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SpellBook
SpellBook by Phil Walker-Harding and Space Cowboys. I received a review copy from Asmodee Nordics. Elevator pitch: SpellBook is a race of collecting magical resources, using them to unlock spells and then using those spells to unlock more spells. What’s in the box? There’s a bunch of spell cards and a familiar board for each…
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Xiangqi, Shogi, Riichi and Brass: Birmingham
Here are some random notes on games I’ve played recently. Xiangqi and Shogi. Thanks to a book project, I’ve returned to Chinese and Japanese chess. I tried both about 15 years ago, but those were just single attempts. Now I’ve delved slightly deeper, thanks to a son who is keen to explore these games with…
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Earth and Space Base
I’m usually not interested in new games, but apparently, I can be persuaded. Something in Earth attracted me; I’m not sure what it was. I checked the rule book, which seemed complicated at first sight, and then went and learnt the game. It’s not that tricky, really. It’s a game of many cards, tableau building…
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Texas Showdown with Seas of Strife rules
Texas Showdown is a very good trick-taking game for five or six players. The point is to avoid taking tricks. The main twist in the game is the suit-following rules: you have to follow suit, but if you can’t, you play anything, and other players can then follow your suit. The trick is won by…
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Drawing tube lines in London
Next Station: London by Matthew Dunstan is another game in the X-and-write genre; in this case, a flip-and-write (I prefer the Finnish catch-all term “coupon-filler”). Each player has a fairly abstract map of London in front of them and must draw four underground lines to generate as many points as possible. The tube lines are…
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Unlock! Legendary Adventures
Another Unlock! box arrived from the library. This one has three adventures loosely themed with legends. Action Story starts with a chase scene where the players must reach a fleeing criminal. The mood takes a swift turn soon. This is the easiest adventure in the box and relatively straightforward to solve, but it’s fun for…
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First impressions: Scout
Japanese Scout was designed by Kei Kajino and published by Oink Games in 2019. It’s a small box card game with a good reputation: it was a nominee for the Spiel des Jahres award in 2022, and several friends have praised it. Since my game group likes tricky card games, I thought Scout might be…
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Unlock! Game Adventures
I was two Unlock! games behind. Fortunately, both of the sets are available in the local library. The first one to arrive was the later one; this one had fewer reservations. Unlock! Game Adventures uses other Asmodee titles as source material. There are scenarios for Ticket to Ride, Mysterium and Pandemic. It’s a pretty good…
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Top 100 list, 2022 edition
My annual top 100 list is now out on BoardGameGeek: Mikko’s top 100 — 2022 edition. Making this year’s list was a slightly sad process. I have a two-year rule for my list: this year, I’ll consider games that I’ve played in 2022, 2021 or 2020. This meant a list of 146 titles. I’ve last…
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Mathias Wigge interview
Mathis Wigge is the designer of Ark Nova, a tremendously popular board game about zookeeping. What makes it even more impressive is the fact that it’s his first released board game. I interviewed Wigge by email to find out more about where Ark Nova came from. This interview was originally published in Finnish at Lautapeliopas.…