, then rolling dice. Attackers deal two damage if they roll higher, one on a draw and zero if they roll lower. If the attacker rolls a critical and dealt at least one damage, they deal an additional one damage – a critical from the defender blocks all damage, regardless of final totals. TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED SORCERER Both games offer a combination of area control, dice and asymmetric decks. ❚ PLAY IT? M AY B E If you can’t get enough of card battlers and you want something casual that doesn’t rely on your friends buying their own decks, this is a fun little excursion.
S T R A T E G Y G A M E S C A R D G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S MINIA T U R E S G A M E S F A MIL Y G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 77 can potentially change your dice roll, cause you damage or even force you to destroy one of your hard-earned souls. On the flipside, they can potentially help you out by playing a beneficial card instead. The game encourages you to barter with players when you need some assistance. This ‘gotcha’ style gameplay is a little Marmite; some will embrace the chaos, while others will be infuriated that their best laid plans have gone awry through no fault of their own. The other issue is that, with so many interruptions or negotiations for bartering, the game has the potential to drag, particularly with a higher player count. This snazzy Collector’s Edition also introduces rooms that have different gameplay effects. The rooms are changed each time you kill a monster and mimic the exploration element of the videogame. Of course, they also add another random element to a game that’s already fairly chaotic. Those who loveThe Binding of Isaac video game are certainly going to get the most out of this fancy Collector’s Edition. Although no matter how much you revel in the misadventures ofIsaac, that hefty price tag is going to be hard to swallow for what boils down to a Munchkin-esque card game that has the propensity to overstay its welcome. ROB BURMAN Take that & party THE BINDING OF ISAAC: FOUR SOULS - ULTIMATE COLLECTOR’S EDITION Designer: Edmund McMillen | Publisher: Maestro Media WHAT’S IN THE BOX? ◗300+ Binding of Isaac Second Edition cards ◗250+ Requiem expansion cards ◗90+ Four Souls+ expansion cards ◗100 Tainted Penny tokens ◗10 nickel tokens ◗Dice ◗‘Tainted’ coin bag ◗15 heart tokens ◗15 tear tokens ◗10 card dividers 30-60m 1-4 14+ £119.99 TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED MUNCHKIN Both share a distinctive art style, those potentially irritating ‘gotcha’ moments and opportunities to backstab your friends. ❚ PLAY IT? M AY B E A game for the fans of the original videogame more-so than new players, but still has its moments of somewhat charming card-playing chaos. Dating back to 2014, The Binding of Isaac is a video game based loosely on the biblical tale of Isaac. Playing as the titularIsaac, you must escape his deranged mother who is determined to kill him, after becoming convinced she is doing God’s work.Isaac heads off into the basement beneath his house where he encounters numerous monsters, collects piles of treasure and dies… a lot. The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls takes the basic concept of collecting loot and killing monsters, then turns it into a fairly light card game, where you have to collect souls by dispatching bosses. If you’re a fan of the videogame, then you’ll no doubt love seeing the various characters, items and monsters that you’ve spent countless hours with adapted to the tabletop. If you’ve never played the videogame, then the stylised (often gross) artwork and religious quotes can instead be a little off-putting. I got to experience The Ultimate Collector’s Edition, which actually combines the original game with a couple of extra expansions (Four Souls+ and Requiem) so you’re getting a hefty number of cards to set-up! You begin by randomly choose your character and their starting item. Each starting item and character have their own special abilities that can be activated during the course of the game. These abilities can completely change the outcome of a turn, so knowing the best time to trigger them is key to success. You start each turn by grabbing some loot, before potentially purchasing treasure and fighting those pesky monsters.The latteris really the meat of the game. You can choose to attack one of the two monsters available by rolling a D6 and beating the monster’s evade roll(e.g., if they have 4+ you need to roll a four or more) until they take enough damage. However, if you fail to score high enough, you’ll take damage and potentially die. Each time you snuff it, you’ll discard one of yourloot cards and lose money, which is used to buy treasure. Of course, with so much tied to a dice roll, there is a lot ofrandomness to the game, which can be frustrating. However, that’s only the start of the chaos, because other players can respond to your actions by playing their own loot and treasure cards during your turn. This means they
DUNGEONS& DRAGONS 5THEDITION Roll for initiative as we present four fantastic RPG systems to consider if you’ve only ever played the forefather of roleplay 78 September 2023 C NNECT F UR “You enter the cave, weaving through stalagmites as a heavy rotting smell wafts from deeper within. As you tread further into the darkness, a mass of mattered fur rises groggily to its feet. You look at the half-cleaved face of the zombie bear, as it roars gutturally. Roll for initiative!” If that last paragraph got you pumped for an evening of adventure, you’ve likely gained some experience with roleplaying games, which means you’ve also likely played some version of the first ever roleplaying game: Dungeons and Dragons. Designed in 1974 by Gary Gygax and Dave Ameson, the game captured the imagination of millions by blurring the lines between wargames and improv to create a tabletop gaming experience like no other. The system has existed in some form or another for nearly 50 years now, seeing various changes to rules complexity, combat mechanics and other facets of its wargaming origins. As each decade passes, the interests and core focus has shifted to find the perfect balance between strategic combat and narrative exploration. As it stands in the current 5th iteration, there is a much greater focus on player creativity, rewarding them for embracing their character and engaging with the narrative as much as the core gameplay of ‘rolling dice to beat up enemies.’ Whilst it was the first and for many it’s the only RPG for them, that halfcentury of gaming innovation has seen many other fantastic roleplaying game rules systems, that offer newer or deeper mechanics and other avenues for storytelling possibilities. You often won’t look back on the specific rules or mechanics of any given RPG; you remember the stories your play group created, the thrilling heroics and tragic failures, the moments of triumph and heartbreak. If you’ve only ever explored roleplaying through the lens of skill checks and armour classes, I highly recommend giving any of these four systems a try, to see if you can better focus on what your playgroup loves most about RPGs (Note: the prices we’ve listed for these books are for digital downloads, though all of them have physical copies available too.) RELEASED: 2014 DESIGNER: Jeremy Crawford PUBLISHER: Wizards of the Coast PLAYERS: 3-6 PLAY TIME: 120+m RRP: £20 (Starter Set) Four games like… Words by Matthew Vernall
tabletopgaming.co.uk 79 Wanna roll like there’s no tomorrow? If your party loves to get into scrapes and likes slaying monsters in uncaring worlds, it’s harder to find a more hostile locale than MÖRK BORG. Character’s lives in Galgenbeck are short and cruel, as you fight your way through a heavy-metal inspired fantasy setting where the world can end at a roll of the dice. Characters have few hit points and some scenarios will cause instant death, so don’t get too attached to anyone. It’s a system that’s perfect for players who like their characters to live fast and die spectacularly, offering a liberation from the overly protective nature that’s become so common in D&D. There’s also plenty of variants out there to find your preferred setting, from sci-fi to swashbuckling and many more flavours in between. If you want a little taster of the catastrophe that awaits you, check out this month’s ‘Read it Played’ feature on page 82. Some players find it hard to tell a compelling story when your character lacks the necessary points in Charisma and training in persuasion skills. Apocalypse World and the many systems that use its core mechanics (helpfully credited as ‘Powered by the Apocalypse’) trims down the need for so many polyhedrons and stats into a 2d6 system with a handful of stat modifiers. Nearly every test, every challenge or problem is solved with rolling 2d6 and adding/subtracting the relevant modifier. Wanna overpower a bandit with your sledgehammer? Roll Hard and get more than a seven for a chance of success. Each system has its own tweaks and means of making it easy for both players and GM to get inventive with the narrative, letting you delve deep into story possibilities without being mired in minutiae. Whilst the original’s setting can be a little heavy for some groups, I also highly recommend looking at Dungeon World and Monsterhearts for different tones with the same mechanical core. Every D&D group has tried a heist at least once. For the players it’s a challenge to unravel the mystery set before them, struggling to decide on what to prepare or do. For the DM, it’s a nightmare trying to plan for every eventuality, doing you best to prevent the session devolving into a Benny Hill routine. Blades in the Dark does away with the need to overly plan and focuses entirely on doing cool crimes with an elastic rules system. Each session revolves around a score, the target for your group that seems impossible to obtain. However, every problem can be solved with judicious usage of flashbacks and limited but versatile assets. How to get the guards out of the way? You arranged a street gang to create a distraction yesterday. Need to get out of a third story window? Good job I had that grappling hook stowed. It’s constant rising tension through clocks that countdown to failure or success, combined with Stress that means players have to be careful about what they solve in advance, makes the system a joy to play. D&D will forever be rooted in wargaming. The battle grids, range limits, varied weapon damage die, all of it is core to the combat inherited from tabletop sieges. Lancer shows what you can do when you take both the roleplay aspects and wargame combat to their extremes, creating a beautiful blend that gives both systems their chance to shine. Players are pilots of their personal custom mechs, in a post-scarcity future where it’s less about what you own and more what you can do. Even fresh-faced lancers have a massive variety of mech and character customization, with battles decided through a turn-based strategy game that lets you feel like a techno god as you tear through foes, whilst roleplaying is a lot more open ended, always giving you a way to act incharacter to solve their problems, provided you’re willing to sometimes sacrifice something to suceed. The freeform roleplay advancing you to the next seemingly suicidal battle is a joyous cycle that will keep you hooked through every conflict. 16+ £16 18+ £20 14+ £16 12+ £20 MÖRK BORG CONNECTION: Fighting and Feasting APOCALYPSE WORLD CONNECTION: Story Focused Fun BLADES IN THE DARK CONNECTION: Getting into trouble LANCER CONNECTION: Wargaming evolved 96 304 336 430
The cooperative tile placement game is based on the award-winning video game from Toukana Interactive. Place landscapes to complete tasks, gain points to improve your high score. THE BOARD GAME THE DUEL Spring 2024 release
tabletopgaming.co.uk 81 Explore exciting new worlds and battle sinister forces with this month’s top new RPG releases Words by Richard Jansen-Parkes DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: PHANDELVER AND BELOW - THE SHATTERED OBELISK A new adventure for D&D 5e, set in the town made famous by the game’s classic starter set. Phandalin is in danger as a new threat emerges from below. The heroes must uncover a sinister plot by a malevolent cult and confront the otherworldly forces to save the town from destruction. Wizards of the Coast | £44.00 CALL OF CTHULHU RPG: ALONE AGAINST THE STATIC This slim, solo Call of Cthulhu adventure set in 1991 South Dakota thrusts you into a story of grief, isolation and relationships with a new mechanic to track fateful choices. Blending traditional RPG mechanics with choose-you-own-adventure stories, it challenges you to survive alone against an ancient evil lurking in the Black Hills. Chaosium | £9.99 DREAMS AND MACHINES STARTER SET This complete starter set for Modiphius’ new Dreams and Machines RPG thrusts you into a far-future colony rebuilding after an apocalypse, where the heroes must battle dangerous awakened mechs, explore ruins, discover lost tech and more. It’s built on a 2d20 system designed to encourage teamwork and quick action. Modiphius | £30.00 WARHAMMER 40,000: WRATH & GLORY - REDACTED RECORDS 2 Step into the war-torn Gilead System as an Electro-Priest or Sister Dogmata in this Wrath & Glory supplement. It features new Adeptus Mechanicus and Adeptus Sororitas archetypes, holy relics, shrines, patron missions, ascension packages, talents and more sacred weapons and gear. Cubicle 7 | £30.00 MARVEL MULTIVERSE RPG Step into the Marvel Multiverse as your favourite heroes or create your own in this new RPG powered by the d616 System. With quick character creation, explosive combat and tons of powers and profiles, you can team up to take down sinister villains and experience the action of the Marvel Universe. Marvel | £40.00
82 September 2023 READ IT PLAYED Growing up isn’t really a thing you do in Galgenbeck. At best, you sort of, congeal. Get harder. Dirtier. You do what’s needed to hang on, to eke out a bit more life, trying not to think about the things you have to do to survive. Orthe people you step on along the way. Personally speaking? I’m just gutterborn scum and I’ll happily gut you forthruppence. That’s what’s dumped us here. My gang - lost souls glued together by hatred and despair - are hunting for treasure. “Where there’s gold, there’s hope.” That’s what they used to yell at us when they cast us orphans out to beg. So, where do you find treasure? Dungeons, that’s where! The problem is where do you also find goblins, horrors and grisly, forsaken deaths? Aye, that’d be dungeons too. We stood before a spiked pit. “There’s a single log balanced over the top of it. Recklessly.” said Dave, with a grin. He was our GM and he’d invited the three of us over to play MÖRK BORG, knowing we couldn’t resist its grim charms. I was playing as “Gert,” Sam as “Grint” and Celion had taken on the role of “Svind.” “It’s obviously a trap,” whistled Grint, spitting through fragile, flaking teeth. He’s a murk-priest and has been utterly useless today. He carries round these scrolls, but when he tried to use one earlier, he fumbled and rolled a 1. All his teeth fell out and fingernails grew in their place. Repulsive. “Of course it’s a trap, you utter imbecile.” I pointed to the hand-carved sign on the edge of the precipice, scarred with the jagged words ‘THIS IS A TRAP.’ “Could… could we jump over it?”, quivered Svind, nervously. They’re always nervous. They used to be a noble, I think? Then the money ran out. Or there was a bloody coup or something. I hadn’t cared to listen properly. Now they’ve found this world isn’t the place they’d been raised for. I looked at the gap. Between us and the next ledge was a crumbling rift in the earth, at least 12 feet wide. I couldn’t really make out the bottom, other than the shimmer of hammered iron. “Don’t be thick, my liege,” I snarled. Svind glared at me, hurt, but they shuffled a little further back from the edge too. Out of game, I ask “So, what’s the chance a player survives a fall down there?” Dave shook his head and smiled. “Fine,” I say, “I throw a rock onto the log to test it.” “Roll Presence,” says Dave. I roll a d20. It bounces to a stop on 15. Given my Presence ability is “-3,” that’s a total of 12. The rock flies through the air and smacks into the log, before falling away into the pit. Nothing else happens. “Doesn’t look like a trap to me,” said Grint through a mouthful of splinters, one of his keratin-sharded nail teeth bouncing off my cheek. As I turned to deliver a barbed retort, there was a loud creak and a resonating crunch behind us, as the log snapped in two. Grint had the good grace to look sheepish. What to do next? Wrapped around my waist, in loops long enough to keep me warm at night, was a decent length of mildewed rope. I tied a noose in one end and peered at the ceiling. Was that a crag with a rusty hook nailed into it? “Do any of you know how to throw?” I asked. Svind looked blank for a moment, then their eyes lit up. “I mean, me… yes, me, of course!” They stepped forward, smiling with an uncharacteristic confidence. “I was Papa’s… I mean, the King’s champion at quoits, during the summer jousts!” I had no idea what “quoits” was, assuming it was some pastime the rich frittered their time away with whilst I spent my childhood sucking stones. “Go on then,” I urged the ex-royal. Partly to avoid doing it myself, but also because I quite liked the idea of one of us actually being good at something. It would be a change. “Roll Presence,” said Dave. “Here goes!” Svind calls out, working the rope into a lively spin, before casting it off towards the ceiling. We stared at the rope, for a moment, before I coughed to break the ice. “So, Svind…” “Yes?” they responded, still looking at the rope. “You didn’t think to, you know, hold on to the other end?” The rope hung straight; one end perfectly caught onto the rusty meat hook in the cave roof. The other end trailed down into the pit, a solid 8 feet away from us. Celion had rolled a 10, adding 1 from their Presence to give 11; a single point short of success. The rope was in the right position… but we weren’t. Svind stammered, “We could probably j-jump that, right?” As I considered a foolish leap over the skewer-lined chasm, events transpired to accelerate my decision making. “BLuuurGGHaaart!!!” roared from behind, as a berserker thundered towards us. Between its snarls and the blood specked spittle running down its cheeks, I made out its subtle intent. The crazed killer held a huge, nearherculean warhammer aloft. I knew my chances in combat were slim at best - the warhammer can do d10 points of damage, In a hardcore world where the apocalypse can strike at any time, Chris Lowry and his party of outcasts try their best to scrape through another day Words by Chris Lowry MÖRK BORG is a sarcastically grim roleplaying game, set in a horrible, decaying world, where life is short, painful and hopeless. It’s also built on an enjoyably simple d20 system that’s easy to run, quick to resolve and generally gets out of your way, so you can focus on properly roleplaying utter despair.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 83 whilst Gert had just 2 hit points remaining. “Run for it!” I yelled, sprinting to the edge and launching myself into the air. A roll of 13, with my Dexterity of “2,” was enough to land me safely on the other side. Well, “land” being a gentler way to say “plummet into a crumpled heap.” Next to me, floating down with an enigmatic flourish, was Grint. He’d used the Lucy-Fires Levitation scroll - successfully this time - rolling an 18 for an exemplary landing. Squinting around in the mirk, I realised we were still one person down. “Where is Svind?” A metallic clang, back across the chasm, alerted me. The berserker had just swung his massive hammer at Svind. Rolling a 15 for Agility, they’d narrowly ducked out of the way, the hammer colliding with the wall. “You gotta get out of there Svind!” I yelled across the void. “I’m going… I’m going to jump it!” they yelped, as they began sprinting towards the edge. Behind, the red-eyed berserker screamed in rage and hurled the warhammer after Svind, requiring another Agility from them roll to dodge. 19! Svind neatly side-stepped, the hammer bouncing noisily, but harmlessly on the stone beside them. Reaching the edge of the pit, Svind looked up, one last time, the whites of their eyes locked on to me. I wish they hadn’t. If they’d looked away, I wouldn’t have seen their expression change from hope, to shock, then terror; they rolled a “1” for their second Agility roll. All too fast and yet what felt like a hundred agonising years at the same time, Svind fell into the pit. There was a palpable crunch of bone and flesh on spikes, then absolute silence. I turned Grint and shrugged. “We best be gettin’ a move on, eh?” We shuffled through the doorway, into the next cavern. No one looked in the pit. There was no point. *
a full setting and society, a campaign and an additional fully-featured one shot, all written for the Director running games. Built on the core archetype framework used in Shiver, I love the new monstrous archetypes. Allowing players to play as the horrible monsters wreathed in legend is clearly a great idea, and there’s some particularly well-thought-out guidance on how to balance these dichotomous characters in play; both a mechanical “don’t just lean on all the good stuff and ignore the bad” reminder and ideas of how to approach your character’s development and roleplaying. The superb character development tree from the original game is used once more, demonstrating the rugged adaptability of the Shiver system. At each stage there are flavourful and substantive choices to choose from, with different branches within each archetype: Constructs, for example, split into Flesh, Machine or Stone, pulling Frankenstein’s Monster into the same broad grouping as a golem without losing the ability to have totally unique paths and phenotypes. As a counterpoint to the Immortals, Lucky Devils, Oddly Undead and others, the 7th Archetype was almost predetermined - surely it could only be “The Slayer,” the players’ Shiver is an RPG built specifically to let you act out your favourite horror movies and create some new ones. Shiver Gothic doubles down into the evocative genre of Gothic. If anything, it feels like a broader sweep, as it incorporates the rich world of Gothic literature too, an intentional homage to classics such as The Fall of the House of Usher and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Shiver Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm opens with an intriguing map of Spireholm, in bold blocky colours. The content comes in two parts: The Player’s Guide, with Gothic specific characters creation and playing tips, then Part Two: Secrets of Spireholm, Designer: Charlie Menzies & Barney Menzies | Publisher: Parable Games Become the monster you always feared you would 320 14+ £40 84 September 2023 P L AY E D
change and darken the world. The rest of the chapters here cover the unfolding story of a city unravelling, with the players caught in its death throes. The plot is loosely tied to events within the Doom Calendar - which is full of gaps for your own Doom Tolls too. Each chapter could be a one-shot, a series of sessions within a campaign, or the part of the full narrative arc of the book. There’s plenty of optional support here for the Director to read out dramatic quotes, trigger events and drop opponents in for players to encounter without being prescriptive. I like that the chapters are built to provide level 1 play on Chapter 1 and so on. Character progression is a highlight of Shiver’s design, so ensuring that players get to experiment within it is a solid decision. Now, I don’t generally have a lot of space for very specific railroaded adventures that require players to walk a certain path for the adventure to unfold. What I love, as you walk through the adventures in Secrets of Spireholm, is that everything is up for use, or disposal. The beauty of a well-developed map and setting is that you don’t need to fear the unknown. If players leave an area and wander, details are there aplenty to create an encounter, to tie it back to the story you are telling. That said, I’d love an index to make looking up this information easier - whilst the excellent map has labelled locations, such as “G1: Watering Hole Row,” it doesn’t use those references in the text to ease orientating yourself. The one-shot adventure “It Lives!” at the very end of the book is a welcome addition. Let’s be honest, most of us don’t manage ten-episode campaigns very often. Even though the chapters are non-specific enough that they could be adapted to standalone play on-the-fly by most competent GMs, it’s nice to not have to. There’s a tiered success mechanic used to good effect here; for example, when players investigate the University courtyard, rolling with no success finds some basic information that ends with an ellipsis. Each additional success adds another paragraph that continues on that initial information, with a further ellipsis beyond; a seamless way to reveal information to the degree players have earned. I also rather enjoyed the Doom Event of “Heavy Rain,” where the rumbling sky and rain pouring down your face gives a minor disadvantage to all Wit Checks made outdoors. Shiver Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm has crisp, readable layout with a hint of grotesque decay. I love Ben Alexander’s illustrations and most of all, I think Charlie and Barney Menzies bring something to Shiver that is rare in big hardback RPGs; an understanding that there is a huge range of ways that people play games. I like Call of Cthulhu, but it feels like there’s literally only one way to run the game. There’s no mandating of play style in Shiver at all - they give you the options, tips and tricks for a variety of approaches, then absolutely trust you to make what you want out of it. As I read through, I often thought “Hmm, I’d like to do x next in this session,” only to find it waiting for me on the next page. If you enjoy gothic horror, look no further: Shiver Gothic is the one for you. CHRIS LOWRY opportunity to be Van Helsing or perhaps a more successful Ichabod Crane? Irrepressible monster hunters in a world crammed with the monstrous. All the archetypes can be paired with backgrounds, either from the same theme, such as an Immortal who is also The Holy Knight, or interestingly incongruous combinations such as a Slayer who is secretly the stitched together Creation of a mad scientist. The mix-and-match here is moreish - I literally built a character, unplanned, during the writing of this review, just because the prompts so inspired me. Part Two of the book covers Spireholm, the purpose-built Gothic setting for one shots and campaigns. Whilst I found some of the book’s introduction a little clunky and in need of another round of editing, this section is enticingly written; it grips you with layers of velvet and blood. Spireholm is a city on lies figuratively and, more literally, on top of a secret subterranean cursed castle. There is a plentiful provision of factions and locations; the city is situated within the country of Karanthia, a nation viewed with suspicion by its neighbours, who have mostly eradicated the curse of monsters from their lands. Inside the city walls, the power is fought for between four ruling families, a multifaceted Divine Order and several key unaffiliated individuals. It would be wrong not to mention Rowan, Rook and Decard’s Spire, since there are some obvious similarities here: it being an inwardlooking town of citizens oppressed largely by an uncaring ruling class; the weird quasi-magical horrors beneath the city; the name Spireholm itself; even the art style is block-toned and Mignola-esque. Really though, these are superficial similitudes - the underlying systems have little in common and the writing in Shiver Gothic is much less esoteric; Secrets of Spireholm is less magnificently strange than Spire, but all the easier to play with and modify as a result. New in Gothic is the addition of the Doom Calendar - a slower, more literature-narrative or campaign approach to Shiver’s Doom Clock, where events build on each other to TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED TEN CANDLES Completely different beasts, but Ten Candles provides its own wax-based Doom Clock and Both are eminently well suited to the lambent world of Gothic disquietude. ❚ PLAY IT? M U S T - P L AY If you’re drawn to Victorian adventure, or want to experience a gritty world of Gothic Horror with your friends, Shiver Gothic: Secrets of Spireholm has everything you need. F A MIL Y G A M E S T R A T E G Y G A M E S C A R D G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S MINIA T U R E G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 85
skulduggery to jump in and out of different wraps to accomplish various heists, assassinations and other ne’er-do-well tasks. The roleplay experience of someone ducking round a corner with a blasted off robot arm to then switch into a sentient getaway car is fantastic. Blades is always at its best when players are free to improvise, fail and finally succeed in their missions to fulfil their character’s lifelong dreams, which is all the more heightened here when failure can lead to significant ‘jumps’ in the narrative. This system stands out through its innovative ‘wrap’ mechanic. Your character sheet is a single side of A4, with details such as your background and persona (how your character self identifies) on the left side whilst actions and stat details are on the right. When in play, your character will jump into a wrap of a specific type, folding that around your lefthand side. It’s an elegant solution that is immediately understood and loved by everyone I’ve shown it to. Best of all, aspects like hurt, stress and gear are all linked to that wrap. Whilst some stress will ‘bleed’ through to your persona, if the heap of junk you currently inhabit is taking a turn for the worse, you can jump into something better, either a prepared wrap that’s part of your plan or randomly into something at the GMs discretion, which in turn offers its own opportunities for surprises and story. The game is open about its transhumanist theme, with a specific instruction to both players and GM that topics of gender or racial inequality are literally inappropriate for the setting; in a world where people can all inhibit an identical group of yellow synthetic miners, it only makes sense that class and standing are all that matters in the ultra-capitalist dystopia. I very much appreciated the care that Rhiannon has given into discussing aspects like disability and offering player aids to help those who struggle with the topics being played with; it shows modern thinking for a futuristic setting, one where you can feel free to push the boundaries beyond what would be considered ‘normal’ without harming one another’s real feelings. Some will find the even more freeform aspects of Action Potential a struggle to comprehend, whilst others will not enjoy the disposable nature of wraps, but if you enjoy sci-fi dystopia and love to get creative with your storytelling, Action Potential offers so much freedom for players and GMs to revel in a world where the limits are only as far as you’re willing to push them. MATTHEW VERNALL Every RPG needs to have its cool moment, ideally the sooner the better. That moment when you first land the final blow in D&D or roll a messy critical in Vampires: The Masquerade will forever engrain themselves in your mind. For Action Potential, my players were sold the moment they wrapped their persona into a new body during character creation. Action Potential is a ‘Forged in the Dark’ Sci-Fi system, rewriting the Blades in the Dark core rules to tell a story of outsiders in the far future, where Megacorps control the known universe and having a body is a privilege. The majority of denizens are fitted with a Jump Jack, a device that transfers their consciousness to another form known as a ‘wrap.’ Your original body was company property that you rented for your childhood, which is a debt that most work off by inhabiting sleepless synths, working in farms, mines and factories. Of course, there’s little fun in roleplaying as a 24-7 worker, so instead players will use their skills of En-wrap-tured ACTION POTENTIAL Designer: Rhiannon Swann-Price | Publisher: we evolve TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED: CYBERPUNK RED Both systems treat a dystopian future like a playground, whilst Cyberpunk is a lot more rooted in classic RPGs, Action Potential embraces modern free-flowing design, which some players will find liberating. 81 12+ £9 ❚ PLAY IT? Y E S A fully-realised Sci-fi world that lets you explore what it means to be human whilst still causing chaos. Experimental in the best possible way. 86 September 2023 P L AY E D
the survivability of a ten-story plunge gets in the way of the fiction. Perhaps the best example of this is the game’s approach to money. The core concept of any campaign is that you’re a bunch of broke bounty hunters in dire need of cash, but the rulebook is very clear that the numbers listed on any target’s wanted poster are pure set-dressing. You never end a session by totting up the cash you earned and consulting an equipment list to pick out new guns or ship upgrades. By the time you next sit down at the table, all the money is gone and your team is desperately hunting for the next big payout. Why? Because that’s what the genre demands. Bebop is a show (or a game) about the hunt, not the reward. This fiction-heavy approach to things also influences the game’s rules, drawing heavily from Blades in the Dark and the countless other titles it’s inspired over the past decade. Rather than asking players to roll for, say, trying to sneak past some mafiosos guarding their HQ, every test instead contributes to filling up clocks that represent a more general kind of progress - for either good or ill. One might, for example, be “SNEAK INTO THE RED DRAGON HQ,” while the other is “GUARDS ALERTED.” Cowboy Bebop’s abstract approach can be jarring if you’re used to more traditional ‘see problem, solve problem’ RPGs. Overtime, though, it teaches players to focus on the direction of the story and less on trying to overcome individual challenges. It’s a clever system. However, it’s also a perfect example that a fiction-first ruleset doesn’t always mean a game is easy to learn. Cowboy Bebop requires its players to juggle tallies of hits, shocks and risks, while also keeping an eye on which phase of the session they’re in (both the difficulty of tests and the rewards they offer change as the game approaches its climax) and whether it’s worth trading emotional damage for a better chance of success. If that sounds too intimidating for your table, this may not be the game for you. If, however, you don’t mind keeping the rulebook open at the glossary for your first few sessions, this is a slick and stylish way to experience the world of Cowboy Bebop. Bang. RICHARD JANSENPARKES Cowboy Bebop is one of the most beloved anime series of all time, known for its stylish visuals, smooth jazz soundtrack and motley crew of bounty hunters aboard the spaceship Bebop. This TTRPG captures the spirit and tone of the original series with a flavourful - if messy - ruleset that prioritises slick storytelling over simulation. Just like the show, Cowboy Bebop: The RPG is all about playing out the adventures of effortlessly cool bounty hunters in a setting created by blending a cyberpunk dystopia, spaghetti western and mob drama, then serving the resulting cocktail in a martini glass. It wants its players to put as much thought into their character’s clothes as their skills and operates on the assumption that everyone - whether they’re a player character or a bounty - has a tragic past they’re running from. Importantly, it’s not a game about playing out any old adventure in the world of Bebop, but rather one that tries to capture the feeling of the ultracool anime series. As such, it truly has zero interest in simulation, realism, or even trying to ground the characters in a logical reality. The rules are always kept as abstract and fuzzy as possible, so that nothing as tedious as See You, Space Cowboy COWBOY BEBOP: THE ROLEPLAYING GAME Designer: Don’t Panic Games | Publisher: Mana Project Studio TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED: BLADES IN THE DARK Less stealing, more bounty-hunting, but if you’re already familiar with the ruleset, Cowboy Bebop will be a delight. 270 13+ £42 ❚ PLAY IT? Y E S If you’re willing to handle some complexity, Cowboy Bebop: The RPG can deliver an experience just as slick as the anime. F A MIL Y G A M E S T R A T E G Y G A M E S C A R D G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S MINIA T U R E G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 87
my kids as the language is, ahem, colourful. The basic theme is succinct and subtext-free; you are an ORC! You live in space, aboard an out-of-control junk rocket. You are eager to FIGHT and YELL and STEAL and KILL to secure a front-row seat for the Apocalypse! It’s about as subtle as listening to Motörhead at a funeral. The zine waves you in with a light introduction to the theme, then hurls you into character creation; a familiar four stat system of Presence, Agility, Strength and Toughness. You roll some hit points, some physical features, gain a lumpy, hacked-together weapon and are ready to ROAR. Nothing is quiet here: clerics are YELLPRIESTS, machine guns are DOOMCANNONS, melee attacks are HITTIN! Some pages you need to stand back from to process. There’s not a lot of hand holding for the GM in this slim booklet. Criticism of MÖRK BORG often claim its more of an art project than something intended to be played; I don’t agree with that opinion, but if you did, ORC BORG is even more so. There are three factions included, a bundle of monsters to fight and some truly brilliant ideas. Here’s two favourites; the BOOMBOX with expendable music “slugs.” We home ruled these slugs as cassettes that played once then caught fire, granting a bonus to attacks whilst characters rocked out to them. Secondly, BIG ROBOTS are janky mech war machines. They come in various cantankerous forms and uneven sizes. Our game ended with a boss battle fist fight between two barely functional siege engines, where one literally punched the other one into outer space. For all that, I’ll admit to being disappointed with the lack of setting content. I love Grant Howitt’s writing and the lack of an actual adventure module was a shame. The last pages detail how to adapt any spaceship map or modern map into the game, but I found myself missing a loot table or random encounters that would flood our game with trashyorcy-shouty-nonsense. The alternate Powers, Prayers and Technowizardly options add some tone, and the Orcen Prophecies of Doom are great for random events, but another four pages would have really sealed the deal for me. If nothing else, ORC BORG lends itself to a type of terrible GMing where you say “Look, I don’t know, there’s a massive bomb, it’s loosely gaffertaped to a massive hog or something? So… what are you going to do?” It’s a game built for crazy nonsense that comfortably excels at it. CHRIS LOWRY ORC BORG is an RPG that never takes itself seriously; not even for a single moment. It’s a cheerful “Oi!” to the universe that revels in a whirling celebration of silliness. Coming from the same warped minds that brought us Goblin Quest and Spire, ORC BORG is based heavily on the mechanics of doom-metal MÖRK BORG; but also brings a unique narrative and aesthetic to the table. The choice of a limited colour palate here is masterful and hurtsyour-eyes vibrant at the same time, a glaring mix of bright yellow, glowing pink and matte black. Coupled with Rollinkunz bold cartoon imagery, there’s absolutely nothing I own that comes close to making the same splash on a table. Taking it out feels - appropriately enough - like crashing a space ship full of war-crazed orcs into a library. I played it in our community café and multiple people bobbed over just to say “Sorry, but what is that?” I also had to hide some pages from A Neon Punch in the Guts ORC BORG Designer: Grant Howitt and Rollinkunz | Publisher: Rowan Rook & Decard TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… PORK BORG Is a tri-fold adventure of blood-soaked pigs terrorising a hamlet a great companion to riotous murder monsters? You tell me. 32 16+ £15 ❚ PLAY IT? Y E S Do you secretly want to give up on the modern world, hammer together a rocket out of old washing machines and fire yourself into the sun? ORC BORG was written for you. 88 September 2023 P L AY E D
locations. These are books that want you to be playing with them for years and they give you the tools to do that. That is where the praise has to end unfortunately, because in an attempt to hew as close to its source material as possible, this book has reproduced a lot of very oldfashioned racism in its pages. Even the name “Hyperborea” is a dog whistle, these days more likely to be accompanied by a sonnenrad than a well-oiled Arnold Schwarzenegger. The introduction to the book should be uncomfortable to anyone who has been paying attention to conversations about racism in the SFF and TTRPG for the past 20 years; Lovecraft and Burroughs and Howard are referenced lovingly and breathlessly, their literary achievements praised and their abhorrent attitudes towards race completely ignored. When you create your character in Hyperborea, you roll for a race. These aren’t your usual fantasy fare of elves and dwarves and hobbits, but rather different human races, such as the Esquimaux (Eskimo) or Ixian to name just 2 of the 24 available. Many of the descriptions of the peoples in this book feel straight out of a Nazi guidebook; “hook-nosed men of dusky gray skin and beady black eyes” or “squat, narrow-eyed tribesmen,” the kind of backward racist caricatures that were outdated when D&D was new. Perhaps most egregious is the description of the Half-Blood Picts, a violent mixed-race people who breed quicker than other races and threaten to become the majority in Hyperborea. It’s textbook “Great Replacement Theory” and is far too close to things actual mass shooters have said in the last couple of years to go unremarked upon. The game doesn’t go as far as giving characters racial buffs/debuffs or race specific abilities, (something other major companies still haven’t figured out, you know who.) Race in Hyperborea is mostly cosmetic; it affects how tall your character is likely to be, what languages they are likely to know and their most common hair and eye colour. It also tells you which other races are likely to be racist towards you; the Romans and the Picts don’t get along, for example. If Talanian hadn’t written the descriptions as if he were writing a phrenology manual, I’d almost (but not quite) be praising this book for being diverse. In a day and age where the vast majority people still working with the Cthulhu Mythos are actively working to reckon with the racism inherent in the material and update the concepts for a contemporary audience, this book goes out of its way to highlight these aspects in such a distasteful way that I cannot recommend it. ROZ LEAHY Hyperborea 3e is a frustrating beast. In many ways it’s the best and worst of the kind of thing that the OSR has to offer. It landed in my hands as two lavish hardbacks and a massive map book of the titular land beyond the west wind. The Player’s Manual gives you the core mechanics, essentially unchanged since the seventies and bound to be immediately familiar to the book’s target audience, while also offering enough character options to satisfy even the most spoiled of power gamers. And those 22 subclasses are at the same time familiar and inventive; the poemwielding Runegraver or the horse riding Cataphract, each with one or two unique little abilities that set them apart from the also included classics of Magician, Fighter, Cleric and Thief. The Referee’s Manual similarly cuts straight to the quick, dispensing with oft-repeated DM advice, or the kind of random generators that plague modern OSR books, in favour of content: interesting monsters, exciting treasure and detailed adventuring Antiquated is an understatement HYPERBOREA 3E Designer: Jeffrey Talanian | Publisher: North Wind Adventures TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED: DRAGONBANE If you looking for a classic RPG experience with an actual modern update, Dragonbane captures classic fantasy without the cultural baggage. 630 12+ £100 ❚ PLAY IT? N O It’s a lovely old school system wrapped in a coat of egregious racism. The Great Replacement rhetoric alone should put you off buying it. F A MIL Y G A M E S T R A T E G Y G A M E S C A R D G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S MINIA T U R E G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 89
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I f you’re the sort of person to be taken in by a silly name, a bit of green foiling on a cover in a metal font and the promise of a good time, it’s probably already too late and you own this game for its good looks already. But sadly, despite its good looks, it misses the mark when it comes to actual gameplay. The vibes of Viking Death Squad are spot on. If you wanted a game that has the subtle and refined sensibilities of, say, demon-eviscerating-to-heavymetal-music classic DOOM, then you’re in the right place. Urth, in the year 10,191, is besieged by the War Pig’s (a Black Sabbath reference) armies of borgs from above, while below Lucifer unleashes literal demons. You play as one of the small rebellious factions attempting to stand between these forces of destruction and mankind. You might be an escaped human slave, or an immortal – who function as the heavy metal space marines of this story. And that’s pretty cool. It’s like the art from Warhammer 40,000 without the inhibiting factor of a share price to appease. But once inside the system, it gets surprisingly fiddly. Target numbers are set by a dice roll; the more difficult, the more D6s the DM rolls. On average, I’m sure this works, but it really breaks narrative to suggest something is quite difficult – worth four D6s – but the target number to beat ending up being trivial. Players set their ‘to hit’ roll as a speed test at the start of combat, meaning your chances of being minced up quickly for a bad roll is frustratingly out of your hands. These core systems bounce off against the fun skills (like literally having another turn akin to a skill streak in murder-sports PC game Quake 3 Arena), the armouras-HP aspect (if you’re naked you’re basically dead) and the perfectly pitched setting. We had fun, but it was against the system. If you like the game’s premise, get it and tweak the system into something that works for you. CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT Aclassic of the ‘sad roleplaying’ genre, Wet Grandpa offers you a chance to explore a truly dark and personal southern gothic adventure location. It’s system agnostic, but expects you to be able to work out a constitution test or a roll against paralysis. Mostly you’ll work it out as you go, as really this isn’t about tests of strength, but your skills at navigating a bizarre situation. Written in a style that’s more like a novel than a regular adventure book, Wet Grandpa leads players through the world of a small and starving town, a group of river spirits and a drowned man who continues his work to look after his children. Functionally, the adventure involves a lot of nearly dying on an evil and strange river, as you travel to deeper location, chatting to people in perilous situations. Do you want to accept aid from one set of characters, knowing that they might suffer horrendously for it? How much of one of your limbs are you willing to lose in the search of treasure? And this is set to the background hum of what is, more or less, a ‘mad wizard’ narrative of someone very normal gaining exquisite magical power over time. So, you best not drag your feet, or indeed, oars. Every threat you face and personal detail included in Wet Grandpa are bodily-mystic, borderline biblical, in a way that each action you can take has such a cost to either the players or the world around them. It’s a compelling read and because of this, surprisingly simple to run – when everything is this interesting, players seem to ask the perfect questions. Possibly a masterpiece for the right group and an adventure you’ll struggle to forget (even if you wanted to) for everyone else. Play with caution. CHRISTOPHER JOHN EGGETT VIKING DEATH SQUAD WET GRANDPA Designer: Hankerin Ferinale | Publisher: Runehammer Designer: Evey Lockhart | Publisher: Melsonian Arts Council 128 14+ £35 32 16+ £15 ❚ PLAY IT? Y E S ❚ PLAY IT? M AY B E S T R A T E G Y G A M E S W A R G A M E S C A R D G A M E S F A MIL Y G A M E S R O L E P L A YIN G G A M E S tabletopgaming.co.uk 91
92 September 2023 WORMS PREVIEW Over the last fifteen years Mantic Games have had us battling across fantasy settings in Kings of War, dungeon crawling with Dungeon Saga and competing in future sports with Dreadball and Overdrive. They’ve always seemed to be drawn towards the darker and grittier intellectual properties, with the likes of The Walking Dead, Hellboy and soon to be released Invincible Dice Game. It came as something of a surprise when we learned that their latest project involves one of Team 17’s brightest, deadliest and most humorous franchises. I am of course talking about the iconic Worms series of turnbased, sensationally silly strategy games, slowly coming up to 18 years young and no more mature than when they first set off an exploding sheep. With their Kickstarter already underway and looking to release the game in 2024, we took some time out in the garden with shovels and some of the team from Mantic, to dig up what we can expect from the cardboard version of the madcap multiplayer video game. RS: Based on your previous back catalogue, I was very pleasantly surprised to see that you were developing the tabletop version of Worms. How did you come around to consider adapting the game to tabletop ? MG: It was actually something Team17 themselves had been toying with for a while and some of their board-gaming staff had tried giving it a go. When the chance came up to develop their ideas and turn it into a Mantic reality, it sounded like too fun an opportunity to pass up! How involved have Team 17 been with the development of the game from the offset? Having passed over their initial ideas, they’ve more or less left it to us - trusting us and the process. Some of the original elements are still there, but the current game is quite different to that first attempt. They’ve been really impressed that our game manages to capture the spirit, features and mayhem of the video game! How many of Team 17 have now taken up miniature painting and skirmish games after working with you? Haha! Not many as it seems a lot of them were already into miniature gaming, as you can probably imagine! Compared to other Mantic projects where you’ve had relatively more freedom at what your end goal was, were there any challenges you faced in trying to make the transition from electronic to cardboard? We are used to working with licensors: taking an established concept and IP then translating that to a tabletop game is something we have a great deal of experience doing. The most obvious change for this game was turning a side-facing experience on screen, to a flat, table surface experience as a board game. I think that’s been done really well and it’s not noticeable that we’ve made that transition. There are several key parts to what made the game of Worms so enjoyable, one of which was the destruction of the scenery. How have you managed to achieve this in the game? Certain weapons will create blasts; these will then create craters on the map. Once there are enough craters in a hex, it turns into water. Worms don’t like water and splosh! Down to the depths with them… The multiplayer is a huge part of the videogame and normally involves more than just two players. How have you tackled the multiplayer element and is there going to be an ability for players to play with multiple bot opponents? The base game is designed for 2-4 human players, so it’s multi-player by default. There are currently no AI rules planned for the game. Apart from the direct combat, one of the parts of the game that caused a lot of laughs for me was the potential mistakes from simply moving around the arena. How are you dealing with the movement of the Worms? When moving about, worms can either “inch” or jump. Jumping has an element of risk to it, as it has a random element. Some cards will allow movement too (before and/or after using a weapon) and there are of course things like the jetpack and ninja rope for even more mobility. How difficult was it to choose what equipment and weapons were included in the game? How do you even begin to decide what was included in the roster? We essentially just got the list of everything we could find and wrote rules for them! Not much was left out and anything that didn’t end up in the initial set has the potential to be added at a later date. Were there any weapons you had to leave out because they would have been simply too difficult to emulate in the board game version? Nothing really too difficult. The trickiest bit was working out starting hands and card quantities to make it fair and balanced (as much as Worms can be balanced and fair!) Actually, the girder had a few rewrites to try and get it working - nobody expected that to be the difficult one! Richard Simpson digs into Mantic Game’s latest game project, as they look to bring one of the barmiest computer strategy game franchises ever made to the tabletop LET SLIP THE WORMS OF WAR Written by Richard Simpson
tabletopgaming.co.uk 93 Can you give an overview of what a typical round looks like? On a player’s turn, they choose a worm to activate, standing it up if it’s knocked down (injured). They can then inch or jump up to twice, followed by playing a card (such as a weapon) from their hand. Lastly, a card is drawn from the drop deck, which will add more mines, barrels or supply crates to the battlefield, then it’s the next person’s turn. There’s a rumour that one of the stretch goals planned for crowdfunding is an actual real life-sized concrete donkey. How far along are you in the development of the actual components? All components are designed and are in final approvals with Team17. We looked at the donkey, but decided the shipping cost might be prohibitive. What else can we expect from Mantic in the next six months? Firefight is having a big summer, with lots of new vehicles and revised rules. Kings of War will be getting its exciting annual Clash of Kings update and of course, the hugely anticipated ‘Twilight Kin’ army is coming too. Dungeon Saga Origin, Umbrella Academy and Terrain Crate 3 will all be delivered after their successful Kickstarter campaigns, with the latter two titles also getting retail releases. We’ve got loads going on right now! Finally, who makes the best Worms impression out of the Mantic team? Hard to say - I think nobody that has played it has resisted saying “you’ll regret that” in an accurate voice, especially when another player has just dropped an airstrike on them… *
Many of us dream of having a collection half as large as the gloriously displayed array of titles that Ben has managed to collate in his years of tabletop gaming. Here he gives us the rundown on a hobby that became a lifestyle. How many games are in your collection? This is a difficult question to ask. Primarily because I haven’t counted them, but also because it’s very much a changeable number. Sometimes I look at my shelves and am struck by the beauty and variety of the games on them; sometimes I despair at the amount of stuff I have. I’ve moved house four times in the last three years and every time I drag my collection from van to flat, I curse my choices, but when they’re on the shelf, I smile. Then I flog a load at Essen. When did you first start properly collecting tabletop games? I never really started collecting, but a love for the hobby and a desire to experience everything out there has led to an accidental collection. Once you get a few games, you start to want to fill the shelves you have. When they then start to spill over, you buy a new shelf and the cycle starts again. What is your earliest game purchase that’s still in your collection? Pandemic. The first version with the wooden cubes and terrible components. After I played Pandemic there was no going back. I never thought that games could tell such wonderful stories and drench my brain in all of that wonderful serotonin. I am sure Pandemic has given birth to thousands of gamers and what an honour that must be. If I was Matt Leacock or any of those pillars of the hobby, I would pinch myself every day that my journey through life had yielded something so remarkable, to have opened up such a glorious world to people. To do something that good, even if it’s only once, is a dream most of us will never achieve, but I still endeavour to do so. Do you have a particular system when it comes to organizing your games? You’ve seen the picture! I sometimes look at my higgledy-piggledy arrangement and think that I should do something about it. Arranging by colour or by style might be nice. Then my mind goes off on a thousand possible permutations and I decide that it is too much work. I tend to see problems as a whole, rather than in the steps it would take to solve them, so when faced with such enormity I give up. It’s a wonder I get out of bed in the morning. Are all of the games in your collection in this #Shelfie? I have an overflow shelf directly opposite this shelf, but it’s also populated with recording equipment and other detritus. I haven’t been buying games for the last couple of years, but I feel like I want to indulge myself at Essen this year, so I think my overflow shelf will be filled. Which one game do you have that you feel most people won’t? Chaos in the Old World with the Horned Rat expansion. When I got into gaming, I bought this off Amazon with a Christmas gift card, at a normal price when it was still freely available. It might be the most expensive thing I own! Thankfully the game is wonderful and I have no intention of selling it or the really expensive part, the expansion which makes the game a chaotic marvel. I’m really glad I picked it up. * This month we have a look at the collection of ourlongserving, ludological lord of the games, Ben Maddox Written by Ben Maddox #SHELFIE 94 September 2023
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96 September 2023 Tell us a little bit about how the store got started? We needed a workspace for the team, as well as somewhere to distribute our card game, Achroma. At the time, we were also looking at venues for things like tournaments and launch events. When we found a location we liked, it made sense to add a café and retail area. Before we knew it, we’d opened up the doors of The Achroma Store and it became a destination for our growing community. It wasn’t long before we wanted to do more with the space. Jack (Constantine, CEO) and I thought back to our long-discussed ideas about running a bar, all those neat little touches we’d include to make it a home-awayfrom-home. We realised we could put our Realm Runner Studios twist on a venue, whilst filling a niche locally. We closed for a week, renovated and re-trained our team, then reopened as Five Realms Gaming Lounge. What’s it like being a FLGS in your area? We love it here. Dorset is a beautiful place. There’s a reason it’s a holiday destination for families. There are other FLGS’s in the area and they’re excellent in their own ways, but we fill a niche with casual gaming. We have the same challenges as other businesses right now, what with purse strings being a little tighter and rates going up, but we feel great about the direction we’re going. The response we’ve had so far has been super positive too. What do you think makes your store unique? We’re focused on the customer experience. Five Realms is a relaxed social space and hang out first. Aside from being able to buy and play tabletop games and order some mighty tasty sandwiches, we have things like sofas and a huge TV with multiplayer videogames, a free-to-play arcade machine, even some books and magazines around the place. If you’re popping in on your own, bringing the kids, or just want a bite to eat, there’s something here for you. W’re very family friendly and a lot of the games and events we support are at the casual end of the scale, we work hard to create a really wholesome environment and a nice atmosphere. The fact that we’re right on Poole Quay and have nice big floor-to-ceiling windows means it’s nice and bright, plus you get that sea breeze if you decide to sit outside. What events do you run for the local gaming scene? Every week we have an evening built around Pokémon, Warhammer Skirmish, Achroma and Magic: The Gathering. Other games are always welcome, but this is what we’re starting with. On Saturdays we host special events like tournaments and our ‘Stay & Play’ days, where we teach and support new players with games like One Piece or Pokémon. We round off the week with board games on a Sunday. We have some nontabletop gaming events in the pipeline that we’re excited about and we can’t wait to start working with local indie game developers. What’s been your favourite part of running the store so far? Maybe it sounds cliché , but I like looking around the store and seeing so many smiles. Knowing you’re helping bring joy and providing a space where people are connecting with one another is awesome. What are you plans for the future? Right now, it’s all about spreading the word, building our community and refining what we offer. In the future, I’d love for Five Realms to be a destination for gamers around the country – something special and on the geek map of places to visit. Longer term, it would be interesting to see if we could replicate what we’re doing here in Poole elsewhere in the country. * Who better to open up a game store than a games company? We chat with Dan from Realm Runner Studios about the team’s recently redesigned gaming store in Poole Interview by Matthew Vernall FIVE REALMS GAMING LOUNGE WHERE CAN I FIND IT? Five Realms Gaming Lounge Unit 27, Dolphin Quays The Quay, Poole BH15 1HU S H O P S P O T L I G H T
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98 September 2023 tabletopgaming.co.uk HANAFUDA CIRCA David Parlett is a games inventor and historian, author of The Oxford History of Card Games and its sequel on board games, and a visiting professor of games design at the University of Suffolk. ABOVE Setup of the twoplayer Hanafuda game Koi-Koi T abletop games lacking boards and dice are the preserve of tiles and cards, which are their roots are essentially the same: flat objects blank on one side, with significant markings on the other. That there’s no hard-and-fast difference between solid objects like dominoes and flexible objects like playing-cards is illustrated by the Japanese game of Hanafuda. Lying midway between the two, it consists of 48 small cards - about 5.4x3.2cm – with a compensating stiffness that create a pleasing clacking sound when played out. Hanafuda means ‘flower cards’ – a literal description, as they have no numerals or suit symbols and are entirely pictorial. Like regular playing-cards they are divided into ranks and suits, though unlike playingcards, they are slightly convex when face up. Twelve suits depict the twelve months of the year, with four ranks in each suit the illustrating flowers and/or birds particularly associated with that month, namely: January: pine, matsu; February: plum, ume; March: cherry, sakura; April: wisteria, Mt Fuji; May: iris, ayane; June: peony, botan; July: clover, hagi; August: pampas, susuki; September: chrysanthemum, kiku; October: maple, momiji; November: rain or willow, yanagi; December: paulownia, kiri. (November and December are reversed in the Korean system.) Certain individual cards have point-values, but they are neither displayed nor systematic, so you have to learn them in advance. Three cards count 20 each, nine count 10, ten count 5 and 24 count 1 each, making 284 points in all. Many different games are played with them, in Korea as well as Japan. Most are of the ‘fishing’ variety, like western games Scopa and Scopone. That is, you win (usually) two cards by matching one from your hand of seven cards with one from a tableau of six, scoring bonuses for making particular combinations. The story behind Hanafuda is a fascinating one. Matching games are indigenous to Japan. In the shell game dating back to the 11th century Japanese court, the object was to match the two halves of a patterned clam shell. Others involved matching two identical items, whether natural objects or human artefacts, including poems. When playing-cards reached Japan from Portugal in 1459, the pack then in use was one of 48 cards used for Ombre and its relatives. During the 17th century, the Japanese authorities banned the import of foreign cards, leading card game enthusiasts to produce indigenously-designed replacements, following much the same pack structure, but with pictorial illustrations intended to disguise their use as tools for gambling. As fast as the government banned specific games, the players developed new ones in disguise, to keep the gaming tradition alive. Hanafuda, dating from the 19th century, is the deck that caught on, long after the authorities had given up the fight. You may be surprised to learn that Nintendo, the Japanese corporation known for its video and digital games, was founded in 1889 specifically to manufacture Hanafuda cards, as you can see on their website (search ‘Nintendo’s Roots with Hanafuda’ to find the article.) For more details, I recommend looking up ‘Hanafuda’ on Wikipedia. *
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