Can board games be art? What might have been a controversial question back when I started in the hobby has without a doubt by now been answered by a resounding “YES!”. We have more and more artists that no longer are only mentioned in the fine print (or not at all) but are printed on …
Read more “First Impressions of ICE – A Coffee Table Board Game”
To say Sleeping Gods: Distant Skies was my most anticipated game of 2023 would be true, but kind of missing the point: it was my only anticipated game of 2023! I usually don’t “anticipate” games. Sure, I’ve backed a handful of crowd funding projects I would like to play right now, like Pampero or Inventions: …
Read more “First Impressions of Sleeping Gods: Distant Skies – A More Mature Experience”
One of my most unique gaming experiences of 2023 was without a doubt Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory, designed by Vangelis Bagiartakis and Varnavas Timotheou. It’s a thriller woven out of heavily interconnected political and economical concepts that pits up to four players against each other, each trying to get their unique, asymmetric faction to …
Read more “Origin Stories: Hegemony – An Interview With Co-Designer Vangelis Bagiartakis – Part 1”
It all started when the sheer gigantuous box that is the Galactic Edition of Voidfall arrived at a good friend’s doorstep after many months of anticipation. Would I be interested in playing it? Of course! I had been close to backing Voidfall myself but ultimately decided not to, mainly because I couldn’t decide whether I …
Read more “First Impressions of Voidfall – But wait, there’s more!”
When discussing modern classics of the board game hobby, one quickly ends up talking about 2013’s Concordia. While its theme of trading in the Mediterranean nowadays is considered a cliché of the hobby and a synonym for unremarkableness, the gameplay of Concordia is far from it. In fact, Concordia can be seen as a master …
Read more “Origin Stories: Concordia – An Interview With Designer Mac Gerdts”
I was playing I C E yesterday, which is just about as gorgeous as games can get. Great table presence, lovely theme, … and it has an unfortunately pretty mediocre solo mode. It’s an efficiency puzzle without competition in a game that’s all about player interaction and stealing stuff from under another player’s nose. So in the …
A couple of people have expressed interest in my process of creating the photos I add to my first impressions and reviews. That came as quite a surprise as I still very much feel there is a lot I need to learn and improve. But I guess I figured out a few things along the …
I’ve written before how difficult it was to get a copy of Sky Team at Essen this year: it’s not out in Europe yet, there was a lot of interest in it leading to queues forming within minutes of the fair opening, and the publisher Le Scorpion Masqué had only a limited quantity on sale …
I was asked the other day what my approach to crowdfunding is and which pledge levels I usually back. As those of you that follow my first impressions and reviews might have noticed, a substantial part of the games I play (roughly 1/3) actually are coming from crowd funding, so that was indeed a good …
Ever since discovering John Company Second Edition and Carnegie, I’ve become interested in board games that have some historical foundation. While Carnegie was merely inspired by the name-giving philanthropist and has little resemblance of the actual, complex and controversial person that was Andrew Carnegie, both games inspired me to buy books on their topics and …
Read more “First Impressions of Votes for Women – Board Games as a Medium to Tell History”