Matthew Smail

As a board game reviewer, I sometimes have to accept that it can be hard to get some games to the table. Where Secret Unknown Stuff: Escape From Dulce is concerned, I have to hold my hands up and say that I wish I had done it sooner. The…

Cities: Skylines is probably the most comprehensive and perhaps even the most popular city planning simulator of the current era. Whilst Sim City is possibly still a more famous brand, its last few haphazard releases have resulted in…

An icy wind rushes into the cavern where you and your companions huddle around a meagre campfire. The flames rush upwards in the gust, throwing their light onto the glistening, icy walls. As the flames die down, you notice that there are…

I can’t remember where I first read it, but one line from the lore surrounding Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 has always stuck with me; “in the grim darkness of the future, there is only war” it forecasts. From the moment I laid eyes on…

Ecos: First Continent is the second of John D. Clair’s designs that we’ve reviewed here at B3, with the first one, Mystic Vale, being a game that we enjoyed immensely thanks to its unique gameplay. Ecos, whilst having a completely…

In Symphony No. 9, players compete to sponsor their favourite composers over several rounds of gameplay, putting on exquisite royal concerto's periodically, which must match the mood of the people in terms of both how lavish they are, and…

Touted as the next massive, open world, online role playing game, Citadel: Forged with Fire is a particularly exciting prospect for me. In particular because it comes from Blue Isle Studios — a crew that has both Valley and Slender to their…

If Atelier: The Painters Studio is to be believed, painting a great masterpiece was more about the cutthroat world of securing the right paints and pleasing your benefactors than it was about actually striving towards an artistic vision.…

Even though you might not realise it, Vindication is actually a mid to heavyweight eurogame. I open with this line because if all you looked at was the box, the marketing material and some of the supporting collateral, you’d be forgiven…

Here at B3, a number of members of our team are parents and love playing board games with our kids, and it’s always good to combine educational properties and learning with fun, as well as teaching the fundamentals of more complex games.…