ERA: MEDIEVAL AGE PA N D E M I C C R E AT O R M AT T L E A C O C K

EX T ID
CO IN
R O L L S O U T H I S C I T Y- B U I L D I N G S T U N N E R

TR EN E
N
tabletopgaming.co.uk April 2019

A T
S
W TO
HO
H O S T T HTE
PERFEC
GAME
N IG H T

+
20
REVIEWS
D&D: VAULT
OF DRAGONS
WINGSPAN
BATTLETECH
ANDROID RPG
MARVEL
STRIKE TEAMS
THINGS FROM
IVE!
THE FLOOD WORLD EXCLUS

ROOT
TREASURE
ISLAND

THE ROLEPLAYING GAME

Fight tooth and claw in the fierce follow-up
to the best board game of 2018
L’ATTAQUE
T H E F O R G O T T E N S T R AT E G Y
HARRY POTTER
M AGIC AL T IP S ON PAIN T ING
Display until 25/4/19
£5.25 C L A S S I C P L AY E D B Y C H U R C H I L L THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX
 NE
WILDLANDS: AV W
THE ADVENTURING A FA
PARTY IL C
A TIO
Some see them as heroes, bringing
BL N
E
hope to the Wildlands. Others regard
them as a menace – a band of criminals that
!
must be stopped at all cost!

Never shying away from danger, a bold adventuring

party has joined the fray. This band of hardened warriors
can replace one of the existing factions, with their unique
healing ability keeping them in the ight even when hope seems
lost, or they can take to the battleield using the ‘Encounter’ rules,
stealing crystal shards and attacking anyone who gets in their way.

AVAILABLE MARCH 2019! Requires a copy of Wildlands to play.

M A RT IN WA LL A CE 'S

TW
WILDLANDS:
M ON
MAP PACK 1: A E
THE WARLOCK’S TOWER PS W
& THE CRYSTAL CANYONS !
Stirred by the shattering of the arcane crystals, an
ancient warlock’s tower has risen from the depths in which
it has long hidden. The magical energies that were released
have reactivated ancient portals, and the lure of further secrets
draws groups from far and near.

The mines in which the irst arcane crystals were found, known to
many as the Crystal Canyons, have also seen renewed interest from
adventurers and explorers. Could there still be crystals that have
retained their magical power somewhere deep within the mines?

AVAILABLE MAY 2019! Requires a copy of Wildlands to play.

AVAILABLE ONLINE AT WWW.OSPREYGAMES.CO.UK

 EDITORIAL
EDITOR Matt Jarvis
01778 392 400
matt.jarvis@warnersgroup.co.uk

Welcome
MINIATURES EDITOR
James Winspear
james.dyson@warnersgroup.co.uk

CONTRIBUTORS Anna Blackwell,

Sam Desatoff, Owen Duffy,
Robert Florence, Sam Illingworth,

A
Richard Jansen-Parkes, Dan Jolin, pril: a month of showers and pranks. Clearly the
Andy Leighton, Phil Robinson, perfect excuse to get together, play board games
Alex Sonechkina, Charlie Theel,
Paul Wake, James Wallis, and read the latest issue of Tabletop Gaming!
Chad Wilkinson Speaking of showers, there’s a flood of must-read features
in this month’s mag, from our chat with Matt ‘Pandemic’
HEAD OF DESIGN & PRODUCTION
Lynn Wright Leacock about his new roll-and-build game Era: Medieval Age
(p28) and a look at the making of real-time smash Space
DESIGN Richard Hallam Cadets (p36) to the history of L’Attaque (p42), the forgotten
COVER IMAGE inspiration for Stratego played by Winston Churchill. And
Root: The RPG by Kyle Ferrin speaking of, erm, floods, we also take a look at Tales from
the Loop sequel Things from the Flood (p50) and then
ADVERTISING
TO ADVERTISE PLEASE CALL Now Playing... review the ‘90s-set RPG in a packed Played section (p63).
MULTI MEDIA SALES EXECUTIVES Sekigahara: The If you receive Tabletop Gaming through your door each
Danielle Warr 01778 391 129 month, you’ll notice that this month’s magazine marks the
danielle.warr@warnersgroup.co.uk Unification of Japan
debut of our new exclusive subscriber covers, kicking off
Elizabeth Ridge 01778 395 059 by showcasing the breathtaking artwork of Kyle Ferrin to
elizabeth.ridge@warnersgroup.co.uk
Get in touch celebrate our lead feature on Root: The RPG. Turn to page
18 to get a world-first in-depth look at the board game’s
ADVERTISING DESIGN tabletopgaming.co.uk
AND PRODUCTION upcoming roleplaying spin-off with designer Mark Truman.
Nicola Lock 01778 392 420 tabletopmag You’ll also find the first of our subscriber-exclusive free
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Katherine Brown 01778 395 092
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PUBLISHED BY
PUBLISHER Claire Ingram
Warners Group Publications PLC
Matt
Matt Jarvis Editor
The Maltings, West Street,
Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE10 9PH matt.jarvis@warnersgroup.co.uk | @liquidmatt
01778 391 000
www.warnersgroup.co.uk Q U I C K S TA R T
NEWSTRADE DISTRIBUTION
Warners Group Publications PLC
I want this You get a There are no
01778 391 150 to be a lot of the rules that can
PRINTING game people are joy that you get kill a character in
This publication is
printed by Warners
playing ten years with playing Tales from the Loop.
01778 395111 from now – with Lego. In Things from the
The views expressed by contributors are not necessarily
those of the publishers. Every care is taken to ensure that
that is a big Flood there’s a
the content of this magazine is accurate, but we assume no
responsibility for any effect from errors or omissions. While
challenge. mechanic for it.
every care is taken with unsolicited material submitted for We get a world-exclusive look Matt Leacock rolls and builds a new Things from the Flood’s 1990s:
publication, we cannot be responsible for loss or damage.
While every care is taken when accepting advertisements, we
at Root: The RPG, p18 series in Era: Medieval Age, p30 darker, moodier, deadlier, p50
are not responsible for the quality and/or the performance
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content of advertisements. Tel: 020 7429 2222
© Warners Group Publications Plc, 2019 tabletopgaming.co.uk 3
 In this issue
06 AT A GLANCE 35 THE INDEPENDENT SHELF 63 PLAYED
Definitive verdicts on the latest releases
09 FIRST TURN 36 HOW WE MADE
Dungeon Alliance designer Andrew Parks on Geoff Engelstein on blasting off Space Cadets 85 PAINTING GUIDE
waging war with ideas in 2003’s Ideology with the help of his co-designers: his kids Is that a brush, or a wand? Giving Harry
Potter’s Order of the Phoenix a touch of magic
10 10 OF THE BEST 42 L’ATTAQUE
Don’t be a fool this April 1st with a Discover the forgotten story of the game that 90 DUNGEON MASTER’S
list of laugh-out-loud funny games inspired Stratego and was played by Churchill GUIDE TO ROLEPLAYING
13 ROLE CALL 45 AROUND THE 93 EVENT REPORT
WORLD IN 80 PLAYS
14 ALL THE JAHRES 94 CLUB DIRECTORY
We’ve got a Ticket to Ride, and we do care! 46 EAT PLAY LOVE 96 SHOP SPOTLIGHT
Host the perfect game night with our
17 MY FAVOURITE GAME readymade recipes for flavour and fun
SEAL Team Flix co-creator Mark Thomas on the 98 TABLETOP TIME MACHINE
post-apocalyptic pleasure of Neuroshima Hex 49 PLAY IT SMART Wheat! Wheat! Wheat! The chaos and fun of Pit
ON THE COVER!
50 THINGS FROM THE FLOOD
18 ROOT: THE RPG Meet the moody sequel to RPG Tales from the Loop WANT TO SUBSCRIBE?
Get a world-exclusive first look at the RPG set in Receive subscriber exclusive benefits
the woodland warzone of 2018’s hit board game 53 THROUGH THE AGES PLUS save money, time and effort!
Celebrating Plaid Hat’s ten-year journey from See page 27 for more info.
26 MICROGAME OF THE Summoner Wars to Stuffed Fables
MONTH: WRECKDIVERS
Hold your breath – for real – as you dive for 54 WAR OF THE WORLDS:
treasure in this month’s free playable game THE NEXT WAVE
The Martians return to conquer Earth in the
28 HAVE YOU PLAYED? deckbuilding battle to save humanity
Wargaming without the effort: it’s Sekigahara
59 UNEARTHED ARTEFACTS S E E I T | P L AY I T | B U Y I T 2019
30 ERA: MEDIEVAL AGE TICKETS NOW ON SALE
Matt Leacock tells us about his ‘roll-and-build’ 60 PAUL BONNER Turn to page 41 to book yours today!
spiritual successor to Roll Through the Ages The veteran Warhammer artist on his work and life

4 April 2019
EXTRA CONTENT IN
YOUR DIGITAL EDITION
LOOK OUT FOR THESE ICONS AND ENJOY EXTRA REVIEWS,
Y O U T U B E V I D E O S A N D M O R E ! A L L J U S T O N E C L I C K AWAY ! THE GAMES
Amazing Tales 83
Android: Netrunner 65
BattleTech 68
City of Gears 71
More info Kickstarter Gallery Zoom Panoramic 360˚ Sound Video YouTube Core Space 70
Crown of Emara 74
Dead of Winter 53
30 Dual Powers: 76
Revolution 1917
Dungeons & Dragons 90
Era: Medieval Age 32
The Game of Life 49
Genesys 65
Harry Potter 85
42 Miniatures Adventure Game
Ideology 09
Illusion 73
Invisible Sun 79
L’Attaque 42
Lindisfarne 81
Marvel Strike Teams 69
85 Mutant Chronicles 60
Neuroshima Hex 17
Ninja Squad 78
Photosynthesis 59
Pirate Tricks 35
Pit 98
Rising Sun 46
Root: The RPG 18
Sekigahara 28
Showtime 78
Space Cadets 69
Stratego 42
Swordcrafters 77
Telestrations 10
Terminator Genisys 80
Things from 50, 72
50 the Flood
Ticket to Ride 14
60 54 Treasure Island 66
Tudor 82
Vadoran Gardens 73
Vault of Dragons 67
Visitor in 75
Blackwood Grove
War of the Worlds: 54
The New Wave
Warhammer 60
Wildlands 83
Wingspan 64
Wreckdivers 26

tabletopgaming.co.uk 5
 AT A GLANCE
TABLETOP GAMING LIVE 2019 TO
HOST CATAN NATIONAL QUALIFIER
Settle for best at London convention for your chance to win a place at the UK Championship
Can you trade wood for sheep like nobody
else? Prove your settling skills in the
Catan national qualifier tournament at this
year’s Tabletop Gaming Live and you could
win some fantastic prizes!
The Catan national qualifier being
held as part of our London convention in
Alexandra Palace on September 28th
and 29th 2019 will give a lucky winner
the chance to be sent to the Catan UK
Championship and face off against the
winners of other qualifiers to become the
UK Catan Champion.
What’s more, every two years the
best Catan player the UK has to offer
joins other champions in the game from
around the world at the Catan World
Championship, giving them the opportunity
to represent their country and show off
their impressive gaming skills on the world
WATCH
OUR
TRAILER
ttgami.ng/watchme
stage to win
amazing prizes.
Reckon you’ve got what it takes to play to
the top? Don’t miss your chance to become a
Catan champion by coming along to Tabletop
Gaming Live this September.
The Catan national qualifier will
be just one of several tournaments
and events taking place during the
weekend, including a Pandemic Survival
regional qualifier, talks, workshops and
participation games.
We’ll also have the latest games from
the makers of Catan and Pandemic on
the show floor, along with the hottest
releases of the year from the studios
behind KeyForge, Kingdomino, X-Wing,
Sushi Go!, Ticket to Ride, Forbidden Sky,
King of Tokyo and many more. Whether
it’s a board game, card game, RPG,
miniatures title or something else on the
tabletop, you’ll be able to find it, play it and
buy it at the convention.
Tickets for Tabletop Gaming Live can be
purchased now from theticketfactory.com,
with weekend passes and family bundles
available – kids under 10 can attend for
free. Get your tickets ahead of the show and
you’ll be able to get in an hour before visitors
who buy on the door. That means more time
for more gaming!

KNOW YOUR NUMBERS

5E 1975 II
You’re gonna need
a bigger board: a
Jaws board game
½+½ Throw Throw Burrito,
the next party game
from the creators of Exploding Kittens, is
will take a bite of the table later this year described as half-Uno, half-Nerf
Dungeons &
Dragons book

40,000
Ghosts of Saltmarsh

2
Playing board games as The designers of War
is taking Fifth Edition Chest are reuniting
a couple is officially good
to the high seas for Second World
for your relationship, a
with a collection of Relic, Warhammer 40,000’s answer to fantasy War deckbuilder
scientific study has found
nautical adventures quest game Talisman, is returning this summer Undaunted: Normandy

“EXCLUSIVE” YOU SAY?!

Get your fix of the latest board game, miniatures, RPG and card
game goodness delivered to your door every month – plus, save
money and receive EXCLUSIVE subscriber benefits!

6 January 2018 See page 27 for more details

 For the latest news from the world of gaming visit
We asked…
April Fools’ Day is upon
tabletopgaming.co.uk/news us! What are the games
that make you LOL and
ROFL around the table?
was claimed by The Mind, which was also nominated (Turn to p10 for our picks!)
for the Spiel des Jahres. It beat Codenames-y, Dixit-y
deduction game Shadows: Amsterdam, Sébastien
Dujardin’s gorgeous Solenia and pirate scavenger hunt You said…
Happy Salmon... especially the
Treasure Island (find our review on page 66).
The expert As d’Or was picked up by Detective: A one time we played it in a limo...
switcheroo?!?
Modern Crime Board Game, which uses a companion
Lucy Mitchell
app to power along its interlinked tales of murder,
mystery and conspiracy. Coconuts is hands down my
The win meant Detective triumphed over favourite late-night party game.

A BEAUTIFUL MIND KeyForge: Call of the Archons, the ‘unique deck’

The Mind and Detective triumph at
France’s game of the year awards
Number-counting social card game The Mind and
app-enhanced mystery Detective have been named the
big winners at this year’s As d’Or awards – France’s
answer to the Spiel des Jahres.
The ‘all public’ As d’Or is the awards’ headline
trophy for a widely-accessible release. 2019’s award
MYTHICAL LEGEND
British winner makes history at
Magic: The Gathering tournament
The first tabletop Magic: The Gathering Mythic
Championship – the evolution of the card game’s long-
running high-level Pro Tour format – was one for the
history books.
THE TABLETOP GAMING PODCAST
card game created by Magic: The Gathering
designer Richard Garfield. Also in the running in the
particularly heated category was subversive co-op
board game Spirit Island.
Over in the children’s category, memory-based animal
challenge Where’s Mr. Wolf? came out on top, beating
self-proclaimed ‘first legacy game for children’ Zombie
Kidz Evolution, emotional dice game The Color Monster
and Who Did It? – a card game about working out which
animal crapped on the living room floor.
The three-day tournament saw almost 500 players
compete for a prize pool of $500,000 in Cleveland,
Ohio, reportedly making it the second-biggest single
Pro Tour equivalent ever held behind last November’s
Guilds of Ravinca Pro Tour – the final event to use
that name.
It was a showcase of some of the best pro-level
play Magic had to offer, too. The last eight players
in the tournament shared more than 20 Pro Tour/
Mythic Championship Top Eight appearances
between them, with the final match seeing a
showdown between consecutive two-time English
national titleholder Autumn Burchett – playing
for the first time in a day three at a premiere
tournament – and Japan’s Yoshihiko Ikawa, who
claimed his second Top Eight placing.
As well as making Burchett the first winner of the
rebranded Mythic Championship format, the win
made them the first British winner of a Pro Tour-level
event. As a transfemme non-binary person, Burchett
is also the first non-male winner of a top-level Magic:
The Gathering competition.
Silly bounces, stealing cups, calling
your shots. It’s amazing.
@zach66827
Cockroach Poker! Never had a game
where we haven’t laughed out loud!!
Tom Gorner
Cards Against Humanity. It’s
sometimes much more entertaining
to play answers you KNOW they
hate saying aloud. The initial look on
their face – tightened lips, squinted
or bulging eyes, blushing. It’s like you
are watching their very soul grapple
with the effort to even speak.
@rbraxxo
Sheriff of Nottingham because of
our use of innuendo! We don’t call
them chickens...
Rob Jones
The Resistance... only because if
you don’t laugh, you cry.
Katie Ng
Mountains of Madness, when
everybody has three madness cards.
Steven de Graaf
For us, its Telestrations It’s that
moment when the penny drops, when
what their word prompt was versus
the monstrosity you just drew...!
@competitiveduo
Get in touch
tabletopmag

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tabletopgaming.co.uk 7
 FIRST TURN
ANDREW PARKS
The designer of Dungeon Alliance and Assault of the
Giants on his 2003 debut Ideology: The War of Ideas
Interview by Dan Jolin
BACKGROUND
“It was a long path of failure, my friend. I had always
enjoyed game design. Over the years I made a lot of
homebrew variations of games with my friends – we
played an inordinate amount of Talisman. Then in 1998 I
was a stay-at-home dad and, when I wasn’t watching my
daughters, I tried to work on various projects. So I spent
five years trying to get one of my designs published: a
Lord of the Rings card game called Doom, a similar card
game called Lords of Eternity, The Venture Card Game,
which you can still download on BoardGameGeek
and which became an Arthurian game called Camelot
Adventures [later released as Camelot Legends]. But after
four years I was still an unpublished designer with no
prospects. However, after 9/11, I’d started working on
Ideology – something I had no intention of pitching…”
COMPONENTS
“Like many other people, I was so blindsided by 9/11 I felt I
knew nothing about how the world worked. I really wanted
to understand the different ideas that formed everything
that happened in the 20th century and culminated in
this event. So I started doing research, watching a lot of
documentaries, a lot of stuff on the Afghanistan War of the
’80s and all these other things that I kind of knew, but didn’t
really understand how they all linked together. I created
Ideology as a way of combining different concepts of the
20th century in such a way that would make sense for me.”
OBJECT
“I wanted to make something that used more streamlined
mechanics than the Ameritrash games I was brought up
on. So I knew I didn’t want to make a game like Risk; I
wanted it to have a more European feeling to it. The whole
thing was sort of a thought experiment. It’s an abstract
game. Not very theme-based like most of my later games.”
SETUP
“By this time I was remote playtesting games, including
[publisher] Decipher’s collectible card games. Decipher
used to have this really awesome event called Decipher-
Con. I was there in the fall of 2002, helping to demo their
Austin Powers game, and one evening I broke out my
prototype for Ideology: The War of Ideas. The other players
The whole thing was sort of
a thought experiment.
April 2019
said, ‘This is really
different,’ and while
we were playing it Tom
Slizewski of InQuest Gamer
magazine came by. Then about a month later I
got a call from Zev Shlasinger of Z-Man Games. He
said, ‘What’s this Ideology game Tom told me he
saw you demoing?’ He wanted to see it. So I went
to Zev’s house and played it on his kitchen table,
and he said, ‘I’m going to print this.’ Wow.”
HOW TO PLAY
“Each player is one of the five chief
ideologies of the 20th century: capitalism,
communism, fascism, imperialism and
Islamic fundamentalism. You have one
region on the board that you begin with and new
regions keep coming out in a random order. These are
worth one, two or three points, based on their level of
influence in the world. You’re all trying to influence
them with three different types of resources, and
each ideology has special powers that allow them to
manipulate certain types of influence. The first person
to get to 12 global region points wins the game.”
END OF THE GAME
“It’s a flawed game that I’m very proud of. The very first
review I got was in German and I had to use Google
Translate to figure out it was a negative review. But a lot of
people did like it and it got a very good response at Essen.
Zev sold all the copies that he was able to get over there,
which was very exciting, and the game sold out in nine
or 10 months. The second printing didn’t do as well,
but I’m still so happy because now there is this really
much nicer looking edition of my first-ever design.”
STRATEGY TIPS
“I teach game design and one of the things I tell my
students is, ‘You’re not selling a game, you’re selling
yourself.’ In other words, don’t fall in love with your
own creation because you’re going to hate it in a year
or two. Just try to establish that you have the right skills
and abilities and then eventually you’ll sell a game.”
tabletopgaming.co.uk 9
 2 YOGI
Best described as ‘Twister stood up’, Yogi is an even
funnier physical challenge of contorting yourself
in response to a deck of instruction cards. Some
cards even have to be balanced or held between
parts of your body
– fail to keep up with your mounting
list of directions and you’re out! For a
more expressive art style, try Yogi’s
original incarnation, In a Bind, which
was followed
by a kid-friendly
Jr. edition that
added animal
noises and silly
poses to the

TELESTRATIONS giggly mix.

1 A boxed version of pen-and-paper game ‘Eat Poop

You Cat’, Telestrations is a drawing game that
makes it hard to draw breath. Everybody doodles a
word, which gets passed to their neighbour – who
then tries to describe what they see. So it goes,
with the basic prompts quickly spinning into ever more
bizarre and hysterical examples of miscommunication.
For a ruder alternative, Scrawl starts with suggestive
phrases – things can only go downhill from there…

OF THE BEST

10 FUNNY GAMES
LOL, ROFL and have TOTT (tears of laughter on the
tabletop) with these hilarious cardboard crackers that
will leave you in creases for April Fools’ Day
Picked by Matt Jarvis

3 THE EXTRAORDINARY
ADVENTURES OF
BARON MUNCHAUSEN
Designed by James Wallis – whom many of you will recognise as a regular contributor to
this magazine – this social game is a spectacular competition of one-upmanship inspired
by the titular real-life teller of tall tales. Players take turns to weave their fantastic and 100%,
definitely, absolutely true yarns, accounting for sudden details their fellow storytellers can
throw in at the cost of a token. (“You forget that the alligator you rode to the moon
was in fact made of marshmallow!”) Once everyone’s had a go, the group picks
their favourite – but it’s more about the laughing than the winning. The rules
themselves only take up about a page in the book, the rest being amusing
observations on suggested topics; it’s well worth a read in full.

4 APPLES TO APPLES
The inspiration for Cards Against Humanity and roughly a billion terrible party games
on Kickstarter, Apples to Apples is a simple game of picking the right thing: literally. A
player pulls a ‘description’ card that everyone else tries to match with the best ‘thing’
card from their hand, with the selected winner becoming the next judge. What’s
more dysfunctional: the Vatican or the MTV Music Awards? Debating over this
answer and thousands more provides plenty of opportunity for laughs.

10 April 2019
5 HAPPY SALMON
Who can resist a silly, quick card game that comes
in a fish? Get the muscles in your arms and cheeks
working as you high-five, fist-bump (pound it!), swap
places (switcheroo!) and happy salmon (once

6
you know it, you know it) with players who match
your action cards. The first to ditch their whole
deck wins, but you’ll absolutely want to play again
– if your throat hasn’t been worn out by shouting
“Happy salmon!” over and over
again, that is. The older
Pit is just as shouty and
chaotic, but is less about
bashing body parts and
more about quickly trading
MONIKERS
Based on the public domain party game Celebrities (which also saw a
resources to complete sets. published release as Time’s Up!), Monikers rolls a combination of charades
Happy Salmon sequel Funky and Taboo into a single game, where players have to get their team to guess
Chicken, meanwhile, clues using descriptions (minus the answer itself), then just a single word,
can be played alone or then no words – just mimes or noises. With a readymade deck of inventive
combined with the original answers that range from drunk Jeff Goldblum and the Kraken to a Russian
and adds dance moves to an nesting doll and the Doge meme (such guess, wow), it’s a great way to enjoy
uproarious couple of minutes. a classic social game that will leave you in stitches.

7 SAY
ANYTHING
Parties love a debate, it seems. Say
Anything invites a more open whose-
is-better discussion than fill-the-blank
alternatives, with players writing answers
8
FUNEMPLOYED
How do you find the funny in the harrowing
process of being interviewed for a job? With
to questions such as “What’s the
best activity for a first date?” Funemployed, of course. Everyone’s a rival
and chucking them into the applicant for a relatively reasonable role – if
middle of the table. The asker you count secret agent, bounty hunter and
secretly picks their favourite astronaut – and they each have some interesting
answer, and everyone else qualifications that they need to prove makes them
tries to guess what they’ve the right hire. Why could having a beard and being
picked to score points. It a spontaneous crier make you the perfect dog
works particular wonders food taster? Or being soulless but a black belt in
among close friends, but it’s also martial arts be ideal for a cheerleader? As you
a fun way of finding out more about answer those, you’ll likely find yourself employed in
newcomers to the table. the profession of giggling.

DIXIT KOBOLDS
9 It might not seem laugh-a-minute,
but Dixit is one of the best ways
of getting players to come up
with gags around the table. Each
turn sees someone trying to
describe an abstract picture card with a single
sentence, while everyone else adds their own card
into the mix to try and get people to guess their
10 ATE MY
BABY!
A parody of fantasy roleplaying
staples in Dungeons &
Dragons and the like, KAMB!
puts players in the shoes of
image as the right answer. The teller doesn’t want sword-fodder kobolds as they
everyone to guess their card, though, or they’ll try and survive a world out to
get nothing – so being vague but not too get them. The BEER engine
vague is the order of the day. (it stands for the key traits
With surreal illustrations and of Brawn, Ego, Extraneous
endless room and Reflexes, obviously) that
for players’ powers the RPG encourages
creativity, loud behaviour (“All hail King
Dixit will have Torg!”) and a high body count
you laughing as dice are rolled, kobolds
with the best dispatched and drinks are
of them. inevitably spat.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 11
Role Call
Weird creatures abound in this month’s RPG round-up, whether they’re Lovecraftian
cowboys, the spirits of Invisible Sun or the dangerous foes of Monster of the Week
Words by Richard Jansen-Parkes

CALL OF CTHULHU: BIG BOOK OF SCI-FI INVISIBLE SUN: MONSTER OF

SHADOWS OVER BATTLE MATS TERATOLOGY THE WEEK: TOME THE LEGEND OF
STILLWATER A sci-fi follow-up to Loke’s The closest thing the OF MYSTERIES THE FIVE RINGS
Feel like mixing a little successful run of fantasy- inscrutable world of An expansion for the RPG: WINTER’S
bit of rootin’ tootin’ themed mats, this ring- Invisible Sun will ever charming Monster of the EMBRACE
cowboy action with your bound A4 book allows you come to a bestiary, the Week mystery game, this The first adventure for
cosmic horror? Well to carry around dozens of Tetraology promises slim book is loaded with new The Legend of the Five
then, you’ll probably combat-ready maps with to introduce hundreds options for players, rules for Rings invites players
need this combination of in your backpack. The book of “creatures, spirits, confronting investigators into the treacherous
adventures and locations is designed to lay perfectly and other entities”. with X-Files-esque weird intrigues of the Winter
for Down Darker Trails, flat, doubling the size of the Expect some beautiful phenomena and almost 30 Court, where the
Call of Cthulhu’s creepy environments. It’s a very writing and stunning fully-formed mysteries. On right words can kill as
Wild West setting. The nifty little accessory – and art for Monte Cook’s top of all this it’s fleshed surely as any sword.
print copy is a few months if you don’t care about easy impressively ambitious, out with essays and advice Expect schemes
away, but you should be portability it also comes in inventive and grand from the Monster of the aplenty throughout
able to pick up a PDF now. a giant A3 version. roleplaying opus. Week community. the icy-cold quest!
Chaosium | £28 Loke | £20 Monte Cook | £36 Evil Hat | £20 Fantasy Flight | £16

April 2019 tabletopgaming.co.uk 13


Replaying the winners of the Spiel des Jahres so you don’t have to
TICKET TO RIDE
n Germany Ticket to Ride is called Zug
I um Zug, which may be the best name
for a game ever. It’s a phrase that doesn’t
translate easily: ‘zug’ is German for ‘train’,
but ‘zug um zug’ means ‘step by step’, and
if you say it over and over it has the rhythm
of a steam locomotive gathering speed. It’s
the perfect name for a game of building and
connecting vaguely Victorian railway routes,
and strikes exactly the right tone for Alan R.
Moon’s 2004 masterpiece.
To be honest, this article is mostly
unnecessary. If you’re enough of a gamer to
be reading this magazine, you have an opinion
on Ticket to Ride. It’s ubiquitous. It’s eclipsed
Settlers of Catan as the go-to gateway game
for the hobby, has shifted a joyous six million
copies in its 15-year history, and amassed
several mantelpieces of awards. There’s a
games café close to where I work, and every
time I go in at least one table is playing some
version of Ticket to Ride. Every time.
Ticket to Ride was Alan R. Moon’s second
game to win the Spiel des Jahres, the most
important games award in the world. His first
had been Elfenland in 1998, another game
of working out routes around a large map.
Many of his releases are, as Wikipedia dryly
observes, “board game
variations on the travelling
salesman problem”. That’s
not entirely fair; while
Elfenland is absolutely
about visiting as
many places as
possible with finite
resources, Ticket
to Ride is less of a
puzzle and much
more of a game.
14 April 2019
All the
Jahres
Words by James Wallis
Year of win: 2004
Designer: Alan R. Moon
Number of players: 2-5
Playing time: 30-60 minutes
Worthy winner? Yes
Worth playing now? Yes
Availability: Wide
Price: £39
In Ticket to Ride you… we both know you
know the rules already, but I’m going to go
through the motions. You’re trying to complete
railway routes between different cities, with
longer routes worth more points. On your turn
you draw face-up or facedown train cards or
facedown destination cards, or trade a set of
matching train cards for enough plastic trains
to complete a track between two cities: part of
a route, which scores points, with more points
for longer tracks. At the end of the game you
score for completed destination cards and lose
points for uncompleted ones.
At this point I need to admit something:
before I started researching this piece I’d
never played Ticket to Ride. Not once. I’d
played Ticket to Ride: Europe, and others,
but I’d never played the original game. And
you know what? Removed of all the extras,
the ferries and tunnels and passengers
and goods and shares and technologies,
stripped back to the bare essence of the
game, it’s really tight. Everything comes
down to simple, pure decisions: build now
or build later, start that route now and risk
being guessed and blocked, which routes
to prioritise, which colours to collect.
Everything’s a choice, and none of the
choices are obvious or uninteresting.
It’s not perfect. A player who gets route
tickets that are close or overlapping has
a huge advantage over someone whose
destinations are all over the map, east-coast
routes are point-poor and take several turns
to complete, and there aren’t many places
where players can interact directly. You can
take a train card that you suspect another
player wants, but there’s no reason
to do that unless you need that
card too. You can lay a route
to block another player, but
again there’s no reason to
unless you need the same
route. There’s almost no
direct player interaction, no
reason to barter or bicker or
trash-task. Playing over the net
is not an appreciably different
experience to around the table.
 Everything’s a choice, and
none of the choices are
obvious or uninteresting.

Of course, that could be an advantage.

Ticket to Ride wasn’t the first train game
to win the Spiel des Jahres, not even the first
designed by a Brit. (Alan Moon was born in
Southampton; he moved to America aged
seven but he still counts.) That was 1984
winner Railway Rivals designed by
David Watts, tragically out of print in
English since the Games Workshop
edition of the same year. Brits used to
be good at making trains, now we’re good
at train games; Francis Tresham created
the 18XX series, Martin Wallace did Age of
Steam and Tony Boydell did Snowdonia
Snowdonia.
Here’s the big secret about Ticket to Ride:
it isn’t about trains, not really. It’s a set-
collection game, a cousin of rummy, with
a route-completion mechanic tacked on for bit of magic that means we don’t mind losing if success, and even if you lose dramatically
scoring and to give players short, medium and the game itself was good. ‘Fun’ is part of it, but (which, dear reader, I did) you still feel that
long-term goals. Does that matter? Not in the ‘fun’ has been part of the academic equation of you’ve had a good time, and you don’t feel bitter
slightest when the blend of elements is arranged what makes games work since Dutch cultural towards any particular player for beating you
and balanced with this perfect finesse. philosopher Johan Huizinga wrote Homo Ludens – not even the robber-baron who completed
As games players and games designers, we in 1938. We don’t have a vocabulary to describe Portland-Salt Lake City while you were still
talk a lot about mechanics and balance and what makes a game pleasing, at least not in waiting for the last blue card you needed. Call
randomness distribution and cognitive load and English. It’s like umami, the fifth taste: it’s always the café staff over, order more drinks and some
the other parts of the structure of games, the been there but if you don’t have the words to nachos, and have another go.
engineering that makes them work. Something describe it then it’s hard to talk about.
we talk about far less are our emotional But whatever it is and however it happens,
Next month: Take a risk gathering gems at the
reactions to a game: the satisfaction we get from Ticket to Ride has it in spades. It’s very satisfying
edge of a waterfall in 2005 winner, Niagara.
arranging bits of wood and cardboard, the little to play. Every route you complete is a little

tabletopgaming.co.uk 15
my favourite game
MARK THOMAS
The SEAL Team Flix co-designer and House of Spirits creator
explains why the tough tactics of Neuroshima Hex make for
his ideal post-apocalypse
arth lies in ruins. Those who didn’t die

E in the war are left to band together,

struggling to survive in the
wastes. Sentient machines
roam the plains, while
mutated creatures swarm
the cities. Many will fight,
but only one faction
will prove its mettle on
the battlegrounds of
Neuroshima Hex.
My favourite board game
of all time is Neuroshima Hex,
set in the post-apocalyptic RPG
setting of Neuroshima,
designed by Michal Oracz,
and published by Portal/Z-
Man Games. Mr. Oracz just
happens to be my favourite
designer, as well. For my
money, there is nobody better
at designing asymmetric games.
You could call this game an abstract strategy title,
thanks to its hexagonal cardboard tokens, but I think
that sells it a bit short. The factions all have cohesive
themes and sometimes wildly different play styles. The
mutant army of Borgo is very melee-focused, the Steel
Police features many ranged units and the robotic
Dancer consists of only three super-powered units.
One of the things I like about this game is that it
forces you into tough decisions on every turn. On
your turn, you will draw three tiles from your entire
force, kept in a facedown stack. This is the only luck-
based element in the entire game. You must discard
one of these tiles and, since you only go through your
stack one time, anything discarded will never be
played in this session. Sometimes the choice is very
easy to make, but other times you will want to play all
three tiles!
The genius of this design decision has many
repercussions. First, it keeps the game moving at a
predictable pace since in general you will get about a
dozen turns. Second, it prevents analysis paralysis by
only letting you choose between three tiles at a time.
Finally, it allows astute players to keep track of what
you have played/will never play versus what you may
yet play. Every time I teach this game to a new player I
advise that, when in doubt, always take the action that
will result in the most carnage, even if it’s yours. That’s
actually good advice for any game.
Gamers talk
about their
‘forever’
shelf.
Neuroshima
Hex will
always be
on mine.
This game encourages a chess-like mentality. You
have to think about the ramifications of your moves,
and try to predict how the inevitable battles will play
out. Those battles can be tedious, which has led some
players to prefer the app version of this game over the
cardboard original. Each unit has an initiative value,
and all units with matching initiative will attack at
the same time. Casualties are cleared, and the next
highest-initiative units attack. You’ll love the look on
your opponent’s face when you point a weak-but-
fast unit directly at a lumbering death machine
that was sure to cause your ruin. That death
machine will be cleared off of the field before it
ever gets to act.
Variety is the spice of life, and Neuroshima
Hex has it in spades. As of this writing, there
are at least 18 different factions available.
I own 11 of them and want to collect the
others. In even better news, the game
was re-tooled and re-themed in 2018 as
Monolith Arena. I have this as well, and it is
just as excellent as I knew it would be.
Gamers talk about their ‘forever’ shelf.
Neuroshima Hex will always be on mine. I
should probably do something about the
failing duct tape that is holding my box
together. To Michal Oracz, thank you for the
inspiration and entertainment!

April 2019
tabletopgaming.co.uk 17
 Root was 2018’s standout board game: a triumph of asymmetrical
design, breathtaking presentation and a stirring sylvan world.
This year, Mark Truman leads the way deeper into a war-torn
woodland with Root: The Roleplaying Game
Words by Matt Jarvis

18 April 2019
“I
t’s very much this convergence between
‘Obviously!’ and ‘Whoa!’ These feelings of
surprise and inevitability.”
Mark Truman is talking about Root: The
Roleplaying Game, the upcoming RPG
based on last year’s phenomenal board game of warring
woodland creatures. Designed by Cole Wehrle and
brought to life by the gorgeous pastel artwork of illustrator
Kyle Ferrin, Root handed control of industrialist cats,
aristocratic birds, scrappy rodent rebels and a lone raccoon
adventurer to players and set them against each other
in a battle for supremacy truly red in tooth and claw.
Each side operated their animal army in a completely
unique way, from the Marquis de Cat’s resource-driven
expansion across the map to the Eyrie’s stringent
commitment to an ever-growing list of commands that, if
broken, would plunge its hierarchy into turmoil.
Truman first discovered the game almost a year after
it was crowdfunded to the tune of more than $600,000
in October 2017. Playing in a hotel bar during the
US gaming fair Gen Con with Brendan Conway, who
would later join him as a co-designer on Root: The RPG,
Truman was left stunned.
“I remember Brendan and I kinda looking at each
other and being like, ‘Wow, this is really something
special,’” he recalls. “The combination of the intricacy
and asymmetry and the depth of it echoing wargames
and counterinsurgency games – COIN games, they’re
often called – but matched with this really evocative
fictional world thanks to Kyle’s art and Cole’s sort of
fiction. We were just blown away from minute one.”
As co-founder and CEO of roleplaying studio Magpie
Games, responsible for RPGs including the superhero-
inspired Masks and gritty political fantasy game Urban
Shadows, Truman saw the potential for Root’s setting to
become the backdrop to an even wider stage.
“On the eighth or tenth playthrough we were like,
‘Y’know, what would be pretty cool here is if we could see
more of this world, if we could do more with it,” he says.
He reached out to Patrick Leder, head of Root
publisher Leder Games, who Truman says was
immediately interested and excited about the
opportunity to explore the game’s universe in an RPG.
“Leder Games has always been super supportive of
trying to make this a broader world that people can engage
with beyond the board game,” Truman says. “They have
plans for what that looks like beyond Root, too.”
DIFFERENT SIDES
As Magpie Games began working on Root: The Roleplaying
Game, Truman and his team pondered how to best bring
the board game’s distinctive factions of creatures alive.
“We thought of Root right off the bat as a game that
could speak to the complexities of asymmetric conflict,
of having lots of different perspectives, but also it’s an
adventure game,” the designer says.
“When we think about Root, one of the things
we were most excited about was this is a game in
which there’s a big war, or a cold war, going on in the
background, and you all are playing the adventurers
who come to make your fortunes. That immediately
leapt out to us as an idea that would give a whole bunch
of gamers an opportunity to do what they wanted with
Root in an exciting way.”
To provide players the chance to freely interact with
the woodland’s varied inhabitants and forge their
own path through the trees, the team settled on the
Vagabond as the focus of the RPG. In the board game,
the Vagabond’s solo adventurer – one of several different
class-like characters picked by the player – could ally with
or antagonise any of the other factions, moving freely
between areas of conflict as they gathered items and
fulfilled quests. The experience was already that of an
RPG-lite, albeit driven by victory points rather than story.
“We’re big fans of COIN games and other things that
capture that feeling of being the insurgents, being the
powers that be. One of the reasons we love thrusting
players into that as the Vagabonds is that you end up
in the middle of everything. You are the creatures, the
fighters, the warriors that are wanted by all sides because
you could tilt this battle, this quagmire, one way or
another,” Truman says of the RPG.
“Part of what we wanted was to give people the option
of choosing their faction kind of in the game. You can
play any animal as a Vagabond; there’s a cat that’s a
Vagabond in the original game, the Scoundrel. So you
can be a cat or a bird or a badger or whatever. There’s
not a one-to-one correlation in Root between the faction
and the animals. Even though all the cat meeples are
cats, the cats have recruited all kinds of other animals to
their army. When they’re out there doing recruiting in
the woodland, they’re not recruiting more cats – the cats
come from somewhere else – they’re recruiting ordinary
mice, bunnies, foxes to their cause. So every faction in
Root is already kind of a heterodox faction.”
Taking control of Root’s remaining factions is the
RPG’s game master, who under the guise of the Marquis
de Cat, Eyrie and Woodland Alliance will give players’
Vagabonds the chance to co-operate – or clash – with
the opposed groups.
“One of the things that we wanted was for people to
be able to think through the ideologies of each faction in
the game,” Truman explains. “So rather than say, ‘Okay,
you’re all cats let’s go and do some cat stuff,’ and have to
really define what ‘cat stuff’ is, we’re going to let the GM
represent the cats as a faction – the Marquis de Cat.
“Those factions want things from you; they want you to
fight their enemies, they want you to do errands for them,
they want you to go seek treasures for them. And as you do
so you might become more closely allied with that faction,
and at some point even find yourself directly working for
them. If you want to protect the woodland, become rebels
and join the Woodland Alliance and be the Han Solo of the
Woodland Alliance – where you came here to make money
but these damn mice just won your heart and now you must
fight for them – that’s a thing you can do as a Vagabond.”
tabletopgaming.co.uk 19
 R O O T: T H E R P G
MORE THAN ANIMALS
Part of Root’s asymmetrical depiction of its woodland
warfare was the way its animal combatants symbolised
conlicting ideologies and behaviours, continuing
a tradition that stretches from Animal Farm to the
Redwall novels. From industrialist felines to tradition-
bound birds, the allegorical gameplay relected a living,
breathing world of difering beliefs and ambitions – all in
a few bits of cardboard and wood.
Root: he RPG is able to dig even further into the history
and nature of each faction and their place in the forest,
with the underlying symbolism giving players’ portrayal
and perspective of the sylvan setting a huge amount
of potential for richer storytelling and worldbuilding.
Truman highlights the Lizard Cult introduced in the
board game’s irst expansion – a faction he hopes to
explore further in a supplement for the RPG – as a perfect
example of Root’s ability to go beyond its charming
visuals and hand players room for interesting stories.
“I love that they worship the Great Dragon and they’re
religious fundamentalists and they have their little skulls
and they hiss about everything,” he says. “hat for me as
a GM is really exciting: to get to play all those diferent
factions and have them be represented as metaphors for
those kinds of people.
“he Eyrie being an aristocratic, above-it-all faction of
birds is super fun to play, and it reminds us of what we love
about things like Mouse Guard – which is an RPG which I’ve
loved for a long time – and of course anything, any movie,
any iction like he Rescuers Down Under where the animals
are not just animals; they’re metaphors for what it feels
like to be a mouse in a big world or a fox in a big world.”
As in the board game, Root: he RPG’s metaphorical
layers won’t just sit below its cute and cuddly surface.
Truman promises that the roleplaying game’s systems
will bring the individuality of its characters to the fore.
“If you’ve played any of our games, we’re very rarely
just like, ‘It’s a theme!’ and wave our hands,” he assures.
“Everything is always rooted in mechanics.”
he roleplaying game will feature tracks similar to the
alliance system used by the Vagabond player in the board
game. As the group works with – or against – particular
factions, the GM will be able to track their standings
with certain characters and groups. As their favour
or notoriety grows, the players might ind eventually
themselves confronted by particular situations as the
result of their past decisions, in a more concrete and
impactful way than other roleplaying games.
“If the cats make an opportunity available to you and
you turn them down, then they’re going to remember that,”
Truman explains. “And as you go through the adventures
that you have, the cats are going to have a mechanical efect
on your options that are available, on their reactions and
on some of the ictional setups for the adventures that
you have. And eventually they’re going to be enemies,
right? hey’re going to put up posters all over the
woodland. Y’know: ‘REWARD for these Vagabonds!’ We
think that that’s part of the fun. Part of the fun of being
20 April 2019
a Vagabond is not just making new friends, but having
enemies – and those enemies, like Robin Hood-style,
trying to catch you and you evading their grasp.”
Truman cites Robin Hood as a particular inluence on
the feel of playing a Vagabond in Root: he RPG – as well as
acknowledging Root’s existing similarities with Disney’s
animal-illed take on the Sherwood-dwelling outlaw.
“What we deinitely think about is that Robin Hood,
woodland feel,” he says. “We want the Vagabonds to be
the lovable scoundrels of the woodland. So we’ve spent a
lot of time thinking through what it takes to give players
the ability to play tricks, persuade people to give them
what they want, sometimes get in ights but also have a
whole plethora of other options for resolving conlicts.
So we see that as an opportunity to do what we always
do, which is build highly thematic mechanical systems
to get across what options players have.
“What we’re doing right now is trying to build out a
game in that style, in that fashion of: what does it take to
produce scoundrel iction at the table? [...] Are people
having an experience at the table that mirrors that sense
of playing Robin Hood?”
Although there’ll be plenty of opportunity for
jaunty woodland adventure and witty interaction with
animal characters, Truman is keen that Root: he RPG
presents players with tougher decisions and potentially
darker implications as the result of their Vagabonds’
mercenary ways.
“One of the parts of that is we also feel that there’s
a strong Game of hrones-style inluence here as well,
where you could also play the Hound,” he compares.
“You could also play a Vagabond who works for the
cats and you’re wrestling with the moral challenges of
working for the ‘villains’, but who might be making the
woodland a better place, maybe? here’s some questions
there about whether you’re on the right side.
“We don’t want it to just be light scoundrel fun – we
also love the idea that you roll into town and the local
people have things they want you to do, but those things
are in direct opposition to what your allies want to
have happen. And you as a group of Vagabonds have to
choose: who are we really working for? And if we want
fame and fortune, are we willing to go our own way
and perhaps earn the enmity of everybody – of all the
diferent factions! – to be our own Vagabonds? ‘No cats,
no masters,’ right? hat’s sort of the core moral challenge
we want to put into the game.
“All the systems we’re building are trying to give
the Vagabonds the option of being very powerful,
very exciting – have a lot of agency as players but also
be confronted with touch choices about what the
woodland’s going to look like when they’re done.”
AWAY FROM THE ROOTS
While Truman vows that Root: he Roleplaying Game
will be faithful to the board game’s world and characters,
he says that the experience of actually playing the RPG
will feel signiicantly diferent for fans.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 21
22 April 2019

“It’s usually a bad idea to try and parallel mechanics,
because the way that a board game functions –
it’s limited, it’s constrained, it’s focused – is just
fundamentally different from how a roleplaying game
functions,” he explains. “But we’re certainly looking at
those elements to capture their feeling.”
He gives the example of the Arbiter, one of the possible
Vagabond classes, who can serve as an extra defender for
another faction during combat in the board game.
“That doesn’t really transfer to a roleplaying game, ‘cause
you’re supposed to be the actor, right? This is happening
on someone else’s turn. So we’ve actually looked at giving
the Arbiter a special ability to basically say, ‘Thou shall not
pass.’ The Arbiter’s cool thing is they can hold an area – a
bridge, a door – and no-one can get through it. It gives you
that sense of, ‘Yeah, I matter to this fight! I was the one who
held them off,’ but in a different mechanical way.”
Another possible character type is the Tinker. Like
the Arbiter, the class opens up a different approach to
encounters and situations – this time, by building and
using mechanical objects.
“Other Vagabonds might try to do that or learn to do
that over time, but the Tinker’s going to have options that
no other character has,” Truman explains.
“This game is going to look a lot like Dungeon World,
Masks, other places we’ve worked in, where players get a
playbook or a character type that gives them unique ways
to engage with the setting. So it’s a little asymmetric.”
Playing just as important a role in the RPG as it did in
the board game is the Vagabonds’ gear and equipment,
which opened up additional actions and abilities in the
original Root as it was collected from the forest.
“Whether you have a crossbow, whether you have a
hammer, matters a lot,” Truman says. “We want that to
I want this to be
a game people
are playing ten years
from now – that is a
big challenge.
R O O T: T H E R P G
be true about the tabletop RPG, too; but we want it to be
true in a storytelling way, not necessarily ‘And now I do
plus-two damage against cats with my crossbow.’”
The aim is, Truman adds, to give the players the power
to make their characters – and the world – their own,
going beyond the relatively rigid gameplay of a board
game to bring Root’s setting fully alive.
“As they have adventures, the way that the mechanics
play out is that they have options for moving forward
that aren’t just fighting every group of cats they come
across but engaging in the kind of delightful trickery-
slash-persuasion-slash-sneaking around that kind of
typifies woodland scoundrel fiction,” he explains.
Several of Magpie Games’ previous RPGs have been
built on Powered by the Apocalypse, the flexible and
straightforward roleplaying engine used in other games
such as Apocalypse World and Monsterhearts that
defines characters’ actions as ‘moves’ resolved by two
six-sided dice and modifiers. Truman confirms that
Root: The RPG will likely follow a similar structure.
“We’re still playing around with exactly what this
system looks like, but one of the reasons we love
that system in particular is that it’s not a hard-coded
system of, ‘Oh, you definitely have these moves, these
playbooks, these things’ – it’s a framework for thinking
about roleplaying games,” he says. “So if you’ve tried
Dungeon World, Monster of the Week, Masks or Urban
Shadows, they’re very, very different games.”
Truman is confident the solid roleplaying foundation and
fleshed-out setting of Root: The RPG will satisfy roleplaying
veterans looking for a vast new world to venture into. But
just as important as proving the game could live up to the
second half of its name was ensuring those attracted by its
familiar title wouldn’t find themselves lost in the woods.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 23
 R O O T: T H E R P G
“here’s got to be a lot of people for whom this is
going to be their irst RPG,” the designer predicts. “We’re
thinking about that in terms of the mechanics that
are being developed, in terms of the book that we’re
outlining and starting to write. We’re already thinking
about: how can someone who’s never played an RPG
before have this be their irst game and have a blast with
their friends? Or maybe you played Root last week as a
board game and this week you’ve convinced that same
group of four or ive people to give it a shot as a tabletop
roleplaying game. he game has to work for those folks.
“We want to move away from gaming as spreadsheets, as
‘Here is this thing you have to absorb and understand before
we can even start playing,’ to gaming, tabletop roleplaying,
as a storytelling experience with you and your friends. hat
doesn’t mean we want to make a mechanically light game.”
FOREST FOR THE TREES
With a background as ripe for roleplaying potential as
the world of Root, Truman admits it’s easy to get carried
away with ideas.
“One of the challenges of publishing is you say, ‘We’re
going to do these things!’ and then, like, three years later
everything inally comes out,” he says. “he irst thing we
want to do is make an absolutely fantastic core game. I
want this to be a game people are playing ten years from
now, and that is a big challenge. It’s a big challenge to
make a game that people really pick up and run with and
have a great time with. So that’s our irst thing, and if we
do nothing but that I will feel like we’ve done Root right.”
hat doesn’t mean the designer doesn’t have a wish
list of plans for Root: he RPG, of course. he game’s core
rulebook will focus on the four factions from the original
board game: the Marquis de Cat, Woodland Alliance,
Eyrie and Vagabond.
“We want to give people a sense of really how to play
the cats and the birds and the Woodland Alliance in a
concrete solid way irst,” Truman says. “hat gives us the
option of bringing [other] factions in in a real way once
we’ve built a system that really supports the core game.”
Beyond that, supplements and expansions will bring
more options to the table for both players and the
GM, as well as exploring new types of adventures for
characters to embark on – and bringing fresh voices to
Root’s political commentary.
“What we like about Root is the way that all the
factions are positioned in tension with each other,”
Truman says. “So the Woodland Alliance looks great, it
looks like they’re the good guys. But they’re also distinct
from the other creatures of the woodland; they’re a rebel
faction. here are many creatures in the woodland who
don’t necessarily support them. So we don’t want to ever
have a situation in which we’re saying, ‘Well, these are
the good guys and these are the bad guys and that’s it,
we’re done.’ Instead we see every supplement as a way of
delving deeper into what the game has to ofer.
“A lot of what we’re going to do is build and support
the world that Leder Games puts out with mechanics and
24 April 2019
advice and systems that allow people to take whatever
Leder Games is doing and go deeper with it. So when
the Riverfolk Company and Lizard Cult are introduced
to your board game, you’re like, ‘his is cool, these have
totally new perspectives.’ But when they’re introduced to
your roleplaying game, suddenly you have these disaster
capitalists and religious fundamentalists – how will your
Vagabonds deal with the challenges they pose and the
opportunities they ofer? Because before the otters come to
town, being straight mercenaries isn’t really a thing – you’re
picking a side. But the Riverfolk Company, they just want
to pay you money – and how will you react when you’re
ofered a big sack of gold to deal with problems instead of the
promises that birds and cats always make for future loyalty?”
Truman expresses his hope to bring all of the board
game’s additional factions to the RPG, including the Great
Underground Duchy of moles and the Corvid Conspiracy
– a murder of crows who excel in espionage – introduced
in this year’s upcoming Underworld expansion.
“hose new factions, we look at them and we’re like,
‘Oh, those are so cool!’ but we’re not going to get to
them until like 2021,” he laughs. “We move a lot slower
in some ways because we have the obligation of writing
tens of thousands of words to get a book out the door.”
With the border of Root’s woodland world set to grow
further in both the board game and RPG, Truman says
that keeping players in command of the setting’s story
will remain central.
“Leder Games has always been committed to Root as
a playground more than a set story,” he explains. “he
idea is we’re working to support their development of
new factions and new ideas for the setting, but we’re
really unlikely to say, ‘And then the cats win and book
four is where you must ight…’”
With a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter this
year ahead of a planned release next spring, Truman
diplomatically comments that the Root: he RPG team is
taking the right amount of “extra time” to ensure that the
roleplaying game is exactly what fans hope for.
“here’s a lot of precision that sometimes we might
go out there and try a thing and not care too much if it
works, but we’re putting a lot of time and energy into
making sure that what Leder Games is doing is a thing
we’re supporting and that we’re clear about what their
future vision is for the product,” he says. “So there’s these
kind of pulls here. On one hand, it’s really clear, it’s really
easy for us to write to what this game is about and we’re
so excited about what this game is about. On the other
hand, we have to move a little bit more cautiously; we
have to take our time and make sure all our ducks are in
a row before we say, ‘Oh, it’s deinitely going to be this
kind of game,’ or ‘It’s deinitely coming out on this date!’”
But even he can’t contain his own excitement at the
potential to venture deeper into one of gaming’s most
engrossing and breathtaking worlds.
“Our main thing right now is making sure that people
are really clear that this isn’t going to happen in ive
years from now; it’s happening now.”
tabletopgaming.co.uk 25
MICROGAME OF THE MONTH A F R E E G A M E F O R YO U T O P L AY I N S I D E E V E R Y I S S U E O F TA B L E T O P G A M I N G !
WORD WARS
A game of doing maths while holding your breath
By Tim Barribeau
ou are a proud child of Charolus-By-Sea, a small fishing
Y village on a ragged coast. Equally at home in the water as on
land, you’re a Wreckdiver, like your parents and their parents
before them. Every day, you and your friends paddle your boat into
the waters, and dive into the countless shipwrecks beneath the waves,
salvaging treasure. There’s riches to be had, but also great danger!
WHAT YOU NEED
» 2d6 in one color (white, for example)
» 2d6 in another color (like red)
» Timer
» A pen and paper for each player
YOUR TURN
THE DIVE
How deep will you go today? What treasures hide in the wrecks’
dark and fallen passages?
Roll 2d6 for the maximum length of your dive (in seconds) for
this turn. Before you roll, choose one die for the 10s and one
for the 1s to decide your dive time. (eg. a 4 and 3 would be 43
seconds.) You must hold your breath the entire time you’re
Diving. Yes, in real life. Set the timer, take a deep breath, and go.
FIND TREASURE
You can only stay under as long as your breath holds – find
what you can!
While Diving, roll both sets of d6 as many times as you can. Each
time you roll, add up the total of the white dice and the total of the
red dice. If the white dice total is higher than the red dice total,
the difference is how much gold you find. Record this number
on your sheet. If the red total is higher than the white, you get
nothing on this roll. Keep rolling until you Ascend or Bail Out.
Doubles: If you roll double whites, take 2x as much gold as you
normally would (so if the roll is higher than the red). If you roll
double reds, you see a shark and drop your gold – reset your
gold tally to 0 for this turn, but keep rolling!
ASCEND
You safely make it to the surface, treasure in tow!
You may Ascend at any point during The Dive before the timer
runs out. Add the gold you’ve collected this turn to your game total.
Signal your Ascent non-verbally to other players: clap, rap the table,
flip a token, anything you all agree on before the game starts.
BAILING OUT
Something went wrong! Get to the surface ASAP,
forget the treasure!
If you’re still Diving when the timer
runs out, or you accidentally
breathe, you Bail Out. You make
it to the surface fine, but leave all
26 December
April 20192017
your gold behind in your hasty retreat. Mark 0 gold for
this turn.
OTHER PEOPLE’S TURNS
You’re free to talk to them, make jokes, scheme with other players
or anything else you can think of without touching the current
player. If you make them crack up laughing, that’s breathing
and they have to Bail Out (and take zero gold this turn).
GAME END
After a predetermined number of rounds (we suggest at least
three), the person with the most gold collected wins. But
there’s always tomorrow!
FAQ
» Wait, I have to hold my breath for real?
Yup.
» And I have to do maths while holding my breath?
Ahhh, there’s the challenge!
» And while these other goofuses try and distract me?
Pretty much!
» What happens if the red dice and the white dice have the
same number?
No gold on this roll, roll again quickly.
» Do even double 1s on red count as a shark?
An itty bitty one, but yes.
» What if I roll double reds AND double whites?
I’d count that as a shark, but go where your heart leads you.
OPTIONAL RULES
Hide the timer from the diver, so it’s harder for them to know
how much time is left to Ascend.
WHO MADE THIS?
Tim Barribeau is a lead editor at the US-based site The
Wirecutter, where he organises bag and pet coverage. You
can follow him on Twitter (@tbarribeau) for dumb jokes and
bad puns, or Instagram for pictures of food, cats, and clothing
– any further game design he does will find its way to one or
both of those places. The art for Wreckdivers was done by
freelance artist Matt H Taylor, who you can follow on Twitter
(@MattHTaylor),), or read his web comic about the Titanic,
Admiral,, at tapas.io/series/Admiral-Comic.
Wreckdivers v0.8 by Tim Barribeau (@tbarribeau).
Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Art by Matt For a free PDF
H. Taylor (@matthtaylor) of Wreckdivers
visit ttgami.ng/
wreckdivers
 SUBSCRIBE
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December 2017
 H AV E Y O U P L AY E D ?
SEKIGAHARA:
THE UNIFICATION
OF JAPAN
This elegant retelling of a
pivotal Japanese battle is
historical wargaming at
its finest, with none of the
effort and all of the action
Words by Matt Jarvis

ekigahara is a three-hour wargame

S recreating a decisive seven-week

battle in 1600 between two Japanese
forces, led respectively by the
guardian of a seven-year-old heir
to the throne and the country’s most powerful
lord. It depicts a sweeping conflict involving castle
sieges and highway skirmishes between tens of
thousands of troops where the shifting loyalty and
allegiance of units can quickly turn the outcome
of a crucial encounter. It comes with a dry, matter-
of-fact subtitle that belongs on the cover of a dusty
history book: The Unification of Japan. With this
intimidating description in mind, you nervously
lift the lid off its dense box to find… some wooden
blocks and two decks of cards. That’s it.
Alright, we admit: we’re being a little reductive
there. After all, there’s also a beautiful map board,
a rulebook and a couple of player aids. Plus, first
time around you’ll have a bunch of black and gold
stickers to carefully align on the dozens of wooden
blocks. The point stands: Sekigahara is an intense,
epic wargame with very little of the gameplay
convolution and minutiae often associated with the
simulationist tabletop genre. That doesn’t mean
it’s lacking strategic complexity and atmosphere,
however; what designer Matt Calkins has achieved
in this packed box is little short of genius.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Sekigahara is based on the 1600 battle of the same
name that would ultimately bring Japan together
for hundreds of years at the conclusion of seven
weeks of fighting for control of the nation.
Each player takes one side of the clash: Ishida
Mitsunari, who must defend the seven-year-old
son of the late warlord whose death triggered
the war, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, the former

28 April 2019

lieutenant of the warlord who had risen to become
Japan’s most formidable daimyo. If either leader
is killed, their opponent claims victory; Tokugawa
also emerges victorious if he captures Toyotomi
Hideyori, the juvenile heir. (Spoiler: in real life,
Tokugawa won.) If seven weeks – represented
by two-part rounds – pass, the war’s outcome
is decided by victory points claimed by holding
castles and strategic resource points.
Central to Sekigahara’s tense conflict are its
blocks. Stacked in towers representing thousands
of warriors (each block represents roughly 5,000
units), the gold and black blocks of Ishida and
Tokugawa are positioned so that only their
controlling player can see their faces. You may
see that your opponent has just three blocks on
a location, but those could be weak strength-one
units or powerful strength-three battalions – or
even cavalry or ranged troops. You won’t know
until you engage them in combat, and discovering
could come at a great cost. The stage is set for
plenty of bluffing, misdirection and intimidation.
Driving the blocks between points on the map
and into combat with each other are players’ hands
of cards, drawn from separate decks for each side.
A simple blind bid opens each round to decide
who goes first, before players can choose to expend
some of their cards to summon reinforcements,
manoeuvre stacks of blocks between points – with
leaders and highways allowing troops to move
further or in greater numbers.
When two stacks come into contact, it’s time
for the fighting to erupt. In a slick representation
of the loyalty of troops, the players must play cards
from their hands to bring blocks from their stack
into battle – making spending those additional
cards on movement and recruitment a potential
risk if you suddenly find yourself without the sway
to encourage your troops to fight. As they join the
fray, troops generate impact – a measurement
of the armies’ strength – with the greater total
inflicting additional casualties when blocks are
removed after the overall power of both sides
has been calculated. A relatively straightforward
system, the combat is given extra excitement by the
ability to build up combos of blocks from the same
clan – represented by matching symbols, or ‘mon’,
on the blocks – and use the power of cavalry and
guns to increase the total impact when the right
cards are played. Leaders enter the battle for free,
as long as they lead the way ahead of their troops.
It’s not just a question of having the most units;
how those troops are used together effectively can
swing the outcome in favour of a smaller force.
Loyalty can be a fickle thing. Each player has the
potential to draw loyalty challenge cards that can
be played in response to their opponent bringing
a unit into battle. To counter the challenge, that
player must reveal another card matching the
symbol of that unit – or suffer the humiliation of
The two players
sit either side
of Sekigahara’s
board, enabling
them to see their
own units but not
their opponent’s
their warriors betraying them and changing sides
to join the enemy.
While most of Sekigahara’s battles take place
out in the open along its titular highway, castles
can be besieged in an attempt to diminish the
opponent’s resources – the player with the most
castles under their control draws an additional
card each round, and the strongholds grant the
most victory points if it comes down to score.
With its ruleset masterfully tight – there are
almost as many pages detailing the history of
Sekigahara in the slim 20-page manual – the
game keeps the complexity and detail in the act
of playing, with the uncertainty of players’ units
and cards creating a tense and tactical showdown
without the distraction of fine-checking rules or
spending time operating its simplified but highly
involving simulation.
WHY SHOULD YOU TRY IT?
The scale and fiddly detail of wargaming can
sometimes be off-putting to those otherwise
attracted by the rich atmosphere and immersion of
recreating real-life events.
Sekigahara boils down the thrill of pitting
your strategy against that of your opponent to
the bare essentials – units, actions, objectives
– without sacrificing the sense of real-world
factors such as loyalty, movement limitations
and army composition. Its easy-to-grasp card-
driven gameplay is given layers of deduction and
deception by the clever use of its block units, and
cements the game’s core of managing the resources
at your disposal carefully, making sure that every
card you play is used to its full effect whether it’s a
bid, movement cost or battle command.
The asymmetric nature of the two forces and
the sprinkling of luck in drawing cards and blocks
is balanced against an absence of any dice-rolling
– victory or defeat overwhelmingly comes down to
how you play your cards, not what cards you have.
Its comfortable position between the ease
of board games and the depth of wargaming
makes Sekigahara an outstanding experience for
newcomers and fans of either world. Elegant in every
way, inside and out, it’s a true modern classic.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 29
 DICE AGE
A decade after Roll hrough the Ages, Matt Leacock’s
spiritual successor to his breezy civ game is taking
the action into the 3D streets of medieval cities.
A new Era of roll-and-build is upon us…
Words by Matt Jarvis

30 April 2019
 008 was the year of Matt Leacock.
2 Although his influential Pandemic
has reaped the lion’s share
of attention and acclaim for
kickstarting a new wave of co-op
experiences, the designer’s other release that
year, Roll Through the Ages, would turn out to
be similarly prescient – eventually.
Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age
condensed the grand empire-building of
games such as Civilization and Through the
Ages – the card game from which it took its
name – into a quick loop of rolling wooden
dice, gathering resources on a peg board and
developing a culture. With ticked boxes on
paper sheets tracking players’ improvements
and the construction of monuments, it was a
roll-and-write in the tradition of Yahtzee but
a decade before the recent flurry fuelled by
the success of last year’s Welcome To…, Ganz
Schön Clever and Railroad Ink, among others.
“It’s funny looking back seeing all those
games and then remembering how much
fun it was to do the original ten years ago.
It was just kind of enjoyable for me to see
It wasn’t very long
them have their time,” Leacock says.
“I’m not sure what really led to their
before I saw how a
popularity in the last year. I don’t know 3D version of the game
if people were kind of looking for some
kind of lighter fun or filler but, yeah, I would really be so
don’t know, it got people’s attention. I
don’t know if I was just early. It felt like much more exciting.
the game got plenty of good attention
back when it came out, but then people
moved on to other things.”
After an official print-and-play expansion
in 2009, The Late Bronze Age, and despite
a nomination for the Spiel des Jahres the
following year, Leacock also moved on to
other things. In 2014, it was Race for the
Galaxy designer Tom Lehmann who took
up the mantle of continuing the series with
standalone sequel The Iron Age, which
similarly expanded with a Mediterranean map.
Roll Through the Ages lay dormant for a few
years. Eventually, Leacock began to consider
rebooting the series.
“I started kind of working on games in that
system and hit upon this medieval variation
of it that I really loved; I thought it was even
stronger than the original,” he says.
The roll-and-write follow-up to the series
he worked on came close to being published,
but something was missing.
“We all kind of looked at the game sitting on
the table and, y’know, it didn’t have a whole
lot of table presence,” Leacock says. “It’s just
kinda a score pad and some dice.
“I talked with the publisher about different
ways we could bring some life to it, to take
advantage of the fact that it’s a board game,
that it’s a physical thing, it can broadcast fun to
people. Sophie Gravel, the head of [publisher]
Plan B, challenged me: what if it was a three-
dimensional game? What if you actually could
manipulate the pieces?”
Inspired by his recent purchase of a laser-
cutter, Leacock set to work on lifting his
spiritual successor to Roll Through the Ages up
from the table.
“It wasn’t very long before I saw how we
could really take advantage of the fact that a
three-dimensional version of the game would
really be so much more exciting.”
A NEW DIE-MENSION
The result was Era: Medieval Age, the first in
a genre its creators have dubbed ‘roll-and-
build’. Where Roll Through the Ages was about
building up an entire civilisation on a sheet of
paper, Era focuses on a single city constructed
piece by piece by players on their individual
board. The walls and buildings are represented
by plastic structures that slot into the grid,
replacing the ink boxes of old.
“You get a lot of the joy that you get with
playing with Lego, kind of snapping things into
place, and also the classic game of Cathedral,
its really great table presence,” compares
Leacock. “I love playing with Cathedral sets,
but I was always kind of disappointed that the
game wasn’t super deep. So this gives you the
joy of positioning buildings relative to each
other within a medieval city, and the positions
actually have some meaning.”
Era’s impressive visuals aren’t just for
looks, either.
“One of the great things about going 3D is
that you can really see what the other players
are doing,” Leacock says. “So you can look
across the table and see – I can see how your
city is developing and know that other people
can see mine. So there’s a better sense of that.
There’s more of a toy-like quality, because
you’re dealing with physical components
you can pick up and they’re really beautiful.
We’re able to kind of leverage the fact that
we’ve got components now and we can play
with scarcity, so now players are competing
for buildings, which is something that would
be hard to do when you can draw whatever
you want – there’s an unlimited supply! So
we played with that quite a bit, and that really
brought a lot of life to the game.”
As he began fine-tuning its follow-up,
Leacock went back and replayed Roll Through
the Ages. A turn-based format where players
rolled their dice individually, the designer
found his older game to feel considerably
more sluggish by today’s standards.
“I don’t know if we had more patience for
it ten years ago, but in a four-player game
there’s a lot more downtime,” he says. “I re-
engineered the system for Medieval
Age so that players roll their dice
at the same time, then there’s a big
reveal and you work out how the dice
interact with each other. That cuts
downtime considerably and keeps
the game moving at a really fun and
rapid pace.”
Era hides its players’ simultaneous
rolls behind screens, allowing them
to reroll dice without the pressure of
checking what their opponents are
doing. Once everybody’s ready, the
results are revealed together, with
players collecting resources and inflicting
disasters on each other.
“We actually found that the interaction
happens in more interesting ways later in the
turn and that downtime that was introduced
by waiting for you to roll just interfered and
felt kind of clumsy – people just wanted to
roll,” Leacock says. “So I went with what
players really wanted and what they really
enjoyed, which was to just get on with the
turn and interact in the more interesting
parts of the turn.”
The increased interaction between players
in Era is a significant step up from Roll
Through the Ages, which allowed players to
roll skulls to cause pestilence among their
rivals and squabble over monuments. In the
new game, players are competing over the
buildings available to add to their city, but
can also extort resources, scorch earth and
unleash diseases – centuries before Leacock
would rid the world of them in Pandemic – to
ensure their own medieval metropolis thrives.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 31
 E R A : M E D I E VA L A G E
With the right rolls, players can
extort resources and unleash
disasters such as disease
“The competition is me against all the other
players, so there’s no ‘take that’ in the game,
you’re not directly attacking a specific player,”
Leacock says. “A lot of it is more long-term
competition; it’s not direct necessarily but you
are forming a strategy and seeing how that
strategy interacts with your opponents.”
Being able to mess with your opponents
also stands apart from the ‘multiplayer
solitaire’ format of many roll-and-write games,
where players compete with each other for the
highest score but could otherwise be playing
alone. Leacock says having the option to
interact with your opponents in Era was “there
from the beginning”.
“I was looking for ways to augment it and
thread it through there without it feeling
clumsy,” he remarks. “I just wanted it to feel
like it was a natural part of the turn. Y’know:
I’m exploring a certain strategy but if my
opponents are exploring a different strategy
which conflicts with mine, I have to adjust.
“You may have this very well-laid plan but
then one turn maybe three of your opponents
are extorting from you, you have to decide is it
worth handing over the resources or do I take
a knock in victory points? So you’re always
kind of adjusting your plans based on what
your opponents are doing.”
32 April 2019
HISTORY LESSON
The game that would become Era wasn’t
the first stab Leacock had taken at making
a historical roll-and-write game since Roll
Through the Ages.
“I had another game that I probably worked
on maybe eight years ago set in the medieval
age, and I put it together and it was...” He
laughs. “I’ll just say it. It was just bad! It was just
a bad game. It checked all the boxes – it was a
roll-and-write game, it was set in that age – but
it was kind of clumsy.”
When he came back to the idea, the designer
sunk himself fully into researching the period:
“what things were like and how society was
structured”. Although his background reading
isn’t necessary explicit in the finished game,
it’s present; for example, Era’s dice represent
four different societal classes, from peasants to
nobles and clergy.
“It’s something I’ve done more and more
in the last, say, five or six years,” Leacock
comments on his level of study. “When I did
Pandemic I didn’t do much original research
or anything, I was just kind of chasing the
excitement of the game. I bounced it off people
to make sure I wasn’t making any big mistakes,
but I wasn’t setting out to simulate something.
But I have found when I go out and do some
reading that it does spark new ideas and it just
feels like it grounds me a lot more than just,
say, making derivative games off pop culture
references would.
“It’s funny, when you actually do that
research you put yourself in the mindset; you’re
playing less off of clichés. I was able to take a
more authentic approach to it. At the end of the
day, you’ve got this game [where] I think players
will find many familiar tropes in it and it will
be comfortable to play and so on, but it made
a difference actually going and doing some
reading and starting fresh several years later.”
When we speak, Leacock reveals that he’s
close to wrapping up a second Era game set in
the Bronze Age and is beginning to research a
final instalment in the planned trilogy.
“The ideas come pretty fast for all the
different ages you could do,” he acknowledges.
The designer admits that he considered the
ease of taking Era’s dice-rolling gameplay to
different time periods.
“My original conceit was we do the Bronze
Age, then we do another age, call it medieval
or iron – [my] thinking was, ‘Oh, I’ll just have
a different tech tree for each of them, and you
have different developments and set them in
different time periods and so on, and then the
game writes itself,’” Leacock recalls.
Uninspired by the idea of producing the
“same game over and over again with different
labels for the different developments”, Leacock
says he began to look at Era from a different
angle, striving to give each game a unique
and fun treatment rooted in their setting that
avoided the feeling of repetition.
“You have some things that you take for
granted, like there’s going to be dice and there’s
going to be building, but I really do want the
games in the series to stand apart from each
other, so you feel like you really need to have
each one or you can explore different aspects
in each of the games without them being, like,
‘Oh, this is just another tech tree game.’”
Tying the different ages together would be
the series’ new name: Era. While Leacock says
he wanted to preserve Roll Through the Ages’
“heart and core” from the off, what it would be
called “was kind of always up in the air”.
“Roll Through the Ages was a fun name, but it
was really long,” he says. “So we were looking for
something kind of snappy as an umbrella name.
Something short, something easy to localise and
that was descriptive – all those good things –
that we could then tag an age onto.”
He laughs.
“I think the name actually in German was
even worse. I think it might’ve broken one
publisher’s database, it was just so long! It was
like Through the Ages: The Dice Game: The
Bronze Age or something like that, it was just
way too long. So I’m happy that the name has
gone on a bit of a diet.”
TIME ROLLS ON
Leacock and his games have come a long way
since Roll Through the Ages first landed on
tables, but despite his stardom in the decade
since the designer is keen to keep his feet on
the ground.
“We haven’t released this one, so I’m trying to
take it one at a time,” he comments carefully when
discussing the future of the Era series. “I really
want to learn and see: how does this one go?”
He compares the measured approach
to Pandemic Legacy, the hugely innovative
episodic spin on his other 2008 release co-
created with Rob Daviau that helped cement
Leacock’s celebrity presence on the tabletop.
Medieval Age’s
‘roll-and-build’
gameplay
features players
building up a 3D
city on their board
“We had the first one out and we had a good
start on the second one, but we learned a lot
from the community as they enjoyed the first
one that we could then roll those insights into
the second,” he says. “I don’t want to get too
far ahead of myself before we see what people
think of Medieval.”
Speaking of legacy games, Leacock is quick
to dismiss any notion of feeling pressured into
transforming more of his earlier projects – or
their later successors, for that matter – into the
grand, story-focused format.
“Those things are really big undertakings,
so I don’t take them lightly,” he laughs.
“I’m happy to work on lighter games in-
between. It’s fun; you can bring them to a
really high level of quality because you can
really obsess about every single little detail
where in a legacy game you’re pouring your
obsession into the story and the longer-term
arc elements. With these smaller games,
you can really just try to polish them up like
little gems.”
With no less ambition to be ahead of
the curve ten years on (among projects
mentioned in passing is a dexterity game he’s
been “hacking away at” – “I’ve really been
trying – those are difficult!” he laughs – as well
as his current fascination with playing with
“dimensionality” and “physicality”), Leacock
reflects on his own journey through the ages
into a new era.
“I just feel a little bit more confident when
I come to designing these things,” he says. “I
have more of a process, so I think I can watch
people play a little bit more objectively and am
a little bit more in tune with what I’m feeling
when I’m playing the games. But nothing
dramatic; more of just, y’know, you get some
more experience and you can apply that to the
next project and, each one, you feel a little bit
more confident.”
tabletopgaming.co.uk 33
 DOUBLE-SIDED BATTLE MATS
22x30 inch size 

WARGAME BATTLE MATS AND TERRAIN COMPANY

www.gamemat.eu
 the independent shelf
Bid on your hand in this inventive trick-taking card
game from the co-designer of Heroscape
irate Tricks is an odd duck as a
P selection for The Independent
Shelf. It is indeed an indie
by reasonable standards of
judgement, but co-designer Craig Van
Ness is not small-time in the slightest.
This man is a titan of the industry,
working at Hasbro for many years and
helming projects like Heroscape and Star
Wars: The Queen’s Gambit. That’s in the
rear-view as now he’s teamed up with
his brother Jeff and they’ve formed label
Soaring Rhino.
This delightful little trick-taker is
their second release. Their debut was
Shifting Realms, an interesting Euro-style
design where the board was a collision
of randomised areas with fantastical
themes. Pirate Tricks is something
PIRATE TRICKS
Words and photographs by Charlie Theel
different – something that appears simple at
first blush but is actually quite radical when
you dig a little.
The game’s crucial twist is that it lets you
bid on your hand. Instead of a completely
randomised group of cards, players participate
in blind bids for open hands splayed on
the table. Half of your hand will still be
randomised, but this mechanism offers a
substantial element of mitigation when it
comes to luck of the draw.
Most interesting is that you’re bidding with
victory points. This requires a shrewd beak
as you must be careful not to overspend on
your hand and come out sore. Furthermore,
the entire experience gains some weight
upon repeated plays as a metagame develops.
Players may begin to collude to pass up
bidding and have the hands seeding with
bonus money as they lean into the more
subtle nuances of the system. This touch of
oomph is slick and a joy to manipulate.
If that wild concept of bidding on hands
in a trick-taking game is not enough
for you, how about this: randomised
objectives. Each of the game’s three rounds
feature a set of goal cards flipped from their
respective decks. These are multifaceted
as they dictate points awarded for simply
constructing your hand a certain way, as
well as defining the points awarded for
taking tricks.
Let’s break this down a bit. The former
provides a set of micro-objectives that
influences your bidding. It may provide
points for possessing cards that form a
run (4-5-6) or maybe if you have three
of a kind across the three suits. This
is wonderful because it’s an alternate
scoring vector to simply winning tricks. It
adds a serious degree of emphasis on the
bidding portion of the game and redefines
pre-conceived notions on what it means
to be a trick-taker.
The second set of goals dictates how
tricks award points. Occasionally they’ll
reverse things, providing precious VP for
those who win the fewest. Sometimes you
will receive bonus points for each card
taken of a particular colour, or
perhaps you will be penalised.
All of this shifting
directives provide
a great deal of
texture, feeding
back into the bid
and forcing you to
evaluate which paths
you will pursue.
Amusingly enough, the
actual trick-taking in Pirate
Tricks feels secondary. The
auction and objective systems
interlock in such a compelling
and satisfying way that you can’t
help but grin once this 30-minute
experience soars by.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 35
 SPACE CADETS
Geoff Engelstein and his children set off on a mission to explore strange
new gaming worlds together. What they discovered was this frantic
co-op game of operating a starship in real time (and space)
Words by Owen Duffy

36 April 2019
 eal-time games are among the
R most fun and frantic experiences
the tabletop hobby has to offer.
Where most games come with
calm and orderly turn-based
structures, the likes of Captain Sonar, Magic
Maze and Escape: The Curse of the Temple see
players all acting at once – the results can be
tense, raucous, confusing and sometimes side-
splittingly funny.
Over the years, a host of designers have
offered their own distinct spins on the
concept. But one of the most beloved – and
hectic – real-time releases is 2012’s Space
Cadets. A tabletop tribute to the kind of
dramatic ship battles seen in Star Trek, it
casts players as the crew of a starship and
hands them each their own role and set of
responsibilities as they navigate the depths
of space, fight off aggressive enemies and
attempt to complete a series of increasingly
perilous missions.
We spoke to designer Geoff Engelstein,
who created the game along with his children
Brian and Sydney, to discover the story
behind its creation and the secret of its long-
lasting appeal.
TO BOLDLY GO
Geoff Engelstein is a lifelong gamer, and over
the decades he’s played titles of just about
every imaginable type.
“I always played games with my family,”
he explains. “We played a lot of chess,
things like that. But eventually I discovered
Avalon Hill games like Diplomacy and
Panzer Blitz, and then a couple of years later
Dungeons & Dragons.
“I was gaming all the way through high
school, then in college I was the head of our
gaming group. I used to play more complex
games in college. Then I got married, and we
had kids, and that was right at the time that
Eurogames were starting to make inroads
into the US market. There were a couple of
companies importing games like Settlers of
Catan and some of Reiner Knizia’s games and
things like that. So gaming has always been
part of what I’ve done.”
While tabletop games are a long-standing
part of Engelstein’s life, he also took an early
interest in the then-nascent field of video
game development.
“When I was in high school I had an Apple
II computer,” he says, “and I used to program
some video games. I had a couple of computer
games published in the mid ‘80s, one of which
you can still play in a web implementation
to this day. It was called Star Blaster. Even in
college, we played around with coding games,
but then I got super busy and started working,
so that took a back seat.”
FLUX BREACH
Each player
has a different
role aboard the
starship – the
crew must deal
with problems
DETONATION together
Return one FAIL
Active Jump
Flux card to the All shots do one
inactive pool less damage
(player choice). (not less than
zero)
Absorb 1
Energy assigned
to Jump. CIRCUIT
FLUX LOSS BREAKER
Remove 1
inactive Jump Before Distrib-
Flux card uting Energy
(player choice) (Step 1), lose 2
from the game. Energy that were
generated (player
Absorb 1 choice).
Energy assigned
to Jump.
While his opportunities to make video the ‘80s or ‘90s,” Engelstein recalls. “In that
games were curtailed, Engelstein maintained game, when you were on the bridge, each
his interest in the tabletop side of the hobby. player had their own console. One player
“I was travelling a lot for business,” he says, controlled the weapons and one player
“and I would always try to reach out to people controlled the sensors, and it was really
and say: ‘Hey, I’m going to be in Cleveland, rudimentary, but I really liked that idea of
I’m going to be in LA,’ or wherever it was. ‘Do the asymmetry where every player had their
you want to meet up and play something?’ It own responsibility.”
was a great way to meet new people and keep He developed the idea, envisioning a
things interesting on the road. game in which a group of players collectively
“Then in the early 2000s I was travelling over controlled a spaceship. One player would be
to Korea, and during one of the trips I looked an engineer, generating energy to power the
up Tom Vasel from the Dice Tower podcast, ship’s systems. Another would be a weapons
who was living over there at the time. I said: ‘Hey, technician, fighting off attacking enemies.
I’m going to be in Seoul and I’d love to meet you,’ One would control sensors, hunting for
so we got together and played some games, and objects and potential threats in the cold,
then every time I went to Korea we’d get together. black depths of space.
That evolved into me being part of The Dice “The original idea was actually to do it as
Tower and doing a segment where I talked about a computer game,” he says. “Online games
some of the math and science behind games. So I were in their early stages, and I thought it
thought: ‘I’ve always been involved in the hobby, would be really cool if we could set it up
I’ve enjoyed programming computer games; I so that every person’s screen would be a
should just sit down and do a board game.’” separate console. So I pitched it to a video
Engelstein’s first release, developed in game company, and they said: ‘Oh, this is
partnership with his son, Brian, was the sci-fi just Puzzle Pirates in space.’
card game The Ares Project. It wasn’t the last “Puzzle Pirates was a game back then
time they’d visit a futuristic theme; the idea for where each player had their own mini-game.
their second title was inspired by one of the So I was a little dismayed, and I kind of put it
most iconic science-fiction series of all time. on the shelf. But it kept kind of germinating
“Space Cadets was actually inspired by a in my mind and eventually I thought: ‘This
Star Trek roleplaying game that came out in could make a pretty cool board game.’”
tabletopgaming.co.uk 37
 HOW WE MADE SPACE C ADE T S
INTO THE VOID
Geoff and Brian began thinking of ways to
translate the idea of a Star Trek-inspired
online game into a physical product, and this
time they worked alongside Geoff’s daughter,
Sydney. Their design saw players piloting a
spacecraft through a succession of missions,
with each person at the table responsible for a
different aspect of the ship’s operations. Every
job came with its own mini-game, which
players aimed to complete simultaneously in a
series of frenzied 30-second rounds.
“I designed Space Cadets with my kids, and
they were about 15 and 13 at that time,” Geoff
says. “One of the things we really wanted to
do was have the mini-games be reflective of
the roles they were supposed to represent. So
in the initial incarnations of the game it was
really more of a starship simulator. The control
panels were quite complicated, and tried to be
more like what you would expect to see if you
were really flying a spaceship. The weapons
had different arcs they could fire in, and there
were different types of phasers and torpedoes
and things that had to work in certain ways.
“But when we actually set up the game and
tested it, we found that people had the most
38 April 2019
fun when they were really just roleplaying
being on the bridge in Star Trek. The mini-
games didn’t need to be super detailed,
they just needed to be suggestive of the jobs
people were doing on the ship, and the more
complicated those control panels were, the
less people liked it.”
The family went back to the drawing board,
creating a collection of mini-game elements
that weren’t just mechanically easy to grasp,
but which sought to evoke the feeling of
particular tasks through their physical design.
“For the weapons officer, for the torpedo
tubes, you’re taking pieces that look a bit like
Tetris blocks and assembling them into certain
shapes,” Geoff says. “The more of these little
puzzles you can complete in 30 seconds the
more torpedoes you have, and to fire them you
just flick a disc down a little track. There are no
arcs of where your weapons can shoot, there
are no fancy charts and tables and modifiers –
you’re just flicking a disc.
“For sensors, which is one of the ones we
really liked, you have a bag with differently-
shaped pieces in it, and you’re reaching
in and trying to identify them though only
your sense of touch in order to get a lock on
the enemy. So it’s very simple to explain to
someone: here’s this bag, you’re reaching
into it, but it’s very suggestive of the role
you’re trying to perform.”
With such a variety of mechanical moving
parts, the process of tweaking and developing
LEECH
Leech must be first Enemy ship
activated. If it hits players, shield hit STEAL
Two sensor po
drops to zero after damage is applied.
four for Super
2 1 6 1
4 3
V
HADES Add dama
If player speed <3 will not attempt to to damage
lock on. Still locks on automatically as
normal if damaged.
2
0 0 12
4
7
the game proved tricky. Geoff says the
approach also provided answers to some
particularly thorny design problems.
“On each round you only have 30 seconds
to do your little mini-game,” he says. “Part
of the reason for that was to avoid having an
‘über player’ telling everybody else what to do.
If everyone’s doing everything in the same 30
seconds, you literally cannot do that.
“But at the same time, we wanted to have
links between the different stations in some
fashion in order to make it work. So, for
 Z-75 HUNTER-KILLER
LTH OSPREY No superlocks allowed.
oints required for lock, FRIGATE Cannot be target of tractor beams.
rlock. CRUISER Lock on Z-75 lost at end of each turn.

2 2 5 3 2 5
3 4 2 2 3
4 +2 5 -2
-1 45
SCOUT DRONE
VENGEANCE If locked onto players at end of its
age Vengeance has suffered STILETTO activation, enemy nearest Scout Drone
e caused on players. gains lock (if unlocked) and fires on PROXIMITY MINE
Each torpedo fired at Stiletto does -1 players if in range.
damage. (minimum of zero) Remove if it explodes.
0 5 2 1 2
3 2 2 4 0 2
+? 4
2 0

example, the one thread that flows through

the whole game is that the engineer creates
energy. They have essentially a domino
Designing with my kids was both
puzzle, and they have to put the dominoes
together in such a way that it can send the
good and bad. We’d be at a
energy to the stations that are important at
that time. Maybe you want to move fast, so you
restaurant or wherever, and you
send it to navigation, or you’re in a fight and
you send it to weapons, and so on.
could just throw stuff out there
“The other tricky part was that we wanted
the mini-games to be relatively simple, but
and start scribbling.
also we wanted them to be somewhat skill-
based. We wanted it to be something that you
could get better at as you went on. It’s easy to
design mini-games based on luck, but that “One thing we underestimated, and three, and I could usually dragoon my wife into
doesn’t give you that feeling of growth and something I would approach differently if I joining us as well. And fortunately you could
that you’re working better together as a team. were to do the game again is that there’s a test the mini-games in isolation to some extent;
It doesn’t give you that sense of: ‘Oh boy, lot to learn,” Geoff says. “Each mini-game you could sit someone down, give them 30
Susan’s fantastic on shields.’ There was one is pretty simple, but it means there’s a lot seconds on a task and see how well they did.
game where we played with a ten-year-old to teach. You have to teach a different set of “Designing with my kids was both good and
girl who was just a killer at flicking that disc rules to each individual person, and everyone bad. In one sense it was incredibly gratifying
down the torpedo track, so she was always else is sitting staring at the wall. And plus, the to work with them. It was great having the
on weapons. She was just a dead-eye with game works better with more players, so it’s designers live in the same house. We’d be
that. That’s exciting, and it kind of fed into the always more of a challenge when you need to driving in the car and I’d come up with an idea,
whole starship fantasy.” recruit more people, or they’d come up with an idea, or we’d be at
If designing the game’s various tasks was tough, “But then, one of the advantages of designing a restaurant or wherever, and you could just
playtesting also presented some challenges. with my kids was that we always had at least throw stuff out there and start scribbling

tabletopgaming.co.uk 39
 HOW WE MADE SPACE C ADE T S

Space Cadets has

received promo
cards and an
expansion, as well
as spin-off Space
Cadets: Dice Duel

Radioactive
Crystal Unstable
At end of Step 4, if player Crystal
ship is in same square Stealth
Explodes when success- Crystal
Massive take two damage. If
adjacent, take 1 damage. fully tractored.
Two sensor points
Crystal May be stopped by Range 0: 4 damage
Range 1: 2 damage required to gain lock.
shields, does not affect
+2 to required Tractor enemies.
Range 2: 1 damage Superlock not possible.
Beam points. May be stopped by
shields.
NANOBOTS CHRONO WARP
Affects enemy ships.

SKIP BUBBLE
Ignore ongoing effects Extend any Step by 30 Blink without inactivat-
of Damage Cards at all seconds. ing a Jump Flux card.
stations this turn.

URING URING
D AFTER D
1 ? 8

it down. It was so easy to just poke my head into
their room and say: ‘Hey, what about this?’”
“We ran into some conflict sometimes.
Occasionally I had to put my foot down,
although more often than not it later turned out
I was wrong, which they never let me forget. I
guess that’s just an occupational hazard!”
THE FINAL FRONTIER
The collaborative process ultimately paid
off, and Space Cadets was released in 2012,
meeting with a positive response from fans.
“I was pretty excited about it,” Geoff says.
“We got a lot of great press over it. I took it to
the conventions in the US, then we showed it
at the Essen Spiel game fair in Germany, and
just seeing people having fun with something
you’ve created is very gratifying.
“But one of the first bits of feedback we got
was from people saying: ‘Hey, I’d love to be
able to fight ship-to-ship against another team
of players.’ We had tentatively started working
on some rules for that, but it all got a little bit
crazy – and that’s what led to the successor
game, Space Cadets: Dice Duel.
“It’s a similar concept in that each person
has a different station, but it’s kind of
simplified. It’s only a ship-versus-ship, team-
versus-team game, which is very fun.”
Geoff returned to real-time design with
his 2017 release Pit Crew, a game about
mechanics rushing to repair cars in the
middle of a high-stakes motor race. He argues
that the approach creates an atmosphere
around the table that turn-based games find
it hard to match.
“It certainly has a different sort of feel
to it,” he says. “You’re trying to create
that anxiety, that rush. Because of my
background in video games, I’ve always tried
to recreate that digital game experience as a
board game. Having real-time elements is a
way to do that, because people are so used
to doing that in a video game. It also helps
people stay focused, because everyone’s
constantly involved in the game.”
He points to other real-time designs as
examples of the format’s advantages.
“I’m a bit fan of Space Alert, and the first
stages of Galaxy Trucker, by the same designer,
where people are trying to put together their
ship,” he says.
“I think Captain Sonar is really neat
as well. It’s similar to Dice Duel in some
approaches, but one thing it taught me is
that we were worried about players making
mistakes and cheating, whether intentionally
or not. Captain Sonar doesn’t worry about
that at all. Everything’s behind the screens;
people could make mistakes and you’d never
know. Maybe in a tournament setting that’s
important, but when people are just getting
together with friends they’re much more
willing to take the game on its own terms. You
don’t need to make it mistake-proof, and if
you don’t need to do that then it opens up a
lot of fun and interesting possibilities.”
In the years since Space Cadets’ release,
Geoff has continued to produce games, and
he’s particularly enthusiastic about some of
his most recent projects.
“My most recently released game was Trade
on the Tigris,” he says. “It’s a trading game with
an open-ended real-time phase where people
are yelling at each other, and I’m very pleased
with that.
“Coming out this year we have Versaille
1919, which is a simulation of the negotiations
around the Treaty of Versailles at the end of
World War I. We’re not trying to do that in real-
time, though.”

40 April 2019
 S E E I T | P L AY I T | B U Y I T

28–29th September 2019

Alexandra Palace,
London

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tabletopgaming.co.uk/shows
 everal years before famed
S novelist H.G. Wells would pioneer
miniatures wargaming in his 1913
book Little Wars, a little-known
female French designer created
a board game that would go on to become a
landmark of strategy gaming in its own right.
In November 1908, Hermance Edan filed a
patent for her invention of a “jeu de bataille
avec pièces mobiles sur damier” – a “battle
game with moving parts on a chequerboard”.
The patent for the then-unnamed game
was granted the following year; Edan
dubbed it L’Attaque. From 1910, the French
manufacturer Au Jeu Retrouvé began selling
the game.
42 April 2019
A two-player showdown, L’Attaque played out
on a nine-by-ten-square board, with sections of
impassable water terrain. Each player controlled
an army of 36 pieces, representing French and
English soldiers of varying strengths. Players
would alternate turns, moving their troops
across the gridded battlefield in an attempt to
capture their opponent’s planted flag.
Key to L’Attaque’s uniqueness was its hidden
information. Both players could arrange their
units as they pleased during setup, with the
faces of rival tokens hidden. When a piece
moved into a position where it was back-to-
back with an opponent, the controlling player
could shout “Attack!” to reveal both units and
eliminate the weaker one.
As well as standard soldiers, players could
also place stationary mines, which would blow
up any piece except the sappers able to remove
them. Scouts could move multiple squares in
a straight line. Most important was each side’s
spy, which was the only unit able to capture the
powerful commander-in-chief – but could be
stopped by any unit that discovered it.
“The early edition featured French and
English soldiers, but whether it was based on the
Napoleonic wars, we don’t know,” says Michael
Gibson. “In some ways, it seems unlikely that
the French would publish a game based on a
military campaign in which they were defeated!”
It was Gibson’s father and uncle, Harry
Aisbitt Gibson and Robert Gill Gibson, who
 It was the ‘rival to chess’ played by Winston Churchill
that inspired Stratego and Dover Patrol. Over a century
since its invention by a female French designer, we
discover the forgotten story of a piece of gaming history
Words by Matt Jarvis

Michael says negotiated with Edan for the
English rights to L’Attaque in the early 1920s
following its success in France.
“I believe that Robert Gibson personally
travelled to Paris to conclude the transaction
and to take possession of the printing blocks,”
he recalls.
PLAN OF ATTACK
H.P. Gibson & Sons – the family-owned business
founded by Harry A. and Robert’s father Harry
Percy in 1919 – began printing Edan’s game in its
London premises on Aldersgate Street. Promoted
with the grand promise of being “a game to
rival chess”, the game retained its French
name of L’Attaque for the British audience.
“We don’t know why the French name was
retained, but maybe at the time there was
some charisma in a game with a French title,”
Michael suggests.
Among the more high-profile British players
of the game was politician Winston Churchill,
who was noted as being a fan.
“In its heyday, almost every schoolboy
would have enjoyed playing L’Attaque and,
because it is a two-player game, it tended to
generate considerable competition between
school friends, each vying to become the class
champion,” Michael says.
“It is common knowledge that Prime
Minister Winston Churchill greatly enjoyed
a game of L’Attaque, when he wasn’t busy
leading Britain to victory in the Second
World War!”
L’Attaque became the first in Gibsons’ ‘Big
Four’ series of military strategy games based on
a similar gameplay experience. Dover Patrol
was a naval wargame with ships and the need
to return the flag to your base; submarines
and flying boats introduced unique movement
and attack rules. Aviation, meanwhile, took
the action into the air, with planes and airships
weaving around barrage balloons, searchlights
and AA guns that could pick off planes at
range; the objective was to escort a troop
carrier to an aerodrome on the opposite side
of the board. Published not long before the
Second World War, 1935’s Tri-Tactics combined

tabletopgaming.co.uk 43
 L’ A T T A Q U E
the land, sea and sky action into a single
game, with coastlines and the opportunity for
units in different environments to interact.
While Dover Patrol, Aviation and Tri-Tactics
were based on Edan’s design for L’Attaque,
they were credited as being created by
Harry Gibson – who has been occasionally
miscredited with the design for L’Attaque, too.
L’Attaque continued to be produced in
London for almost two decades, until the
Gibsons site was destroyed during the Blitz
bombings during World War II.
WAY TO STRATEGO
The story of L’Attaque would take another
significant turn toward the end of World War II.
While evading the Nazis in the Netherlands,
trader Jacques Johan Mogendorff had come
up with the design for a game very similar to
Edan’s L’Attaque while playing with his sons.
According to historian Fred Horn, Mogendorff’s
design appears to have been inspired by a game
he had played called Tek, the creation of a shot-
down Canadian pilot sheltering in The Hague
in around 1941 to 1942. Tek itself seems to have
been based on the British rules of L’Attaque,
which the pilot may have played back home
and recalled from memory.
‘Stratego’ was first registered as a trademark
in 1942, although who registered the name
is unknown. Two years later, Mogendorff and
his family were deported to the Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp; they would be freed in
April 1945, though Mogendorff’s suffering in
the camp would contribute to his death in 1961.
44 April 2019
The first edition of Stratego was published
in 1946 but, despite the game’s popularity,
Mogendorff struggled financially as the result
of the war and his inability to sell the game after
his original licence expired in 1949. In 1958, the
designer sold the rights to publisher Jumbo.
During the following year, Stratego sold more
than 15,000 copies across Europe. Its success
soon saw it cross the Atlantic to the US, where
the game shifted 100,000 copies in 1962 alone
– five years later it sold 300,000 copies in a year,
followed by its peak success in 1980 as over
700,000 copies were bought. In the decades
since, numerous versions have followed,
including a home computer release and
handheld video game for the Nintendo DS.
Stratego’s differences to L’Attaque are slight.
The ten-by-ten board is more square, the players’
armies slightly inflated with 40 pieces each. Mines,
spies, sappers and the commander-in-chief (now
known as the general) all made a return. Later
variations would introduce more unique
roles and rules, ranging from the four-player
Ultimate Stratego to Stratego Fortress, which
added multi-storey 3D terrain and movement.
Although Stratego’s lineage to L’Attaque is
widely acknowledged, the complete destruction
of Gibsons’ company records in 1940 means
that even its creators remain somewhat in the
dark as to the exact relationship between the
two games. Mogendorff is even alleged to have
called L’Attaque “an exact copy” of Stratego
upon seeing the earlier game, seemingly
unaware that Edan’s design predated his by
several decades.
“Stratego is clearly a variation of the same
game, but whether we just obtained the UK
rights and not world rights is unknown,” Michael
Gibson comments. “There would not appear to
be any evidence of any legal dispute between
ourselves and Jumbo, the publisher of Stratego.”
BACK L’ATTAQUE
While Stratego has become a widely-known
competitive classic – the game has a dedicated
governing body, the International Stratego
Federation, that organises multiple championships
each year – L’Attaque isn’t nearly as well-known
among players. Its most recognisable version
from recent years may be Sharpe’s Attack, an
edition released by Gibsons in the mid-1990s
based on the Sean Bean-starring television series
that proclaimed itself as “developed from the
original game of L’Attaque” on the front of its box.
Despite being somewhat overshadowed in
the years since its release, Edan’s game has been
properly recognised as an important milestone in
the history of gaming, with the game appearing in
the collections of museums such as London’s V&A.
This May sees a re-release of L’Attaque with
a faithful recreation of the game’s original
box, components and rules sheet – although
an updated way of playing is also included.
Gibson expresses his hope that modern players
who pick up the game will find more than a
historical artefact to appreciate.
“L’Attaque is a clever little game and, although
it passed out of fashion in the eighties, partly due
to the advent of computers, it still provides 60
minutes or so of stimulating entertainment.”
around the world in 80 plays
UGANDA
Words by Chad Wilkinson
,500 miles west of last month’s trip to
3 India lies the landlocked country of
Uganda in eastern Africa. Uganda’s
most nationally-recognised game
is omweso, a variant of the mancala style of
games that originated on the African continent
over 2,000 ago. These popular two-player
games were often played using seeds, with pits
in the soil representing the board. Nowadays,
mancala-style games commonly use a wooden
board with stone or glass playing pieces.
The object of the game is to capture your
opponent’s pieces through the mechanic of
‘sowing’. Sowing involves a player choosing a
pit of their seeds and collecting them in their
hand, before placing them one by one in each
subsequent pit.
The influences of mancala can be seen in
modern games such as Bruno Cathala’s excellent
Five Tribes. Taking the key ‘sowing’ mechanism
seen in omweso, Five Tribes sees players
collecting groups of coloured meeples from a tile
and placing them one by one until left with only
one colour. All meeples of that colour are then
taken and used for specific actions.
Whilst Uganda might be lacking the
publishers, game stores and cafés that
commonly promote the tabletop hobby in
other regions, people are nonetheless finding
ways to use board games to engage with
communities across the country.
The UK charity CYEN (Chrysalis Youth
Empowerment Network) has been running
the Uganda Village Board Game Convention
since 2017, with help from leading names in the
hobby such as Matt Leacock (Pandemic),
(Pandemic
Pandemic),), Tony
Boydell (Snowdonia)
( ) and Hub Games (creators
of Rory’s Story Cubes).
Cubes). The charity aims to bring
young people from across northern Uganda to the
village of Koro, with hopes of teaching confidence-
building, initiative and problem-solving skills,
alongside a focus on teamwork. Activities include
several tournaments, roleplaying sessions and
even a space for people to create their own
designs. Not all of the convention’s activities
rely on modern examples of game
design though, as one of the
largest events is a grand
tournament of that old
Ugandan pastime, omweso.
In 2018 CYEN organised the
second Uganda Village Board
Game Convention, raising over
£4,000 through crowdfunding. The
charity kindly offered rewards for some
donations including signed Molerats in
Space memorabilia, whilst Matt Leacock and Tony
Boydell themselves offered prizes for donations
such as copies of Pandemic and a specially created
Tsavo Lions train card for Snowdonia. Leacock
heavily covered the event in his blog and even
created team-based rules for the various Ugandan
districts playing Molerats in Space.
The convention has built up a healthy
collection of games but is still looking for
donations, with dexterity and language
independent games being sought out in
particular. Look up CYEN’s website if you’re
looking to slim down your collection and help out.
Simple board and card games have also
been used in Uganda to inform residents of less
developed areas on aspects of sexual health and
other issues. Ugandan-based company Zzimba
Games started business as a producer of jigsaw
puzzles but later expanded into simple Snakes
-style games with added worldly
and Ladders-style
messages on safe sex, business management and
land acquisition.
Academia and healthcare providers
have also taken an interest in the
benefits of educational board games,
with several studies examining levels
of engagement of Ugandan men with
games focusing on pregnancy, childbirth
and STIs. Despite recent improvements,
Uganda still has a high rate of maternal
W
N
Slides & Ladders, Whose Shoes? and
a modern omweso board (pic:
(pic: Yintan
Yintan)
– three Ugandan games that range from
entertaining to educational
deaths each year, largely due to little or delayed
maternity care. Husbands play a key role in
determining the safety of their wife and infant
as often, due to imbalanced power relations,
women’s decisions are limited.
The game Whose Shoes? was developed
to encourage men to take a more proactive
approach to the use of healthcare during
their partner’s pregnancy. Gameplay involves
players rolling dice and moving shoe-
shaped playing pieces around the board.
Different spaces correspond to coloured
cards containing information on diet,
potential birth problems and the problematic
cultural issues affecting healthy childbirth.
Unsurprisingly, studies found that the visual
aids and interactivity offered by a board game
were preferred over general talks on the topic,
with Ugandan men displaying a healthy
engagement with the information learned.
Uganda may not be leading the way in regard
to its own innovative designs but, perhaps
more importantly, demonstrates the universal
power of board games. Game mechanics
can teach vital skills to anyone, regardless of
background, whilst specific theming can be
used to generate understandings of issues
important to specific communities.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 45
 GO O D TIME
EAT PLAY LOVE BLOODY ho Raiders
Play: Ps
yc

Watch : M
Eat : Rar
andy
e Steak
ary
r i n k : B loody M
D lew my m
ind. By
Raiders,
it b e indie
. This lit tl
I p la ye d Psycho and full of awe l Evil is jam-
time rbed rna
The first n it left me distu Emperors of Ete e that Nicholas
a ris
Ensure your next game night is an unforgettable evening with our readymade recipes

io
that I me game from stud ere. It’s no surp same cranial
e h e
magazin h brutal atmosp andy cuts into th wonder.
it nd
packed w 18 horror flick M ce with dread a ant to serve a
0 pa w e
Cage’s 2 fills the empty s violence you will Accompanying th
d of ch. ry.
lobes an ff this road trip u can s to m a
ll Blo o d y M a
To top o ak, as rare as yo n the nose is a ta more blood.
ic y ste te ly o h , well,
nic e ju co mp le loo d w it ly over
eat and or and b is cer tain ’re
carved m n a night of terr ompassing gore e charm. If you
of games, films, food and drinks that make for the perfect playable pairings

w c f th
Wash do coction of all-en ut that’s par t o d on spectacle,
This con bit facetious, b h a film premise
nd a atc
th top a lay a game and w of it.
e
g to p n igh t
goin ke a
then you
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Pla TT
y: N OP
Wa
tch eon
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LAY
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futu id Hat s iors
r
at t e ta late ’s Dri t Foo
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caff ane S bet te vibran politic e of s rawls f the ctly m nzied
‘
hol eine a urge a r acco t anar s and t yle. T wher 79 W imics retro-
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out low as nd ca nd fa mpan chy. disco hey b ruffi alter the
hea , at le thos rbs w st foo iment urs oth ans Hill
eh fi
dac ast e ca ill k d fr t h a ave highlig speak lm
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r es can es. y our y o ur ras t n
olve If gut futur
s it screa the g veins prefe hy me ted e
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self m a am j u r r e a l
. “C t ea e or iced d ea of hi e
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it?” r unti oesn’ er a he
l th t w s
at p ork
oun
din
g
Words by Charlie Theel

46 April 2019
 PSYCHEDELICACY
Play: Fire in the Lake
Watch : Apocalypse Now
Eat: Pho
Drink: Bia Hoi
their own
in the Lake each provide
Apocalypse Now and Fire k of art fea turing a
a cinematic wor
brand of bizarre. One is tor tur ed Ma rtin Sheen, the
ndo and
deranged Marlon Bra plex war in
ulation detailing the com
other a magnificent sim
Southeast Asia. king through someone else
’s fever
Apocalypse Now is like wal its black heart. Fire in the Lake
ctly into
dream and staring dire then trying
aking tha t dre am down into blocks and
is like bre
gam e util ises the phenomenal
. This
to reassemble the pieces GM T and provides a
cy) system from
COIN (counterinsurgen whi le stil l maintaining a strong
t of det ail
tremendous amoun
degree of playability. workout.
r noggin a mind-bending
So kick back and give you se bre w Bia Hoi . This
in the Vietname
To stay fuelled, par take wit h the sou py street food Pho and
pai rs wel l
delicious local beer the jungle
d long into the night. As
will keep your table satisfie delic collision of art and immersion
V FOR VICTORY P around you burns, this psy
che
ted and contemplative.
It will be an
OINTS will leave everyone exhaus
experience none will for get .
Play: Escape from
Colditz
Watch : The Great
Escape
Eat : Bratwurst & Sa
uerkraut
Drink: Moonshine
Released in 1963
, The Great Escape
This war film featur is a
es an ensemble ca stone cold classic.
Richard At tenboro st
ugh, James Garner of Steve McQueen,
Fit ting then that it and many more.
serves as an open
exemplar Escape ing salvo to the eq
from Colditz. ually
This 75-year -old bo
escape from a W ar d ga me similarly features
orld a climactic
re-release is a beau War II German POW camp. The 20
tiful sprucing up – 16
original integrit y isn a remastering wher
’t sacrificed. e the
If you’re going to be
prison break, you digging a tunnel an
can’t be hungry. Br d lau nching a massive
are obvious choic atwurst and saue
es, reflecting the rkraut
manning the wire tas te of the German so
fence. Moonshine ldiers
suggested bevera , on the other hand
ge due to a signifi , is the
Escape where the cant scene in The
prisoners perform Great
Just as these soldie some clandestine
rs celebrated in ca brewing.
initiating their risky maraderie before
gambit, dull your se
blood flow before nses a bit and let
assembling your es the
cape kit.

47
 GAME NIGHTS

MY
3:10 TO YUM
Legends
Play: Western
the Ugly
tc h : Th e G o o d, The Bad and
Wa
i
Eat: Spaghett
ey
Drink: Whisk .
n film, full stop
th e Ug ly is th e best wester en a of
Bad and in the ar
The Good, the s earns that same accolade ter development
nd ac
Western Lege offer an intense arc of char your brain like
a
cardboard. Bo
th
em bl az on th emselves upon
n. Both
through actio etop gaming.
smoldering br
and. comes to tabl
n is an od d genre when it tr ai n wi th in boundaries
The wester or ie s is difficult to cons m s of the greater
su ch st oc os
The scope of in m os tly sh or t-form micr going full adventure,
lted d by
which has resu rn Legends bucks the tren erchants &
te nre greats M
narrative. Wes ns established by other ge .
er em
mimicking patt a: Legends of a Drift Syst usted.
ar au de rs an d Xi an d boar d wi ll leave you exha iskey.
M ey ac ro ss film d a sh ot of wh
an
This epic journ jolt to the nervous system a huge plate of
ver wi th a n dig int o
Best reco rned you ca n westerns
lties have retu d towards Italia
Once your facu eeky, but this humorous no you on the trail.
ch th
spaghetti. A bit genre fans riding shotgun wi
ht
is sure to delig

HEAVEN SAM
URAI
Play: Rising Su
n
Watch : Ran
Eat: Sushi
Drink: Sake
Our final game
nig
plastic monstro ht is one for the ages. Risin
sit y of feudal Ja g Su
control with fa panese warfare n is Eric Lang’s
ntasy elements . It blends area
much to explo and dramatic
re over the thre negotiation. Th
asymmetrical e-hour playtim ere’s
abilit e as
combos to supp ies and a CCG-esque upgrad you grapple with
lement strategy e system of ex
Of similar emot . ploiting
Ran ional complexit
n. This magnifi y is the legenda
cent period film ry Akira Kurosa
Shakespeare’s
King Lear, altho features a plot derived from wa’s
unparalleled se ugh it reshapes
ns th
the truly special e of st yle and poise. Like Lang e story with an
members of his , Kurosawa is
bear witness to field and we ar one of
his work. e fortunate en
The sake and su ough to
the overall atm shi are almost
os to o pe rfe ct . Bo
immersion of de phere of the experience and th will heighten
lvi su
of entertainmen ng into such prodigious poet ppor t the natural
t and vit tles wi ry
experiences a ll provide one of . This pairing
hobbyist can en the best total
counter.

48 April 2019

+y ^
180
Play it smart
What’s in ‘a game’? Our professors of play consider what lies behind
the seemingly straightforward definition of a tabletop experience
t a recent meeting of the Manchester
A Game Studies Network, Hwa
Young Jung (a multidisciplinary
artist and games designer)
and Dr. Emma Murray (senior
lecturer in criminal justice from Liverpool
John Moores University) presented their work
in developing Probationary: The Game of Life
on Licence. Produced through workshops with
men on licence, Probationary explores the lived
experience of being on probation, reflecting real
experiences of being subject to the criminal justice
system and presenting players with an opportunity
to play, understand and discuss such systems
within our society.
Probationary very clearly takes the form of a
game. To all intents and purposes, it looks like
a classic game such as Snakes and Ladders, or,
indeed, The Game of Life whose title it invokes.
In terms of gameplay, Probationary (which was
designed for three to five players, one of whom
takes a game master-like role as the ‘Eye’) gives
each player an identity (a composite character
with a set of values, abilities and restrictions)
and the goal of moving from their designated
starting space to the final ‘safe space’. Movement
is determined by the roll of a d6, with players
picking up cards on each space that either award
¦^
a+b
Probationary: a game
that explores the
experience of living
while on probation
(Dan Burns)
or remove points. The
player with the most
points by the time all
players reach the safe
space wins. In addition
to this classic roll-and-
move mechanism, players must ‘report in to the
Eye’ at specified points, with penalties applied
for failing to do so.
Probationary prompted a discussion that
could broadly be divided into three categories:
questions about the probation system, questions
about co-creation and ethics, and questions about
games more generally. Prompted by the seemingly
innocuous question ‘Is Probationary a game?’, we
found ourselves engaged in a heated (but good-
natured) discussion about the nature of games.
There have been many attempts made to define
games. Some emphasise playfulness, others rules,
others conflict. In his keynote presentation for
the 2003 Level Up conference, Danish game
designer and theorist Jesper Juul offered what
has become an influential definition of games,
arguing that they must be: (i) rule-based; (ii)
have variable, quantifiable outcomes; (iii) have a
value attached to the outcomes (some outcomes
are better than others); (iv) involve player effort;
(v) have an attachment of players to the outcome
(winners ‘feel good’ and losers ‘feel bad’); and
(vi) have negotiable consequences (the game can
be played with or without real-life consequences).
How does Probationary fare? It certainly has
rules (it comes with a rulebook) – these allow
players to quantify the outcomes, of which
(a)
(b)
La
Ga
Am
Es
there are some that are ‘better’ than others
(there will always be a winner). Does the game
involve player effort? No, or at least not beyond
the mechanical action of rolling dice and moving
pieces. Like Snakes and Ladders, Probationary
is a game of chance with minimal player agency.
In the absence of any meaningful input on the
part of players, any attachment to the game’s
outcome is likely to be short-lived. As Juul notes,
this category is negotiable, depending as it does
on the lusory attitude of the players. In other
words, if attachment is in the gift of its players (i.e. a
subjective response is made possible by the game’s
rules) then this relies on the players themselves.
Juul’s last criteria, ‘negotiable consequences’, was
an interesting one. While for those at our session
the game could be played without consequence,
its thematic impact was dramatic. That some of us
could play Probationary in this way underscored
the fact that for those living on licence there exists
a parallel ‘game’ in which the submission to a
system of rules, and the attendant frustrations and
apparent lack of agency is rather less negotiable.
According to Juul’s framework, then,
Probationary is not a game. Does this make it any
less effective in obtaining its goal of stimulating
discussion about the probationary system in
the UK? Absolutely not. Taking this further, does
classifying something as a ‘game’ or not actually
matter to anyone working outside of games
research? Probably not. Consider the original
Game of Life, which falls short of Juul’s definition
for exactly the same reasons. Yet, despite this,
The Game of Life is recognised by millions as an
archetypal game. Could we say that games include
“anything that might be classified as such by the
people who are playing it” – a cop-out or a more
inclusive (non-)definition that seeks to move
away from perceived value? Perhaps both.
Doctors Paul Wake and Sam Illingworth
are Manchester Metropolitan University
academics and co-directors of The
Manchester Game Studies Network.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 49
 STRANGER THINGS
Tales from the Loop’s beautiful art, exciting premise
and subtly Scandinavian tone helped the game sweep
roleplaying awards and top countless ‘Best of’ lists.
Get ready to meet its darker, moodier teenage cousin
Words by Richard Jansen-Parkes

ou don’t get too many follow-ups “Perhaps you could call it a sister to Tales players to grunge music, girl power and the

Y in the world of roleplaying. You

get new editions, designed to
wipe away the old and welcome
in the new, but rarely do you get
something that feels like a direct continuation
– the Dark Knight to a Batman Begins. And
yet, that’s exactly what Things from the Flood
feels like.
“We call it a sequel game,” explains Tomas
Härenstam, CEO of the RPG’s Swedish
developer Free League. “It’s completely
standalone but it continues to expand the
universe – in time if not in space. We actually
have the same thing with our Mutant: Year Zero
games, with four standalone titles in that range.
from the Loop. It’s hard to work out the
exact terminology.”
As you might expect from two games tied
so closely together, Things from the Flood has
roughly the same premise as its progenitor: a
bunch of youths investigating weird goings-
on in an alternate, sci-fi-tinged version of
our own reality. Where Tales from the Loop
looked at pre-teens exploring the optimistic
world of the 1980s, this time things are moved
on by a few years.
The kids are suddenly teenagers, caught
between the surety of adulthood and the safety
of childhood. The world around them has aged
too, moving into the 1990s and introducing the
wonders of PC gaming.
“We followed the time,” says Härenstam.
“Moving into the ‘90s brings along a whole
different source of inspiration – they’re quite
different from the ‘80s. We loved the weird
vibe from things like Twin Peaks, for example.
On top of that the kids are older and that
brings a darker, creepier tone.”
OLDER, WISER, DARKER
He’s not wrong. Many things have changed in
the rough decade between the games, and the
happy days of friendly robots and stumbling
across dinosaur eggs in the woods seem to be
long gone.

50 April 2019
 The Loop – the titular research facility that
accounts for most of the weird phenomena – is
all-but erased from sight, buried beneath a
morass of brackish floodwater and sealed off
from the public. Machinery developed from
its breakthroughs is erupting with hideously
organic growths and fluids, AI independence
movements in Russia have led to a brutal
government crackdown and the grown-ups in
your home town all seem to be acting weird.
Weirder than usual, that is.
Everywhere you look in Things from the
Flood things are changing, and not always for
the better.
One of the reasons for this, explains
Härenstam, is that the shift in mood mirrors
what many Swedes were experiencing around
the time in our own reality.
“It’s hard to separate the tone of the era
from the countries that it’s set in,” he admits.
“In Sweden the ‘90s were a time of big change.
That was when Sweden opened up to the
outside world – suddenly we had commercials Along with older characters, Things from the Flood features more mature
on television! Before that it was state- themes and gameplay – including the potential for its heroes to die
controlled TV with only two channels.
“There was a lot of change, a huge shift
in power throughout the country. And we Härenstam is quick to point out “it’s not a proud of – here you have a ‘shame’. It fills the
thought that paralleled the changes that particularly deadly game”, though. same kind of space in the rules but, rather than
teenagers underwent at that time, leaving “We have things called scars that are showing off something you’re good at, you’re
childhood and becoming adults. permanent damage of a sort. If you get enough trying to overcome something you’re ashamed of
“Of course, when we looked at building our of these scars, there’s a risk that you might die. – whether that’s the fact that your dad’s in prison
US version of the setting, the parallels weren’t “Even then, the way we handle death is or the way you feel about your appearance.
quite so clear, so we had to consider that a different from how it’s handled in a normal
little differently.” fantasy game where you’re simply killed in LOOK TO THE FUTURE
the middle of a fight. You’re always given a Over the next few months there will be a
DEATH IN THE WATER chance to choose how you exit the story – to hardback release of Things from the Flood as
Things from the Flood is a dark and often create some kind of final farewell that feels well as a book of adventures set in both the
dangerous experience. Where the mysteries appropriate to the character. ‘80s and ‘90s. Härenstam teases more products
in Tales from the Loop were knockabout “But the stakes are higher and the set in the shared universe; he’s keen to make
adventures that might land you in trouble with challenges more serious, so we wanted to it clear that “it’s not like we’ve abandoned
your parents or with a warning from the local make sure you could lose a character. It’s Tales from the Loop – we still plan to put out
police, the stakes are an awful lot higher this important almost as much as a signal as it is a supplements for it”.
time around. rule. The mere fact that it exists – the fact that Beyond that? Well, Free League always has
Indeed, one of the news announcements you can die – puts that thought into the heads plans in motion below the surface, but anyone
sent out in the lead-up to the game’s release of players.” holding on for the noughties version starring
ended its headline with a stark warning: Beyond that, Härenstam says, the core disaffected twentysomethings is probably
“THIS TIME YOU CAN DIE.” According systems between Tales from the Loop and going to have to wait a while.
to Härenstam, the team didn’t make the Things from the Flood are “very, very close”. “We don’t have any plans for a third game
decision lightly. You have the same attributes and mostly the right at this moment,” says Härenstam. “But
“Nils Hintze was the lead designer for both same skills, and the mechanics around rolling we’ll see. Both Tales from the Loop and Things
games, and that’s one point that we had a lot dice are pretty much identical. from the Flood are based on art books by
of discussions about,” he explains. “How could There are a few minor differences, however, Simon Stålenhag and his third book – The
we make that change mechanically?” and like those around character death they help Electric State – isn’t set in the same universe.
“I mean, there was nothing stopping you to paint a picture of the world the Härenstam If we were to do a game based on that, it
from killing off a kid in Tales from the Loop if and his colleagues were working towards. wouldn’t be the same universe, but perhaps
you want to, but it would be all in the narrative There’s no luck mechanic anymore, for more of its own thing.”
– there are no rules that can kill a character. In example, and where you had ‘pride’ in Tales – Read our full review of Things from the Flood
Things from the Flood there’s a mechanic for it.” something you were really good at and really on page 72.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 51
 Presented by the South
London Warlords,
Salute 2019 is the
biggest independent
one-day wargaming
and gaming event in
the UK. Once again, we
have a huge number
of UK and international
traders attending the
show at ExCel London
as well as plenty of
demonstration and
participation games
to enjoy. We will, of
course, be running
our renowned painting
competition on the day.

SATURDAY 6TH APRIL 2019

DOORS OPEN 10.00-17.00
Tickets SALUTE is held at
ExCel London, which
£10.00 via eticket or £20.00 (cash is very easy to get to.
Here is a simplified
only) at the door. transport link map.
Under 16s FREE with a paying
adult.
Again this year there will be
several ‘golden ticket’ prizes.
Tickets are now on sale from our
Facebook page and website:
www.salute.co.uk
NB: there is no bring and buy at
Salute 2019.
THROUGH THE AGES
PLAID HAT GAMES
As the Dead of Winter, Summoner Wars and Stuffed Fables studio turns 10,
founder Colby Dauch looks back on a decade of boundary-pushing games
Words by Sam Desatoff
efore founding Plaid Hat Games in
B 2009, Colby Dauch was a big fan of
Heroscape. His enthusiasm for the
game set in motion a career that
began with a simple fansite and a freelance
design job at Hasbro.
“I became a super fan, and started a website,”
Dauch says. “Then ended up working on the
game [as a playtester]. I developed several
different games for Hasbro, and then decided
that I should make my own game.” That game
was Summoner Wars.
Dauch shopped Summoner Wars to
Hasbro, who said it wasn’t the right fit. Next,
he tried Fantasy Flight Games, which also
turned it down. Dauch says he tried the larger
publishers first because they would have the
financial strength to back his game, but the
idea of starting his own company was never far
from his mind. In 2009, he did just that.
Summoner Wars is a tactical card game that
pits two faction armies against one another. The
action takes place on a grid-based battlefield,
which makes positioning an important part of
planning your attack. Since launch, the game
has inflated to include 24 factions and taken
home several prestigious awards.
To keep up the momentum from Summoner
Wars, Dauch went on the hunt for other designers
to bolster his burgeoning company. He reached
out to friends from the Heroscape community and
connections made while working for Hasbro.
“Jerry Hawthorne and I worked together
doing freelance for Hasbro,” he says. “We met
2009 2012
April 2019
through Heroscape, and got work through [the
game] at Hasbro. After I got the company up
and running, I turned to Jerry and was like,
‘Hey, you got any game ideas?’”
It turns out that, yes, Hawthorne had an
idea up his sleeve. Released in 2012, Mice and
Mystics is a co-op story game about a team of
humans-turned-mice who must save their king.
In the base game are 11 story chapters – several
expansion chapters have been released since.
Mice and Mystics opened many doors for
Plaid Hat; following the game’s release, the
company received a call from video game
developer Irrational Games to make a board
game adaptation of BioShock Infinite. And just
last year it was announced that Shrek and How
to Train Your Dragon studio DreamWorks was
developing an animated Mice and Mystics film.
In 2014, Plaid Hat published Dead of Winter,
the first entry in its Crossroads series. Players
are thrown into a group of survivors during a
zombie apocalypse – the twist is that players
each have a own secret goal that may or may
not involve betraying the rest of the group. Plaid
Hat followed Dead of Winter last year with its
second Crossroads game, Gen7.
Dead of Winter’s undead-infested universe,
meanwhile, has since been explored further in
spin-off game Raxxon and served as the subtle
backdrop to the Specter Ops series of hidden
movement games, which has expanded with a
sequel and social deduction title Crossfire.
2016 saw Plaid Hat release SeaFall, the
ambitious – if flawed – Age of Sail legacy game
2013 2014
from Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy pioneer
Rob Daviau.
Hawthorne followed up Mice and Mystics
with 2018’s Stuffed Fables, the first game using
the new AdventureBook system – all the action
unfolds, literally, inside a storybook. Players
take on the role of stuffed animals and must
protect their young owner as she makes the
transition from a crib to a bed. Earlier this year,
Plaid Hat released Comanauts, the second
game in the AdventureBook line. Dauch
reveals plans to release a new AdventureBook
game later this year.
Supplementing the Crossroads and
AdventureBook series is Plaid Hat’s line of ever-
expanding card games. Aside from Summoner
Wars, that line includes 2015’s Ashes: Rise of
the Phoenixborn and 2016’s Crystal Clans.
Each title continues to receive new decks and
factions that help encourage replayability.
With Plaid Hat celebrating a decade of
business, Dauch shares some of the philosophy
behind the company’s designs. At the forefront
of his approach is the idea of inclusion via
storytelling – the AdventureBook series in
particular is ripe for diverse characters.
“Representation is pretty important to us
as a company,” he says. “We have a strong
focus on trying to tell more than one kind of
person’s story. I think it’s important when a
person can see themselves in a character that
they’re playing. If we’re going to try to grow
games, that’s part of it: make sure all people
feel welcome.”
2015 2018
tabletopgaming.co.uk 53
 In War of the Worlds: The New Wave, the Martians are back – and they’ve decided to
take over Scotland. All that stands in the way of humanity’s destruction is a deck of cards…
Words by Matt Jarvis

54 April 2019
 alk about bad luck. “The chances number of years, taking the necessary steps to

T of anything coming from Mars are

a million to one,” famously went
the chorus in Jeff Wayne’s musical
version of The War of the Worlds.
So what does that make the chances of the
defeated Martians not only returning just
a few years later, but deciding to shift their
survive its first contact with players.
“The game was being developed for quite a
long time,” reveals Plastinin. “Initially, in 2016,
it was a Euro strategy with several resource
types and a quite clumsy combat system.”
After multiple attempts to get its War of the
Worlds Eurogame prototype off the ground
invasion of Earth only a few hundred miles unsuccessfully, studio Jet Games made the
north from Horsell Common near Woking to decision to move away from the concept.
an isolated spot in Scotland? “In our opinion, it didn’t work quite well,”
Upcoming board game War of the Worlds: Plastinin continues. “And we really didn’t want
The New Wave doesn’t dwell for too long on to just exploit a popular setting.”
the mathematic improbability of its opening, Two years of experimentation followed,
which takes place several years after the the team avidly testing a variety of gameplay
dramatic conclusion of H.G. Wells’ science- types and different approaches in an attempt
fiction classic, itself set at the end of the 19th to capture the essence of the human-alien
century. We’d put a spoiler warning here but, conflict. Eventually, they struck upon the fusion
honestly, if you don’t already know the ending of an asymmetrical deckbuilding card game
of The World of the Worlds, where have you with a board-based skirmish between units.
been for the last 120 or so years? “We’re actually really happy that we
“The original story ended with aliens’ death managed to bring this project to life; we’re
by Earth viruses, so we decided not to base the also very proud of creating an easy-to-learn
game on that exact story,” says The New Wave and easily-understandable game engine,” says
designer and creative director Denis Plastinin. Shamolin. “You can explain the rules of play
“In our interpretation, aliens considered to any person in five to 10 minutes, and at
Earth’s atmospheric dangers and arrived the the same time the game has a great strategic
second time, fully prepared this time. This experience and depth. Apart from that, we
allowed us to keep the question ‘Who will win believe we managed to keep the atmosphere
in the War of the Worlds?’ open.” of this amazing masterpiece properly.”
Armed with the knowledge of their past One significant step was the decision to
mistakes – as well as the heat-rays and limit the game to just two players: no more,
fighting-machines that wreaked such havoc
during their first attempt – the Martians arrive
in a “backwater district” of Scotland, emerging
from a gigantic spaceship with the destruction
of humanity on their agenda. First of all,
they’ll need to go through the rest of Great
Britain. Round two is on.
“We love The War of the Worlds by H.G.
Wells, so, as the book’s fans, we finally
came up with the idea to create a board
game in this setting,” says producer Roman
Shamolin. “We were aiming for a dynamic,
easy-to-learn game, which would also
have vast strategic depth. And, of course,
we wanted to keep the spirit of this
amazing classic masterpiece.”

MARS ATTACKS
Like the Martians’ second run at turning
humanity into space dust, The New
Wave has been in the works for a

One player controls the

invading aliens – the other
humanity’s last hope

tabletopgaming.co.uk 55
 WA R O F T H E W O R L D S : T H E N E W WAV E
no less. One player takes control of the
technologically advanced Martian invaders
attempting to spread their control from their
landing zone in Scotland, forcing their way
south in an effort to completely annihilate
Great Britain’s remaining civilians. The other
commands the human resistance forces of
the nation, desperately trying to deal enough
damage to drive the aliens away before all
hope is lost.
“It’s currently a duel game, as in the
classic story: humans versus aliens,”
says Plastinin. “By developing the
game for two players, we managed to
achieve good balance and very high
gameplay dynamics. The downtime is
absolutely minimal and during all 40
to 60 minutes of play both players are
totally involved.”
With the human and alien forces having
such wildly different weaponry and tactics
at their disposal, the players’ separate
decks of cards are equally distinct. Both
sides start with a starting deck of ten cards;
in typical deckbuilder fashion, from there it’s
up to them which cards they purchase from
an available ‘offer’ row and add to their deck,
steadily increasing their power and customising
their strategy to overcome the enemy.
SCORCHING BEAM
POWER SUPPLY
In a region
with UFO unit
IV
ALIEN ABDUCTION
FRIGHTENING SOUND y 1 Civilians token in a region In a region with UFO unit
Destro
iningUFO unit (even if it’s protected)!
In a land region contawith
a Tripod unit. During next turnMove any 1 UFO unit
s I
Humans units and Civilia token
ns
to an adjacent region.
cannot enter that region! II
56 April 2019
The cards provide resources and abilities
that. The human player might relocate civilians
to avoid marauding Martians, making use of
barrage balloons, the army and Royal Navy
to bombard the aliens. The extraterrestrial
attackers, meanwhile, can unleash UFOs and
fearsome tripods as they rampage through the
countryside, leaving towns and villages – and
their inhabitants – little more than scorched earth.
The game
underwent more
than 500 test games,
and now we’re finally
happy with the result.
“We tried to let the players really feel the
difference in the game’s atmosphere, playing
as one of the sides,” says Shamolin. “Each side
of the conflict has its own tactical and strategic
opportunities. They have different targets,
different economy, units, buildings, kinds of
PLASMA SYNTHESIS
REAP
Destroy 1 unprotected Civilians token
in a region containing a Tripod
Move any 1 Tripod unit to an adjacent land region
I During
IV
UFO
Move 1 UFO unit up to 2 regions
You gain an extra
TRIPOD
Move 1 Tripod unit
In a region with UFO unit
IIto an adjacent land region
I In a region with Tripod unit
In a region with Tripod unit
III
attacks and influence. Almost each part of the
playing experience is different.”
Humanity’s last-minute stay of execution
thanks to Earthly pathogens and a hefty dose
of luck in Wells’ original story doesn’t exactly
bode well for its chances this time around –
it’s hard to see as many players relishing the
chance to play the side facing near-impossible
odds. Plastinin insists that although each
side’s deck and options stays faithful to
their depiction in the narrative, when
it comes to gameplay both forces begin
on a level playing field.
“While developing the game, we were
constantly facing balance issues for one
or the other side of the conflict; we had
to change abilities and numbers on the
cards often and start testing both decks
anew, again and again, in different
variations,” he says. “The playing board
was also adding lots of variations
during the tests, and so the borders
and the board concept itself also had
to be redrawn several times. But still, the most
different part was to create two balanced
and asymmetrical decks of the factions. As a
result, the game underwent more than 500 test
games, and now we’re confident to say that
we’re finally happy with the result.”
NERVE AGENT
POISONOUS FOG In a land region containing INFRASOUND
In a land region adjacent a Tripod unit. During next turn In a land region adjacent
to a Tripod unit. Humans units and Civilians tokens
to a Tripod unit. Move 1 Humans Army
V next turn Humans player cannot leave that region!
unitIIfrom this region to an adjacent
cannot use attacking abilities
of buildings in that region! non-hostile region.
III II
PLASMA REACTOR ALIEN FACTORY
per turn
PARTICLE GENERATOR Tripod units’ attack powe
r
is increased by
You gain an extra per turn
II
II
 ARMY ROYAL NAVY
GUERRILLAS Move 1 Army unit LANDMINES
EVACUATE to an adjacent land region AIRSTRIKE Move 1 Navy unit to an adjacent navy region
RELOCATE In a region with any Civilians token,
In a coastal region adjacent
When enemy land unit enters the region
if that token did not deal damage this
Move In a region with Army unit
up to 2 different Civilians tokens
Move any 1 Civili ans token turn to navy region with a Navy unit
n containing the Landmines token:
to an adjacent land regio In a region with any Civilians token,
to their adjacent land region(s)In a
region with Army unit In a coastal region adjacent
III to navy region with a Navy unit II to Alien forces
if that token did not deal damage this turn
IV II
VI V II

HEAVY ARTILLERY TANK FACTORY

REDEPLOY BUNKERS
SUPPLY DEPOT
All Army units have their BARRAGE FORT
Move any 1 Army unit BALLOONS
up to 2 land regions You gain an extra
In a region with Artillery Defense increased to
per turn UFO units may not enter regions
Move any 1 Civilians token In an adjacent region where Barrage Balloons are placed.
I
to an adjacent land region II Barrage
I Balloons may be placed
In a region with Fort
II in a region containing
III
allied buildings! I
I

WORLD IN FLAMES Meanwhile, Jet Games is already planning its War of the Worlds: The New Wave,
Although the Martians of The War of the next tabletop tribute to a sci-fi classic. Shamolin meanwhile, is due to land this summer,
Worlds have largely had an obsession with the describes co-operative game Forbidden Lands following a successful Kickstarter at the start
British – Steven Spielberg’s big-screen, US-set as an survival experience inspired by The Thing, of the year. After years of work, its creators
take on the story aside – the creators of The John Carpenter’s horrifying cinematic vision express hope that their continuation of Wells’
New Wave are keen to see how the rest of the of John W. Campbell’s short story Who Goes seminal tale will have been worth it.
globe copes with an alien invasion. There? Alongside “space pirate” deckbuilding “We think the classic never gets old,”
The first announced expansion for the game game Tortuga 2199, it rounds out the studio’s says Shamolin. “People love that book, it’s
crosses the Irish Sea to add Ireland to the line-up for 2019. really inspiring.”
theatre of interplanetary war, with Plastinin
revealing that Jet Games is considering
whether to expand The New Wave’s
battleground to Russia, China and the USA in
the future. Another expansion said to currently
be in the works will add another asymmetrical
side to the game, allowing an extra player to
take control of an unspecified third force.

OPPOSITE + TOP
The aliens and
humans have
unique card decks
representing
their different
– but balanced
– firepower

RIGHT As well as
cards, there’s a
board-based battle

tabletopgaming.co.uk 57
SPACE FLEET WARFARE
BY RICHARD BORG

www.pscgames.co.uk

<UNEARTHED ARTEFACTS>://
PHOTOSYNTHESIS
++YEAR 3138++INCOMING TRANSMISSION++
found sector b04: pastime x17 – board game –
“photosynthesis”
Message intercepted by Robert Florence
s we all know, before our glorious
A Seluveyine Assembly raised our
terraforming facilities on this planet
Earth, the world had been scorched and
ruined by the ignorance and greed of its
former custodians. The cosmos had gifted
the Flesh Devils a paradise, and the creatures
repaid the cosmos with fire and dust.
The board game “Photosynthesis”,
discovered in Sector B04 by our research
units, tells the story of a time when the
Earth functioned as it should. Trees grew in
unviolated forests, the sun moved through the
sky as a friend and ally, and sentient beings sat
around tables to play games with each other.
The game is primarily about the spending of
light points – points gained by a player’s trees
when they are fortunate enough to receive
the full rays of the sun. Each round, the sun
moves from one corner of the game’s board
to the next, and the game ends after three full
revolutions of the board. As the sun moves,
April 2019
the trees that the players place on the board
gain light points as long as they are not in the
shadow of other trees. As the forest grows, the
struggle for light becomes critical.
With light points, a player can drop new
seeds, grow trees to their next size, and
ultimately end the life cycle of a tree to gain
scoring discs that could potentially lead to
victory. The flow of light, coming in and going
out, as players drop their seeds and grow their
beautiful forest giants, is a gameplay concept
that always delights.
The sight of the game on the table is the
thing that moves Photosynthesis onto another
level. The players’ trees are gorgeous little
cardboard constructs, in springtime greens
and yellows, autumnal reds, and wintry
blues. At the game’s start, trees are small
and the forest is sparsely populated. By the
game’s mid-point, the forest is full of life.
Trees of various sizes and colours cluster on
your table, and shadow falls everywhere. By
the game’s end, gaps have appeared due to
the removal of the largest trees, and sunlight
breaks through again.
In playing this game, you must deny light
to other players if you hope to succeed. When
you place and grow a tree, you must always
consider the consequences of that choice. Will
you receive enough light if you grow that tree
in that spot? Will you be casting shadow upon
any of your other trees? The game slows at
these moments, as players visualise the forest
of the future.
The impact of this game upon our facility
was significant. The sheer beauty of the game
had units visiting from other departments
to gaze down at the table and look upon
our miniature forests. The philosophical
conversations were many and varied, but
most led to one conclusion – that the Flesh
Devils’ destructive nature illuminated even the
corners of this creation.
How do you win? By ending a tree’s
life, and scoring points. We reasoned that
this abstracted notion must refer to the
destruction of forests for industrialised
manufacture. Yes, in this beautiful game,
about the relationship between light and life,
the tragedy of Earth’s ruin is a key element of
the story. Participating in this destruction is,
in fact, the only way to “win”.
As our civilisation restores Earth to its
former glory, it is worth remembering that
nature’s beauty is a gift that must be cherished.
There is no punishment severe enough for the
animals who forget that.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 59
 ‘CUPS OF TEA AND
NOTHING ARTY-FARTY’
THE LIFE OF A GAMES ILLUSTRATOR
Dwarves, goblins… but no elves! We speak with Paul Bonner,
the veteran artist behind the fantasy visions of Warhammer,
Magic: The Gathering, Mutant Chronicles and more
Words by James Winspear
t’s not hard to spot recurrent motifs in
I Paul Bonner’s art. Craggy mountains, lush
trees, leathery skin, large noses, ruddy
complexions and cheeky grins are all the
hallmarks of the English-born illustrator.
His is a world of windswept Nordic vistas and
trolls, of mighty beasts and stoic warriors. One
thing you won’t find much of, however, is elves.
“They just don’t do anything for me,” he
explains. “As soon as I see any pointy ears or
flowing hair all belief just goes straight out the
window and I pack my bags!”
Paul Bonner is an artist who, in one form or
another, has been involved with the gaming
and hobby scene for the last 30 years or so. His
art style has been featured in numerous RPGs,
card games and miniatures games, including
Warhammer 40,000 and Magic: The Gathering,
and is notable for its distinctive, Scandinavian
take on the fantasy genre.
For him, one of the most important things
about presenting fantasy is to try to create a
world that’s believable.
“I think my main thing is a need to portray
some kind of reality rather than that almost cliché
approach to fantasy which you see rather a lot of. I
think a lot of people [who do fantasy illustrations]
go from the basis of creating a great painting,
whereas I try to work from the idea of, ‘What
would this look like if I were actually there, if I were
hiding behind a big stone or tree or something?’
60 April 2019
It’s those little details like a nose or grubby
fingers; it’s about what they would look like;
it’s not about what a nose or a weapon or
whatever ‘should’ look like for fantasy.
If you go down that route you just end
up doing what everyone else is doing.”
Hand in hand with this
desire for believability is
an urge to drawn the
player in, which
explains another
key feature of his
work. Though many
of his pictures feature
conflict, few ever have
blood or portray the killing blow.
“I’ve always been attracted to
the moment just before the crucial
event,” he explains, “or else the
contemplative moment
after. It leaves it up
to the viewers
to make their
own story, or
else ask, ‘What’s going on here?’ course, after which he got a job as an illustrator of
A guy smashing a load of zombies or Conan children’s novels. Though it paid the bills, there
atop a horde of warriors: there it is – there’s no were few opportunities to do anything fantasy-
interpretation. But if you leave a few little details related and the work was largely unsatisfying.
you can subtly pull your audience in – very crafty!” His first break came a short while later when,
towards the tail end of the 1980s, he sent a few
BLANK CANVAS samples to Games Workshop illustrator and
Born in Yorkshire, it was clear from a young age that sculptor John Blanche. Blanche liked his stuff
Bonner’s future career lay in a creative direction. and Bonner moved up to Nottingham to work in-
“Like most kids, I’d spend those rainy house as a full-time artist. His main output was
afternoons drawing when I was young, but unlike in doing orks for Warhammer 40,000, though he
them I just never really stopped,” he recalls. also worked on some fantasy elves and the Slaan
He was particularly drawn to the worlds of lizard people for Warhammer Fantasy Battle.
fantasy, having been exposed to the likes of Whilst he found the Warhammer 40,000 orks
Tolkien, Conan and Mervyn Peake’s fantasy series wonderfully characterful, he laments that there
Gormenghast from a young age. At the same time, were few chances to do his beloved dwarves.
his inspiration was fuelled by the fantasy artists Bonner remained with Games Workshop for
of the golden age of illustration, particularly John just over three years and left in the early 1990s. In
Bauer, Arthur Rackham and Edmond Dulac. part, it was because he was only commissioned
Attending Harrow Art College, Bonner did a to do black-and-white illustrations rather than
foundation year followed by a three-year illustration full colour – something that “drove [him] crazy”
as an artist. The company was at the beginning of
the meteoric ascent that would propel it to new
heights over the course of the decade.
“It was a great company to work in,” he explains,
“but it was turning into a much bigger, more
faceless operation. I’d had a wonderful time there,
but you could sort of see it changing so to be
honest it wasn’t really a big decision [to leave].”
With no attachments, he decided to up sticks
and went to live in Denmark, a country he’d fallen
in love with after a close friend had invited him
there on holiday. Much of his choice was down to
his interest in Nordic and Scandinavian mythology
he’d picked up from Tolkien, though there were
more earthly reasons as well.
“I was a lot younger then, obviously;
Copenhagen just had the most beautiful girls
there and everything was open 24 hours a day –
clearly that was important to me back then!”
Despite the change of scenery, Bonner
soon found himself back in a familiar situation
working on children’s books.
“They were even worse than the ones I’d be doing
in London!” he laughs. “It was all young teenagers
with problems at home running away or stuff
about being bullied at school; there was no fantasy
market to speak of, especially not in Denmark.”
Fortune was on his side, however. Some time
after moving to Denmark Bonner was tracked
down by Nils Gulliksson, who approached him
with an offer to work for Target Games. Target was
a Swedish games company founded in 1980 whose
most famous creation was Mutant Chronicles – a
science-fantasy RPG that later became a card game,
a tabletop wargame and even a film. Gulliksson
was the art director for the series and became the
main point of contact for Bonner, who worked
as a freelancer for Target from his workspace in
Copenhagen. The subject matter differed heavily
from his usual comfort zone – being a futuristic
setting that contained no standard fantasy races,
instead featuring evil zombies and slightly less evil
mega-corporations – but his output during this
period constitutes some of the most iconic imagery
from the Mutant Chronicles universe nonetheless.
My main thing
is a need to
portray some kind of
reality rather than a
cliché approach
to fantasy.
Many of Bonner’s
illustrations take
inspiration from a
mixture of classic
fantasy and
Scandinavian folklore
THE ART LIFE
Target collapsed in 1999, though it was through
Mutant Chronicles that Bonner got his name out
there in the gaming world, and the closing of
one door opened up others. For a time around
the end of the millennium, he worked on short-
lived miniatures title Vor: The Maelstrom, a
game pitting humans – split between the North
American Union and the Neo-Soviets – against
various aggressive alien races.
The main development, however, was when Theo
Bergquist of Riotminds – another Swedish gaming
company – approached Bonner about working on a
project called Trudvang. This proved an ideal match;
an RPG, the game draws heavily on Norse and Celtic
mythology to create a world that mixes common
fantasy tropes with traditional Scandinavian
creatures and sagas. Best of all, it had dwarves.
“It was rather ironic,” notes Bonner. “When Theo
first approached me I don’t think he actually knew
my fantasy work; he just knew me from Mutant
Chronicles. He got in contact and said, ‘We heard
you were available; would you like to a painting of a
bunch of dwarves and goblins fighting in a forest?’
He didn’t have to say anything else!”
Trudvang, now in its eighth edition, has
constituted one of Bonner’s main area of output
from 2000 onwards, though there have been
several other projects of note as well. For a time he
worked with Rackham, a French miniatures and
roleplaying studio set up in 1997, which he’d been
introduced to through Paulo Parenti, a comic artist
for Mutant Chronicles. Rackham’s Confrontation
was a skirmish-level miniatures game set in the
fantasy world of Aarklash; though always niche,
the game’s beautiful artwork and miniatures
attracted a small but dedicated following, who
helped to a crowdfund a new version of the game
last year after Rackham went bust in 2010.
Bonner also did a few pieces for Games
Workshop’s Forge World miniatures division in the
mid-2000s, as well as some paintings for World of
Warcraft and Magic: The Gathering. More recently,
CMON released a set of figures for its Zombicide
sequel Black Plague based on some of his illustrations.
(“They’re fantastic-looking miniatures – oh jeepers
they’re good!”) What’s impressive is that during all
this time Bonner has remained freelance; Games
Workshop remains the only office he’s physically
worked in for the best part of 30 years.
“I’m a lucky guy,” he admits, “I’m just a happy
chap doing my own thing in my own little world.”
Nowadays, Bonner continues to illustrate from
his workspace in his home in Copenhagen. He also
has a number of personal projects; although he
doesn’t play many wargames, he still sculpts and
paints miniatures for various dioramas.
“If someone would pay me for it I’d sit and
do it all day; it’s a lot easier than painting and
drawing and such fun!”
When work calls, however, he gets on with the job.
“Basically it’s just a matter of having that
discipline to grab your cup of tea and sit down to
it. There’s no funny getting my chakras aligned
or chanting mantras – nothing arty-farty.”
tabletopgaming.co.uk 61
PLAYED
64

67 70 81
64 WINGSPAN 74 CROWN OF EMARA
65 GENESYS: SHADOW 75 VISITOR IN BLACKWOOD GROVE
OF THE BEANSTALK
76 DUAL POWERS: REVOLUTION 1917
66 TREASURE ISLAND
77 SWORDCRAFTERS: EXPANDED EDN.
67 VAULT OF DRAGONS
78 NINJA SQUAD
68 BATTLETECH: A GAME
OF ARMORED COMBAT 78 SHOWTIME
69 MARVEL STRIKE TEAMS 79 INVISIBLE SUN
70 CORE SPACE 80 TERMINATOR GENISYS
71 CITY OF GEARS 81 LINDISFARNE
72 THINGS FROM THE FLOOD 82 TUDOR
73 VADORAN GARDENS 83 AMAZING TALES
73 ILLUSION 83 WILDLANDS: ADVENTURING PARTY

S H O U L D Y O U P L AY I T ? M U S T - P L AY | Y E S | P R O B A B LY | M AY B E | N O

April
December
2019 2018 tabletopgaming.co.uk 63
 P L AY E D
WINGSPAN
We’ve just hit beak board game
irds are inspiring creatures.
B The nightingale spurred Keats
to write it an ode. The kestrel
compelled novelist Barry Hines to pen
A Kestrel for a Knave. And without the
condor, we never would have got, er,
’80s Michael Crawford-starring action
comedy Condorman. Now we have
Wingspan, from designer Elizabeth
Hargrave and Scythe maker Stonemaier
Games, which brings a sense of feather-
fine avian grace to the tabletop. And,
thanks to its impeccable execution and
bar-raising visual design, it’s fair to say
it’s closer to Keats than Condorman.
Wingspan sells itself as a
“competitive bird-collection, engine-
building game”, but it’s a far more
sublime experience than that rather
functional sum-up suggests. Yes,
it’s competitive, but it’s one of those
Euro-stylers where you feel more like
you’re playing with your competitors
than against them. It’s not very swingy,
there’s scant take-that and you won’t
have any reason to get pissed off
by your opponents’ tactics, beyond
expressing envy at the sweet card
synergies they may have pulled off.
And yes, it’s an engine-builder,
but what you’re building here
is something pleasant, peaceful
and organic: namely a welcoming
environment for birds to come and
hunt, feed and nest, as depicted by
its large, gorgeous player boards.
64 April 2019
WHAT’S IN Each turn, you select one of four
THE BOX?
◗ Goal board
◗ Bird tray
◗ First Player token
straightforward actions: play a bird
card down to your board, by paying
the right food-token combo and
obeying the bird’s habitat restrictions;
◗ Five player mats
gain food, by selecting one or more
◗ Birdfeeder dice tower
rolled dice from the lovely, self-
◗ Score pad
◗ 170 bird cards assembled birdfeeder dice tower;
◗ 26 bonus cards lay eggs, by taking some delicious-
◗ 16 Automa cards looking (but in no way edible) egg
◗ 75 egg miniatures miniatures and placing them on your
◗ Five custom bird cards; and draw bird cards, either
wooden dice blind from the deck or by choosing
◗ 40 wooden one of three elegantly fanned on a
action cubes moulded plastic ‘bird tray’.
◗ 103 food tokens
For any action other than playing
◗ Eight goal tiles
◗ Automa rulebook a bird, you then activate any placed
bird cards in the relevant habitat, one
by one, from right to left. If you’ve
been careful with your placement,
then you’ll be joyfully executing
those aforementioned envy-inducing
synergies. If not, it’s just fun seeing
how things have worked out and what
you can gain. Besides, your placement
tactics may have been driven more
by achieving your hidden end-game
bonuses, or going for the randomly
selected end-of-round bonuses.
Wingspan’s lack of hard-edged
strategy and direct player interaction
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… GIZMOS
Phil Walker-Harding’s engine-builder is more literal, but its accessibility,
innovation with components and synergy-sparking mechanisms make it
a great primer for the Wingspan experience.
40-70m 1-5 10+ £50
sounds like it might start to turn dull,
but this is never the case. Hargrave has
calibrated it so each turn passes quickly,
while you always feel engaged with
what other players are doing. You might
be keeping track of how their habitats
are developing. Or quietly hoping
they don’t take that food die you were
banking on nabbing. Or just listening to
them read the bird fact at the bottom of
the card they’ve just played; it really is a
learning experience.
There are many great games out
there, but there are few you can
honestly say feel perfect. Wingspan
is one of those few. Looks-wise, it is
a work of art. Play-wise it is a gently
absorbing and genuinely relaxing
dream. Theme-wise it feels as original
as it does universal. It’s hard to
imagine anyone who wouldn’t enjoy
playing it. It is simply inspiring.
DAN JOLIN
PLAY IT? M U S T - P L A Y
Appropriately enough, Hargrave’s
game is a soaraway success. It
will appeal to casual gamers as
much as hardcore players, and
if there is any justice it’ll become
the big crossover hit of 2019.
GENESYS: SHADOW
OF THE BEANSTALK
Jacking back into the world of Android
rom computer-hacking to bio-
F modification, Shadow of the
Beanstalk has everything you
need to launch your Genesys game into
the neon-lit streets of the cyberpunk
genre – though the smorgasbord of
tropes does give the setting itself a
distinctly generic feeling, this may not
actually be a bad thing.
Like the previous Genesys
sourcebook to hit shelves, Realms of
Terrinoth, Shadow of the Beanstalk
is designed to get players exploring a
world first seen in other Fantasy Flight
games. In this case it’s the corporate-
dominated near-future that’s home to
both the Android board game and the
recently-defunct Android: Netrunner
living card game.
This is a world that neatly ticks every
cyberpunk cliché going. Corporate
giants grow clones for menial jobs,
street toughs with luminous hair jack
into vast oceans of data and the streets
are awash with designer drugs with
achingly sci-fi names like Pixel or
Sting. At the very centre of it all stands
the titular Beanstalk, a vast space
elevator that forms the heart of the
sprawling mega-city of New Angeles.
This isn’t just reflected in the fiction,
either, with a wealth of new rules and
options all designed to help you play
out your neon and chrome fantasies.
There are new templates for playing
as mechanical bioroids or long-limbed
humans born and raised in micro-
gravity, skills dedicated to knowing
what’s hot on the Net, and careers for
hackers and tech experts. If you want
to, you could build a cyborg cop armed
with a futuristic hand-cannon and a
drinking problem, or a genetically-
modified courier with chameleonic
skin and an ear for online gossip.
Beyond all the new options and
slick tech on offer, there are a couple
solid changes to the core Genesys rules.
The first of these is a codified favour
economy – a way of tracking who owes
what and how big a deal their obligation
might be. While it may seem like a
pretty minor deal, it meshes incredibly
256 13+ £40
well with the cyberpunk ethos of
information being power.
The other major system laid out within
Shadow of the Beanstalk is computer
hacking or, to give it its official title,
‘Running the Network’. Breaking into a
well-protected system isn’t settled with
just a single roll, but rather a lengthy and
involved process of battling defences
and grabbing data where you can.
In many ways this acts as a kind of
secondary combat system for the game
and, just as the more hands-on members
might buy new guns or combat drugs,
a group’s dedicated runner can equip
themselves with all kinds of sweet tech
to make things easier.
When it runs well the system can
be wonderful. Having the runner work
alongside the rest of the team, opening
doors and disabling cameras as they
break into a black-ops lab, can be a
thrilling experience that really drives
home the cyberpunk dream.
However, while the book has some
fairly solid guidance on keeping
things fun here’s plenty of scope for
it to be handled poorly. Having one
or two characters spend most of a
session trying to grab vital data while
the rest of the table twiddles their
thumbs can be unforgivably boring.
Shadow of the Beanstalk is a setting original, all this would become a
painted in broad strokes and, while it lot harder. Perhaps that counts as TRY THIS IF
lacks any depth or – if we’re being honest damning by faint praise, but it’s true. YOU LIKED…
– originality, there’s still plenty of room to Folks who are already invested SHADOWRUN
build your own stories and characters. In in the near-future of Android and It lacks the fantasy
fact, in many ways the generic cyberpunk Netrunner will certainly get a kick elements that make
feel of the book works out in its advantage. out of the lore and info-dumps, Shadowrun unique,
With a slight shift to your and those that just want sweet but Shadow of the
Beanstalk is a much
perspective you can begin to cyberpunk rules will find exactly
simpler way to hack
approach Shadow of the Beanstalk what they want. It’s not the most mega-corps in a
as less of a setting guide and more exciting product of all time, but it dystopian future.
like a general cyberpunk toolbox that works. Sometimes, what else can
Genesys GMs can plunder as they see you want but that?
fit. Yes, you can use it to run games set RICHARD JANSENPARKES
in the Android universe, but with only
a bit of tweaking you can take a shot at
something more directly inspired by PLAY IT? Y E S
Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell, or Like other Genesys settings the world
even something of your own creation. of Android is rather cookie-cutter, but
If Shadow of the Beanstalk was a the rules have everything you need for
little more off-the-wall, a bit more a strong cyberpunk adventure.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 65
 P L AY E D
TREASURE ISLAND
Golden Silver
reasure Island is a hidden
T movement game with no hidden
movement. That small caveat
aside, this pirate scavenger hunt is one of
the most inventive and original entries in
a genre populated by the likes of Fury of
Dracula and Whitehall Mystery.
It helps that the premise is so
irresistible: it’s a treasure hunt, plain and
simple. Long John Silver – controlled by
one player – knows where the booty is
hidden on the island, but has been locked
up. He ekes out vague clues to the rest of
the pirates, who are all out for themselves
in the search for the buried chest. They’ll
share some knowledge, but other hints
given to individual players can be kept
secret. They might want to consider
working together at least a little, though,
as Long John will eventually escape and
race to reclaim his treasure first.
Lacking the fraught cat-and-mouse
pursuit of other hidden movement games
due to its static target, Treasure Island
manages to whip up just as much tension
and energy as the greats of the genre
by letting players draw on its laminated
board. The pirates move around,
conducting searches to narrow down
66 April 2019
45m 2-5
the possible locations of the treasure,
while every few turns Long John offers
tantilising hints as instructed by cards.
The treasure’s somewhere south or west
of you! It’s not within five miles of the
temple! It’s not in this district! Almost
all of the hints are accompanied by the
immense satisfaction of scribbling on the
board (or your own mini-map, in the case
of a private clue), using a caliper, rulers
and templates to quickly turn it into a
glorious confusion of lines, circles and
crosses. The simple act of drawing brings
the hunt for treasure alive – it’s impossible
not to feel swept up in the excitement
of working out the shrinking number of
places where the plunder could lie.
Of course, pirates aren’t exactly in
the business of honesty. Long John can
choose to tactically lie a set number of
times, with the unknown veracity of his
clues throwing just enough doubt into
the mix to keep the pirates guessing
throughout Treasure Island’s extremely
reasonable runtime. Meanwhile, the
pirates have a limited number of more
powerful special actions individual to
each character, making Treasure Island
more than a simple game of hot and cold.
With the exception of pirates stumbling
onto the motherlode by pure luck –
not impossible, if generally avoidable
– Treasure Island masters its pace. The
clues feel well tuned to narrow the net
10+ £45
without leaving the pirates guessing
blindly or Long John feeling cornered
too early, ramping up the specificity at a
rate that makes the closing turns come
neatly down to the wire. Allowing Long
John to escape makes for a dramatic
finale, avoiding a jarring sudden finish
when time runs out. While the game’s
semi-competitive scavenger hunt sings
WHAT’S IN best with three or four people, it scales
THE BOX? comfortably to a one-on-one showdown.
◗ Five screens Treasure Island’s great pleasure of
◗ Four mini-maps doodling is also where its few hiccups
◗ Four memo sheets arise. Vincent Dutrait’s artwork is beautiful,
◗ Five miniatures but the lush forests and rolling seas of
◗ Four turn order tokens
the map often make the multicoloured
◗ Game board
pens tough to see. As the board is filled
◗ Calendar board
◗ Four character sheets with scribbles, it quickly becomes an
◗ Two mini rulers overwhelming mess of information to try
◗ Ruler and parse; something that the mini-maps
◗ Caliper aren’t too well equipped to help with. At
◗ Small search template points, the sheer amount of brain-burning
◗ Large search template feels like it belongs in a three-hour strategy
◗ Small compass heavyweight, rather than a sub-hour game
◗ Large compass
of pirate hide-and-seek. There can also be
◗ Five markers
a fair amount of fiddliness when it comes
◗ 11 district hints
◗ Eight compass hints to drawing lines – the rulebook encourages
an amount of flexibility, so it’s not a
◗ Seven starting hints
◗ 11 Black Spot hints
◗ Eight
information tokens
◗ Chest
game to play with pedants. It’s worth
noting that the rulebook in our copy of
the game, which suffered from confusing
wording and poor structuring, has since
◗ Six chest tokens been updated with a significantly better
◗ Treasure token
version available online.
◗ Long John Silver
A few small blips ultimately can’t
mini-map
detract from Treasure Island’s buoyant
sense of fun and adventure. It’s a
simple pleasure wrapped up in a
brilliantly creative package that’s a
treasure well worth discovering.
MATT JARVIS
PLAY IT? Y E S
The busy visuals can be a problem,
but the pure joy of seeking out
buried booty makes Treasure
Island a fantastic addition to the
hidden movement genre.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED…
FURY OF DRACULA
Looking for another stellar one-
versus-many hidden movement
board game based on a classic of
literature from the turn of the 19th
century? You’re in luck!
 WHAT’S IN
THE BOX?
◗ 12 location tiles
◗ Seven dungeon tiles
◗ Yawning Portal tile
◗ 21 secrets counters
◗ 30 rumours tokens
◗ 20 action tokens
◗ 50 treasure cards
◗ 50 magic item cards
◗ Four faction tiles
◗ 40 followers pieces
◗ 12 polyhedral dice
◗ Five casualty dice
◗ Six City Watch tokens
◗ Initiative marker
◗ Dungeon revisited token
◗ Assorted coin tokens

VAULT OF DRAGONS
Looking for a new dungeon-basher? Keep looking
90m 2-4 14+ £40

ragons and dungeons: two the City Watch to be avoided, and other of Waterdeep wrestling for control of

D things that go together as well

as sorcery and swords. Vault of
Dragons, a game set in D&D’s Forgotten
Realms but produced by Gale Force
Nine, has a bloody great gold dragon
on the cover, so as you’d expect you’re
going to spend the game… running
round the city of Waterdeep?
It turns out that in Waterdeep a
‘dragon’ is a gold coin; someone’s
stolen a lot of them and hidden them
in a dungeon, and four of the city’s
less-nice factions want to find them.
You play one of those factions, each
with a special ability and unique
action, plus ten little plastic wizards,
rogues and fighters that you use to
occupy areas of the city.
Waterdeep itself is built randomly
from a dozen tiles. Each location has
benefits if you control it, providing
money, rumours and quests, letting you
buy magic items, and so on. But there’s
players’ agents to be brawled.
Once you’re sufficiently tooled up
you can head to the Yawning Portal and
start exploring dungeons, three rooms
at a time, which yield better rewards –
including secrets. Even though you’ve got
a party of fighters, wizards and rogues, all
you do is make a single roll against a series
of three increasing target numbers – and
that’s how many rooms you get through.
Once you have found three secrets you
can reveal the Vault of Dragons, and beat
it by rolling 20 or more to win.
If that doesn’t sound terribly
D&D-ish to you, you’re right. Vault
of Dragons is a retooling of Sons of
Anarchy: Men of Mayhem, a Gale
Force Nine release from 2014, with
a dungeon section bolted onto its
rear end. It plays fine but has few
surprises. The main body of the game,
set in Waterdeep, is solid and fun, but
there’s already a game about the lords
different parts of the city and doing
quests – it’s called Lords of Waterdeep.
The dungeon stuff feels perfunctory
TRY THIS IF
and unsatisfying. The combat system
is entertaining, with lots of satisfying YOU LIKED…
dice rolls, but luck plays a bigger part LORDS OF
than strategy.
WATERDEEP
The best bit of Vault
The rulebook is not as bad as you of Dragons is the
may have read on the internet, but action in the city,
neither it nor the game ever captures and this is different
the flavour of D&D or Waterdeep, and enough from its
the game runs too long for what it predecessor to
is. I kept feeling I’d rather be playing make it worth a look.
Lords of Waterdeep and, since I spend
most sessions of Lords of Waterdeep
wishing I was playing Agricola, this is
not a strong recommendation.
JAMES WALLIS
PLAY IT? M A Y B E
It’s fine – there’s nothing actually
wrong with Vault of Dragons, except
it’s a bit lacking in vaults and dragons.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 67
 P L AY E D

WHAT’S IN
THE BOX?
◗ Eight mech
miniatures
◗ 16-page record
sheet booklet
◗ 16-page
universe primer
◗ 24-page novella
◗ Eight pilot cards
◗ Two reference sheets
◗ Two 18-by-22-
inch double-sided
paper hex maps
◗ Punchboard of
additional mechs
and terrain tokens
◗ Two six-sided dice

BEGINNER BOX (£19)

◗ Two mech
miniatures
◗ One 18-by-22-
inch double-sided
paper hex map
◗ Die-cut mech and
terrain tokens
◗ Quickstart rules

BATTLETECH: A GAME OF ◗ Universe booklet

◗ 24-page novella
◗ Record sheets

ARMORED COMBAT ◗ MechWarrior cards

◗ Six-sided die
Those 31st-century heavy hitters are back
2h+ 2+ 12+ £58

ho doesn’t love a mech? – but this is, if you like, BattleTech Classic. on dice feels at best quaintly retro and

W From Gundam to Scythe, those

titanic, battlefield-stomping,
cannon-blasting robo-warriors have been
a huge part of our gaming culture for
decades. And, for many of us, our first
taste of mech-piloting was BattleTech.
Published 35 years ago, it served up a
rich and detailed space-operatic universe
(think intergalactic Game of Thrones)
while offering an attractive visual and
thematic point of difference to the troop-
heavy antics of Warhammer. It focused
on fewer, bigger, more powerful units,
but these weren’t just tanks with legs. You
could get up close and scrappy with your
BattleMechs, tearing limbs off your foes.
And then pick those limbs up and use
them as a club to deliver a head-crushing
coup-de-grace. Ah, good times.
Well, for anyone of a nostalgic bent,
those good times may be here again
thanks to the latest re-release of BattleTech.
There have been other iterations over the
years – on PC and games consoles, as well
as an RPG spin-off and the streamlined,
more card-based Alpha Strike variation
Which is both a good and bad thing.
Let’s start with the good. The
worldbuilding is as detailed as ever, with
the Beginner Box and regular set each
even including a novella to get you in the
MechWarrior mood. It’s an easy setting
in which to immerse yourself even if
you’re not willing to do all the lore-
hoovering homework, and with its solid
mech designs and attractive minis and
standees, the game retains that vicarious
thrill of placing you in the cockpit of a
30-foot-high robo-monster.
The careful management of your heat
levels gives an added dimension to your
strategic choices, meaning there can be
dire consequences for going all-out with
your particle projector cannons round
after round. And there is a lot of fun in
landing crits on your foes, then rolling
to find out exactly how severely you’ve
buggered up their precious Wolverine.
But there is a lot of rolling. Far
too much, in fact. In this glorious,
modern-day golden age of gaming,
BattleTech’s unmitigated dependence
at worst downright tedious. Add that to
the fact that the gameplay requires turn
after turn of declaring actions before then
actually getting to execute those actions
and, unless you’re an old pro, have perfect
TRY THIS IF
YOU LIKED…
recall or just love fiddly arithmetic, you’ll BATTLETECH
find each battle dragging inexorably into (1984)
thrill-sapping overtime. Loved the original
It’s a shame. Diehard fans might argue game? Can’t find
that if you want it streamlined then there’s your old minis and
already Alpha Strike. But with a universe rulebooks? Well,
this detailed and engaging, you can’t help you’re in for a heavy-
feeling publisher Catalyst should have at metal treat. Unless,
that is, you were
least made some effort to modernise this
hoping for its rules to
old favourite in its core form. As it is, once feel as modernised
you set your nostalgia aside and get over as its looks.
the cool minis, the gameplay feels about
as elegant as an Atlas with a giro hit.
DAN JOLIN
PLAY IT? M A Y B E
You can’t fault the setting, but
BattleTech’s old-school appeal has firm
limits, which makes its mechanisms
feel anachronistic on the modern
tabletop and off-putting to newcomers.

68 April 2019
MARVEL STRIKE TEAMS
Clix bait
Designer: Andrew Parks | Artist: Errick Dadisman, WizKids team
arvel Strike Teams is a
M spin-off from the HeroClix
series, turning the collectible
miniatures game into a dungeon-
crawling board game that pits one
villainous ‘mastermind’ against some of
the best heroes the comic-book world of
the Avengers has to offer.
In place of HeroClix’s busy bases,
which rotate as characters take damage
and display all of their relevant stats, from
speed to range, the bases of Strike Teams’
miniatures simply state their current level
and available build points. These points
can be spent to outfit each character with
a different array of equipment and skill
cards during each mission, providing a
straightforward but incredibly satisfying
level of customisability and shifting
group dynamic. You might decide to
make Iron Man a ranged fighter in one
scenario, only to have him fight up close
when you need to hunker down and
protect something the next. Levelling-up
– achieved during a campaign – is just as
simple, with characters spending points
amassed by completed objectives to
expand their potential pool of abilities.
On the battlefield, the action is as
smooth and solid as Captain America’s
vibranium shield. A combination of
individual character action points and
shared command points that can be
1-2h 2-5 14+ £58
WHAT’S IN spent by any member of the group
THE BOX?
◗ Four hero figures
◗ Mastermind figure
◗ Two villain figures
power a diceless system similar to
Monolith’s slick Conan. Actions cost
points for set amounts of movement and
damage, but carry over from turn to turn
◗ Six henchman figures
and can also be spent to defend, dodge
◗ Eight character cards
◗ 64 action cards or otherwise react to the enemies’ turn,
◗ Seven map cards making it a pleasing challenge of careful
◗ 19 scenario cards resource management and strategy
◗ Victory card rather than luck. (The only die in the
◗ 30 map tiles box presents an optional push-your-
◗ 20 character tokens luck chance to gain or lose additional
◗ 16 objective tokens points, which feels a bit tacked-on if
◗ 18 objective point
ultimately inoffensive.)
(OP) tokens
The combination of customisable
◗ 22 status tokens
◗ 12 round tracker tokens powers and quick, tactical combat feels
◗ 25 duration tokens as good as being a superhero should.
◗ 20 spawn point tokens Cap can deflect incoming fire and
◗ 12 large rubble tokens bounce his shield off multiple goons,
◗ Four small while Iron Man can zoom around on
rubble tokens his jets before firing lasers and missiles
◗ Four door rokens at unfortunate baddies, Quake can
◗ 20 yellow action tokens
cause tremors and Agent May provides
◗ 60 red wound tokens
covering fire. Scenery on the map
◗ Two command dials
◗ Custom action die provides cover but, in a nice interactive
touch, can be destroyed or even
chucked across the stage with the right
skill. Abilities have a cooldown period
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… CONAN
Powered by a similar conservation of action points and with an all-on-
one setup, Marvel Strike Teams’ superhero theme may make it a more
approachable brawler than the fantasy adventure.
and become more expensive to perform
as damage is taken, so there’s no
feeling of spamming the same powerful
move to mow down row after row of
opponents – although the mastermind
player will certainly feel the might of
their superpowered foes, especially
with fewer players.
With such dependable and fun
gameplay at its centre, it’s a shame that
Marvel Strike Teams’ outer layers don’t
quite live up to the promise of its colourful
superhero brawling. Missions consist of a
random map (one of six, plus the tutorial)
and three random ‘stages’, each consisting
of a generic objective that typically
lasts for around four game rounds and
presents a way for either side to score
points: rescue a prisoner, attack a given
object and so on. While the randomised
nature provides a good dose of
replayability, it lacks any real throughline
to hang a full campaign on and feels
quite bland – especially as winning or
losing comes down to points, rather than
a specific epic moment for the goodies
or baddies. The lack of personality
outside of the heroes themselves is
made worse by the map tiles, which can
be arranged into a variety of plain grey
warehouses (one side is technically the
Hydra base, which is also grey) with only
a few sentry turrets, crates or barrels in
fixed locations to really set them apart.
The uninspired mission structure
and dull presentation – outside of the
miniatures themselves, which do bring
the world to life – undersells what is
otherwise a thoroughly competent and
enjoyable dungeon-crawler. The robust
gameplay excels at making its stars feel
superpowered, with the flexibility of
selecting how your hero will tackle each
scenario giving plenty of reason to come
back and experiment with different
loadouts and styles. If it could only
borrow a little more of the colour of its
comic-book inspirations, Strike Teams
could be a truly super experience.
MATT JARVIS
PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y
It doesn’t look nearly as good as
it plays, but the action is strong
enough to make this an extremely
solid superhero dungeon-crawler.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 69
 P L AY E D

WHAT’S IN
THE BOX?
◗ Eight trader miniatures
◗ Nine purge miniatures
◗ Three civilian miniatures
◗ 11 character boards
◗ Eight class boards
◗ Purge board
◗ Two ship boards
◗ Eight plastic
crew dashboards
◗ Plastic hostility tracker
◗ Seven dice
◗ 20 event cards
◗ 42 counters

CORE SPACE ◗ 189 plastic pegs

◗ Token pouch
◗ 100+
Rogue traders equipment tokens
◗ 2ft/60cm square
1-2h 1-2 14+ £80 gaming mat
◗ 90+ 3D cardboard
ore Space is a game best described you’ll like Core Space or not. The game it’s difficult to find the rules that specify terrain pieces

C as a hybrid of a miniatures
skirmish game and dungeon-
crawling RPG. Players control a crew of
traders as they attempt to gather loot,
complete various objectives and avoid
the deadly Purge, either in a standalone
scenario or as part of a larger campaign.
The action takes place on a decent
quality playmat divided by modular 3D
scenery, with each mission having its own
unique layout. The game certainly looks
impressive when it’s all set up, though
the game’s generic sci-fi setting feels
like a missed opportunity in terms of art
direction. Whilst the board is gridded,
traders and NPCs – the civilians and Purge
miniatures – all move by ruler in inches
and shoot using line of sight, making the
moment-to-moment gameplay more akin
to something you’d find in a skirmish-
level wargame than a traditional board
game. The grids are instead primarily
used for as a reference point for laying
out the scenery for each mission, though
in practice they’re also quite useful for
quickly eyeballing distance as well.
The need to clip together walls and
fill crates with items means that setting
up will definitely take a good 20 minutes
to half an hour or so, particularly for the
first few games. Your attitude to this fact
will probably be indicative of whether
is really best played as a running
campaign, and it’s the sort of title that’s
meant to be played over the course of a
few evenings with the same group. (The
core box has enough for two players,
with expansions allowing for more.)
In essence, the action is divided
between exploring and combat on the one
hand, and resource and crew management
on the other. The progression system has a
very strong RPG element; each member of
your crew not only comes with an innate
skill, but a choice of different skill trees
containing half a dozen or so different
abilities apiece. On top of this, each
ability often has a number of upgradable
levels that have a different effect on your
crewmember. Some items also confer
their own abilities. It’s certainly an in-
depth system, but its sheer size means it
can often be a little overwhelming, and
there’ll almost definitely be times you
forget that one of your characters had a
specific ability at their disposal. All the
different variables also means that the
box comes with a lot of tokens and such,
which can be a bit finicky at times.
The only other major bugbear comes
down to a few hiccups in the rulebook.
Some of this is just a matter of slightly
unintuitive layout, though there are a few
outright omissions as well. For example,
what order civilians should act in if there’s
more than one, as well as how many
health points each Purge unit or civilian
has. Minor complications like these don’t
derail the experience too much, however,
as once you get started you find the game
sequence to be fairly intuitive.
On that note, the gameplay has a
nicely balanced level of risk and reward
that helps create a sense of urgency.
You often need to try and complete
secondary objectives and gain valuable
items to upgrade your crew or trade for
cash. This is vital in a campaign, since TRY THIS IF
as well as outfitting your characters
YOU LIKED…
STAR SAGA
to deal with greater challenges, you’ll Sharing the same
also have to keep your ship maintained developer as Core
and have enough funds to deal with Space, Star Saga
unexpected developments. However, is a more linear,
the Purge are an omnipresent threat streamlined game
whose numbers increase as the game that tones down
progresses, and things can go south the RPG elements
very quickly if you’re not careful. in favour of a
greater emphasis
JAMES WINSPEAR
on combat.
PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y
If you’re prepared to invest the
time required to properly get into
the meat of Core Space, you’ll find
an entertaining romp with mostly
intuitive mechanics whose gameplay
clips along at a solid pace.

70 April 2019
CITY OF GEARS
Clockwork, not hard work
or a game that looks and runs
F like clockwork, City of Gears has
plenty of electrical spark running
through it.
Behind its steampunk appearance
is a fitting mechanical meshing of
gameplay. There’s the management
of resources as players roll dice to
gather steam, gears and electrical
charges. Gears can be spent to
connect up the central nine-by-
nine grid of city tiles (randomly
placed during setup and revealed as
they’re explored), creating bridges
for meeple-like workers – powered
by steam or more potent electricity
– to travel along and extend their
owner’s network of tiles. The gear
links double as a way of activating
ability combos on connected tiles
when resources trigger one location’s
ability, granting the chance to
reap bonus resources and victory
points along a well-constructed
web. Gears also feature an optional
‘development’ ability that can instead
added to a factory, building up an
array of bonus actions and scoring
opportunities that gently expand the
initially simple loop.
What begins as a relatively docile
expansion out of your factory quickly
becomes a scrappy tussle for control
of each city tile. The robotic workers
can zap rival automatons into a pile
of scrap, sending them back to the
factory and forcing them to traverse
the board once again. Zaps can also
be spent to destroy the gear links
connecting tiles, cutting off rivals’
valuable networks. With workers and
gear links determining ownership
over tiles – and their victory points – at
WHAT’S IN the end of the game, City of Gears’
THE BOX? latter half can be surprisingly blood–
◗ 16 production dice erm, oilthirsty. Luckily, getting zapped
◗ 24 automaton isn’t a game-ending setback, so the
worker pawns
heated competition never feels cruel.
◗ 80 ownership markers
◗ 36 resource tokens
The comfortable combination of
◗ 30 movement tokens spending dice results, expanding
◗ Four converter your presence on the grid and
development cogs activating tiles zips along surprisingly
◗ 40 standard cogs quickly – playing on the standard
◗ Four opening day cogs board (a low-conflict option for
◗ Gear bag bigger groups is included), the
◗ 18 city tile boards endgame can come around before
◗ Four factory
you know it. The random nature of
player boards
◗ 60 prestige markers
the sudden finish – which is triggered
by pulling three white gears from
◗ Nine discovery tokens
the bag, and immediately ends the
game – can be a bit jarring, especially
as multiple (or even all three) white
gears can be pulled on the same
player’s turn, leaving little chance
to react or make good on certain
scoring requirements.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… LORDS OF WATERDEEP
Supposedly an inspiration for the dice-rolling steampunk game, this
Dungeons & Dragons spin-off remains a reliable strategy hit years later.
45m 2-4 8+ £55
While the randomness of rolling
dice and drawing gears is deftly
balanced in the rules – two unwanted
resources can be converted to any one
alternate and saved for future turns,
and gears must be drawn together
and can only be used once per turn
for a gear link or factory development
– City of Gears can still occasionally
fall prey to the luck of the draw. The
blunt conclusion means that a lucky
scoring bonus drawn in the last few
turns can suddenly swing the game
in a player’s favour, while the limited
number of resources still makes duff
rolls frustrating to a degree.
These small and shared frustrations
pale in light of the game’s well-
considered mixture of points-
gathering and player interaction,
leaving the cardboard machinery
running smoothly with nary a hitch.
It’s wrapped up in an impressive
presentation that provides the
pleasure of plonking the chunky
plastic gears into star-shaped
holes along the edges of the tiles to
link them together – although the
iconography used to denote certain
development effects could be clearer
at points.
City of Gears is a well-oiled
machine built with dependable parts.
It might not feel like the freshest
experience on the tabletop, but
there’s a certain charm to its sheer
reliability as an enjoyable, if not
outstanding, hour of gaming.
MATT JARVIS
PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y
City of Gears is as solid as they
come, combining conventional
route-building and scoring with a
surprisingly heated level of player
interaction towards its slightly jarring
end. Like its clockwork visuals, it’s an
experience you can count on to run
dependably, even if there are more
modern-feeling successors out there.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 71
 P L AY E D
THINGS FROM THE FLOOD
Back in the Loop
he nineties were a weird time to
T be alive, weren’t they? The radio
would jump from the Spice Girls to
the Prodigy, grown adults wore parachute
pants without any trace of irony and who
could forget the way your friends kept
stumbling into weird mysteries involving
psychotic robots and science gone
horribly wrong. No? Okay, maybe that
last bit is unique to the teens from Things
from the Flood.
Things from the Flood stands somewhere
between being a direct sequel and a
particularly hefty expansion to the wildly
successful Tales from the Loop. In many
ways it feels like the original game reflected
in a funhouse mirror, staying essentially
the same but becoming a little taller, a bit
broader and much, much more sinister.
Where the earlier game dropped you
into the shoes of kids investigating sci-fi
mysteries in the ‘80s, this time you take up
the role of a bunch of mid-‘90s teenagers.
The core idea of sticking your nose into
weird events while dealing with the trials
and tribulations of everyday life is still
present but, in moving from carefree
youth to troubled, angst-ridden puberty,
Flood has adopted a much darker, grittier
and altogether moodier tone.
The sense of optimistic wonder that
littered Tales’ robots, hover-trucks and
mysterious portals is mostly gone, wiped
out by the titular flood that destroyed
the mysterious Loop facility. Robots
are revolting in Russia, malfunctioning
machines are spontaneously growing
72 April 2019
flesh along their wiring and all the adults
are acting particularly weird.
These weird and often disturbing
phenomena are what drive the
investigations and intrigues of Flood.
A group might spend a few sessions
tracking down a rogue android who’s
been abducting rough sleepers for bizarre
experiments, for example, or searching
for a missing classmate that everyone else
in town has mysteriously forgotten.
Long stretches of these adventures can
be driven along without the need for any
dice, as the game retains a strong narrative
focus, but sooner or later the teens are
bound to run into trouble. When they do,
the mechanics that keep things ticking over
are simple and straightforward – though
they’ve acquired a few interesting twists.
Whether they’re sneaking past some
security guards or clocking a rogue ‘droid
with a street sign, players build a pool of
d6s based on their character’s skills and
stats and try to roll sixes. A straightforward
task might require one success, while a
shot at the near-impossible needs three.
So long as you’re careful to stick to
your strengths and take advantage of your
surroundings you should have usually have
a decent chance at passing the check, but
life and luck aren’t always that kind. If you
fail your character might well end up with
some kind of negative condition – and, if
things go bad enough, they might leave
the game completely. Sometimes this
means they bleed to death in a snowy field,
and sometimes it means child protection
222 13+ £35
services catch wind of the broken bones
and whisk them away to a foster home.
If that sounds a little bleak, that’s
because it is. Things from the Flood is a
surprisingly dark game, largely because
despite the sci-fi twists it has a much PLAY IT? Y E S
more accurate portrayal of teenage life It’s darker, deadlier
than most films or TV shows. Drugs, sex and a little depressing
in places, but this
and self-loathing all weave their way
follow-up takes
through the pages in a way that manages everything that
to be both refreshing and disturbing. made Tales from
Where Tales had kids invoking their the Loop great and
luck and pride to gain bonuses to their adds a new twist.
rolls, Flood’s teens instead rely on their
shame and scars. It’s not a particularly
significant rule change in terms of how
the game plays mechanically, but it has a
huge impact on how it feels.
Importantly, the designers have TRY THIS IF
recognised that there’s much more to the
YOU LIKED…
KIDS ON BIKES
teenage experience than writing depressing If you loved Kids
poetry and vomiting up your first Bacardi on Bikes’ blend of
Breezer. There are plenty of moments of light small-town mystery
and fellowship amidst the darkness, and and supernatural
they taste all the sweeter for the contrast. danger, Things from
Within Flood’s pages you’ll find some the Flood might be
incredible art, a solid mini-campaign and right up your alley.
more ‘90s nostalgia than you can shake
a slap-bracelet at. If you’ve played Tales
you might balk at the idea of buying what
amounts to a tweaked version of the ruleset,
but this puts just enough of a spin on the
game to make it a truly unique beast – one
that’s equal parts enchanting and horrifying.
Which makes it a pretty solid take on
being a teenager, actually.
RICHARD JANSENPARKES
VADORAN GARDENS
30m 2-4 8+ £17
et in the universe of The City of three or more symbols, with bonus can be played, taking away some of the

S Kings, Frank West’s ambitious

and sprawling RPG-in-a-box,
this half-hour, light tile-placement
game is best served as an appetiser to
its predecessor’s hours-long buffet.
It plays like a combination of
Kingdomino and Honshu, with the
shifting tile/player order selection
of the former and the overlapping
cards of the latter – although here
only the rightmost column of squares
is covered, forming a constantly
stretching pathway through your
personal garden of soil, grass, water
and sand patches. Connected
areas only score if they contain
points obtained by forming certain
combinations of icons required by
objective cards and placing lost items
by leaving certain squares uncovered.
‘Lesson’ cards restrict which card
suits from your hand can be played
each turn, while others occasionally
throw up the challenge of combining
two cards for an extra wide or tall
addition. Along with the inability
to rotate cards (apart from a lesson
that breaks that rule, flipping them
upside-down) and a limited height
allowed on your pathway, it means
Vadoran Gardens occasionally feels
overly strict on how and which cards
interesting decision-making present in
those other tile-placement challenges.
It lands somewhere between lacking
the simplicity of Kingdomino and the
strategic thinkiness of Honshu, without
finding a comfortable middle ground.
Still, it’s a solid enough design
that benefits greatly from being
handsomely presented – aside from
the odd decision to have one of the
player colours and lost item colours
match, and use purple and black
player pieces that can be hard to pick
out at a glance in certain light.
If you’re craving more of The City
of Kings, Vadoran Gardens’ visual
panache and bite-sized gameplay –
different though it may be – might be
enough to tide you over between full
courses. If you’re not already invested
in that bigger helping of this world,
though, this is unlikely to leave you
with a hunger for more.
MATT JARVIS

PLAY IT? M A Y B E

ILLUSION
15m 2-5 8+ £10

hen the designer of one the one in play, placing it before (less

W of the most interesting

games of last year – The
Mind – comes out with a new game
from the same publisher – NSV – in
a box the same size and colour –
small and black – you’re going to
assume a connection. Is Illusion the
sequel to The Mind, a follow-up or
some kind of sibling?
No. It isn’t. The Mind is a tense
co-op played mostly in silence.
Illusion is a game about guessing
how much of a card is covered in
red, yellow, green or blue. That may
not sound thrilling and, though
Illusion tries hard, it isn’t.
The deck of 98 cards is at the heart
of the game, each one with a unique
four-colour abstract pattern on it.
With one card already down, the first
player draws the top card and has to
judge whether it has less or more of
that round’s designated colour than
colour) or after (more colour).
If the next player thinks they’re
wrong they can challenge,
otherwise they have to draw a
new card and place it where they
think it fits in the card sequence.
Eventually someone challenges,
the cards are flipped to show the
percentages printed on the back
and someone gains a point.
It’s Timeline with patterns instead
of dates, and more replayability but
less chance of being able to work
out the right answer with your
brain. It’s Liar’s Dice without the
randomness or bluffing. It’s fast and
clever, but it isn’t very interesting. If
you’re looking for something to sit
next to The Mind on your shelf, this
isn’t it.
JAMES WALLIS
PLAY IT? M A Y B E

tabletopgaming.co.uk 73
 P L AY E D

WHAT’S IN
CROWN OF EMARA THE BOX?
◗ Scoring track
Not quite fit for a king ◗ Four countryside
locations
45-75m 1-4 12+ £46 ◗ Four town locations
◗ Nobility board
◗ Four player boards
n a game of generic Eurogame Throughout the game, players will The decisions in Crown of Emara

I bingo, Crown of Emara easily

scores a winning combination.
Medieval setting? Tick. A
smorgasbord of meeples of various
shapes and sizes, and cardboard
pieces galore? Tick. A theme so broad
that you forget about it minutes into
the gameplay? Tick. Various strategic
paths to victory that overwhelm with
their number but are actually fairly
straightforward? Bingo!
While Crown of Emara might not
give the best of first impressions, there
are some diamonds in its circlet. Even
though the game attempts to distract
players with the pursuit of ancillary
advisers and title cards, its crowning
features mechanically and visually
are the two boards representing
countryside and town environments.
The top-down artwork of both
areas is drawn in three dimensions
and, once populated with meeples
and tokens, they instantly come alive.
It is easy to imagine the homeliness
of the little villages next to the mines
and the busy market street bustling
with things to buy and exchange.
It's a real shame that the box art of
Crown of Emara is so generic and
lacklustre when it has such a winning
look inside. The boards deliver the
entire story and premise of the game
without the need for words.
be moving the meeples clockwise
around the two boards, picking
up resources in the villages and
exchanging them for victory points
and cards in the town. While both
locations are linked through gameplay
and depend on one another, they
also constantly compete for players’
attention. The village entices by
offering players more resources to
supplement future actions through a
simple engine-building mechanic; the
spaces needed to get that engine going
are limited, so the players will need to
occupy them fast to get decent returns.
There is also an urgency in visiting
the town. The price at which resources
are exchanged for victory points
increases the more people visit
different areas in the town – the earlier
players get to a market or a cathedral,
the more they stand to gain from it.
Deciding whether to move a
meeple along the countryside or
town track is the main strategic
tension of Crown of Emara. There
is the opportunity to plan several
turns ahead, making every turn the
most efficient it can be. The game
creates a robust set of restrictions that
prevent players from roaming the
environments carefree, by restricting
their movement and limiting the
number of actions they can perform.
are not hard, but the sheer volume of
things one can do leaves players a lot
to think about. If that wasn’t enough,
◗ 16 books
◗ 12 signet rings
◗ Two gold coins
◗ 12 breads
◗ 12 favour tokens
the game also has two different victory
point systems. Whichever track, citizen ◗ Four donations
or house, is the lowest at the end of the markers
◗ Four gift markers
game is the one that determines the
◗ Bread marker
player’s overall position. While that ◗ Stone marker
creates competition for areas around ◗ Statue
the boards, as various places generate ◗ 36 action cards
different types of victory points, ◗ 20 nobility cards
overall it feels unnecessary. The ◗ 14 event cards
two-track system mostly just confuses ◗ 22 advisor cards
players and doesn’t contribute a ◗ Four turn overviews
◗ 44 resources
satisfying crescendo towards the end
◗ 16 craftsmen
of the game.
◗ Eight councillors
After six rounds, the game just ◗ Four citizens
ends. Except for some residual ◗ Four buildings
resources that players can exchange
to push their victory point tracks up,
there aren’t any other game-twisting
elements that make the reveal of the
winner more exciting. While there
is nothing wrong with the tried and
tested ‘most points wins’ conclusion,
it’s hard to feel like you have
progressed, as very little has changed
on the beautiful boards. A satisfying
TRY THIS IF
YOU LIKED…
conclusion is missing; the players LORDS OF
could feasibly keep going for six more WATERDEEP
rounds and they would be doing Lords of Waterdeep
exactly the same things as before. offers a more
Crown of Emara is extraordinary robust theme and
and generic at the same time. Some executes the loop of
of its most interesting elements are exchanging goods
in constant conflict with overused for points with more
satisfaction, but
concepts and needlessly convoluted
Crown of Emara
mechanics. It seemingly looks out offers a dynamic
too much for Eurogame lovers, market system
underplaying its strongest elements in and environments
order to play it safe. In certain respects, that attempt to
it succeeds; Eurogame fans will find break away from
plenty to enjoy. However, those looking worker-placement
for something that offers fresher ideas conventions.
might not be satisfied with countryside
vistas and townscapes alone.
ALEX SONECHKINA

PLAY IT? M A Y B E
Attempting but failing to break away
from some of the more overused
Eurogame staples, Crown of Emara
is as beautiful as it is generic.

74 April 2019
VISITOR IN
BLACKWOOD GROVE
I want to believe in this alien deduction game, but...
eduction games can be some of
D the most engaging entries in a
gamer’s collection. They come
with the potent appeal of problems to
solve and mysteries to unravel, taxing
players’ powers of logic, observation
and intelligence. In recent years, though,
there’s been a glut of games revolving
around hidden information, and the
result is that it can be hard to get excited
about a new one hitting shop shelves.
Visitor in Blackwood Grove stands out
from the pack with the allure of its theme.
A flying saucer has crash-landed near a
small town, with a child as the only witness.
Government agencies descend on the site,
intent on capturing the occupant. But the
alien has a powerful defence mechanism:
a seemingly impenetrable forcefield
which stops the FBI, CIA and other shady
three-letter government departments
getting anywhere close. It’s reminiscent
enough of E.T. and The X-Files to spark a
surge of nostalgia in ‘80s or ‘90s kids.
The game sees one player adopt the
role of the alien, while the others attempt
to discover a way to break through the
forcefield. One, playing the child, aims
to help the visitor escape. The others,
playing the agents, intend to capture it for
their own nefarious purposes. Whichever
side you’re on, you’ll need to test the
WHAT’S IN boundary by attempting to pass various
THE BOX?
◗ Forcefield board
◗ Trust board
◗ Alien player screen
objects through it, drawn from a shuffled
deck of cards containing everything
from toys and musical instruments to
◗ Flying saucer tokens pieces of fruit and electronic gadgets.
◗ Agent tokens Before the game begins, the alien
◗ Six role cards player secretly chooses a rule determining
◗ 142 object cards what kinds of objects can pass through
◗ 13 forcefield the forcefield. It might be “red objects”,
rules cards “things that make noise” or “things made
from metal”. Each round, players attempt
to breach the barrier with different items
and, by carefully observing the ones that
make it through, you’ll be able to spot
similarities and start speculating about
what the common factor might be. Have
a chair and a skateboard both made it?
Maybe you’re looking for things made of
wood. A guitar and a smartphone? Maybe
the answer is objects that make noise.
There are a handful of other
mechanical elements – most notably a
system representing the growing trust
between the child and the alien, letting
them exchange information without
giving anything away to the agents. But
the process of testing, observing and
speculating is the heart of the game.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED... DECEPTION: MURDER IN HONG KONG
Like the well-regarded investigation game, Blackwood Grove challenges you to
spot the links between groups of apparently unconnected images.
5-15m 3-6 8+ £20
The trouble is that there are times when
you’ll want to test a theory, but just won’t
have the cards in your hand that let you
do it, leading to some unsatisfying turns.
Then there are the game’s production
values. It comes with some thin card
components; several arrived already
bent in our review copy. The graphic
design doesn’t do much to enhance
the atmosphere, with lots of sparse
elements which try to look mysterious
but end up seeming a bit empty.
It’s a nice idea, and one that plays well
with its ‘80s-inspired sci-fi theme. But it
stumbles in the execution, and it doesn’t
do much to inspire repeat visits.
OWEN DUFFY
PLAY IT? N O
Deduction games are often thematically
thin, but Visitor in Blackwood Grove is a
welcome exception with its nods to the
1980s Spielbergian concept of a child
befriending an extraterrestrial being. Its
actual gameplay does little to make it stand
out from the crowd of similar releases,
though, and the quality of its components
leaves quite a bit to be desired.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 75
 P L AY E D
DUAL POWERS:
REVOLUTION 1917
Don't you know it’s gonna be alright?
he 1917 Russian revolutions and
T the civil war they sparked were
complex and bloody, and their
eventual outcome would go on to
change the world forever. Dual Powers
distils the events, figures and conflict
of the momentous year into a head-
to-head struggle for power between
the Provisional Government and the
Petrograd Soviet that’s beautiful to look
at and impressively streamlined to
play, but lacks the rich thematic depth
to make it a true classic.
The tussle between the state power
formed in the wake of Tsar Nicholas
II’s abdication and the rising socialist
movement led by a worker council is
symbolised by a Twilight Struggle-like
tug-of-war points tracker along the
bottom of the board, which swings
back and forth as the two sides claim
regions in Petrograd. Each player has
four actions each round to recruit
new units, move them around the
board or recover their strength before
up to three of the regions are scored,
handing points to the dominant force.
Despite the complexity of the real-
life politics involved, the core of Dual
Powers remains this trim area-control
conflict throughout, powered along by the
smartly designed deck of command cards
76 April 2019
45m 1-2 13+ £39
WHAT’S IN that can be used for one of two available
THE BOX?
◗ Game board
◗ Six region tiles
◗ 48 command cards
actions or played as an secret objective.
These secret objectives are one of
the elements that make Dual Powers
more than a run-of-the-mill battle
◗ Six leader cards
◗ Eight historical for territory. Each player plays a
information cards card facedown at the beginning of a
◗ Two player aid cards round, secretly selecting one of the
◗ Eight leader tokens regions that will be scored and how
◗ 26 unit tokens many points the controlling side will
◗ Score marker earn. A third region is dictated by
◗ Blockade marker an area of ‘unrest’, which is known
◗ Day marker
by both players. The combination of
◗ Month marker
hidden and shared knowledge cleverly
◗ Will of the People
marker introduces an element of bluffing
◗ Three objective and deduction into the movement of
markers units around the map, as you try to
◗ 27 opposing deduce where your opponent might
unit tokens (for score that round while misleading
solitaire variant) attempts to counter your own points
◗ Three difficulty grab. It works brilliantly, enriching
level tokens (for the straightforward strategic cardplay
solitaire variant)
on the board with the potential for
psychological jousting.
While Dual Powers wears its
historical dressing loosely, the setting
allows for the comfortable addition of
some fantastic asymmetrical gameplay.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… TWILIGHT STRUGGLE
Two players using tight cardplay to battle for control during one of history’s
most pivotal moments? That sounds familiar…
The government and socialists each
have three leaders who can be called
upon, deploying to the board as unique
units and allowing for special actions,
such as revealing your opponent’s
secret objective or blocking a
movement route between regions.
Each played card has a cost in time
which advances a calendar through the
year of 1917, granting bonus actions
for landing on certain dates and later
triggering the return of Trotsky from
exile, who can lend his strength to
either side to begin with before allying
permanently with the Bolsheviks in the
summer. The calendar also serves as a
timer for the surprisingly brisk game,
handing victory to the dominant side if
neither player manages to swing public
support far enough in their favour.
Neutral units who lend their strength
to whichever side has the ‘Will of the
People’ – which can be claimed once
by each player by using Kerensky or
Lenin – present another interesting
way of keeping the board-based
competition consistently dynamic.
Along with its exceptional visual
presentation, these sprinkles of Dual
Powers’ historical theme stand out
as the highlights of a game that is
otherwise solid and satisfying, but
still lacks flavour – despite the chance
to dive into a period with a wealth of
potential. The tight, tense cardplay,
layers of hidden information and
asymmetric area-control strategy make
for an enjoyable abstracted two-player
experience, but it’s hard not to feel that
there was a missed opportunity here to
make something both as mechanically
robust and steeped in its setting as
Twilight Struggle.
Had Dual Powers managed to find
the middle ground of its own tug-of-war
between theme and gameplay, it could’ve
been something extraordinary. Instead,
it’s remarkable – but not revolutionary.
MATT JARVIS
PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y
Dual Powers is a well-designed and
fun two-player game with a fantastic
look and a promising theme. It’s just
a shame that the theme doesn’t go
deeper, resulting in something that
doesn’t live all the way up to its potential.
SWORDCRAFTERS: EXPANDED EDITION
Well weapon
20-30m 1-5 6+ £48

n Swordcrafters you craft a sword. version of that way of splitting cake the Expanded Edition. It contains so

I Out of cardboard, sadly, and the

blade you’re going to create has
a strange blocky quality that looks
more like a child’s construction toy
or something from a mid-‘90s Final
Fantasy game, but it’s an actual 3D
sword with four sides, each studded
with gems in the way that regular
swords aren’t. At all.
Put that aside for now. You’re
going to make your sword by slotting
cardboard tiles together, so the sword
will have four sides. Essentially you’re
building four columns, and the tiles
you put on each side will depend on
(1) what tiles you can get, (2) how
long the other sides are and (3) what
victory conditions you’re trying to
complete. Here’s the nub of the game:
it depends.
You get your tiles each turn
by cutting them. Yes, it’s clever;
mechanic as metaphor, all that. You
lay out a random selection of tiles in
a grid, then the first player splits it in
two, horizontally or vertically, and
the next splits one of the halves, and
so on. Then you go round again, each
taking one of the chunks. It’s a game
between kids, and it works really well.
There’s a huge first-player advantage,
but that’s based on who takes one
particular tile, so it all functions.
Then you build your sword, which
is really satisfying. The tiles are robust,
the grooves well cut; it all holds
together surprisingly well. You can
even swing it about a bit. No idea how
long it’ll last, but I’m optimistic.
And then you score. In the basic
version of Swordcrafters there are
three ways of getting victory points:
longest sword, sword quality (sets
of gems per side) and sword magic
(particular gem combos, on cards).
This works fine. It’s a decent game
in vanilla form, but this review is for
many Kickstarter stretch goals so that
getting them all back in the box is a
genuine struggle.
More importantly, it adds another
three routes to victory points: sword
mastery, relics and tips. The clever part
is that you’re not supposed to use them
all at once. You mix and match. The
rulebook even includes advice on which
ones work together particularly well. WHAT’S IN
Each one completely changes THE BOX?
the tone of the game. The core cut- ◗ 91 sword tiles
◗ 12 sword guards
and-decide mechanic stays, but the
◗ 10 sword hilts
combinations of gems you’re trying
◗ 12 sword tips
to create, either turn by turn or at ◗ Five sword pommels
the end of the game, goes upside ◗ 18 sword magic cards
down. Relics are particularly great, ◗ 48 sword relic tiles
sword tips a little disappointing, but ◗ 24 sword
they all bring their own flavour and mastery cards
add longevity. ◗ 10 solo player
Swordcrafters looks like a kids’ variant cards
◗ Scoring tracker
game and it’s simple enough for the
◗ Five player tokens
family, but there’s both breadth and
◗ First player token
depth here – and length too, because ◗ Forge tile
the funnest part is seeing who’s got
the longest. Come for the displays of
potence, stay for an intriguing and
delightful game experience.
JAMES WALLIS

PLAY IT? Y E S TRY THIS IF

Swordcrafters is packed with
novelty, charm, intelligence and thick
YOU LIKED…
cardboard. It’s unique and a lot of fun.
SPLENDOR
Mechanically it’s
nothing like Splendor,
and it’s not about
the gems either. But
the two games have
a similar flavour, and
the way they engage,
puzzle and satisfy is
tonally close.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 77
 P L AY E D
NINJA SQUAD
he intriguing thing about
T Ninja Squad is that it offers
two games for the price of
one. A family-weight release set
in feudal Japan, it puts players in
the shoes of a squad of – wait for
it – ninjas. The first half of the game
sees you work together to evade
guards and sneak into the palace
of a wicked shogun to assassinate
the despotic ruler. The second
ditches the co-operative approach,
with you and your friends fighting
it out to escape before you can be
brought to justice for his murder.
The co-op portion of the game
introduces its mechanical core. On
your turn you’ll choose one of a pair of
randomly-shuffled movement cards
to manoeuvre an anime-style plastic
assassin across a square-grid board,
aiming to stick to shadowy areas and
avoid running into guards patrolling
SHOWTIME
our rows from the back, middle
F of the row. Everyone has a
favourite place to sit in the cinema;
Showtime has you trying to please as
many picky cinephiles as possible by
placing them in the sticky seats of their
local multiplex.
The theme’s a winner, and helps lift
up gameplay that’s otherwise as light
as a piece of popcorn. The jigsaw-like
board slots together the inside rows of
a screen (more rows for more players)
with the outside of a cinema, a movie
poster displaying the scoring genre of
movie for that round and a red carpet
tracking players’ points. It’s clever, and
cleverly presented.
Then it falls apart. Placing cards to
put your patrons in the right seats isn’t
all that interesting or difficult, and
rarely are there enough viable options
to make it particularly strategic. An
unclear use of symbols to signify special
abilities – there are a few opportunities
for take-that rearrangement of your
opponents' audience members – and
78 April 2019
the city streets. Along the way you’ll
accumulate power-ups letting you make
additional moves or hurl razor-sharp
shurikens at unfortunate enemies.
It’s a premise plucked from big-
screen martial arts epics, but it comes
with some real rough edges. While
you’ll try to evade guards, there are
times when both of your available
cards leave you with no option but to
plough headlong into them. When
that happens, you’ll lose your next
turn and, while Ninja Squad plays
so quickly that it’s not the end of the
world, it’s the kind of thing that’s been
practically eliminated from modern
game design – for good reason.
There’s also not much you can do in
the way of meaningful co-operation,
and the competitive mode on the
board’s reverse side feels considerably
better by comparison. A note in the
rulebook suggests skipping the co-op
20-40m
denote who scores what where makes
placement and scoring more drawn-out
and clumsy than it needs to be.
The gameplay is a bit basic and flat,
but it’s serviceable. What condemns
Showtime to a permanent place in
the bargain bins is how it takes such a
promising theme and ruins it.
20-40m 2-4 8+ £27
stage, which seems like a sensible
option, although it still suffers from
moments that strip away players’
sense of agency.
OWEN DUFFY
PLAY IT? N O
Each character has a favoured movie
genre and specific seating requirement
needed to score points. It’s a good
2-4 8+ £29 idea for a lighthearted game, but the
delivery leaves a seriously sour taste
in the mouth. The characters and their
requirements range from the dull and
clichéd to the downright creepy and
offensive. A small-waisted, large-
chested blonde gives bonus points
for being seated near male patrons,
and loses points for being near other
women. Meanwhile, a chiselled
George Clooney-ish hunk whose shirt
is almost as white as the entire roster
of characters gains points for being
surrounded by fawning women. A
physically larger movie-goer stuffing
their face with food shouldn’t be sat
next to anyone because L-O-L everyone
hates greedy fat people, right?
Rampant with such lazy stereotypes
and tiresome attempts at humour,
Showtime is the kind of unpleasant
aisle neighbour you’d never want to
find yourself sat next to for the 20 to 40
minutes of its runtime, let alone the
length of a feature film.
MATT JARVIS
PLAY IT? N O
INVISIBLE SUN
Treading the line ‘twixt genius and madness
ne of the cardinal rules of
O clear writing is that you
should almost never describe
something as ‘unique’, because most
of the time it simply isn’t true. So,
bear that in mind when I tell you that
Invisible Sun is a truly, genuinely,
maddeningly unique RPG.
Coming from Numenera creator
Monte Cook, Invisible Sun bills itself as
a game of surreal magic and adventure,
one where our waking world is revealed
to be a vast illusion and dreamscapes
form the true reality. It’s an intriguing
premise, for sure, but even that only
scratches the surface of what makes it
stand out from the crowd.
To begin with, it’s probably best
to address the elephant lurking in
the room and admit that a small
but significant part of Invisible Sun’s
unique nature comes from its rather
impressive price tag. Picking up the
core game’s box set, portentously
known as The Black Cube, is going to
set you back well over £200. Even a set
of PDFs comes in at around £75.
That would be an eye-watering price
tag for even the most committed of board
game buyers, and for most RPG fans
it’s almost impossible to comprehend.
However, there’s never been an RPG quite
so packed with stuff as Invisible Sun.
The Black Cube’s heart may lie in the
four hard-backed, beautifully designed
500+
rulebooks, but its flesh and blood
comes in the form of countless cards,
maps, markers, boards and notes. It
even comes with a life-sized six-fingered
hand for holding and displaying cards.
It’s a truly stunning display of
physical grandeur, but there’s more to
the game than props and gimmicks.
The rules themselves are stuffed with
interesting ideas about the structure
of RPG storytelling, such as guidelines
for running inter-session side-scenes
by text or email – the most interesting
of these is the way it approaches
narrative arcs.
In most games the GM is the one
who plots out the broad strokes of the
campaign. When you play Invisible
Sun, however, it’s the players who
determine their own story arcs, long
before any dice are rolled.
If a player’s arc points towards
uncovering an arcane library, it’s up
to the GM to build the story towards
that point. If their goal is to avenge
their father, sooner or later they’ll
have the chance to meet the killer.
Plenty of games like to cast the GM as
the story’s facilitator rather than its
master, but few commit to the idea
quite so wholeheartedly.
In fact, it’s hard to think of anything
that Invisible Sun doesn’t embrace
body and soul. It feels like every time
the designers made a choice about how
something should work they turned
the dial until it broke, leaning into the
concept so fully that it straddles a line
between enthralling and off-putting.
One of the most striking examples of
13+ £234
this is the way it approaches language.
Despite that fact that every player
character casts magic, the rulebooks
note that describing them as ‘wizards’
is rather gauche and old-fashioned.
Instead, they are known as Vislae,
though some prefer to be known as
‘esoterics’, ‘canny ones’ or any one of a
half-dozen other rather flowery terms.
Almost every page adds a fresh
word to the glossary, so rather than
applying bonuses to rolls you build
them into a ‘venture’ that you subtract
from the difficulty of the task, creating
a target number that you want to
hit on a d10 – or possibly several of
them, depending on how things are
shaking down. Instead of levelling
up you combine ‘joy’ and ‘despair’ to
create ‘crux’, which you can spend to
advance your abilities and position.
This, perhaps, is what best sums up
Invisible Sun. It’s a game that straddles
the line between indulgence and
inspiration. While sessions are certainly
enjoyable, now and then I have to shake
the nagging doubt that assails me at
galleries and experimental exhibitions
– the question of how much of my
enjoyment comes from the actual quality,
and how much it owes more to the grand
presentation and price of admission.
There’s no doubt that Invisible Sun
is something unique. If you want to
sip on liquid creativity and can spare
the cash, you should start tracking
down the few remaining pre-orders
right this second. But if you’re a fan
of stark simplicity and have little time
for grandiose airs, there are probably
better ways to spend your cash.
RICHARD JANSENPARKES
PLAY IT? M A Y B E
If you can ignore the price tag
this is a truly incredible display of
creativity and, even if you never play
the game, it’s a fascinating read.
However, that’s a pretty big ‘if’.
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED…
NUMENERA
Monte Cook has always been a
whizz at the surreal; if you loved
the weird world of Numenera you’ll
probably dig Invisible Sun too.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 79
 P L AY E D
TERMINATOR GENISYS:
RISE OF THE RESISTANCE
Roll your dice if you want to live
erminator Genisys: Rise of the
T Resistance is a board game
version of a really bad movie,
which you can’t help but like despite
its more than obvious flaws.
If you have played any action or
RPG-in-a-box games, like Zombicide or
Vengeance, Rise of the Resistance won't
surprise you in any way. Its gameplay
loop is almost too familiar: arrange
cardboard map tiles to form your
battle arena, drop in a couple of tokens
that represent supplies and barriers,
put a miniature of your character on
a starting spot, and battle waves of
endlessly spawning enemies while
trying to achieve objectives that vary
slightly from mission to mission.
The dice combat is basic and the
story that accompanies the missions
is laughably clichéd, being overstuffed
with dramatic end-of-the-world
motivational speeches that are made
even funnier by a scattering of typos.
Finally, while the game may have
enticed you by providing good old
gung-ho action in the Terminator
universe, the theme is entirely
window dressing – beyond the art and
80 April 2019
miniatures, there is no connection to
the mechanics of the gameplay.
In addition, despite being a
miniatures-focused game, the
figurines are of average quality and, to
top that off, do not fit well inside the
box. The rest of the components are
equally shabby in their quality and
WHAT’S IN presentation, with misaligned printing,
THE BOX? extra thin cards and bending boards.
◗ 28 miniatures Despite all of that, almost
◗ 32 base rings unexplainably, Rise of the Resistance is
◗ 22 dice
actually good fun. The combat might
◗ Four character boards
be basic, but its mindless dice-rolling is
◗ 13 double-sided
map tiles entertaining in its ease and simplicity.
◗ 111 tokens The enemies might continually spawn
◗ 108 cards and attack from all directions, but you
dispense with them equally swiftly due
to the generous actions available each
turn. The winning strategy is often as
simple as it is logical: stick together,
pick up as much equipment as you can
carry, focus on your objective, level-up
between missions. Yet, it can still be
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… ZOMBICIDE
Instead of being overwhelmed by zombie hordes, Rise of the Resistance sees
you clearing waves of killer robots – the gameplay may not be as nuanced, but
you will be back for more of its unintentional dramatic silliness.
90-120m 1-4 14+ £60
difficult to execute, as it’s easy to find
yourselves split up while chasing an
objective or ambushed by an unlucky
roll that overwhelms you with enemies.
Like many of games of this ilk, every
mission has a story premise, but Rise
of the Resistance also peppers small
narrations throughout each level that
are unlocked by interacting with certain
objects on the board. No matter how
inconsequential and eye-rollingly cheesy
those bits of story are, they manage to
create a little interlude between constant
dice-rolling and repetitive movement.
As a welcome breather, they unite the
whole table as the players listen to a little
bit of dialogue before going back to their
routine of shooting robots.
Perhaps because of the game’s
incredible simplicity, the strength of
its setting or because its association
to the movie of the same name
doesn’t exactly inspire high hopes,
the mediocrity of Rise of the Resistance
becomes almost irrelevant. It is easy
to learn and easier to play, but can still
be hard to win – and shooting robots
with futuristic-sounding weapons
is entertaining enough to keep
pushing you through the campaign.
If that sounds like too much of a
time investment, there is always the
skirmish mode.
On paper, Rise of the Resistance does
not sound like a game that is worth
your time. In reality, it doesn’t demand
much from you at all, and the time
spent will be full of silly mindless fun –
until the next, better action game in a
box comes along.
ALEX SONECHKINA
PLAY IT? M A Y B E
It doesn’t make much sense or follow
any logic, but Rise of the Resistance,
despite its many flaws, is simple
fun. If nothing else, you can have a
good laugh at its clichéd writing.
LINDISFARNE
A snack for Odin
Designer: Damien Fleury, Alain Pradet | Artist: ann&seb
indisfarne is a whole lot of game
L in not a lot of box. With just a
deck of cards, three smallish
boards and a few handfuls of tokens,
this Viking dice-roller manages to
create an experience that feels like it
belongs in a package several times the
size – and price.
At the centre of the Norse action
is dice-rolling, with players chucking
cubes equal to the number of Vikings in
their clan: six to start, then fewer as they
head off to European shores in search
of regions to pillage. The results can be
assigned to each of the boards to try and
achieve the most unique die results,
longest consecutive run of numbers or
largest number of matching rolls. The
diverse objectives – with the caveat of
having to place at least one token and
only being able to assign dice to a single
board each turn – means that the luck of
the dice is offset, leaving enough room for
a competitive, tactical feel. The chance to
collect dice-modifying runes for unspent
Vikings at the end of a round opens up
control of the cubes further, without
taking away the excitement of throwing
down and seeing what turns up.
Achieve one of the objectives and
you’ll swipe one of that board’s attached
cards, which is where Lindisfarne’s
second clever half comes into play. The
cards can be worth points alone, but
also earn points for the player with the
largest collection and offer bonus score
for completing connected sections of
the panoramic frescos that run across
several cards. Meanwhile, objective
cards award specific sets of card suits,
based on the various destinations; cards
from the Viking home of Norway grant
WHAT’S IN bonus actions and scoring opportunities.
THE BOX?
◗ Three map boards Dice-rolling and card set-collection
◗ Six dice are two staples of the gaming world, and
◗ 38 destination Lindisfarne doesn’t necessarily reinvent
cards the wheel when it comes to its gameplay.
◗ 20 objective cards The rules will be familiar to those who’ve
◗ 24 Viking tokens spent time in similar small-box card and
◗ 12 rune tokens dice games, and can be picked up in a
◗ First Player pawn
couple of minutes by everyone else.
That said, what the combination of
dice and cardplay here lacks in originality,
it makes up for with dependability as
tight as a longboat's planks. It’s wholly
satisfying to assign dice, collect cards and
score points, and the quickness of turns
and setup makes a good experience
even better. You’re left with the feeling of
having played a much more substantial
game thanks to the mixture of gameplay
elements and scoring considerations
coming together seamlessly.
Where Lindisfarne excels in making
its components go the distance – the
three main map boards flip over to
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED… RAIDERS OF THE NORTH SEA
Love Vikings? This pairing of compact Norse-themed Eurogames will give you
plenty of gaming joy to be thankful Thor.
30-45m 2-4 15+ £15
come a final scoring sheet, cards score
in at least three different ways – its
presentation feels a little less inventive.
The muted wood effect and awkward
arrangement of its three Europe-forming
central boards, which serves a gameplay
purpose but looks strangely disjointed,
sits alongside cards that are nicely
illustrated but lack any individuality
versus any one of the countless Viking
games out there. In a word, the look of
Lindisfarne is forgettable.
Lindisfarne won’t change the world.
Taken piece by piece (of the few pieces
there are), its gameplay mechanics
and look are overly familiar and fail to
do anything special alone. Put them
together, though, and this compact set
becomes so much more than the sum
of its parts. It’s fast and fun, and asks
little of your time or money. A lot for a
little – who can argue with that?
MATT JARVIS
PLAY IT? P R O B A B L Y
Its gameplay isn’t revolutionary –
but the amount it crams into an
extremely reasonable package is. This
is a thoroughly solid and strategic
experience that deserves the small
space it’ll occupy on your shelf.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 81
 P L AY E D

WHAT’S IN
THE BOX?
◗ Double-sided
game board
◗ 18 influence tokens
◗ 18 intrigue tokens
◗ Eight
opportunity tokens
◗ 140 faction tokens
◗ 70 faction cards
◗ Six scoring cards
◗ Five scenario cards
◗ Four lord figures
◗ 56 courtier figures
◗ Four scoring markers
◗ Round marker
◗ Cloth bag
◗ Four player
hand screens
◗ 21 rings
◗ Start Player marker
◗ Ring stand
◗ Ring sticker sheet

TUDOR
More choices than Henry VIII had wives
90-120m 2-4 12+ £70

n Tudor, predictably, players are Rings are put on creepy cardboard of several scenarios, which give a

I transported to the court of Henry

VIII. But not to worry: there is no
beheading in this game. In fact, except
for the portraits of Henry’s wives that
serve as a turn tracker, very little relates
to the history of that period at all.
Tudor is supposedly all about
courtly intrigue, which is really just
a thematic explanation for players to
send their meeples around the board
to collect different faction tokens. The
broad premise could work for almost
any royal court, real or imaginary.
The game board, illustrated like
part of the palace, is divided into
several zones, but the main area is
the courtroom. It is populated by a
staggering number of tokens. They
constitute the majority of the initial
lengthy setup, but look gorgeous
once all the tokens are placed on the
board. Collecting them and moving
up several tracks in the courtroom
– which represents your growing
influence – is just one of many things
you will be doing in Tudor. While
this is primarily a worker-placement
game, there are a lot of bells and
whistles to its gameplay.
One of the extra elements that
stands out immediately is a mechanic
that uses the placement of rings on the
fingers of players’ respective noble.
hand cut-outs that double as player
screens, although keeping them
standing straight on the table becomes
one of the biggest challenges of the
game. Putting the impracticality of the
setup to the side, the rings and their
position on specific fingers add an
interesting twist to the core gameplay.
In the first two sequences of the turn,
players assign their meeples to one of
the three rooms on the board, which
allows them to perform a specific set of
actions. The rings are used to enhance
those actions, making them more
effective and powerful; for example,
allowing players to pick up more cards
or move additional spaces up on one of
the tracks on the courtroom portion.
As players begin with just two rings
and gain additional ones only after
getting to the top of one of the court
tracks, choosing the position of rings
is the biggest strategic decision in the
game. Players are able to enhance
only one ability, so they need to
decide right at the start what their goal
for the first couple of rounds will be.
Especially if you are new to the
game, that is a tough decision. Apart
from moving up on the court board
and placing the rings on cardboard
fingers, there are a lot of other things
to consider. Every game there is one
bonus special action. There are several
end-game bonuses that are drawn
randomly at the beginning of the game.
To perform actions in the three rooms,
players also must follow a specific
sequence of placement and activation
of meeples.
Unfortunately, the iconography
makes the already hard-to-remember
rules and objectives even more
convoluted. Unintuitive little symbols
and signs present throughout every
step of the turn force players to
constantly refer back to the game’s
rulebook, slowing the flow of the
game significantly. This remains a
stumbling block for a few rounds, if
not for your first couple of games. TRY THIS IF
Tudor’s gameplay and core concept YOU LIKED…
are done well. It fails, however, in TZOLK’IN:
its execution. It is not enough for THE MAYAN
components to look pretty; they need CALENDAR
to be practical and help gameplay to Tzolk’in is an
run smoothly. In an attempt to stand example of a
out by looking different, Tudor's worker-placement
board game with
gameplay is overshadowed by flashier
a gimmick that not
and less meaningful gimmicks. only works with
ALEX SONECHKINA its gameplay, but
is executed well –
PLAY IT? N O something from
It may have some interesting ideas, which Tudor could
but their poor execution leaves learn a lot.
Tudor on the chopping block.

82 April 2019
AMAZING TALES
oleplaying, when you get down
R to it, is all about make-believe.
Whether you’re stabbing goblins
in a dingy dungeon or uncovering
shadowy conspiracies in a neon-tinged
future metropolis, imagination is the
beating heart of the hobby.
That should make it a perfect activity
for parents to share with children. But for
the most part, designers and publishers
are happy to tailor their products to an
older crowd, with many games revelling
in complicated rules and violent themes.
Even when RPGs do cater for younger
players, they tend to assume that
they’ve at least reached reading age.
Amazing Tales is different. An
introductory roleplaying system with
an emphasis on fun and creativity, it’s
designed specifically for pre-school
and primary-aged kids. Its rules are
incredibly light – in fact, they pretty
much fit on a single page – and
rather than endless stats, tables and
modifiers, it comes packed with hints
on how to keep children engaged and
interested through a game.
WILDLANDS:
THE ADVENTURING PARTY
ast year, Martin Wallace’s
L Wildlands blew us away with its
super-slick, ultra-refined card-
based take on the miniatures skirmish
genre. Its appealingly motley factions
and busy, colourful double-sided
board, made it clear from the start that it
would benefit from expansion sets, and
publisher Osprey Games hasn’t held
back from delivering them. First out of
the gate was the six-strong reanimated
horde The Unquiet Dead, and now
we have The Adventuring Party – a
quartet of classic questing hero types:
barbarian, rogue, wizard and cleric.
With one fewer party member than
the other base set factions (and two
fewer than the zombie gang), they might
appear underpowered. But Wallace
balances that by adding a new action to
20-40m 2-4 4+ £17
Much of this is common sense:
keeping sessions from running too long,
handing players a degree of creative
control and using characters’ failures as an
opportunity to introduce interesting twists
to the plot rather than as sudden brick
walls. It’s the kind of advice that could
equally apply to grown-up roleplaying.
What’s really helpful, though, are the
pages that deal specifically with GMing
for kids: providing them with interesting
questions, keeping things from becoming
too scary or stressful, and harnessing
the energy, enthusiasm and imaginative
quirkiness they bring to the table.
Other than this, the bulk of the book
is made up of pre-made settings for
adventures, but it’s far more interesting
to work with your kids to create one of
your own. By adult standards, Amazing
Tales may seem rather light on actual
content. But as a new twist on storytime
and a way to join your children in
creative play, it’s priceless.
OWEN DUFFY
PLAY IT? Y E S
30-60m 2-4 14+ £20
this deck: a heal, for the cleric character, tower and a deep, crystal-studded
Thom. This can really make a difference
in the thick of battle, and offers a great
way to confound your opponents.
canyon), it’s clear these expansions are
going to keep coming. On the evidence
of The Adventuring Party, that can only
You can also recast the heroes as a be a good thing. All we need now is a
gang of troublesome looters – game- Scythe-style Automa deck to make a
controlled characters with preset actions solo mode possible, and we’re set.
who move around the map during your DAN JOLIN
battle and try to nab the players' crystals.
It’s a fun enough addition to the scrappy PLAY IT? Y E S
chaos, but in truth this faction is best
appreciated as an active participant.
In fact, we’d go as far as to say they’re
the finest faction yet. Only having four
of them gives you more tactical focus
(protect the healer!), which certainly
adds an appropriate against-the-odds
thrill when playing them.
With new maps also on the way
(May’s Map Pack 1 features a warlock’s
tabletopgaming.co.uk 83
HARRY POTTER
MINIATURES ADVENTURE GAME
Whether it’s dragon heartstring or unicorn hair, grab your bristled wand
and cast some painting magic on the goodies of the wizarding world
Words and photographs by Andy Leighton
e’re off to the wizarding world of
W Harry Potter this month to explore
how to paint a selection of goody
miniatures from the Harry Potter Miniatures
Adventure Game’s core set and expansions.
These wonderful models come to us from
Knight Models; no stranger to a franchise,
it has been involved in making miniatures
for Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Marvel, and
Batman and the rest of the DC universe at
one point or another. One thing that’s clear
is the stunning sculpting work that goes into
April 2019
creating characters, ensuring they really feel
like they’ve been plucked straight from their
respective universes.
Harry Potter is no exception to this. The
miniatures are stunning, with each and
every one instantly recognisable and usually
featuring a very thematic or dynamic pose.
All of them come in resin, which offers a great
level of detail and is fairly easy to work with.
There are some very fiddly bits, though.
Some hands or even legs need to be glued in
place and the wands are super thin and just
THE
ORDER
OF THE
PHOENIX
begging to snap. My biggest gripe is with the
bases. They come with a plastic cobblestone
texture – perfect for the universe – but the
slotta bases (a tab at the bottom of the model
slides into a slot) leave a ghastly gap with a
thick tab where more cobblestones should
be. It’s something that can only really be fixed
with some Green Stuff and sculpting work –
something a scenic base should avoid.
This doesn’t detract from the fact the models
are a joy to paint, so let’s look at how you can
add a touch of magic to your collection...
tabletopgaming.co.uk 85
 H A R R Y P O T T E R M I N I AT U R E S

HARRY, RON & HERMIONE

STAGE 1
PA I N T S & Skavenblight Dinge:
Basecoat the trousers/skirt.
TECH N I QU ES Dark Reaper: Apply a
basecoat to the outer robes.
Dawnstone: Apply a
STAGES basecoat to the jumpers.
Each model is split up into four stages, each Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a
with a list of colours and the corresponding basecoat to the skin.
paint that was used for it. Each stage uses a Celestra Grey: Apply a
basecoat to the shirt.
different technique to achieve a similar effect
Dryad Bark: Apply a basecoat
on each element but with different colours. to the wands and Harry’s hair.
Khorne Red: Apply a basecoat
Stage 1 is basecoating. Base colours are to the inner robes, edging,
applied using flat colours. Since the models are scarves and school crest.
XV-88: Apply a basecoat to
primed a lighter colour these initial coats are
Hermione’s hair.
applied slightly watered-down, around two parts Jokaero Orange: Apply a
paint to one part water. basecoat to Ron’s hair.

Stage 2 is shading. During this stage we apply

washes and glazes to the more shadowed STAGE 2
Nuln Oil: Apply a wash
areas of the miniatures, particularly the lower
over the jumpers, trousers
edges and undersides. and exterior cloaks.
Druchii Violet: Apply a
Stage 3 is layering. This stage involves applying wash to the reds.
a layer of a lighter colour, generally focused Reikland Fleshshade:
Apply a wash to the skin.
towards the top of the model, avoiding the
Agrax Earthshade: Apply
areas previously shaded. This guide also a wash to everyone’s hair.
features a lot of line highlights at this stage.
This involves applying a thin line of paint to the
raised areas and straight edges of the area.

Stage 4 is for final details and highlights. This

stage involves adding the finishing touches,
sometimes just small details like the eyes, or
adding small highlights to increase definition.
If you find yourself unsure of where to apply
the highlights or spot highlights, look over the
images alongside the guide and compare that
stage to the last.
STAGE 3
Dawnstone: Apply a layer to
the jumpers and highlight the
trousers. Add a line highlight
to Harry’s hair.
PAINTS YOU Russ Grey: Apply a line
WILL NEED highlight to the robes.
Ulthuan Grey: Apply a layer
Abaddon Black Karak Stone
to the shirts.
Agrax Earthshade Khorne Red
Wazdakka Red: Line highlight
Averland Sunset Kislev Flesh the underrobes, scarf and ties.
Balor Brown Leadbelcher Kislev Flesh: Apply a layer
Blue Horror Liberator Gold to the skin.
Bugmans Glow XV-88: Paint the wands.
Loren Forest
Averland Sunset: Apply
Cadian Fleshtone Lugganath Orange stripes to the ties and scarf.
Caledor Sky Mournfang Brown Jokaero Orange: Apply a
Castellan Green Nuln Oil line highlight to Ron’s hair.
Celestra Grey Rakarth Flesh Tallarn Sand: Apply a line
Ceramite White highlight to Hermione’s hair.
Reikland
Dark Reaper
Fleshshade
Dawnstone
Deathclaw Brown
Retributor Armour STAGE 4
Russ Grey Celestra Grey: Highlight
Death World the jumpers and trousers.
Skavenblight Dinge
Forest Fenrisian Grey: Apply edge and
Skrag Brown spot highlights to the robes.
Dechala Lilac
Slaanesh Grey Ceramite White: Apply a
Doombull Brown
Steel Legion Drab highlight to the shirt.
Drakenhof
Sycorax Bronze Slaanesh Grey: Apply a
Nightshade spot highlight to the reds.
Druchii Violet Tallarn Sand Flayed One Flesh: Apply a
Dryad Bark Teclis Blue highlight to the skin.
Fenrisian Grey Temple Guard Blue Karak Stone: Add a spot
Ulthuan Grey highlight to the wand tips.
Flayed One Flesh
Yriel Yellow: Scarf and ties.
Fulgrim Pink Wazdakka Red
Lugganath Orange: Apply a
Genestealer Purple Xereus Purple spot highlight to Ron’s hair.
Incubi Darkness XV-88 Blue Horror: Spot highlight
Ionrach Skin Yriel Yellow Harry’s hair.
Balor Brown: Apply a spot
Jokaero Orange Zandri Dust
highlight to Hermione’s hair.

86 April 2019
SIRIUS BLACK & PADFOOT

REMUS LUPIN & WEREWOLF FORM

STAGE 1 STAGE 1
Incubi Darkness: Apply a Slaanesh Grey: Apply a
basecoat to Padfoot and basecoat to the werewolf.
Sirius’ waistcoat. Death World Forest:
XV-88: Apply a basecoat Apply a basecoat to
to the jacket. Lupin’s suit.
Skavenblight Dinge: Castellan Green: Apply a
Apply a basecoat to basecoat to the cloak.
the trousers. Fenrisian Grey: Apply a
Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a basecoat to the shirt.
basecoat to the skin. Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a
Doombull Brown: Apply a basecoat to the skin.
basecoat to the hair. Doombull Brown: Apply a
basecoat to the hair.

STAGE 2 STAGE 2
Nuln Oil: Apply a wash Druchii Violet: Apply a
to the waistcoat, shirt wash to the entirety of
and trousers. the werewolf.
Agrax Earthshade: Apply Agrax Earthshade: Apply
a wash to the jacket a wash to everything but
and hair. the skin of Lupin.
Reikland Fleshshade: Reikland Fleshshade: Apply
Apply a wash to the skin. a wash to Lupin’s skin.

STAGE 3 STAGE 3
Dark Reaper: Line highlight Slaanesh Grey: Apply a
the waistcoat and shirt. layer to the werewolf’s skin.
Apply a layer to Padfoot’s Skavenblight Dinge: Apply a
fur, focusing on raised layer to the werewolf’s hair.
areas and facial features. Jokaero Orange: Apply a
Balor Brown: Apply a layer layer to the werewolf’s eyes.
to Padfoot’s teeth. Balor Brown: Apply a layer to
Tallarn Sand: Apply a layer the werewolf’s teeth.
to the jacket. Abaddon Black: Apply a layer
Kislev Flesh: Apply a layer to the claws of the werewolf.
to the skin. Death World Forest: Apply a
Dawnstone: Apply a line layer to the suit and trousers.
highlight to the trousers. Dark Reaper: Apply a line
Steel Legion Drab: Apply a highlight of the robes.
layer to the hair. Skrag Brown: Apply a layer
Retributor Armour: Apply to Lupin’s hair.
a layer to the buttons. Kislev Flesh: Apply a layer
Leadbelcher: Apply a layer to to the skin.
the pocket watch chain.

STAGE 4 STAGE 4
Russ Grey: Apply a spot Ionrach Skin: Apply
highlight to the waistcoat a line highlight to the
and shirt. Apply a spot werewolf’s skin.
highlight to Padfoot’s fur. Dawnstone: Apply a
Yriel Yellow: Apply a layer line highlight to the
to Padfoot’s eyes. werewolf’s hair.
Flayed One Flesh: Apply a Yriel Yellow: Apply a layer
line highlight to the skin, as to the eyes.
well as a spot highlight to Flayed One Flesh: Apply a
Padfoot’s teeth. line highlight to Lupin’s skin
Karak Stone: Apply a line and a spot highlight to the
highlight to the jacket. werewolf’s teeth.
Celestra Grey: Apply a spot Deathclaw Brown: Apply a
highlight to the trousers. spot highlight to the roots
of Lupin’s hair.
Russ Grey: Apply a spot
highlight to the robes.
Tallarn Sand: Apply a line
highlight to the suit.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 87
 ALASTOR ‘MAD-EYE’ MOODY H A R R Y P O T T E R M I N I AT U R E S

KINGSLEY SHACKLEBOLT
STAGE 1 STAGE 1
XV-88: Apply a basecoat Xereus Purple: Apply
to the jacket. a basecoat to the
Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a inner robes.
basecoat to the skin. Caledor Sky: Apply a
Skavenblight Dinge: Apply basecoat to the cloak.
a basecoat to the trousers Mournfang Brown:
and top. Apply a basecoat to
Mournfang Brown: Apply the skin and wand.
a basecoat to the staff. Liberator Gold:
Jokaero Orange: Apply a Apply a basecoat to
basecoat to the hair. the shirt detailing.

STAGE 2 STAGE 2
Agrax Earthshade: Apply Nuln Oil: Apply a wash to
a wash to the staff, jacket the skin.
and hair. Drakenhof Nightshade:
Reikland Fleshshade: Apply a wash to all the
Apply a wash to the skin. robes and hat.
Nuln Oil: Apply a wash to
the trousers and top.

STAGE 3 STAGE 3
Zandri Dust: Apply a line Teclis Blue: Apply a
highlight to the jacket. line highlight to the
Russ Grey: Apply a line outer robes.
highlight to the trousers Genestealer Purple:
and top. Apply a line highlight to
Kislev Flesh: Apply a layer the inner robes.
to the skin. Bugmans Glow: Apply a
Lugganath Orange: Apply layer to the skin.
a layer to the hair.
Steel Legion Drab: Apply a
line highlight to the staff.
Sycorax Bronze: Apply a
layer to the buckles on the
jacket as well as around
the ‘magical eye’.
Ceramite White: Apply a
layer to the magical eye.

STAGE 4 STAGE 4
Flayed One Flesh: Apply a Temple Guard Blue:
highlight to the skin. Apply a line highlight to
Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a the outer robes.
spot highlight to the roots Dechala Lilac: Apply
of the hair. a spot highlight to the
Fenrisian Grey: Apply inner robes.
a spot highlight to the Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a
trousers and top. highlight to the skin.
Karak Stone: Apply a spot
highlight to the staff. Also
apply a spot highlight to
the jacket.
Caledor Sky: Apply a pupil
in the centre of the eye.

88 April 2019
NYMPHADORA TONKS

BASES
STAGE 1 STAGE 1
Xereus Purple: Apply a Mournfang Brown: Apply
basecoat to the cloak. a basecoat to the bases.
Genestealer Purple: Apply
a basecoat to the hair.
Dawnstone: Apply a
basecoat to the top.
Skavenblight Dinge:
Apply a basecoat to
the trousers.
Cadian Fleshtone: Apply a
basecoat to the skin.

STAGE 2 STAGE 2
Nuln Oil: Apply a wash to Skavenblight Dinge: Apply
the top and trousers. a fairly heavy drybrush
Druchii Violet: Apply a across each base.
wash to the jacket.
Reikland Fleshshade:
Apply a wash to the skin.

STAGE 3 STAGE 3
Fulgrim Pink: Apply a layer Dawnstone: Apply a light
to the hair. drybrush to each base.
Genestealer Purple:
Apply a line highlight to
the jacket.
Dawnstone: Apply a layer
to the trousers.
Celestra Grey: Apply a
layer to the top.
Kislev Flesh: Apply a layer
to the skin.
Abaddon Black: Make a
mix with around one part
water and carefully apply
lines down the trousers.

STAGE 4
Flayed One Flesh: Apply a
highlight to the skin.
Dechala Lilac: Apply a line
highlight to the jacket.
Ulthuan Grey: Apply a
spot highlight to the top.
Fulgrim Pink & Ceramite
White: Make a 1:1 mix
and apply a spot highlight
to the roots of the hair.
STAGE 4
Celestra Grey: Apply a fine
edge highlight to the front
and side of each stone.
Abaddon Black: Apply
a coat to the rim of
the base.

tabletopgaming.co.uk 89
 90
T H E D U N G E O N M A S T E R ’ S G U I D E T O R O L E P L AY I N G

April 2019
AN OPTIMAL SITUATION
Does min-maxing your character’s fighting
prowess suck the fun out of the tale you’re telling?
We weigh up the challenge of juggling story and skill
Words by Richard Jansen-Parkes | Image courtesy of Wizards of the Coast
hen you looked at
W Wrath, it was hard to
see anything beyond
a warrior – a creature
built for the beating,
bloody heart of battle and very little else.
His skills and training were all guided by
the need to excel in combat, and his natural
abilities were further enhanced by a carefully
curated selection of equipment. Enchanted
armour boosted his strength to superhuman
levels, while the maul he wielded crackled and
fizzed with magical force.
This image of the consummate fighter was
only enhanced when he entered the battlefield,
with every attack, manoeuvre and charge
dictated by cold, tactical logic. Wrath would
ignore the taunts of armoured brutes in favour
of closing to close quarters with spellcasters
and leaders, crashing through their paltry
defences like a half-tonne of steel thunder.
He was, quite obviously, a creature
optimised for battle.
And yet there was more to him than
that. He lacked the silver tongue that some
of his fellow party members used to talk
rings around their foes, but that didn’t stop
him from letting his voice be heard. It was
a blunt tool that relied on plain logic and
simple honesty rather than cunningly crafted
combinations of flattery and threat, and it was
well-respected by those that knew him.
Though at first glance he seemed fierce
frosty as a mountain, over the course of Wrath’s
adventures he grew to become the grudging
leader of his band of misfits – in large part
because he was a solid point of sense in a
tide of chaotic schemes. He reconnected with
friends who had once thought him dead,
regained a shattered sense of honour and after
many battles took down the wizards who had
once bought his pride with gold and magic.
Yes, he was an optimal warrior. But he
was also a leader, a lover and an all-round
incredible character.
THE STORMWIND FALLACY
In RPG circles people occasionally talk about
something known as ‘The Stormwind Fallacy’,
named after the person who got the idea down
in digital ink on an old D&D message board.
The fallacy revolves around an assumption
that many people seem to hold – namely that
roleplaying and character optimisation are
somehow mutually exclusive. It’s the belief if you
create a mechanically effective character, they’ll be
boring when it comes to the story, and vice versa.
Like the two aspects sit at opposite ends of a see-
saw, with one naturally falling as the other rises.
Like all fallacies, the point of the Stormwind
Fallacy is that once you examine it for any time at
all it quickly reveals itself to be absolute nonsense.
There is no reason, for example, that a
player’s ability to piece together the rulebook
should somehow be linked to their storytelling
skills. We aren’t RPG characters ourselves, after
all, with only so many skill points to assign. It’s
entirely possible to craft a world-boiling hero
one minute and play out a nifty conversation
with a shopkeeper the next.
This becomes even more obvious if we
consider the counter-example. Just because
someone insists on playing that negative-INT
wizard or the Jedi who refuses to use Force
powers, for example, they don’t instantly become
the most nuanced, fascinating character going.
And yet there still seems to be a feeling
among many RPG communities that character
optimisation is anathema to creativity.
Which is weird, because people don’t
seem to mind heroes in other forms of media.
Nobody looks at Aragorn from The Lord of the
Rings or Luke from Star Wars and rolls their
eyes at they way they put so many points into
swordsmanship. When John Wick blasts his
way through an entire nightclub of gangsters
we don’t get huffy because he trivialised what
should have been a deadly encounter.
No, we clap and cheer and nod appreciatively.
Because it turns out that characters kicking
ungodly amounts of arse is fun.
OPTIMISED FOR FUN
This is the point in the tale where I have to admit
that I have skin in the game, so to speak. While
I wouldn’t like to think of myself as a win-at-all-
costs, nothing-counts-but-damage kind of player,
I will freely admit that when I’m on the far side
of the GM’s screen I love playing mechanically
powerful – or at least interesting – characters.
Whether in video games, card games or
RPGs, few things bring a smile to my face quite
so reliably as having a meticulously planned
combo go off just the way I want it. In Diablo
III this might mean crafting equipment that
causes enemies to explode the moment they
attack me, while in D&D it first manifested in
a warlock who endlessly exploited their ability
to see in magical darkness using a spell that
summoned an inky sphere of night.
Even when I’m not pushing the boundaries
of balance, I still struggle with the idea of
controlling a character who isn’t at least
effective at what they set out to do. If I’m
playing a pilot in Star Wars I want to be good
at flying ships. If I’m the muscle in an ill-fated
band of Call of Cthulhu investigators I want
to be able to at least glance over at a cultist
without losing my mind.
And if I’m being entirely honest, sometimes
I have to bite my tongue when folks I’m
playing with don’t feel the same way. No
matter how much I try to bury it, there’s
always part of my brain that knows that their
character could be so much more effective is
they just picked this feat over that one, or that
they wouldn’t be complaining about missing
so much if they just boosted their core stats
instead of fiddling with minor alterations
to things that only crop up once every nine
sessions and… well, as you can see, I find it
rather hard to switch it off.
ALL FOR ONE
Over the years, however, that’s exactly what
I’ve made myself do. Because I also know that
people play RPGs for different reasons; I know
that people find their enjoyment in different
aspects of the games.
Some folks get their kicks from taking out
entire rooms full of bad guys in one move,
others couldn’t care less about whiffing every
roll so long as their death scene is on point.
Part of playing RPGs with other people is
recognising the fact that other people are
there to have fun too and trying to enable that.
So, the next time that someone turns up at
your table with a shiny new character sheet
with more numbers than words, try to avoid
dismissing them as some kind of fun-sucking
munchkin. Instead, try and work with them
to craft an experience that everyone can enjoy.
And if you’re like me, try to bear in mind
the fact that not everybody is so invested in
the mechanical aspects of RPGs, and that
unsolicited advice often comes across as
patronising rather than helpful.
Finally, remember Wrath – living(ish) proof
that just because you’re a sleekly designed
slab of murder there’s nothing stopping you
from being a fascinating character too.
tabletopgaming.co.uk 91
In Call to Adventure, players compete to craft
the hero with the greatest destiny. Play cards
to build your character, cast runes to face
challenges, and choose whether to follow a
path of heroism or villainy. Competitive, solo,
and co-op options included in the base game!

Craft Your Hero

Your hero’s story begins with an Origin,
Motivation, and Destiny. Over the course of
the game you’ll add new cards to your story,
including Traits, Allies, and Challenges.

Cast the Runes

Your success at facing
Challenges is determined by
the Runes. Gain new abilities
to acquire more Runes!

Claim Your Destiny!

Play Hero and Antihero cards to improve
your odds or hinder opponents. Face evil
Adversaries. In the end, the hero with the
highest Destiny score wins!

In stores now!
www.brotherwisegames.com
 UPCOMING EVENTS
CONPULSION DEATH
Friday April 5th to Sunday 7th
Teviot Row House, Edinburgh
conpulsion.org

SALUTE
Saturday April 6th
ExCel, London
The biggest wargaming-focused show
in the UK, the South London Warlords’
one-day event includes trades, demos and
EVENT REPORT participation games to enjoy.
salute.co.uk

CONPULSION SEVEN HILLS

Saturday April 6th to Sunday 7th
Sakura Brandi tells us about the Scottish convention Garrison Hotel, Sheffield
The roleplaying convention returns with
hosted by the University of Edinburgh’s RPG society games to play inspired by this year’s
theme: historical.
Interview by Matt Jarvis 7hills.org.uk

Conpulsion has been running a long time. When did
it start, and how has it changed over the years?
Conpulsion has had a tumultuous journey which
started sometime in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s,
providing nerds of all ages a place to celebrate
and share their hobby for many decades.
Hosted by the University of Edinburgh’s
roleplaying games society, GEAS, it has steadily
grown to a convention that attracts attendees
from all over the world, while maintaining its
unique sense of community and highlighting
local talent, businesses and charities.
What’s new for this year’s event?
We are moving to a bigger room for traders
this year for the irst time in a while due to high
demand, as well as bringing back a selection of
panels and workshops from a variety of topics and
with some very talented and experienced guests.
You feature a different theme each year. What
does this bring to the event, and what have
some of your favourites been?
he theme each year is voted upon during our
logo competition over the course of the weekend,
allowing our community to be involved with the
selection process.
We believe that the themes make each
Conpulsion memorable and varied, whilst also
giving us an excuse to reimagine our logo and
produce more merch! he one constant we
employ is our mascot, Grify, which has had
many diferent reincarnations thanks to the
wonderful interpretations of the artists taking
part. It allows us to showcase the artistic talent
of the members of our community and to
lavour the RPGs and LARPs that will be ofered
at each convention.
Your 2019 theme is ‘death’. What are you
expecting to see in the vein of the macabre
subject during the weekend?
Each year the GMs are asked to relate their games
to the theme as much as possible, and ‘death’
may be the easiest theme to incorporate so far!
RPGs are often illed with NPC, and sometime
PC, deaths, acting as a catalyst for many
adventures, but we have plenty of lighthearted
and family-friendly games on ofer too.
As well as playing games (of course), what else is
happening over the weekend?
Other than RPGs and LARPs we will be ofering a
trade hall with some of the best independent and
local businesses in our community, demo tables of
exciting new games and panels/workshops, board
games, logo and best games competitions, and
even a chance to try out medieval sword ighting!
What advice would you give to those attending a
roleplaying/gaming convention for the first time?
For our convention, the wide variety of RPG one-
shots available are the highlights of the weekend,
so I would recommend arriving as soon as doors
open on Saturday morning to grab a programme
and make your choices! Sign-ups will open straight
before each game slot, so keeping an eye on the
clock and making sure you arrive early is key to
avoid disappointment!
Why is Edinburgh’s Teviot Row House the perfect
place to hold a gaming get-together?
Afordable food and drink, a relaxed atmosphere,
evocative décor and architecture are some of the
irst things that spring to mind, as well as all the
friendly members of the roleplaying society!
What have you got planned for next year’s
Conpulsion – and beyond?
We want Conpulsion to grow bigger and stronger
each year, and be at the forefront of innovation in
roleplaying games and board games. From a more
practical sense, we hope to have at least enough
conventions to complete the alphabet!
UNCON 5.0
Saturday April 6th to Sunday 7th
St. George’s School, Broadstairs
Run by a local group, this family-friendly
event puts socialising at the front of its
welcoming feel.
unconuk.co.uk
HAMMERHEAD
Sunday April 28th
Newark Showground, Newark
This historical, fantasy and sci-fi miniatures
show features tables of visitor participation
games, letting you jump into titles new and old.
hammerheadshow.co.uk
CONTRAPTION
Friday May 3rd to Sunday 5th
Chatsworth Hotel, Worthing
Sessions of Pathfinder, Starfinder and Call of
Cthulhu join a packed three days of gaming,
plus meals and a film screening.
warhorn.net/events/contraption-2019
NORTH STAR
Saturday May 11th to Sunday 12th
The Garrison Hotel, Sheffield
A weekend of sci-fi roleplaying awaits
those that come along to this con held in
Sheffield’s unofficial home of gaming, the
Garrison Hotel.
northstarcon.org.uk
UK GAMES EXPO
Friday May 31st to Sunday June 2nd
NEC, Birmingham
A mainstay of the UK gaming calendar, the
long-running convention returns to its Brum
home for another year.
ukgamesexpo.co.uk

April 2019 tabletopgaming.co.uk 93

 CLUB DIRECTORY

ABERDEENSHIRE HEFFERS GAMES - BOARDGAMES SMIPHEES GAMES CLUB EAST SUSSEX GREATER MANCHESTER HERTFORD BEER &
ABERDEEN WARGAMES CLUB AT THE BOOKSHOP Callington, PL17 7AN 1066 WARGAMING CLUB TABLETOP MANCHESTER BOARDGAMES
Aberdeen, AB15 4YQ Cambridge, CB2 1TY St. Leonards-on-Sea, Cheadle Hulme, M15 4ST Hertford, SG14 1HH
THE DICE AND DAGGER TN38 8BL
BROCH BOARDGAME NIGHT NEWMARKET KNIGHTS GAMING CLUB GWENT HITCHIN HERETICS
Fraserburgh, AB43 9AH GAMES CLUB Bude, EX23 9BL FAMOUS COLLECTABLES GWENT REAVERS TABLETOP Hitchin, SG5 1XL
Ely, CB7 5HS Bexhill-on-Sea, TN40 1DU GAMING CLUB
OLDMELDRUM WEDNESDAY NIGHT GAMING Abertillery, NP13 3DJ LOST ARK GAMES RPG CLUB
WARGAMES GROUP PETERBOROUGH Redruth, TR15 3QY UCKFIELD TABLETOP GAMERS Stevenage, SG1 1EE
Inverurie, AB51 0AA WARGAMES CLUB Uckfield, TN22 5DT GWYNEDD
Peterborough, PE1 1NA COUNTY TYRONE CONWY WARGAMES CLUB NORTH HERTFORDSHIRE
ANGUS OMAGH WARGAMES CLUB WADHURST WARGAMERS Llandudno, LL30 3LB WARGAMES CLUB
ANGUS WARGAMES CLUB ROLL WITH IT! Omagh, BT78 1HL & ROLEPLAYERS Hitchin, SG5 1XL
Forfar, DD8 3AQ Huntingdon, PE29 3TF Wadhurst, TN5 6UL HAMPSHIRE
CUMBRIA ARBBL NORTH LONDON
KIRRIEMUIR WARGAMES CLUB THE CHATTERIS WARLORDS THE WIZARDS OF WINDERMERE EAST YORKSHIRE Andover, SP10 1DQ WARGAMES CLUB
Kirriemuir, DD8 4HN GAMES CLUB Windermere, LA23 1DY WOLDS WARGAMERS Waltham Cross, EN8 9AJ
Chatteris, PE16 6NA Driffield, YO25 6SS BLACK HOLE WARGAMERS
AYRSHIRE DERBYSHIRE Petersfield, GU32 3HS POTTERS BAR GAMES CLUB
NORTH AYRSHIRE THE GAMES TABLE CONSORTIUM GAMES ESSEX Potters Bar, EN6 5BT
WARGAMES CLUB Cambridge, CB24 4RP CLUB @GHQ BASILDON WARBOYZ CHINEHAM BOARD GAMERS
Irvine, KA12 0BA Chesterfield, S40 1JW Basildon, SS16 4NW Basingstoke, RG24 8LT ST. ALBANS BOARD GAME CLUB
CARMARTHENSHIRE St. Albans, AL3 5PE
BEDFORDSHIRE CARMARTHEN OLD GUARD DERBY ON BOARD GAMES BILLERICAY BOARD GAME CLUB DARK WORLDS GAMING SOCIETY
AMPTHILL ON BOARD Carmarthen, SA31 3AD Derby, DE1 1QH Billericay, CM12 9BQ Fareham, PO15 6TL STEVENAGE BATTLEGROUP
Bedford, MK45 2JS Stevenage, SG1 1NA
TOWY VALLEY TYRANTS (TVT) GROWN UP’S GAMES NIGHT BRENTWOOD CRUSADERS FARNBOROUGH BOARD
BEDFORD BOARD GAMING Carmarthen, SA31 2JE Matlock, DE4 3FQ Brentwood, CM13 1LP GAMES CLUB THOR’S HAMMER GAMING CLUB
Bedford, MK40 2SX Farnborough, GU14 0LE Borehamwood, WD6 5PR
CHESHIRE SUNDAY NIGHT BOARD COLCHESTER WARGAMES
BEDFORD GLADIATORS ALTRINCHAM GAMING AT THE OLD ASSOCIATION FARNBOROUGH TRING WARGAMES CLUB
Bedford, MK41 7TW WARGAMING CLUB KINGS HEAD BELPER Colchester, CO3 5RH WARGAME SOCIETY Tring, HP23 6BA
Altrincham, WA14 4PG Belper, DE56 1NP Farnborough, GU14 7LE
LEIGHTON BUZZARD ESSEX WARRIORS WARLORDS WARGAMING
BOARDGAMES CLUB CHEADLE BOARD ROOM DEVON Chelmsford, CM1 3DU FIRESTORM CARDS OPEN ST. ALBANS
Leighton Buzzard, LU7 2NR Cheadle, SK8 1DW BARNSTAPLE SLAYERS GAMING NIGHT St. Albans, AL3 4DJ
GAMING CLUB GBCON QUARTERLY GAMING DAY Basingstoke, RG24 8FB
LEIGHTON BUZZARD CHESHIRE GAMERS Barnstaple, EX32 8LS Loughton, IG10 4LF WATFORD WARGAMES CLUB
GAMING CLUB Crewe, CW1 4NJ FORDINGBRIDGE GAMING CLUB Watford, WD17 4PN
Leighton Buzzard, LU7 1ES CULLOMPTON BOARD LOUGHTON STRIKE FORCE Fordingbridge, SP6 1AS
CONGLETON AND DISTRICT GAMES GROUP Loughton, IG10 1LH WELWYN WARGAMERS
SAXON GAMES & CRAFTS LIGHT BOARD GAMES GROUP Cullompton, EX15 1JX GARY DONALDSON Welwyn Garden City, AL8 6PS
Bedford, MK40 4FU Congleton, CW12 1AH SAFFRON WALDEN Waterlooville, PO8 8RG
DARK STAR GAMING GAMES COLLECTIVE INVERNESS-SHIRE
VINTAGE & MODERN ELEMENT GAMES NORTH Plymouth, PL4 0AL Saffron Walden, CB10 1HQ MUSKETBALLS 1812 INVERNESS TABLETOP GAMERS
BOARD GAMES CLUB WEST GAMING CENTRE WAR GAMING Inverness, IV1 1LU
Dunstable, LU6 2PJ Stockport, SK2 6PT DEVON WARGAMES GROUP SOUTHEND-ON-SEA Southampton, SO15 3FQ
Exeter, EX4 8AW ROLEPLAYING SOCIETY ISLE OF MAN
BERKSHIRE GUARDIANS OF THE GAMES Southend-on-Sea, SS1 1BD PHOENIX BOARD GAMERS KB TABLETOP GAMING
BROAD STREET GAMERS (TABLETOP GROUP) EAST DEVON TABLETOP Bordon, GU35 0LR - ISLE OF MAN
Wokingham, RG40 3AQ Macclesfield, SK11 6UB & RPG GROUP THE HORNCHURCH Isle of Man, IM4 4LA
Honiton, EX14 1HR WARGAMES CLUB PORTSMOUTH ON BOARD
NEWBURY & READING MUG AND GAME Romford, RM3 9LB Portsmouth, PO1 1PT KENT
WARGAMES ASSOCIATION Congleton, CW12 1PG EXMOUTH IMPERIAL ALL AROUND THE BOARD
Newbury, RG14 2RA WARGAMES CLUB THE OVERLORDS RINGWOOD ASSOCIATION Westgate-on-Sea, CT8 8RE
POYNTON BOARD GAME DAY Exmouth, EX8 4SW Dagenham, RM8 2HQ OF WARGAMERS
NEWBURY & READING Stockport, SK12 1RB Ringwood, BH24 1DW ASHFORD (KENT)
WARGAMES ASSOCIATION GAME NIGHT @ CARPE THE PHOENIX GAMES CLUB BOARDGAMES CLUB
Newbury, RG1 4PS VARIABLE MAGERS Plymouth, PL4 8EU London, E13 0AD SOLENT WARGAMERS CLUB Ashford, TN24 9AJ
Stockport, SK4 3BS Portsmouth, PO1 1PT
THATCHAM TABLETOPS NEO TIVERTON GAMING CLUB FIFE BEXLEY REAPERS
Reading, RG7 6QH WARRINGTON BOARD Tiverton, EX16 5JJ DUNFERMLINE WARGAMING SOUTHAMPTON SLUGGAZ WARGAMING CLUB
GAMES CLUB AND ROLEPLAYING FELLOWSHIP Southampton, SO17 2JZ Bexley, DA5 1AA
THE READING Warrington, WA1 2SX PLYMOUTH ASSOCIATION Dunfermline, KY12 7DS
BOARDGAMES SOCIAL OF WARGAMERS THE SOUTHAMPTON GUILD BROMLEY BOARD GAMERS
Reading, RG1 5DE WINSFORD WARHAWKS Plymouth, PL3 5TB EAST NEUK TABLETOP GAMES OF ROLEPLAYERS Bromley, BR1 1TS
WARGAMING CLUB Anstruther, KY10 3DJ Southampton, SO14 0LH
WARFIELD BOARD GAMERS Winsford, CW7 4AT TORQUAY BOARD GAME CLUB CANTERBURY CRUSADERS
Bracknell, RG42 2DD Torquay, TQ2 7AD KIRKCALDY MEEPLE CLUB THE THIRD COALITION Canterbury, CT1 1RT
CLEVELAND Kirkcaldy, KY2 6LF WARGAMES CLUB
WARGAMES ASSOCIATION HARTLEPOOL DORSET New Milton, BH25 5BT CANTERBURY DRAGONS
OF READING WARGAMES SOCIETY SOUTHBOURNE TABLETOP FLINTSHIRE Canterbury, CT1 2DR
Wokingham, RG41 5DU Hartlepool, TS24 7DH & BOARDGAMERS DEESIDE DEFENDERS WATERLOO TABLE TOP GAMERS
Bournemouth, BH6 3AA Chester, CH4 0DR Waterlooville, PO8 8RG DICE ON THE HILL
BIRMINGHAM REDCAR IRONBEARDS London, SE18 3EG
BIRMINGHAM WARGAMES Redcar, TS10 1RH WESSEX WYVERNS FGC FLINTSHIRE GAMING CLUB WESSEX WARGAMES
AND BOARDGAMES CLUB WARGAMES CLUB Mold, CH7 6SZ WINCHESTER GOLDCHEST GAMING CLUB
AKA DRAGOON’S DEN CO ANTRIM Ferndown, BH22 9AN Winchester, SO22 4QB Dartford, DA12DX
Birmingham, B13 9EA DRAGONSLAYERS GLASGOW
Belfast, BT7 1NN WEYMOUTH LEVELLERS CLUB ANTONINE BOARD GAMERS WESSEX WYVERNS GRAVESHAM WARGAMING
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE Weymouth, DT4 0AR Glasgow, G64 4EN GAMING CLUB AND TABLETOP GAMING CLUB
AYLESBURY BOARDGAME CLUB LISBURN GAMING CLUB Ringwood, BH24 2NP Gravesend, DA11 9EU
Aylesbury, HP19 8SR Lisburn, BT28 1NY WORLDS AWAY GLASGOW GAMES GROUP (G3)
Bournemouth, BH2 5RQ Glasgow, G20 7QE HEREFORDSHIRE GREENWICH & BLACKHEATH
MILTON KEYNES QUB DRAGONSLAYERS DICE AND DECKS BOARD GAMES AND BEER CLUB
WARGAMES SOCIETY Belfast, BT7 1NN DUMFRIESSHIRE UNPLUGGED GAMES CLUB Ross-on-Wye, HR9 5HR London, SE3 7JQ
Milton Keynes, MK11 1JQ ANNAN GAMING CLUB Glasgow, G41 3AB
CO CORK Annan, DG12 6EF HEREFORDSHIRE BOARDGAMERS MAIDSTONE
NEWPORT PAGNELL BRETHREN WARGAMING CLUB GLOUCESTERSHIRE Hereford, HR4 9EA WARGAMES SOCIETY
BOARD GAMES CLUB West Cork, T23 F577 THE FIVE ARCHES GAMING CLUB GLOUCESTER TABLETOP Maidstone, ME17 4AW
Newport Pagnell, MK16 8AN Dumfries, DG1 3JR GAMING COMMUNITY HERTFORDSHIRE
CO DURHAM Gloucester, GL2 5AS BISHOP’S STORTFORD TABLETOP MEDWAY AREA BOARDGAMERS
WYCOMBE WARBAND DARLINGTON’S DOGS OF WAR DUNBARTONSHIRE Bishop’s Stortford, CM23 3BQ Maidstone, ME14 1ED
Beaconsfield, HP9 1LG Darlington, DL3 7LX DUMBARTON WARGAMES CLUB GLOUCESTERSHIRE
Dumbarton, G82 1QQ GAMES BUNKER BLACK WOLF WARGAMES CLUB MILTON HUNDRED
WYRMBERG GAMES DURHAM RAIDERS Cheltenham, GL51 4XA Hitchin, SG5 1XL WARGAMES CLUB
Aylesbury, HP21 9DT Croxdale, DH6 5HJ DURHAM Sittingbourne, ME10 4BX
DWG IWARPUK CALAMITY COMICS HATFIELD
CAITHNESS GAMERS@HART Durham, DH1 1QG Gloucester, GL2 9EB Hatfield, AL10 0JJ SEVENOAKS & TONBRIDGE
NORTHERN Hartlepool, TS26 9DE ASSOCIATION OF
KNIGHTS WARGAMES DYFED LECHLADE BOARD GAMES CLUB FINCHLEY GAMES CLUB GAMERS (STAG)
Thurso, KW14 8HN CO LONDONDERRY CARMARTHEN OLD GUARD Lechlade, GL7 3HA London, N12 7JE Sevenoaks, TN15 9HA
THE SIEGE BUNKER Carmarthen, SA31 3JS
CAMBRIDGESHIRE Londonderry, BT48 7JL LINCOMBE BARN GAMES CAFE CLUB TUNBRIDGE WELLS
2D6 LODGE GAMEPARK GAMING WARGAMES SOCIETY St. Albans, AL3 4BL WARGAMES SOCIETY
Cambridge, CB1 8NN CORNWALL Aberystwyth, SY23 2JS Bristol, BS16 2RW Tunbridge Wells, TN3 0PR
CORNWALL MINIATURE HEMEL HEMPSTEAD
FENLAND RPG CLUB WARGAMES ASSOCIATION WELSH WEYR GAMING GROUP PORK CHOP GAMING WARGAMING CLUB WHITSTABLETOP
Ely, CB7 5NG Newquay, TR8 4LA Ammanford, SA18 1DX Cheltenham, GL50 3HA Hemel Hempstead, HP1 1LD Whitstable, CT5 1DA

94 April 2019

LANARKSHIRE
CARLUKE WARGAMES CLUB
Carluke, ML8 5JQ
GLASGOW BOARD GAMERS
Glasgow, G2 5AP
LANARKSHIRE GAMERS
Motherwell, ML1 1BS
ML2 GAMERS
Hamilton, ML3 6BU
LANCASHIRE
BLACK TOWER WARGAMING
Blackpool, FY4 4ND
BOLTON GNOME’S
Bolton, BL1 5QD
BURNLEY BOARD GAMERS
Burnley, BB10 3LF
BURNLEY WARGAMES CLUB
Burnley, BB10 3EU
DECKS & DICE
Manchester, M25 1AW
DICED TEA
Oldham, OL1 2DB
DUNGEONS & FLAGONS
Manchester, M1 7HL
ELWA: EAST LANCASHIRE
WARGAMES ASSOCIATION
Blackburn, BB6 7DD
FAN BOY THREE BOARDGAME NIGHT
Manchester, M1 1EL
GECKO GAMES CLUB
Accrington, BB5 3QW
HARLEQUINS BLACKPOOL
Blackpool, FY1 3QA
HOUSE LANCASTER
GAMING GROUP
Lancaster, LA1 1EE
LYTHAM ST. ANNES GAMERS
Lytham St. Annes, FY8 4BX
PRESTON’S GAMERS GUILD
Preston, PR1 7DP
SALFORD AND MANCHESTER
GAMING HAVEN
Salford, M8 0TW
THE HUNGRY DRAGON
GAMES NIGHT
Manchester, M21 0AE
THE LIVERPOOL WARGAMES
ASSOCIATION (LWA)
Liverpool, L1 6HB
THE NEGG (NORTH OF
ENGLAND GAMING GROUP )
Accrington, BB5 3EE
THURSDAY SCYTHE
BOARD GAMERS
Liverpool, L3 8HE
LEICESTERSHIRE
CHARNWOOD ROLE
PLAYERS GAMING CLUB
Loughborough, LE12 8DT
LEICESTER ALL SCARS
Leicester, LE1 3JR
LEICESTER PHAT KATZ
Leicester, LE3 0QY
MARKET HARBOROUGH
WARGAMES CLUB
Market Harborough, LE16 7JU
SECTION 31
Leicester, LE1 1PA
SONS OF SIMON DE MONTFORT
Loughborough, LE12 8TX
THE LEICESTER WARGAMES
AND FANTASY GROUP
Leicester, LE3 0QU
LINCOLNSHIRE
BOSTON TABLETOP GAMERS
Boston, PE21 6QQ
GRANTHAM FRIENDLY GAMERS
Grantham, NG31 6LJ
GRIMSBY WARGAMES SOCIETY
Grimsby, DN32 9HT
LINCOLN BOARD GAME GROUP
Lincoln, LN1 3BJ
LOUTH STRATEGY GAMES CLUB
Louth, LN11 8DB
LONDON
CROSS GAMING CLUB
London, SE1 1DX
SELWG
London, SE6 2TS
TANELORN WAR
GAMING CLUB
London, E11 3DB
THE ROLE PLAY HAVEN (STRATFORD)
London, E15 2HU
THE ROLE PLAY HAVEN (LEWISHAM)
London, SE13 6LH
MERSEYSIDE
FORGEMASTERS GAMING CLUB
Wirral, CH63 6HD
LIVERPOOL LION BOARDGAMERS
Liverpool, L3 9NS
MUTANT DICE GAMES
GAMING GROUP
St. Helens, WA9 4TR
SOUTHPORT BOARD
GAMES GROUP
Southport, PR8 1NH
ST. HELENS BOARDGAMES,
ROLEPLAYING GAMES (B.O.R.G.)
St. Helens, WA10 5BF
MID GLAMORGAN
CAERPHILLY BOARD GAMERS
Caerphilly, CF83 1AP
CASTLE GAMERS BRIDGEND
Bridgend, CF35 6AU
MIDDLESEX
BATTLEUX WARGAMES CLUB
Uxbridge, UB10 0RY
DICE CLUB
Uxbridge, UB10 0RY
HESTON AND
EALING WARGAMERS
London, W13 9SS
LONDON ON BOARD
London, W1F 9LD
TABLETOP TUESDAYS
London, N16 8BX
THE GAMES CLUB
London, NW1 2JU
MIDLOTHIAN
EDINBURGH LEAGUE OF GAMERS
Edinburgh, EH7 5EA
SOUTH EAST SCOTLAND
WARGAMES CLUB
Edinburgh, EH7 4EW
NORFOLK
AFTERMATH GAMING CLUB
Norwich, NR3 4HX
KING’S LYNN RPG &
WARGAMES CLUB
King’s Lynn, PE30 4DN
NORWICH BOARD GAMERS
Norwich, NR2 4AL
TAS GAMING CLUB
King’s Lynn, PE34 4SJ
NORTH YORKSHIRE
SCARBOROUGH GAMES SOCIETY
Scarborough, YO12 7BY
YORK GARRISON
WARGAMING CLUB
York, YO32 4AQ
NORTHAMPTONSHIRE
BATTLEFIELD HOBBIES
Daventry, NN11 8RB
DESBOROUGH ROLEPLAYING
AND WARGAMES CLUB
Kettering, NN14 2NQ
List your club for free and see full club details
tabletopgaming.co.uk/clubs
PHOENIX GAMING CLUB SOUTH HUMBERSIDE GUILDFORD BOARD SOUTH DOWNS SIEGEBREAKERS
Rushden, NN10 9YE SCUNTHORPE GAMES CLUB Pulborough, RH20 4DR
TABLETOP GAMERS Guildford, GU1 4LH
THE BRACKLEY & Scunthorpe, DN16 1DQ WEST YORKSHIRE
DISTRICT GAMERS HAMPTON COURT BOARD IN THE VILLAGE
Brackley, NN13 6LF SOUTH YORKSHIRE GAMES CLUB Bradford, BD14 6RE
MALTBY AND DISTRICT East Molesey, KT8 0BT
THE PIT GAMING CLUB WARGAMES CLUB GAMING CLUB BRADFORD
Wellingborough, NN9 5TU Rotherham, S66 8JB KINGSTON GAMES GROUP Bradford, BD1 2DX
Kingston upon Thames,
NORTHUMBERLAND ROTHERHAM WARGAMES CLUB KT2 6LN HALIFAX BOARD GAMERS
BOARD TO DEATH Rotherham, S60 1JE Halifax, HX1 1SJ
Alnwick, NE66 3NP REIGATE WARGAMES GROUP
ROTHERHAM Reigate, RH2 0NA KEIGHLEY TABLETOP COMBAT
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE WARGAMES SOCIETY Keighley, BD20 6EB
K.I.A GAMES CLUB Rotherham, S60 1JE STAINES WARGAMES
Nottingham, NG17 8LA ASSOCIATION MIDLIFE DICES
STEEL CITY WARGAMING Egham, TW20 0QT Shipley, BD18 4SJ
NOTTINGHAM BOARD & Sheffield, S13 7LL
WARGAMES CLUB STAY ON TARGET OTLEY BOARD GAMERS
Nottingham, NG2 1NB VAULT 14 Woking, GU21 5BG Otley, LS21 2AU
Doncaster, DN1 3JU
THE CLUB WITH NO NAME SURREY GIRL GAMERS PENNINE RAIDERS
Nottingham, NG2 1NB ZONE OUT GAMES CLUB Woking, GU21 4AL Halifax, HX3 6AW
Doncaster, DN1 2PX
WAR & PEACE GAMES CLUB SUTTON GAMES CLUB WILTSHIRE
Nottingham, NG10 5BD SOUTHWARK Sutton, SM1 1DT BOSCOMBE DOWN &
DICE CULT AMESBURY WARGAMES CLUB
WILDSIDE GAMING London, SE1 4GZ SUTTON GAMING CLUB Salisbury, SP4 7LN
Newark, NG24 1ER Sutton, SM1 4DP
STAFFORDSHIRE CHIPPENHAM BOARD
OXFORDSHIRE ALL ABOARD GAMING CLUB SWIGGERS GAMES CLUB
ABINGDON WARGAMES CLUB Stoke-on-Trent, ST4 1JB London, SE1 2TF Chippenham, SN15 3WL
Abingdon, OX14 5AG
CHASE WARGAMES CLUB THE SOUTH LONDON WARLORDS DEVIZES & DISTRICT
AMBROSDEN GAMING CLUB Burntwood, WS7 0JL London, SE21 7BT WARGAMES GROUP
Bicester, OX25 2LZ Devizes, SN10 5AD
GAMING POTION THE WOKING WEIRD BOYZ
BICESTER BOARD GAMERS Stoke-on-Trent, ST10 4JY Woking, GU22 7TA WEDNESDAY KNIGHT GAMERS
Bicester, OX26 3HA Salisbury, SP1 3TA
LICHFIELD GAMERS AND RPG TOLWORTH 1ST FOUNDING
NORTH OXFORDSHIRE Lichfield, WS13 6EB Chessington, KT9 1PF WORCESTERSHIRE
WARGAMING CLUB BROMSGROVE BOARD GAMERS
Banbury, OX16 9AF STAFFORDSHIRE SUSSEX Bromsgrove, B60 2DZ
WARGAMING GUILD BRIGHTON WARLORDS
OXFORD GAMING CLUB Stone, ST15 8TG Brighton, BN1 1UB KIDDERMINSTER AND
Oxford, OX2 7DP AREA ROLEPLAYERS
TAMWORTH GAMES CLUB WARWICKSHIRE Kidderminster, DY11 5QA
OXFORD ON BOARD Tamworth, B79 7DJ AFTERNOON PLAY
Oxford, OX4 1EA Birmingham, B15 1AY PERSHORE GAMING
TAMWORTH LIBERATORS Pershore, WR10 1EQ
OXFORD OUTRIDERS GAMING CLUB BOARD GAME CAFE
Oxford, OX1 2AU Tamworth, B77 3AE SUMMERFIELD POSTAL ORDER GEEK MEET
Birmingham, B16 0EZ Worcester, WR1 1DN
RENFREWSHIRE THE VINE INN GAMERS
GLASGOW AND DISTRICT Rugeley, WS15 2AT BRAVO ONE GAMING REDDITCH
WARGAMING SOCIETY Birmingham, B1 1QP WARGAMING SOCIETY
Glasgow, G41 4AD TRITEX GAMES Redditch, B97 5YE
Stafford, ST16 1BG COCKED DICE GAMING
SHROPSHIRE Coventry, CV5 9EQ WORCESTER BOARD
BIG ORBIT GAMES STIRLINGSHIRE GAMERS (WOBOG)
SHREWSBURY FALKIRK DISTRICT DREAMDEALERS GAMING CLUB Worcester, WR1 2DP
Shrewsbury, SY1 1PH WARGAMES CLUB Coventry, CV6 4FE
Grangemouth, FK3 8QR WYRE FOREST GAMERS
E-COLLECTICA GAMES GRANGE LIVE GAMING Kidderminster, DY10 1RP
Shrewsbury, SY1 2DT STIRLING WARGAMERS Birmingham, B1 1QP
Stirling, FK8 1QJ YORKSHIRE
GAMES @THE BIRD NUNEATON ALTERNATIVE AIREBOROUGH
Shrewsbury, SY1 2DT SUFFOLK GAMES ASSOCIATION COMMUNITY GAMERS
BURY ST. EDMUNDS Nuneaton, CV10 8LJ Leeds, LS19 6AS
STAGS TELFORD BOARD GAMING GROUP
WARGAMING SOCIETY Bury St. Edmunds, IP30 9LH OCTOBER WARGAMES BEYOND MONOPOLY
Telford, TF1 1LU ASSOCIATION York, YO24 1AQ
HAVERHILL AREA BOARD Birmingham, B16 8SY
TELFORD BOARDGAMERS CLUB GAME GROUP EAST LEEDS
Telford, TF1 2BW Haverhill, CB9 8AU SCIMITAR WARGAMES GROUP Leeds, LS25 2HD
Coventry, CV3 5GT
SOMERSET HAVERHILL WAR GAMES CLUB EAST LEEDS MILITARIA
BATH GAMING GROUP Haverhill, CB9 9JE WEST MIDLANDS SOCIETY WARGAMES CLUB
Bath, BA2 6AA BIRMINGHAM WARGAMES Leeds, LS25 2HD
IPSWICH BOARD GAMERS AND BOARDGAMES CLUB
MID SOMERSET Ipswich, IP3 0FS AKA DRAGOON’S DEN HEADINGLEY GAMES CLUB
WARGAMES CLUB Birmingham, B13 9EA Leeds, LS6 3HN
Wells, BA5 2PU IPSWICH COUNTY LIBRARY
BOARD GAMES LIBRARY DUDLEY DARKLORDS HOLMFIRTH GAMING CENTRE
PIGMAR WARGAMING CLUB Ipswich, IP1 3DE Kingswinford, DY6 8AP Holmfirth, HD9 7HP
Bath, BA1 6AB
MID SUFFOLK GAMING CLUB PLAY MORE GAMES! HULL’S ANGELS
THE ESCAPE COMMITTEE Stowmarket, IP14 4SH Solihull, B90 3GG Hull, HU1 3HG
WARGAMES CLUB
Burnham-on-Sea, TA8 2ET SKYWARD FIRE GAMES WEST SUSSEX IRELAND WOOD GAMES
Lowestoft, NR32 1TY BOGNOR REGIS COMMUNITY
THE FROME BOARD GAMING ASSOCIATION Leeds, LS16 6BS
GAMES CLUB WHITE EAGLES Bognor Regis, PO21 5EU
Frome, BA11 1PU WARGAMES CLUB LEEDS GAMING
Ipswich, IP2 0RG BOGNOR REGIS MILITARY Leeds, LS1 3DL
TRINITY WARGAMING CLUB MODELLING AND
Taunton, TA1 3JG SURREY WARGAMING SOCIETY LEEDS NIGHT OWLS
BELLUM KNIGHTS Bognor Regis, PO21 5SB Leeds, LS6 1LJ
WARGAMING @ RADSTOCK Surbiton, KT6 5NJ
Radstock, BA3 4BD CRAWLEY GAMING CLUB SHEFFIELD AND ROTHERHAM
CROSS GAMING CLUB Crawley, RH10 5DF WARGAMES CLUB
WESTON WARGAMERS CLUB London, SE1 7RW Sheffield, S2 2TP
Weston-super-Mare, DUNGEON CRAWL-EY
BS23 1NF CROYDON BOARD GAMERS GAMES CLUB SHEFFIELD BOARD GAMES
Croydon, CR0 1DP Crawley, RH11 7QG Sheffield, S3 7HG
WSM BOARD GAMING CLUB
Weston-super-Mare, EAGLE GAMING CLUB MID SUSSEX MEEPLES SHEFFIELD WARGAMES SOCIETY
BS22 8PD London, SW18 2PT Burgess Hill, RH15 8DX Sheffield, S8 0PS
tabletopgaming.co.uk 95

SHOP SPOTLIGHT
DARK SPHERE
Alexi Tingey tells about us the rise of the outlet from a
small miniatures website to a London megastore
Interview by Matt Jarvis
Could you give us a brief history of Dark Sphere?
We originally started in 2006 as
MiniaturesByPost, a webstore selling only
Games Workshop products.
In 2009 we opened a tiny store in Waterloo
– and I mean tiny, we had a single six-by-
four table in the store and that was a massive
squeeze! As we grew, we played on tables out
on the pavement, putting up sheets between
pillars to protect product and people from
the elements. Curious people would poke
their head through the gaps to see what on
earth was happening. It was a great deal of
fun. Passers-by would come and interact for a
while before they had to make their trains or
various sightseeing bookings.
Having taken up all the available space
on the pavement which might have been
considered ‘ours’ we moved into a bigger unit
just further down the road. As we continued
to grow and with no room to expand on to the
pavement we hired a second unit a few doors
down to be our gaming centre.
We soon ran out of room yet again and so
about four years ago we moved it all under one
roof to our current store. As gaming continued
to expand we began our search for a venue
where we could run the size of tournaments
that we really wanted to host and in October
we opened our second shop, a west London
megastore in the shopping centre opposite
Shepherd’s Bush underground station.
What makes the two shops similar – and unique?
In both stores we’ve tried to support as many
diferent games and ofer as much gaming
space as possible. So you’ll ind shop shelves
running along the wall of the store full of the
most popular tabletop miniature systems,
collectible and living card games, board
96 December
April 20192017
games, roleplaying games, a massive paint
selection including Games Workshop, Vallejo,
Scale Color and Army Painter, brushes, basing
materials, tools, primer sprays, and basically
everything else you need for the hobby.
he new Shepherd’s Bush megastore is one
of the biggest gaming stores in Europe which
means that we have far more space to display
a much larger product range, rent out board
games, run multiple tournaments on the same
day or just run single large events. We also have
space to have ixed display and demo tables
such as the Rogue One Scarif X-Wing demo that
we took to Salute a couple of years ago.
Are the local gaming communities in Shepherd’s
Bush and Waterloo different?
Not massively, and we do have a large overlap
of players who will happily game at either store.
Waterloo is easier for players who work or
study centrally so tends to have a bit more of
a skew towards university students and young
professionals. Being a short distance from the
Imperial War Museum it does have a lot of
historical gamers popping in; being close to
the London Eye means we have a number of
tourist and overseas visitors who want a quick
game whilst they are visiting London. Last year
we had an American visitor who bought his
tournament Eldar list with him who managed to
play six games against four diferent opponents
in three days and returned home a happy man.
Shepherd’s Bush tends to be a little more
family-based, especially with the large board
games selection and lending library. he
extra space means it’s more popular with our
wheelchair customers and being in a shopping
centre we get more casual gamers or people
just popping in who have never seen a store
like us before!
You stock all sorts of games. What’s been proving
particularly popular so far in 2019?
he Games Workshop releases have been
very well received, with Genestealer Cults,
Gloomspite Gitz, Carrion Empire and
Shadowspear all in high demand. In other
ranges Gloomhaven, KeyForge, Pokémon: Team
Up, Magic: he Gathering’s Ravnica Allegiance
and WizKids’ unpainted miniatures have also
been very popular with our customers.
Have you noticed any wider trends when it comes
to what people are buying and playing recently?
We’ve noticed a steady trend towards
skirmish-style games – Kill Team, Guild Ball,
Blood Bowl, Shadespire, Ininity. hese tend
to have a signiicantly smaller model count,
usually ive to ten models, which means busy
players can still ind the time to paint their
force and since the games are typically quicker
they can it in a game or three after work even
if their job means they leave work relatively
late at night. It’s also easier to ind room for
a small case containing a handful of models
than trying to travel in the rush hour with
large cases as well as a computer bag etc.
What are you expecting to be the biggest releases
of the rest of the year?
[Warhammer 40,000’s] Sisters of Battle has
been a range that players have wanted for
years and we anticipate that will be incredibly
popular. Even though we don’t know what it
is yet I imagine whatever Games Workshop
releases on Black Friday will be the most
popular thing in the remaining year; Blood
Bowl, Necromunda and Blackstone Fortress
were Black Friday releases from previous years.
What are your plans for the rest of 2019?
here is still much to sort out in the new
megastore and a very large amount of scenery
to build and paint! We’re hosting a 100-player
Warhammer 40,000 tournament this autumn
and already have plans for large events for Age
of Sigmar, X-Wing and hosting a Malifaux GT.
Our new dedicated high-speed line should
be installed in the megastore by end of April,
allowing us to have great customer wi-i but
also to start streaming a number of our events
– and we should be able to start ofering food
and drink around the same time.
WHERE CAN I FIND IT?
186 Hercules Road, SE1 7LD (Waterloo)
W12 Shopping Centre (Shepherd’s Bush)
020 7928 1373/020 8749 2916
darksphere.co.uk
tabletopgaming.co.uk
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PIT: BULL & BEAR

it is a playing card game that

P was first released by Rook

Card Company Inc. in 1904.
In 1919 it released a special
edition which contained
two extra cards: the bull and the bear.
These cards added some extra strategy
to a game that was already fun to play.
The rights were bought by Parker Bros.
and released in many different versions
throughout the USA and Europe. While
there are many older versions out there
it is still being actively produced and
marketed today by Hasbro.
Pit was created by Edgar Cayce,
who later found fame for his psychic
predictions, but it was most likely based
on the game Gavitt’s Stock Exchange,
which was invented in 1903 by Harry E.
Gavitt. The game’s title comes from the
Chicago Board of Trade (known internally
as ‘The Pit’) and it is intended to be a
simulation of the open outcry commodity
trading which took place there. It’s quite
easy to see why Pit was a big hit in the early 20th cards you have to trade.
century; it was an era where parlour games were You can only trade
popular and Pit is designed for several players – it’s complete sets – with
noisy, fun and ideal for parties. the exception of the
The game is for between three and seven players bear card, which you
and the deck of cards represents seven different can sneak in with other
commodities: wheat, barley, corn, flax, hay, oats and cards during a trade.
rye. There are no turns in Pit but rather all players play The extra bull and
at once, creating a noisy atmosphere representative of bear cards are optional for play but are used to add a
open outcry trading; if you stay quiet in Pit you’re not further element of luck/risk to the game. The bull can
going to win. be used as a wild card to represent any commodity
The aim is to try to collect a full set of nine cards of a or it can be used to create a ten-card set rather than
single commodity by trading with fellow players, thus nine, which stands for double points. Any player with Words Phil Robinson
Phil Robinson is a game
cornering the market. When this happens you lay down the bear in their hand when a set is completed gets 20 historian and the founder
your cards and collect the points indicated. Versions of points deducted. of the Museum of Gaming,
the game from 1970 onwards were issued with a bell, Pit is a game that has lasted. It’s a game that thrives an organisation that
similar to a hotel desk bell, to signal the start of trading, in a party environment and that’s partly why it it’s still explores and documents
at which point everyone starts advertising what they around today. If you’re looking for a game that can be the history of gaming
through its collections,
have to offer – hence the noise. All trading is blind in played by a group at a party then Pit is worthy of your
exhibitions and research.
respect of commodities so you just shout how many attention. It’s noisy, chaotic and fun.

98 April 2019 tabletopgaming.co.uk

 IN M AY ’ S I S S UE ON S AL E AP RIL 2 6 T H

POKÉMON
Fans and pros tell us why they catch ‘em all –
and why you should join them

YU-GI-OH! THE HIDDEN DESIGNERS SECRET UNKNOWN STUFF

20 years of the TCG – Meet the secret talent behind How three friends came up with one of
and what comes next the board games you love the most original universes on the table