Matthew Smail

Up until now, I think that every drinking related board game I’ve played has been strictly a party game, usually with a real focus on drinking and very little actual game. Drunkgeon, whilst undoubtedly linked to the consumption of alcohol…

In Ryan Laukat’s The Ancient World: Second Edition, each player will take control of a city state vying for the attention of five migratory tribes, fleeing from rampaging titans. To do this, each city must be bigger, better equipped and…

Senshi, from Arcane Wonders, is a small box, very low key design from Dan Manfredi. The game centres around the idea that each player is one of the titular Senshi — a trainee monk under study from an ailing master. With the master fading…

Until Dawn was one of the five or six Sony exclusive games that first made me invest in a shiny new PS4. Supermassive Games' blockbusting horror game featured an all-star cast, incredible visuals and, most importantly, a heart pounding…

If you stare into the looking glass back through tabletop history, you’ll spot that we once reviewed Hotshots, a firefighting themed cooperative game from Fireside Games. Hotshots was not the first game to riff on the idea of firefighters…

Talisman: Legendary Tales is aimed at a new, much younger audience and even though it is faster and simpler than the original, it also manages to be way, way smarter. When you mention Talisman to a modern board gamer, you’ll likely get one…

With the number of strategy games hitting Nintendo’s incredible Switch platform recently, you’d be forgiven for missing some of the more obscure entries into the market. Shiro Games Northgard is most certainly not to be missed however, and…

There are lots of dice based minigames emerging in the market, but few of them carry the same level of interest as those with big licenses. Robotech: Ace Pilot is a brand new “small footprint” game from Japanime Games, who recently…

Generic looking Euro-American people are shown on the box of Friedemann Friese’s Futuropia, they dance awkwardly at an almost empty discoteque, relax on beaches and enjoy open fires with their friends. This is because they have achieved…

With deep and meaningful strategy games making the leap onto consoles in unprecedented numbers recently, players have never been so spoilt for choice. Even so, relatively few strategy games have the same grand ambitions as Age of Wonders:…