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To set the mood, I dialed up the Italian Mafia Music playlist on Spotify (13,000 likes) so that I would have four hours and 15 minutes of sweet, sweet background music from films such as The Godfather, Goodfellas, Casino, and other classics.

I wanted to set the mood because our review group was ready for our first play of La Famiglia: The Great Mafia War (2023, Capstone Games). It was gonna be a long sit. Plus, it’s important to set expectations when players will be laundering cash, sending car bombs into enemy territory, and murdering opposing “Soldati” by firing the miniguns on your fleet of speedboats.

The only issue with La Famiglia is also the only issue with that playlist; you’ll need to set aside about four hours and 15 minutes for each of your first few plays.

Don Stefano, Pass Me the Drug Labs

La Famiglia is a four-player-only–

I CAN’T DO IT MAN. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT FOUR-PLAYER-ONLY GAMES JUST DON’T WORK!

Hold your horses, pal. Lots of games are essentially four-player games; heck, even when the games aren’t designed as four-player games, they work best as four-player experiences. (See: Brass, Hegemony, Wildlands, Brick & Mortar, Arcadia Quest…and those are just the…

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Pumafiosi is the second in a series of three games from designer Reiner Knizia and publisher Bitewing Games. Called the Criminal Capers trilogy, the series consists of three card games. All three games—Soda Smugglers, Pumafiosi, and Hot Lead—occupy a seedy underworld of anthropomorphic animal gangsters and cops. All three feature simple rules, easily teachable in under five minutes. You might even be able to teach all three in that time, actually, assuming a particularly keen audience. Finally, all three feature absolutely fabulous art from Paul K. Halkyon.

Obligatory Goodfellas Reference

Pumafiosi has players struggling to secure their place in the hierarchy of the Pumafia, the Puma Mafia. Players are dealt a personal draw pile of ten cards from a deck of cards numbered 1-55. The cardplay in Pumafiosi is a sort of suitless trick-taking game, with the winner of each trick placing their card on the ladder of hierarchy cards in the middle of the table. Each rung is worth points varying from -3 to 10, scored at the end of the round.

I have just described a boring game in which players must, surely, score ever-decreasing amounts of points as the round goes on. The first player wins and…

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A century after the Prohibition era seems about the right time to celebrate the willful defiance and unmitigated glamour of the American speakeasy. Having never been to the 1920s myself, I write not from personal experience, but those folks sure appeared to be having a good time. Celebrities of stage and screen, flappers, gangsters, and Jazz music make lovely fodder for a roarin’ board game. 

Speakeasy Blues is a title from Artana Games designed by Adrian Adamescu and Daryl Andrews, the team behind Sagrada, Dice Theme Park, and several other bang up games. In this offering, players are given the chance to defy the 18th Amendment and operate their own illicit gin joint in pursuit of fame and cash, but mostly just fame. 

Between the theme and the design team, I am predisposed to enjoy Speakeasy Blues, but the proof is in the playing and, in this case, in the tiny bottles of hooch. 

The Speakeasy

The central board of Speakeasy Blues is a ring containing seven actions, six of which share their icons with the faces of the custom dice. Each action contains one to three dice-shaped locations. The seventh location, of course, is a wild that need not match any particular face. The game’s ten dice come in five pairs of different colors. 

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[caption id="attachment_216469" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] I played both a physical copy and a Tabletop Simulator mod. The Tabletop Simulator mod is a delight as well.[/caption]

Theme

Mantis Falls is set in a fictional 1940’s mountain town ruled by the mob. The art and naming is supposed to evoke the feeling of a mystery show like Twin Peaks, and the manual actually recommends the Twin Peaks soundtrack as theme music. The artwork, naming conventions, and overall theme do a great job of drawing you into a general sense of dark foreboding, conspiracy, and twisted scheming.…

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Back SYNDICATE on Kickstarter.

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Read our written review of SYNDICATE.

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A Dark Future

Welcome to Arcturus. A dark and grimy solar system ruled by the tyrannical Sovereign regime. All that awaits you here is poverty, pain, and misery. People quickly turn to drugs or other vices to make life more livable, but the end result is the same. The Sovereign takes what they want and leaves the scraps for the people. There is not much to gain here if you play by the rules. Seems like you may have to make a new rulebook entirely if you want to get ahead. It's time to make a name for yourself and make enough cash to last you a lifetime. Only first, you will need to dispose of some of the competition.

You’re Not Bad, You’re Misunderstood

In Syndicate, 2-5 players take on the role of various crime groups vying to break out from under the thumb of the Sovereign and make some Credits (cash). Each player works to build up their criminal empire before the Sovereign catches wind of these schemes and shuts things down. Players build Bases, advance their tech, and complete Missions to become the most powerful criminal operation. There are various methods and approaches to doing so, but at the…

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Back Fallen Angels on Kickstarter.

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They say that every city has its seedy underbelly. Seedy underbelly. Those words carry such negative connotations. Disreputable. Dirty. Unseemly. Criminal. Clearly the people that use such words have never visited the Black Lotus. Nobody that has ever spent a moment on her casino floor as it pulses with life or relaxed in one of her luxury suites would use the word “seedy” to describe the experience. Anybody that would describe the Black Lotus as dirty or unseemly has certainly never sat down and listened to Madame Peng sing. Her voice is transcendent. Frankly, their unkind words are a little insulting.

But they’re not entirely wrong. Managing such a lucrative enterprise sometimes requires getting a little dirty: greasing palms, airing dirty laundry, muckraking. And when necessary, a little wetwork. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Overview

In the game of Shadows of Macao, the players are competing to build the most powerful triads. They will be sending their minions out to collect the resources and recruit the work force needed to build different Establishments in order to spread their influence throughout the titular city.

In between the players are 4 stacks of double-sided Character cards. On their turns, the players will be able to add Characters from the…

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The Godfather: A New Don Overview

Originally released in 1972, and based on a book of the same name by Mario Puzo, The Godfather is a classic of American literature and cinema. The movie is filled with characters who are brutal and violent, yet show remarkable integrity, honor, and loyalty. Set in the late 1940s and early 1950s The Godfather details the rise of the Corleones, a small New York crime family.

The Godfather: A New Don is a dice based area control game which pits players against each other in a fight to control the boroughs of 1950s New York City. Players fight to become the Godfather receiving all of the benefits that position entails. Roll your dice, place your soldiers in neighborhoods around the city, muscle other players out of territory, and use your own personal strategy to become the next Godfather.

How to Set Up The Godfather: A New Don

The Godfather: A New Don plays 3-6 players and offers a double sided board: one side for 3-4 players, and the other for 5-6. Select the correct board for your player count then set up the game in the following way:

• Each player should take the player…

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