Dominion designer Donald X. Vaccarino has put together another winning mid-weight gaming experience in Kingdom Builder (published by Queen Games). Ideal for both a “gateway” game for new strategy gamers and as a filler for gaming veterans, Kingdom Builder plays fast and has very simple rules, and yet provides enough game to offer a decent challenge. It’s never going to be the centerpiece of game night, but as a warm-up groups could do far worse. READ MORE
Since its release in 2004, Friedemann Friese’s Power Grid (published in the US by Rio Grande Games) has been one of the top-ranked games on BoardGameGeek, currently sitting at #5. It has won several awards, each one generally coinciding with its release in a new language. Combining auctions, resource management, and route-building, Power Grid will tax the skills of from two to six players like few other games.
And I absolutely cannot stand playing it. READ MORE
Can the Freedom Five — Legacy, Bunker, Tachyon, the Wraith, and Absolute Zero — survive the Ruins of Atlantis in order to prevent the nefarious Baron Blade from activating his Terralunar Implosion Beam and causing the moon to crash into the Earth? Will Grand Warlord Voss amass his army of gene-bound minions at the Wagner Mars Base in order to take over the Earth before Ra, Tempest, Fanatic, and the Visionary can stop him? Find out in the next exciting issue of Sentinels of the Multiverse! READ MORE
As I mentioned in my Best of 2011 edition, Jay Cormier’s and Sen-Foong Lim’s Belfort (published by Tasty Minstrel Games) is a grand mix of various traditional Eurogame mechanics. Up to five players have seven months (rounds) to carefully place workers (elves, dwarfs, and to a lesser extent gnomes), manage resources, and vie for control of the five districts of the titular city as they race to construct it before the winter arrives and the yetis attack. That may seem like a lot — and it is. Early plays of Belfort will test you like few other games, and new players are likely to be overwhelmed by the options and strategies available. READ MORE
2012 kicked off in a big way for the board gaming community, as Gary Games finally unleashed the next standalone edition of Ascension in the form of Storm of Souls. Much like Chronicle of the Godslayer, Storm is a hundred-card center deck and enough “always available” and starter cards to accommodate up to four players. Storm can also be combined with Chronicle and/or its expansion Return of the Fallen to hold six players. As this is a “base” release, Storm also includes a new and slightly-revised playing board, along with the usual array of red and white honor crystals. Sadly, a more streamlined version for those of us who already have more crystals than we could ever possibly need and little interest in the board is not offered. READ MORE
