Nights of Fire is a block wargame, a genre that seems by and large to have fallen out of style. Was it ever in style? I actually don’t know the level of relative ubiquity block wargames achieved.

It seems like a great format. Units are printed on one side of chunky wooden blocks, and typically angled so that a player knows their own units without knowing anyone else’s. Block wargames incorporate bluffing, memory, and dramatic reveals, which are all good things. I feel like blocks should be a fixture of game design. Maybe the problem is that, outside of Stratego, they’ve seldom been attached to approachable games.

[caption id="attachment_295914" align="alignnone" width="1024"] On the other hand, maybe block wargames haven't caught on with the greater public because they're so hard to photograph without professional lighting...[/caption]

Nights of Fire: Battle for Budapest, the second game in a Hungarian Revolution diptych from designer Dávid Turczi and publisher Mighty Boards, aims to address that. While Days of Ire: Budapest 1956 focused on the initial uprising…

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Days of Ire: Budapest 1956 is a cooperative game in which one-to-four players work together during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, when students attempted an overthrow of the ruling Communist Party. The game also includes a one-v-all mode, with one player taking on the role of the oppressor. Both play similarly, with only mild differences between them. Since most of my plays were cooperative, I’m going to default to describing that mode.

The fundamentals of the Days of Ire system aren’t too far from Pandemic, the cooperative Allfather. The board is a network of locations throughout Budapest, each filled with potential allies and enemy forces. Players take turns to execute actions with the goal of clearing events and removing Soviet forces.

Player count determines the number of actions each turn. You can move, activate fighters, resolve events, attack militia, destroy tanks, and give/take cards. Some cards have free actions, while others include resources that can be used to resolve the aforementioned events. Say, for example, that an event pops up in the Radio location which requires one Intelligence. You’d need to have either an active fighter at the location with Intelligence…

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The British Empire was having a bit of a time in the aftermath of World War II. To put it succinctly, the empire was crumbling. Colonial subjects had fought alongside the British in WWII, and now they returned home with military training and a sense of self-worth. Those pesky natives, you know. Don’t they appreciate that we brought them crumpets, cricket, and the eternal gift of an inbred’s face on their money?

The British Empire was an exquisite PR machine, telling its citizens and the world that this empire was different, sharing care and civilization with the savagery of the world. Never mind the fact that every empire has told that lie. For some reason, this time, it took. When she died, people were shocked—shocked!—to hear of the things that happened under Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Most people didn’t hear about them at all.

Flip a COIN

The British Way: Counterinsurgency at the End of Empire is one of the more recent entries in GMT’s popular COunterINsurgency (COIN) series, an ever-expanding collection of titles about guerrilla warfare and resistance movements. I don’t know enough about the politics of the series to delve into that, but I know enough to know that they are a hot-button topic. There is at least…

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One of the many advantages of getting intellectual property for your board game is leveraging the audience to look at your project. For example, developing games based on well-known franchises like Marvel or Game of Thrones allows you to tap into those brands' existing fanbases. Fans of the IP are likely to take an interest in a related game, even if just to check it out briefly via marketing materials or initial coverage.

Which leads to my confusion about today’s game, The Last Kingdom. Based on an obscure Netflix show, it only made a blip on my radar due to some YouTube hype around it, calling it a “hidden gem” or “game of the year.” After checking them out and realizing that this is an area control drafting game where you can switch allegiances, I had to see this one to the end.

The Last Kingdom throws you a position of power of the political kind. You are a figure of importance during a time when the Saxons and Danes are having a series of cultural exchanges on the battlefield. Like any other board game, your power in this world is measured through victory points.

Based on that description, one can easily assume that this is a Risk-style or “dudes on a map” board game, and they would be…

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During an interview on the podcast 5 Games for Doomsday, designer Mark Herman discussed two different approaches to historical board games. He said that games can work like simulations, recreating the events more or less as they happened, or they can work to put you in the headspace of that moment. To illustrate his point, he used one of his own games.

In Empire of the Sun, which depicts the Pacific Theater during World War II, neither player knows if the atomic bomb will come into play. It’s possible to go an entire game without seeing it. Why does that matter? In real life, neither Japan nor the vast majority of the U.S. military knew about the bomb, until suddenly they did. If either party had, they would have made different decisions.

 If Harry Truman knew about the bomb before he did, the United States Military and other allies wouldn’t have planned an invasion of the Japanese mainland. If Japan knew the United States had the capacity to instantly end the lives of some 80,000 people in Hiroshima, to say nothing of people who died later from hunger, injuries, or radiation sickness, they may well have surrendered earlier, or never entered the conflict in the first place. To play knowing that the atomic bomb is coming is to fundamentally…

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Hello and welcome to ‘Focused on Feld’. In my Focused on Feld series of reviews, I am working my way through Stefan Feld’s entire catalogue. Over the years, I have hunted down and collected every title he has ever put out. Needless to say, I’m a fan of his work. I’m such a fan, in fact, that when I noticed there were no active Stefan Feld fan groups on Facebook, I created one of my own.

Today we’re going to talk about 2011’s Trajan, his 15th game.

2011 was a busy, and career defining, year for Stefan Feld. Earlier that year, he’d released Strasbourg. Even earlier than that, the unassuming The Castles of Burgundy had appeared on the boardgaming scene, completely unaware of the mark in history it was going to make. If Feld had been flying under the radar, he certainly wasn’t anymore. The Castles of Burgundy took the world by storm, placing Stefan Feld squarely in the spotlight. It was a game that marked him as a designer to watch out for. And Trajan only served to solidify that status, proving that it is possible to catch lightning in a bottle a second time.

Overview

Using Ancient Rome as a backdrop, Trajan is a game that challenges players to maximize what little time they…

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Welcome (Back) to Arrakis

I wrote a glowing review of the original Dune: Imperium earlier this year. To say that I was enamored with it would be an understatement. The game has risen in the ranks to claim its spot among my top board games of all time, and I jump at the chance to introduce new players to it. I even snagged the new digital version on Steam and have already sunk about 20 hours into the challenges and weekly scenario modes there. This is all coming from someone who isn’t that taken by the world of the original Frank Herbert novels and has seen the Denis Villeneuve film a grand total of once.

At Gen Con this year, Dire Wolf Digital announced a “standalone spinoff” for the game titled Dune: Imperium - Uprising. Initially, much of the conversation around the new game was slightly confusing for the gaming community because it wasn’t clear how this would work with the existing Dune: Imperium properties. The publisher quickly clarified that both expansions for the base game can also work with this new spinoff game and that cards from the base game can be mixed and matched. It is an example of making the waters a bit too muddy for my liking. It’s a sequel and a spinoff, but…

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I heard about Land and Freedom: The Spanish Revolution and Civil War through an interview with designer Alex Knight on the wargaming podcast Beyond Solitaire. It’s the first time an interview with a designer compelled me to seek out one of their games. He was exceptionally well-spoken in regards to what he was trying to accomplish with the design, and what about the setting drew him in. You can see his passion in the results. Land and Freedom is great.

They Burned the Churches up in Harlem

World War II has been, and will continue to be, done to death. That’s quite alright. The convenience of the setting is such that it’s understandable. The Spanish Civil War, though geographically and chronologically adjacent to WWII, has largely escaped the board game treatment. Resist!, a very good (and exceedingly difficult) solo game from last year, depicts the actions of the Spanish Maquis as they fought against the fascists following Franco’s victory, but that doesn’t cover the Spanish Civil War itself.

Land and Freedom, from publisher Blue…

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What is Kingmaker?

Kingmaker is a game covering the War of the Roses, the dynastic clash for the throne of England between the houses of York and Lancaster from 1455 to 1487. A remake of the 1974 Avalon Hill classic of the same name, this latest version by publisher Gibsons has a double-sided board and two rulebooks, one for playing Classic Kingmaker, and the other for playing Kingmaker II —a streamlined version of the game. Depending on the version, the game can support up to 5 or 6 players. There is even a solo mode. This review is limited to Kingmaker II.

[caption id="attachment_284878" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Setup for a 3-player game[/caption]

Each player controls a varying number of nobles at the start of the game, along with the troops loyal to those nobles. Nobles can be awarded titles, offices within the English royal court, bishoprics, control of towns and cities, mercenaries, and ships. These are used to fight battles, conduct sieges, and gain control of royal family members from the House of York or Lancaster. An immediate Royalty victory is won when one player controls the only royal family member who has been crowned king. Barring that, a faction controlling a king can win a Prestige Victory under certain conditions.

Game…

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Deep State or Deep Sleep?

A game called Deep State promises machinations, intrigue, and skulduggery. The actual Deep State is a drafting game that feels as onerous as the bureaucracies you’re attempting to overthrow.

The game presents you with two areas to manipulate: First, four mats, each functionally serving as a track to advance on that grants powers and endgame points; Second, a row of cards (scaled to player count) which players place workers (“agents” in game parlance) to claim for their individual tableau. In a 3-player game, there are 8 Objective cards available, and each game round, the leftmost 3 are available for players to attempt to claim. There are some additional rules for 5 players that I won’t cover here.

Play takes place in rounds, with each player taking an action. There is another phase that occurs once all the Objective cards have been claimed. The first player token, known as the Supervisor, travels around to each player in clockwise fashion after a round is complete. Each player takes one action. The Supervisor receives two agents from their pool (which starts with 3) but their actions are limited to tying to claim an Objective card or accomplishing a single big contract, called a Covert Operation, which requires…

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For a variety of reasons, you should know going in that this will be a messier review than normal. I don't think I should apologize, but I feel compelled to warn, at least.

At 1:20 in the morning on Saturday, June 28, 1969, New York City police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village. Such raids were a routine occurrence at the time. There was a script. Patrons were made to line up and produce identification. Female officers took those suspected of “crossdressing” to the bathroom to verify their sex. Alcohol was seized and arrests were made.

For whatever reason, that raid at Stonewall didn’t follow the script. That night, which for all intents and purposes was like any other night, patrons refused to comply, refused to go to the bathroom to be "verified," refused to produce their IDs. Patrons who weren’t arrested didn’t leave, they gathered out front. This wasn’t planned, it was spontaneous. The gay community had had enough.

By the time the NYPD wagons showed up to take people away, the people outside constituted a crowd. They booed, they chanted, most crucially they questioned. The situation escalated to the point of a riot, an uprising, lasting until 4 in the morning. That night of resistance spun out into…

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“Perhaps the final ninja trick was leaving little trace for any of us.” 

So ends the Historical Notes section at the back of the rulebook for Ninjato, a two-page dive into the Heian Period and the Japanese legend of the Shinobi upon which the game is based. Players become master ninja, raiding clan-controlled houses for treasure, bribing envoys, and spreading rumors to gain honor and become the Ninjato, the invisible sword of the ruling family.

Ninjato is no spring chicken, a 2011 release from Z-Man Games and the mind of Adam West (Transmissions, Wizards of the Wild). As a game, it lurks in the shadows, an agent of the night that leaves its indelible mark while, sadly, never drawing an excess of attention. But there is a lot to get excited about in a subdued, ninja sort of way.

Banzai!

The game board is an 11th-century village, or thereabouts, with a handful of locations to choose from. Players use their shuriken as “workers” to make selections across seven rounds, each with three turns.

The bulk of Ninjato’s intrigue revolves around raiding the five clan houses. Each house is marked with a clan token and contains a number of treasures guarded by a numbered sentry card. The…

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“Gosh, this feels like that game where, you know…you know?”

After my first play of Vaalbara (2023, Studio H), I was struggling to use my words. But, it wasn’t just me who had this problem—no, it was the same issue my friend Gideon was having while we were trying to place the game against others we had recently played.

Vaalbara is beautiful. The box cover and the cards, featuring artwork from the duo of Felix Donadio and Alexandre Reynaud, are fantastic. The cards feel great in the hands and there’s a really short set of instructions; paired with a small box and straightforward teach, the entire package screams “tidy.”

I wish it screamed “all-time classic”, but such is the state of the gaming world. Vaalbara is entertaining, but the lack of innovation makes Vaalbara a tough call.

I’m Thinking About Using the #8 Card

Vaalbara is a nine-round game of conquest between 2-5 players serving as clan leaders looking to expand their territory. Using a sort-of secret scoring system and a deck of 12 identical character cards, players must outscore the competition to achieve victory.

Each deck of cards features the same 12 characters—drawn with the same 12 pictures, so each clan looks the same save for the…

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