Category Archives: Board Game Reviews

Dune: Imperium is a deck-building worker placement game about political intrigue that plays best with 3 or 4 players. With great implementations on Steams, Google Play, and the Apple App Store, it is also a fun board game to play electronically. You play a character representing one of four Great Houses (e.g., the Atreides House). You start with a deck of 10 standard cards, from which you draw five to start each round. These cards have three capabilities: they decide the type of place you can send a worker to […]

I ignored the release of Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition when it came out. I thought the original edition was a phenomenal Ameritrash-style civ game, and I’d already decked my copy out with 3D models of the wonders and with custom wooden tokens for resource tracking. I was wrong to ignore it. Earlier this year, I re-played the original a few times and realized that certain advances (e.g., technologies) were overpowered and that the beginning of the game was pretty scripted. So I downloaded the revised rules [PDF] and compared them to the original. To […]

I first played Star Trek Panic in 2018, playing it twice, and I loved it so much I bought it for my father for his birthday, as he was a fan of Star Trek when it premiered. Well, neither he nor I ever got around to playing the game until I visited him recently. I’ve now played it six times total, working through all the missions twice. Star Trek Panic is a cooperative game where each player is one of the main characters from Star Trek: The Original Series—Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Scott, Sulu, or Chekov. […]

If you were invited to a beer-and-pretzels game night, but you’re the designated driver, here are my favorite “non-alcoholic” beers to consider, though technically some of these do have up to 0.5 alcohol by volume (ABV). Participation in “Dry January” and “Damp January” is on the rise: 22% of Americans participated this year. For each of the last three Januarys, I personally have set aside regular beer at home to drink these non-alcoholic brews instead, which I track and rate on Untappd. These are sorted by my rating, with the […]

Back in 2018, I posted the following question to the Wargames forum of BoardGameGeek: I’m looking for a foundational wargame to use to introduce my 13-year old son to the hobby: something that plays in an hour but introduces the key concepts common to most wargames. No more than 88 counters. Replayable up to 10 times (about the most we ever repeat a game). He likes ancients, medieval, Revolutionary War, ACW, and WW2. Thoughts? And, if like one poster, you wonder, “Why 88 counters? (It is an awfully specific number is why I […]

Alien Frontiers is a dice-based worker placement game that blasts players to a fictional alien planet to gather resources and establish colonies. With its blend of Euro mechanics (worker placement, area control) and Ameritrash elements (direct conflict, “take that” abilities, high-quality plastic components), it boldly goes where few games have gone before. Gameplay Overview In classic Euro game style, you’re trying to score the most victory points, from placing colonies on the planet (1 VP each), controlling territories (1 VP for each where you have the most colonies), and by collecting […]

I had expected 7 Wonders: Architects to be a streamlined version of the base game designed for a wider audience, like Simply Catan vs. Catan (e.g., fewer victory points, fewer cards, nicer components). In fact, 7WA is a dramatic reinvention of the game for the mainstream market, with gorgeous components. The result is a great game to give as a gift but probably not a great game to replay. Differences from 7 Wonders— Game decisions are primarily tactical rather than strategic but there are interesting decisions to be made. With […]

I missed The Golden Ages by Luigi Ferrini when it came out in 2014, among the thousands of games that came out that year. I stumbled across it in reviews of Sid Meier’s Civilization: New Dawn among players who said they preferred it. Ten plays later, I can see how it compares favorably. In most civilization games, any hidden elements of the board are explored rather quickly (e.g., Clash of Cultures) or the board starts out as fully visible (the first and third board games based on Sid Meier’s Civilization […]