Tabletop Games Blog - board game reviews and discussions with a personal touch

Balance in board games is one of those much-talked-about topics that keeps cropping up. Some people want games to be perfectly balanced, so that players' only advantage comes from their skill and hours of practice and graft. Others relish highly unbalanced games, where it's nigh-impossible to win, but when you do win, it feels amazing. Yet, balance in board games is much more complex and subtle than that. In this article, I...

Under the glow of the moon, the forest stalls sizzled and steamed. Ramen bowls, takoyaki, and miso soup filled the air with rich, savoury aromas. Woodland chefs scurried between stoves, each eager to cook the most delicious dishes, only to be outdone by competitors who stole their patrons right from under their noses. The question is whether you have what it takes to serve up the best culinary creations that burst with Umami by Don...

Board games are often seen as a way to bring people together. They're a social activity, even for solo gamers. When we sit down to play, we fall into familiar rhythms of turns, actions and mechanisms. We don't even need to share the same language. Playing board games is a time when gestures, shared goals, and the actions within the magic circle of the game itself act as a way for us to communicate. Board games themselves ar...

From the mist of Lake Titicaca, eight children of Inti and Mama Quilla stepped onto the high plains, their feet brushing the grass and waking the land itself. As their journey continued, the mountains claimed some of them, caves swallowed others, until only one final pair held the golden rods. By then, they had taught the first clans who had accompanied them to weave, shape clay, carve terraces into the mountainside and coax life f...

This is a guest post by Abdel Mounim Bouazzaoui from The Cardboard Crew.

Most people see board games as entertainment. Roll some dice, move some pieces, maybe argue about house rules. But I've noticed something else happening at my weekly game nights over the past few years - we're all getting better at talking to each other.

Read the full article here: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2025/11/25/the-hidden-language-of-co-op-gam...

Mist coiled between the ancient stones, whispering secrets of powers wielded by only a few. The forest waited, still and patient, as cloaked figures approached with burning torches. As they began to chant, the flickering flames stretched and twisted until fires flared in silent circles. Moving from shrine to shrine, they connected dolmens, built runestones and standing stones, and weaved their magic through leaf and root. In that s...

Over the years, I have demoed quite a lot of games at a few different locations. It all started back in 2019 at Essen Spiel, where I demoed Fog of Love to the German audience. More recently, I have been demoing for Asmodee at UK Games Expo, as well as at my local board game cafe. With every demo, I have honed my skills, learned new tricks and generally fine-tuned my approach. So in this article, I want to share my demoing method, w...

The ground trembled as the horizon flickered with violet light. Tribes gathered in small clusters, clutching relics that glowed faintly or fizzed with a strange energy. Some hoarded scraps of parchment filled with incomprehensible runes, others carried fragments of forgotten technology bolted hastily to their frames. Yet despite the looming end, laughter filled the twilight air. Every choice felt urgent, every move a gamble, but th...

Some people enjoy running their fingers along a row of books, looking for one that catches their eye. Others love wandering past shelves filled with board games, drawn to the artwork or the imaginative setting. Book lovers love the smell of paper and ink, while board gamers relish the scent of a new box. Flicking through pages or rifling through components is part of the thrill. Collections are more than mere possessions. They offe...

The land was divided, its provinces fractured by ambition and betrayal. Armies marched through rice fields, emissaries whispered in candlelit halls, and the people looked to their daimyo for guidance and protection. Every order carried the weight of loyalty and the promise of power. It was a time when each decision could tilt the balance of history, and so the samurai sent out their General Orders: Sengoku Jidai by David Thompson a...

Night had fallen over the village of Bodega Bay. Most people were at home, because they knew there were terrible creatures roaming the streets. Only a few brave heroes had ventured out into the cold, dimly lit streets to protect the inhabitants from the horrors that were lurking in the shadows. It didn't take them long to come across the first fiendish creature. As they looked upon the muddy Creature from the Black Lagoon, they...

It all began with a voyage across calm seas, as we boarded the ship and searched for a paradise of our own. From there, the path rose skyward, climbing a mountain one careful step at a time until the summit finally revealed itself above the clouds. Now the journey turns in a different direction, leaving sunlight behind and slipping beneath the surface, into the shadows of the deep. The silence is thicker here, the choices more pres...

The candlelight flickers across the damp stone walls, casting long shadows that stretch and twist. You huddle closer to the table, scanning the cards laid out like pages from a forbidden story, the musky scent of ink and paper mixing with the chill in the air. Every dice roll echoes forebodingly in the quiet room, a tiny heartbeat of suspense. Each time you put pencil to paper, you mark the fate of you and your companions. Then, al...

I was reading Dan Thurot’s most recent article, titled "Anti-Fun", when, as so often with his writing, I found myself challenged in the best possible way. Few people in board game criticism can cut to the heart of a topic like Dan can. That is why his work is so valuable and important. So, as I say, I felt challenged. His argument that the word "fun" has no real use in criticism struck me as too dismissive. To m...

Your skin is cold as you awaken in the dark. You have nothing but a flickering candle. A terrifying foreboding is constricting your throat, just like the narrow passageway is squashing your body. You know you are trapped in the tightest, most claustrophobic tunnel labyrinth imaginable. Yet, you must find keys and gates that may vanish at any moment, your only path to freedom. You must press on and escape The Night Cage by Christoph...

As board gamers, we are obsessed with size. We love sharing shelfies to show off the size of our giant board game collection. Board games that come in a giant box that could double up as a garage for a small car are appealing to us. We love giant miniatures that we could use for weight training. War games that come with thousands of chits and other little tokens are standard. So, this article obsesses over how much table space some...

The wind rustled gently through the trees. Dappled sunshine bathed the garden in a warm yellow tint, catching on the edges of the leaves and shimmering on the glass of a small bird bath. A hummingbird flitted from branch to branch, pausing briefly to inspect a cluster of flowers. Further away, a woodpecker drilled purposefully into the thick trunk of an old oak. The seasons were starting to change though. The time for migration was...

We are all so very conditioned to play board games to the end. Most games have some sort of end game trigger and a form of end game scoring. They want us to play them all the way through. Yet, when a player’s win is all but guaranteed, continuing to the end seems pointless. The enjoyment of a game often matters more than strictly following the rules. Adapting play to the situation and the group’s mood can keep board gaming fun and ...

It was like there were pixels: red ones, blue ones and black ones. There was one, two, three or four for each, sometimes none, in all sorts of combinations. You could combine them to give you five, six, seven or eight in the different colours. It was a real puzzle. You wanted to create the lowest or highest difference between the numbers in the centre and those in your hand. That difference changed over time. It was D.O.T by Chris ...