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Jim Cohen - Res Arcana
As the year ramps up, and we move into the Spring months, more and more board games are born. But in the quiet early months of the year, with fewer new releases demanding our attention, I was given the opportunity to finally play a modern classic. Res Arcana is available for an amazing price in January on the Zatu site, and I picked it up after courting it from afar for years. I learnt and taught the game in about 20 minutes, and quickly played my first game a few weeks and began a new obsession. I love engine builders, and Res Arcana certainly delivers with this.
Res Arcana is hand management card game that pits players against each other, in an attempt to maximise their efficiencies, increase their engine, and reach the desired points total first. If you enjoy games like Splendor and Century Spice Road, than I would suggest this could be a great game to look at next. Res Arcana has a similar price point, feel, and complexity to these other card games, but offers a little more depth in the game play. A bit more subtlety in the card play. And more of a presence and ‘board game’ feel.
The satisfaction from collecting the essences you need to play more cards, develop your tableau, and reach your goal is something that most gamers will find very addictive.
Res Arcana happens to look rather gorgeous too. Res Arcana was first published in 2019 and saw instant success due to the simplicity of learning the game, mixed with the enjoyment of players trying to maximise their small hand of cards. In what is essentially a race game, players are trying to end the game by getting to ten points first. It can take as little as 20 minutes, but you will feel a real sense of development during this short game time. Learning this game is simple, mastering it is a little more difficult. But when you do, there are some simple and affordable expansion to bring new life to this wonderful little game.
Thom Newton - Rolling Heights
I’ve been trying to stay on top of any newly arriving kickstarters of late. There are two things that have gotten in the way of that though. The first is the sheer size of one of them, looking at you, Frosthaven. The other is Rolling Heights. This kickstarter from AEG showed up in late January and has sprawled its way across my table multiple times since.
This game is a weird mix of mechanisms when you say it out loud. But it’s a city building push your luck dexterity game with elements of sort of deck building? Like I said, odd. The main event is the city board. You’ve got a modular board made up of 6 double sided parts that can be mixed and matched to set out loads of different map layouts. You’ll spend your turns placing out building plans and then trying to complete buildings out on the map. Different building types will score in different ways.
All of this is driven by the meeple rolling dexterity game though. You’ll begin each round by rolling up to 10 different meeples into your tray. Different coloured meeples will give you different things. Some will give resources; some may make buying building plans cheaper. Others allow you to use some special actions on some of your completed buildings or they may just give you a few points. If the meeples are stood up your meeples are working hard and you get a boosted version of their ability. If they are lay down they are tired and don’t do anything.
You can re-roll these meeples to try and get more resources but if you ever bust your workers go on strike and you lose half of what you have. It’s a nice push your luck with sort of fuzzy probabilities because who knows how likely it is to roll a meeple and have it land stood up? I’ve enjoyed Rolling Heights a lot as there is so much variation in the set up and available buildings.
Hannah Blacknell - Bananagrams
This month has been utterly wild for me, we got married, and so our game playing has been erratic and also skewed towards the lighter end of things. We had a few games of Sagrada which really appeal to me when I am in a highly stressed state. The colours and the puzzle soothe me. We also have the app which has made the perfect in-flight pass and play entertainment.
But the absolute hero of the month was actually something we were bought as a wedding gift - Bananagrams. As a couple we are unable to play Scrabble purely because my partner prefers to play to box out the game rather than play for fun, so this was a welcome success for us. During this game you are reworking your own personal crossword to try and use up all your letters as quickly as possible. Once someone has used all their letters they call “peel” and everyone takes a new tile, which you now need to incorporate into your crossword, rearranging as necessary. This continues until fewer tiles remain in the middle than the number of players. This is the perfect travel game as it comes in a small banana bag, and is great for outside as the tiles are water and wind proof.
Callum Price - Dungeons And Dragons
Gaming has been lacking in my household; the Dead Space Remake and other PS5 titles have taken precedence in my “get played” list. But that doesn’t mean that all my tabletopping has been stopping! Oh no, most certainly not. I’ve been rolling some dice, taking some names and roleplaying my heart out over the last few weeks. Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition is my game of the month, and what a whopper of a game system it is!
Unlike many other tabletop games and experiences, Dungeons and Dragons is fluid. An ever evolving, limitless and vast tabletop adventure that is led and controlled by a non-player known as the Dungeon Master. The players then role play as different heroes, villains or just plain ol’ adventurers within the world the Dungeon Master creates. This can be from a scripted and suggested Adventure Book, such as The Rise of Tiamat or Dungeon of the Mad Mage. These texts give a path, story, setting and scenario for the Dungeon Master to structure their adventure around. It’s never prescriptive, but gives them a world to work within and characters to utilise. But the anarchy of player choice is something any Dungeon Master can never prepare for.
Player choice and decision drives the core of any campaign. Usually players start with sensible outcomes in mind: save a village, defeat a villain, gain a victory… but as games go on, characters develop and evolve into actual beings with personality, goals and intentions. My most recent character was a dwarf barbarian to start, but is now a keen coin collector and a renown wrestler. Nobility and heroics are still his focus, but he’ll never turn down a chance to get into the ring! Moreover, players only control the direction – not the outcome. That is decided by the chaos of the dice! All combat, decisions and checks can be resolved with a D20: the most integral tool for any player. Roll well and you’ll achieve incredible feats… but roll poorly and you’ll have incredible tales to tell around the inn table.
Dungeons and Dragons is an experience everyone needs to have at least once. Roleplaying is never an easy start to gaming, but my goodness is it addictive when you get into it! There’s nothing quite as thrilling as rolling a natural 20 when checking how well you tied a knot and rolling a 1 for a life or death situation. The hilarity is endless and the escapades are limitless!
Sam Graven - Beast
Without a doubt, my GOTM is ‘Beast’ from Studio Midhall . It’s an astonishingly good combination of co-operative and competitive play, as the team of hunters work together planning their turns to take out the Beast stalking the land and generally munching its way through sheep and settlers alike. It incorporates a number of familiar mechanics such as hand-drafting, hidden movement and experience trees, without ever feeling cumbersome or impenetrable.
The card art is evocative and creepy, definitely channelling the Gloomhaven vibe without feeling derivative. High-quality meeples (boars! bears! tiny nobles with swords!) and heavy-duty cardstock make for a very satisfying product in hand and on tabletop; I really love the micro-board with screen that the Beast player gets for tracking their movement (and it has a handy reference table inside, to complete the GM vibe). Each of the 6 Beasts plays in a radically different style (I like rumbling about the board turning everything into swamps with the Hydra, for instance) and similarly the 6 Hunters have very different strengths. It makes for a huge amount of variety, and on top of the 4 scenarios in the box, there’s a wealth of additional content from the creators also, with new contracts (missions) downloadable from the site (accessed via QR code in the box if you need a new scenario RIGHT NOW!)
I always look at how my 12 year old (not great competitively if it's not Fortnite) and my 15 year old (very competitive and plays a lot of board game) gel with any game: they both love it, whether as Beast or as part of the team of Hunters - actually, they both like playing the Beast as they don't have to put up with one another! It's unusual to get a game of this weight with as strong a social aspect, and it makes for a really satisfying gameplay experience for veteran gamers also. Highly recommended!