8As a part of an upcoming Publisher Profile on Mindclash Games, I wanted to go back to where it all began.

Trickerion: Legends of Illusion is a 2015 release set in a world that feels a lot like video games such as Bioshock and We Happy Few, a Victorian steampunk setting that looks both dated and futuristic. I love worlds like this, so Trickerion scratches a certain itch for me every time I sit at the table to soak in the visuals.

Trickerion is a success in almost every way. The game, designed by Richard Amann and Mindclash CEO Viktor Peter, was nominated for a number of tabletop awards, including a BGG Golden Geek award when it was first released. It has also spawned a few expansions and a collector’s edition in 2019. A few people in my gaming circles swear that Trickerion is their favorite strategy board game; those superfans were the reason I had copies of the game to play for this review.

Explaining the rules of Trickerion in a short written article is essentially impossible; the game’s rulebook is 28 pages long, and that’s before you get to the player aid known as the Magician Workbook, which lists all of the game’s illusions, steps for each round, and some examples of play.

I thought it…

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Votes for Women, from first-time designer Tory Brown and second-time publisher Fort Circle Games, is an historical game about the battle surrounding the passage of the 19th amendment, which guarantees that the right of citizens to vote cannot be infringed on account of sex. A more contemporary rendering would likely say "on the basis of gender."

There is a fine tradition in historical gaming of one player being forced to adopt a troublesome, dare I say "problematic," role. Someone has to play as the Nazis or the Confederates if this whole thing is going to work. In Votes for Women, one of you plays as the Suffragettes, while the other takes on the more nebulous persona of the Opposition. This is a tug-of-war, with both sides adding and removing influence across the country.

There are up to six rounds, and each follows a similar formula: draw up, then take turns playing one card, either using it for its event or discarding it to perform one of several actions. In the early rounds, both sides can Lobby, which will either push the amendment closer to or further from consideration by Congress. You can Campaign, which places influence cubes out on the board. You can…

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Give Us Victories (GUV) was released in 2022 by Italian game publisher Dissimula Edizioni.  It is the third game from designer Sergio Shiavi, whose previous offerings Radetzky’s March and From Salerno to Rome focus on conflicts that took place in Italy.  This time Sergio takes us to the U.S. Civil War with a game that is four games in one.

GUV is actually three games in one.  The “Main” game covers the 1863 Chancellorsville Campaign that saw the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia (ANV) severely maul the Union Army of the Potomac (AoP).  Although the fighting resulted in the death of General “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee’s victory at Chancellorsville emboldened him to invade the North, eventually leading to the Battle of Gettysburg.  GUV also includes a “Strategical” game and a “Tactical” game, as well as a solo game with AI.  My review focuses on the “Main” game.

Historical Context

Before getting to the game, let’s take a moment to review the overall situation preceding the Chancellorsville campaign.  In December 1862, then commander of the AoP, General Ambrose Burnside, launched a frontal assault on the fortified position known as Marye’s Heights just west of Fredericksburg, VA.  Fredericksburg is nearly equidistant between Washington D.C. and the Confederate capital of Richmond, VA.  Its…

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I can’t be the only one whose reading of Devil in the White City resulted in a nearly instant purchase of World’s Fair 1893. I doubt the two would have made our list of board game and book pairings if I was alone. The horrors of H.H. Holmes are the sort of legend I’d rather weren’t true, but the side-by-side demi-fiction about pulling together such a massive spectacle are engaging and a worthy antidote to the muck.

Toss in the fact that I live a half-mile from an institution whose grounds were designed by the iconic Frederick Law Olmsted—landscape architect to New York’s Central Park, the famed Biltmore estate, and the 1893 Exposition—and I was drawn into the White City and all things World’s Fair.

World’s Fair 1893 is the design of J. Alex Kevern (Succulent, Daxu), published by Renegade Game Studios. Two to four players take up the role of Fair organizers, gathering exhibits and laboring to secure the finest locations for their wares in an hour or less. At its heart, World’s Fair 1893 blends a lovely area control endeavor with a fascinating set collection dynamic.

Ingression

In a hobby where hex tiles are used to construct maps of all sorts, I am strangely delighted that World’s Fair 1893 utilizes a keyhole-shaped center and…

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Everything about every single Friedemann Friese game looks similar when you consider each green game box with dry cover art and a game title that (usually) starts with the letter F.

At the behest of my editorial boss, Meeple Mountain founder Andy Matthews, I stopped by the 2F-Spiele booth at SPIEL ‘22 to pick up a copy of Findorff, Friese’s newest game, for his personal collection. While I was at the booth, I went ahead and grabbed a copy for myself.

I added Findorff to the 40-or-so review copies I hauled home from the show. Fast forward to the moment I whipped out the rulebook for Findorff and then did a dummy-hand three-player setup to walk through the game.

Two turns into that walkthrough, I knew we had something here. After four plays (two solo, one three player, and one four-player game), I know something else: this has replaced Power Grid as the best Friedemann Friese game I have ever played.

Downtime? Zero

Findorff is one of the 23 districts of a German town called Bremen, the birthplace of Friese. Findorff (the game) is based on the history of this district with players producing resources to build up the town from the early 1800s to the early…

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I would be lying if I failed to admit the superficial fact that my interest in Furnace had everything to do with its box. Publishers take note: I will make every effort to acquire games whose covers boast a prominent use of white space, sometimes without regard to the game inside. I’m not even ashamed to say so. Tokaido? Yes. Topiary? Absolutely. Petrichor? You bet. Furnace, the engine-builder from Ivan Lashin (Smartphone, Inc.), has one of the more striking boxes around.

The young pencil-drawn industrialist has a scowl that speaks more of ambitious resolve than it ever could of joyful living. Below his shoulder, his silhouetted body blends seamlessly into an early 20th century factory complex. With a splash of indicative color, a manufactured glow emanates from what would be his heart were he not governed by the drive to build a prosperous empire. Power lines extend to and from the image as if he is strung up, supported and animated by the product of his greed.

The white space isn’t really white, and how could it be amid the polluted skies and even more polluted ambiance within? The effect is potent. I half expected a dirty cloud to rise from inside as I lifted the lid for the first time.

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I have become lost in the dusty, isolated, weirdly moist corner of board gaming with all the war games, those aesthetic heretics with demanding rule sets and titles like Axis of Forgiveness: The Macedonian Civil War 230-173 BCE. How I got here, I do not exactly know. I was looking for my copy of Blokus and tripped, running headfirst into Conquest & Consequence, which seems to have left me confused and concussed.

Unable to see in the darkness, I stagger forward with my hand running along the shelf, both for stability and to make sure I don’t travel in circles. I have heard the horror stories, as we all have, of people ending up lost in war gaming forever. I will survive to see my friends, I will survive to play Blokus again.

I hear a constant, low buzz. I swat at invisible mosquitos who do not disband.

I think I’m headed in the right direction. The air grows less stuffy. I see light. As I near the fluorescence of the better-illuminated areas of the basement, my hand catches against a box protruding a few inches from the shelf.

Sure that I can find my way out of the war games from here, I pull the box down to…

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[caption id="attachment_25136" align="aligncenter" width="730"] I mean look at that *exciting* board[/caption]

My father is always describing me as being farther to the left than anyone he’s ever met and he’s telling the truth. If you’ve read any of my writing, you’ve likely caught a whiff of this. I’m going to talk about games, of course, don’t worry! But I’m also going to talk about the personal, which is impossible to divorce from the political. Negotiation games are the most personal games that I know and therefore cannot be separated from the political. It doesn’t hurt then that the game (or argument simulator) that I will frame this piece around is one about the founding bros of the good ol’ US of A.

We’ll come back to my politics.

The Game of Wigs

2007’s Founding Fathers (not to be confused with 2010’s Founding Fathers, a game co-designed by Jason Matthews, one…

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Join Board Game Brody as he learns to paint from the masters in Atelier: The Painter’s Studio from AEG.

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I’m going to start this review by saying that Pax Pamir (2nd Edition) is a fully-realized and beautiful work of art, and if you can find a copy of it, do so. It’s absolutely worth playing and owning. If that’s as far as you read, I’ve done my job. Still here? Cool.

Now I’m going to talk about history in games and accessibility, because I think Pamir has an underlying argument about what games can be, and what historical education can be, and this argument is powerful.

[caption id="attachment_13446" align="aligncenter" width="730"] The Last Stand of the 44th Regiment at Gundamuck, William Barnes Wollen. You will find none of this romanticism in Pax Pamir.[/caption]

History Lessons

Pax Pamir is set in the period of time that is often referred to as “The Great Game,” when Russia and Britain waged a hot and cold war in Afghanistan. The players in Pax Pamir are not any of these big nation-states, but instead you’re small power brokers and local leaders. History-wise, and writ very large, Britain wanted to protect the borders of its then-colony, India, and Russia was looking to expand its borders, or just generally make Britain uneasy.

For the cliff notes version, there were a lot of…

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