The first time I played it, I bounced so hard off of Carta Impera Victoria (CIV) that it may as well have been made of weapons-grade military rubber. It seemed an utterly asinine game where you basically race to lay out enough cards to win the game, with only a…
Category: Board Game Review
Clacks (2015)
In our review of Discworld: Ankh Morpork I wrote what is effectively a love letter to Terry Pratchett’s wonderfully warm and funny universe of magical misadventure and narrative causality. More than that though, the review was a chance to reflect on what makes a satisfying theme and how there are…
6 Nimmt! (1994)
If you’re a regular reader of this site you may remember that we had a somewhat contrarian view on The Mind. It’s a game that I still think of as mostly recruitment material for a weird and esoteric cult that will surely rise up and kill us all before too…
Planet (2018)
If you imagined someone took a copy of Kingdomino and bent its tiles around a twelve-sided die you’d be quite a lot of the way towards visualising the game Planet. This visually striking game is from many of the same people that brought us the stunning Photosynthesis. It’s clear that…
Terra Mystica (2012)
There’s a risk for this site that comes with starting a review of Terra Mystica. It’s a game that you could legitimately discuss for tens of thousands of words, being reviewed by someone that views academic essays as something akin to a post-it note of brief reminders. I’m going to…
When I Dream (2016)
Imagine playing Dixit. It’s good, isn’t it? A beautiful design. Elegant systems. Gorgeous art. You’re happy with it. You’re satiated. But you know – the more you play, the more familiar it becomes. It stops being exciting and starts being comfortable. Now imagine that one night you’ve got an arm…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Board Game (2016)
I’m the one that purchases board games in our house-hold. Mrs Meeple, truth be told, would be happier with a smaller collection of well-worn favourites. As such she views every new game arriving at the door with a justifiable amount of suspicion. At a certain point running a blog like…
Junk Art (2016)
There gets to a point when reviewing games where you look at a box laid out on your table and think ‘I’m not sure there’s anything I can really say about this that hasn’t already been said’. When you review things like Catan and Carcassonne it’s true – so much…
Viticulture: Essential Edition (2015)
I’ve never really gotten along with wine. Whether it’s a £5 bottle of own Tesco own-brand value plonk or a rich, full-bodied Cabernet it all pretty much just tastes like lighter fluid to me. I see people holding wine up to the light and saying things like ‘Fruity but not…
Discworld: Ankh Morpork (2011)
The Meeple Like Us project is aimed at mapping out the accessibility of a substantial portion of the BGG Top 500. One of the aims in this is to simply explore an interesting problem domain for user interaction – to nail down some stats and insights of a tractable sample…
Nudge (2019)
It’s weird to think that those reading this post are perhaps living in the last few generations of humanity. Look ahead over the next fifty years. Consider to what we have to look forward. Apocalyptic climate change. Increasingly polarized political extremism encouraged, endorsed and knowingly leveraged by civic authority. The…
Mechs vs Minions (2016)
Mechs vs Minions may have the single most refined ratio of price to production that you’ll find in any tabletop game anywhere. For $75, direct from the Riot Games storefront, you get an absolutely massive box big enough to bury a beagle. It’s filled to the brim with painted mechs,…
Above and Below (2015)
If you’ve been paying attention to the site, there are a few things you could probably deduce. The first is that I like city building games. Suburbia, Quadropolis, Lords of Waterdeep – they all got enthusiastic support for the way they let you feel like you’re actually contributing to the…
Secret Hitler (2016)
In today’s ‘meandering monologue on stuff only vaguely related to the topic of the review’, let’s discuss about the accessibility of first impressions and how Secret Hitler is layers and layers of case study on how important they can be. At least, let’s talk about that for a bit before…
Champions of Midgard (2015)
What’s your favourite way to fail to carry out a plan in a board game?
For me, I prefer it when my failure is something inherent in my inability – that the low-grade incompetence that infects every facet of my life can be blamed for the inevitable shellacking I’m about to…
Railroad Ink (2018) – Blazing Red Edition
I haven’t really sat down with a roll and write game since Ganz Schon Clever and that was perhaps out of self-preservation. I feel like that game came close to capturing my soul like a cursed amulet in a D&D campaign. I only escaped with my essence intact by burying the…
Pit (1903)
Continuing our occasional series of ‘games from ancient antiquity that still deserve some attention in the modern era’, let’s talk about Pit! This is a game that was first released in 1903. Even now it’s probably the single most efficient engine for taking a game group from quiet contemplation into…
Castles of Burgundy (2011)
My first experience with Castles of Burgundy was traumatic. The rulebook is terrible and badly structured, the components cheap and shoddy, and there is so much setup that I eventually gave up in frustration and put the box back on the shelf for literal years. Any one of those would…
Monopoly (1933)
There was a surprisingly good response to our review of Scrabble – a review I said I’d never write because, come on, who really needs to hear anything anyone has to say about Scrabble at this point? I wrote it out of a kind of completionist compulsion. Scrabble had appeared…
Perudo (1800)
I’m going to do something a little unusual today. I’m going to review a game you can probably make for yourself right now if you have a few spare dice laying around. If you’re reading this review I’m willing to bet you’re exactly the kind of cheeky scamp that certainly…