Matthew Smail

Planet is about drafting and abstracted area control/influence, in it players attach magnetised hexagonal tiles to a large, replica planet.

You wouldn’t believe it, but the current generation of consoles has never had a proper snooker game and, thinking back, I can’t even remember the last time that this incredibly skilful game was represented digitally. That has all changed…

Robin Hood and The Merry Men is the third major release from Macedonian publisher Final Frontier Games. In our reviews for their previous titles, Cavern Tavern and Rise to Nobility, we called out the exceptionally high build quality,…

There are so many modern board games these days that it’s hard to play all of them, so why not tackle two at once with Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig? If you’re new to the scene, it can be especially hard to track down some of the…

Hand of Fate: Ordeals is the recently released board game about a video game about a card game. We followed the Kickstarter closely back in 2017 and we’ve recently managed to get our hands on a retail copy. Hand of Fate: Ordeals wisely…

Kodama (and recent two player standalone/sixth player expansion Kodama Duo) are among the cutest of all the small box card games that I’ve played. What these games lack in size and apparent complexity though, they more than make up for…

What makes Outward unique, however, is that it supports split screen cooperative play and is arguably even more demanding than the games that inspired it. Outward is an ambitious, open world RPG from Nine Dots Studio and publisher Deep…

If you’ve had your fill of zombie-based, post-apocalyptic survival games, but still have room in your heart for the genre then perhaps Generation Zero’s robot based carnage will appeal. Generation Zero is a cooperative online shooter from…

2018 was a year in which there was not one, but two Stefan Feld games themed around ancient Rome. The first, Carpe Diem, is a relatively straightforward tile drafting and placement game where players act as wealthy Patricians. The second,…

Have you ever dreamed of travelling through the stars, exploring new worlds and exploiting their resources to fuel the expansion of your species? Horizons is certainly not the first board game to help this dream materialise, but it is one…