Tabletop

Whilst I don’t play tons of party games, I tend to favour those which rank as at least “mid-tier” in terms of the complexity. I’d much rather invest a bit more time and effort into a crunchier game, and I suppose in general that’s why I…

Slamwich is an intense version of slam/snap, where everything looks like not so tasty sandwiches.  The game itself is pretty simple, you divide out the Slamwich deck between all players. Without looking at their card, each player puts down…

Once upon a time a designer called Martin Wallace decided that every game should be card driven, and once he had made war games, area control games and deception games thus, he rested. After pondering for a while, he thought “miniatures…

Sometimes it seems that games of a similar theme come in runs. I assume this is because of a particular theme across popular culture, but I’ve never been able to put my finger on it. One theme that we’ve seen a lot of in board gaming…

Whilst it’s a bit of a niche area, Victory Point Games have become known as the almost undisputed champions of solo specific board game experiences, having created a number of systems specifically designed for lone play. Nemo’s War is one…

A little while back, you might recall that we previewed an inventive and unusual worker placement and retrieval game that was coming to Kickstarter, called Thieves Den. Well, the good news is that it successfully funded and is now a fully…

From time to time, I stop playing with my little tabletop group and instead play board games with my family. Some members of my family are quite small, so when Orchard — a board game about counting and numbers — came up, it just made sense…

Only a few months ago we reviewed Valeria: Card Kingdoms, and I really enjoyed its accessibility, speed of play and how generous it felt overall. Today, we’re taking a look at its sibling — the travel sized Villages of Valeria, which is…

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…

Making beautiful cakes is a great pastime, especially if you do it without making the entire kitchen a mess. In Frenemy Pastry Party, you and your friends are working together to make pastries, while also trying to get the most points that…

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…

Tile placement games are always interesting to play through, especially when people ignore the name of the game and instead just want to build a beautiful world. Small Islands is indeed a beautiful game, about creating small islands — not…

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…

Gloom: Second Edition is a card game I have heard talked about over and over. It’s something people always seem to have in their collections if they have been playing board games for a while. I’ve never played Gloom before, but have…

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…

Born to Serve follows a bunch of superheroes, with no funding and no way to save the world, each now looking at the lonely job of being a table waiter or waitress at the local restaurant. With ten heroes all fighting over the same job, you…