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Boardgame-Reviews

  • Sword & Sorcery + Arcane Portal Review

    A tale of soul and swords.

  • T.I.M.E. Stories - Time Keeps on Slippin'

    T.I.M.E. Stories is something of an odd design. It's odd in that it doesn't do anything really well. It's odd in that it doesn't do anything particularly innovative. It's odd, because it's just well, odd. This game shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be popular. Yet, here we are.

  • Tag, You're on Fire - Wiz-War Re-review

    Sometimes reviewers have to write up what they know, and call it a day. There’s a kind of nebulous pressure to get a review out quickly, and usually that’s fine. If you play a game 3-4 times, you almost certainly know how you feel. There are times when it doesn’t even take that long. But now and then a game begins to grow legs after you pass judgement, and becomes this odd game that you gave an alright review to, but that you now love.

  • Take the Family to the Races in Camel Up Second Edition

    Put your sandals on because things are going to get weird.

  • Tales of the Arabian Nights Five Second Review

    So yeah, maybe you heard that Tales of the Arabian Nights got reprinted.

  • Tales of Wonder - Tales of the Arabian Nights Review


    I still can’t believe that Z-Man’s reprint of Tales of the Arabian Nights had any impact at all. There’s a market for even the dodgiest games, but this one runs counter to just about every trend I had seen in gaming. It’s far too random to approach anything like strategy, and it makes a mockery of player choice. It’s key mechanic involves passing a huge book around the table while you look up numbers on charts to see what paragraph you have to read. It resembles nothing so much as the world’s most expensive Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book. How could such a game become anything besides an admirable failure?

  • Talisman The Blood Moon - What A Horrible Night to Have a Curse!

    Let's be honest, Talisman needs a gothic horror expansion like Jar Jar Binks needs more screen time in the Phantom Menace. However, I'm a Talisman fanatic. So when FFG pours gothic horror flavored slop into my feeding trough I gorge myself like the gluttonous Talisman pig that I am.

  • Target Arnhem Review

    Arnhem

    In many ways I’m ideal Grognard material, being interested in games and military history. However I’ve tended to shy away from wargames because I can’t usually be bothered with the byzantine, unappealing rules and because too much counter density does my head in. I’d really enjoyed the few lightweight style games I’d tried such as Hammer of the Scotsand Commands & Colors: Ancients so when I got the chance to try a similarly lightweight game in the hex-and-counter format, I jumped at it.

  • Techno Bowl - A Game I Didn't Think I Needed

    A look at the upcoming Techno Bowl from Bombshell Games.

  • Temple Hopping - Relic Runners Review

    Relic Runners is a game that dwells in the shadowy realm of the okay. It has absorbed too many lessons from modern game design to be anything close to bad. It’s a surprisingly thoughtful design, one that has gotten a little bit better with every play. Still, I’ve yet to play it with anyone who was wowed by it. The response when we finish a game is almost always “not bad,” or “alright.” It’s too competent to be ignored, but too bland to make much of an impression.

  • Temple of Elemental Evil Review

    Innovation in game design seems to be in short supply nowadays. Yet you can find it in unexpected places. Take all those wargames that use the same basic rules but have new units, maps and mechanical tweaks for different battles. Playing through these franchises can reveal an ocean of wonder inside those tiny details, making history come to life.

  • Temporal Odyssey Review

    Can Level 99 create CCG like Magic without all the hunting and gathering?

  • Tentacle Town Review

    The best game of 2019 to feature a SPINNER.

  • Terakh - Review

    TerakhThe reviews I write tend to come in one of three basic flavors. Your first flavor is the bland vanilla, and it goes something like this:

    This game was OK if you like this kind of thing. Here's a joke about boobs or the mentally handicapped.

    My second basic flavor is the beatdown review. It reads a little like this:

    This game is horrible, and the designer should be embarrassed. Now here's a dick joke.

    The third flavor, and my favorite to write, is the Big Winna review. It's kind of like this:

    This game is totally kick-ass, and you should buy it if you can. Boobdicktard.

    Tonight's review is the third kind of review, the Big Winna review. Because tonight, I'm going to tell you about one hell of a fun game, one called Terakh, and then hopefully you'll all run out and buy a copy, assuming you can find it, which you probably cannot because it does not have US distribution and is currently only available in Canada.

  • Thanos Rising Board Game Review

    Workmanlike but fun - perhaps the best description of both this game and the MCU.

  • Tharos Board Game Review

    We had been on this planet for decades now, exploring its riches, mining for crystals and ore, building factories, markets and other public buildings, growing our pool of experts and increasing our commerce. Now it was time for the steam guilds to move to another section of the amazing planet Tharos by Spielworxx.

  • The Target: Shoot to Thrill

    JAN111928_m1
    Thrill is  an overstatement.  How about “Target: Shoot to have a lot of fun pretending to be a spy.”  I dunno- it just doesn’t have the same ring.

     

  • The 2007 Trashies!

    OK, get your tuxes ready everybody…it’s time for the 2007 Trashies!Now, I have to admit, that I wasn’t going to do Trashies this year…mainly because they were really about BGG and the culture over there more than anything else.But when edit-monger Bill Abner tasked me with doing a year-end list for Gameshark.com, I started writing and I realized that I was basically writing the 2007 Trashies Awards.And since I didn’t want Bill and Co. over there to get hit with lawsuits or anything like that I decided to send them the “good guy” version.F:AT gets the uncensored, Renegade Version- yes, just like HIGHLANDER.Now, if you don’t like what you see here or you don’t feel like something was represented that you feel that ought to be, by all means add it in the talkback.

  • The Allure of Dragonfire Castle

    How about a little user-submitted content to kick the week off right?  Here's a nice review/opinion piece on Dungeonquest.  Enjoy!      --Ken B.

    The first in a series attempting to pinpoint exactly why I love the games I love.  The first is a look at Dungeonquest, a game I fell in love with the first time I played it.

  • The Barnestorming Christmas Special: Operation Burning Christmas (also, Battle of the Bulge in Review)

    burning-christmas-treeYes, this is a Very Special episode.

    During some of the backroom emailing that went on during Michael Barnes Proudly Presents Secret Satan 2013, I received this email from Frank Branham, whom you may know best as the designer of Warhamster Rally. He said:

    Hey Barnes, I was just listening to John Lennon’s “Merry Christmas (War is Over)” and when he asked me “So this is Christmas…and what have ya done?” I realized that I had not done anything. So why don’t we all send our Secret Satan gifts to Shellie (aka Ubarose) this year?"