Secrets of the Tombs was clearly designed by Martin Wallace to be sold in the British Museum's gift shop. As such, it contains lovely components, including cards with photos of actual Egyptian artifacts and educational text descriptions. Other cards, if you bother to read them, have information about Egyptian mythology. I would expect a game like this to be a dreadful roll and move affair, or possibly a dreary set collection game. Surprisingly, there is actually an enjoyably trashy game in the box.

In Secrets of the Tombs, players are archeologists, or perhaps just tomb robbers, racing to be the first to collect a certain amount of treasure and get out of the tomb alive. Like DungeonQuest and The Adventurers, it is absolutely possible for all players to die, and for everybody to lose the game.

Zen and the Art of Flocking Birds

Sekigahara may seem like a souped up Stratego but instead presents a fascinating look of the orginizational level of the titular campaign.

Best Euro-Wargame of 2011?  Move over Halifax Hammer, here comes the Kyoto Katana!

Is 30 minutes of setup worth it?

One of the best tactical games on the market.

Many of you may have played Werewolf, that old high-school party game where nobody knows who is the bad guy and who is the good guy and you have to try to kill the other team before you get discovered and eaten. If you have, you probably know it's about as relevant for an adult as Duck Duck Goose. There's nothing that says 'grown-up party' like sitting around a table with your eyes closed and then making wild, uninformed accusations about everyone around you.

Overshadowed by the release of Arigricola, Shadow Hunters debuted this weekend at WBC with little fanfare.  While copies of Z-man's English edition of Arigricola were rushed to Lancaster in a Dunbar truck accompanied by an armed escort and a medical team, Shadow Hunters was unceremoniously packed into cardboard boxes for transport and appeared stacked on the Z-man table with nothing more than a post-it note displaying a discount price. It was easy to miss Shadow Hunters in the crowded vending room, or mistake it for a poor selling clearance item. Fortunately, I did neither and was able to pick up this awesome game, which we played until our sides ached from laughing and my brother Strider (not KingPut) earned the nickname of Douchey Boy.

One of the best games of recent years- my original review from 2015.

Like a Polaroid Picture

I scoffed when Shards of Infinity came out last year. Despite my love for Ascension, the idea of it becoming a PvP game seemed silly. Besides, there were already other games that did that and I wasn’t a fan. However, soon after playing Shards of Infinity, my reaction of “Why?” immediate changed to “More!”. Everything in the system worked. You have the standard attack values that you aim at an opponent of your choice, but the mastery system is what made the game sing. The decisions as to how your deck became more nuanced than simply get more money, buy more attack. I couldn’t wait for more content to come out.

Supersytem is a rule set based on the "goals" system for skirmish level battles in a comic universe. Each player needs a team of 5-10 figures to play and nearly any terrain is appropriate depending on how detailed the players wish to get. The basic mechanic of Supersystem is the d6 success roll. Players roll and appropriate number of d6s depending on their combination of attributes and powers. They count up their total results that are a 4 or higher, and need to beat the number of 4's or higher rolled by their opponent. Characters only have 4 basic stats, or "attributes" as they are called here. Character creation is smooth and easy with a point buy system for all stats and superpowers. Each model has a set number of action points based on their stats to spend on movement, attacks or superpower usage each turn. Turns operate on an initiative system with a fairly strict "I go you go " mechanism, with each player activating one figure at a time.

A face to face look at 2014's biggest bluffing game.

The Realms, they are a-shiftin'.

Shogun started off as my favorite game of all time, now it doesn’t crack my top 30.

What do you do when a good game starts to show cracks?