Gaming Articles, Role-Player Game Reviews, RPG Preview

Legend In The Mist: The Rustic Fantasy Role-Playing Game

Leave a comment

Truly inspired ideas in role-playing games are not rare at all, and that, perhaps, is what keeps the RPG hobby endlessly fascinating. Unlike board games, which often iterate and refine on what came before, tabletop RPGs still feel unafraid to wander and explore new territory. Each game I read I find has its own energy and unique take on the hobby. Every new book carries the promise of a different path, a different voice, a different way to tell stories together. It’s amazing that this sort of thing is common in the hobby.

Despite this almost routine ability for RPG designers and writers to surprise, when I got my first look at Legend in the Mist, I knew I was in for a treat. It had the look of something created with love and care, a personal touch, the expenditure of enormous amounts of creative energy. It may be weird to say, but I think anyone who reads a lot of RPG books as I do would probably agree that when you crack a new book open, you almost expect innovation and something original. That is rarely a problem. But whether you find something that speaks to you, that delights you, that is the real trick.

The real question is always, “Will this land with my group?”

Legend in the Mist is a new tabletop role-playing game, successfully Kickstarted in 2024 with the support of over 8,000 backers, and now standing on the threshold of its physical release. I’m a bit late to the party on this one, Legend in the Mist has been very provocatively successful and has seen some pretty heavy coverage by some of the most renowned RPG bloggers and YouTubers in the business. Ladies and Gentlemen, to whom I bow to with respect. It’s sitting pretty on the best seller list on RPG DriveThru and outselling my beloved Daggerheart, which of course begs the question. How? I mean, what is this game that is crushing it right now?

The Kick-Starter may be over, but getting your hands on it shouldn’t be too difficult. I suspect with the general fanfare with which this game has had, it will be available wherever you buy your RPG stuff before too long.

You have my attention!

I’ll be giving the game a full, detailed examination later this year, but after spending some time with it, it felt wrong to stay silent. Games like this deserve to be talked about, even if only in fragments at first. Consider this a glimpse through the trees before the forest opens up if you just happen to be late to the party, like I was.

Overview

At its heart, Legend in the Mist is driven by a modern, story-first design philosophy, but not the kind that discards structure in favor of pure improvisation. This isn’t a game that asks you to abandon mechanics and simply “feel your way forward”, like say Dungeon World or Index Card RPG, nor is it a heavier mechanic hidden behind contextualized flavor like say Dungeon Crawl Classics. Instead, it offers a carefully built framework designed to support narrative play, to guide it, and, at key moments, to challenge it.

There’s an important difference between removing mechanics and hiding them.

Legend in the Mist is very much a system. There is an engine here, one that governs risk, consequence, and change, but it hums quietly beneath the surface, woven into the fabric of the story itself. The rules don’t interrupt the narrative; they shape it. They ask hard questions at dramatic moments and demand answers that matter, not just to the plot, but to who the characters are becoming. And this is the center stage of the game, it’s not as much a game about narrative as it is about character perspective on the narrative and their response to it and that internal dialogue that asks, what would my character do? A question that is somehow more profound in Legend in the Mist because of how the system is designed (more on that in a minute).

There is no question that “art” was foremost on this publisher’s mind when making Legend In The Mist. It’s provocative, original, and inspiring, with a level of love that is hard to ignore. People say A.I. will replace people one day. When you look at work like this, all I have to say in response is “good luck with that”. You need a soul to make something like this.

Explaining exactly how the game achieves this would require a deeper dive than I want to take right now. For the moment, it’s enough to say that Legend in the Mist is less concerned with heroic spectacle and more interested in the personal legend of ordinary people, from quiet places, who step into the unknown carrying little more than their resolve.

This is, in itself, kind of an old school philosophy or approach, but while Legend in the Mist has an old school premise from a story/narrative perspective, aka, ordinary people in extraordinary situations, mechanically the game itself is very modern with a lot of modern sensibilities about “how” the story lives in the game.

That’s mouthful and a long run-on sentence, I know, but I think it will make more sense once we dive in a little deeper.

To help paint that picture, there are three core aspects of the game that are worth highlighting.

The Writing & The Art

Role-playing games have a long history of treating their books like instruction manuals. Clean. Functional. Sometimes almost clinical. The writing does its job, the rules are clearly labeled, and inspiration, if it arrives at all, is left to seep in between the margins. I guess my point is that most RPG books these days tell you how to play, but rarely bother to tell you what the game is meant to feel like once the dice hit the table. Modern games like Daggerheart and now very clearly Legend in The Mist are trying to change that, and they are doing so very successfully in my opinion.

This book is not a reference manual for how to play the game, it’s art from front to back. Even when explaining game concepts and rules, it makes it a form of artistic expression.

That clinical approach of creating reference manuals works, don’t get me wrong. But it’s never been the only way; there was a time not so long ago when RPG makers were as much writers as they were game designers. Legend in the Mist I think is bringing us back to that style of RPG design and writing.

It’s time to go off on a tangent, it’s story time!

Back in the 1990s, a small publisher called White Wolf took a very different path to book writing from what most were doing at the time, when RPGs were still very much more G than RP. Through the World of Darkness, they treated RPG books not as sterile rule references, but as artistic expressions, guided tours through mood, theme, and identity. Those books didn’t just explain a setting; they immersed you in it. They whispered tone through poetry, bled atmosphere through layout and art, and made it unmistakably clear what kind of stories they wanted you to tell. For many players, they weren’t just rulebooks; they were formative experiences, myself included. In fact, I was very lucky in my formative years to actually grow up with one of the original writers from the early era of White Wolf, so I like to think that, at the very least, I understand the desire and passion of that work, having heard about it growing up from the horse’s mouth.

Reading the opening pages of Legend in the Mist, I was immediately taken back to that era of RPG’s. To those many conversations about the books, about role-playing, and about what storytelling actually means in that context.

There is a deliberate artistic hand at work here. The writing flows with confidence and intention, guiding you gently but firmly into the world the game inhabits. It doesn’t rush to explain itself. Instead, it establishes presence first, inviting you to slow down, to listen, to feel the rhythm of the setting before asking you to engage with its mechanics. You come away with a clear understanding of what this game wants to be at your table, long before you’ve memorized a single rule.

Just because the game book is an artistic expression, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t do a good job of teaching you what the game is, how the engine works. Quite to the contrary, the opening chapters hold your hand through the core game with great examples, all tied into a story format that you effectively follow along as you learn. It’s a fantastic approach.

The effect is quietly captivating. There’s a sense of nostalgia for a game you’ve never played before, a familiarity that doesn’t come from imitation, but from shared philosophy. It builds on the feeling we inspire to have at the table in our imagined games. It was only after sitting with that feeling for a while that the connection clicked for me: this is storytelling-first design in the old, confident sense. Not apologetic. Not minimalist. Purposeful. The game itself is a story.

What Legend in the Mist does particularly well is blend teaching with tone. As the book introduces you to its setting and themes, it also begins to reveal the engine beneath the hood, the way its mechanics serve the story rather than compete with it. You’re learning how the game works almost by accident, absorbed through example and narrative momentum rather than rigid instruction. It’s a technique that feels rare today, which is odd because it’s remarkably effective.

That approach is perfectly matched by the game’s artwork. The illustrations don’t scream for attention; they invite it. They reinforce the rustic fantasy mood, grounding the game in misty hills, quiet villages, and half-forgotten paths with an almost comic book, dare I say, Saturday morning cartoon feel to it. Together, the writing and art don’t just support the rules, they carry them, ensuring that from the very first page, Legend in the Mist knows exactly who it is and what kind of stories it wants you to tell.

This game doesn’t need a sales pitch; just hand someone the book and let them read the first 5 pages. If it doesn’t grab them by then, you might want to check your pulse; you might already be dead.

Themes and Tags

At the core of any role-playing game, Legend in the Mist very much included, is the character. Not just what they can do, but who they are: how they behave, what they believe, and why they act the way they do. These are the fundamentals of a good backstory. Yet in many RPGs, those elements live mostly outside the mechanics, serving as loose guidance rather than something the game actively engages with. In fact, most RPG’s traditionally define “who your character is”, outside of the game entirely, and the game itself is responsible for explaining “what you can do”.

For example, a class of a character to some extent says something about who your character is in an abstract way, A Cleric, a Fighter etc.. but mostly the point of the class is to tell you what powers you have. Yet, oddly enough, that class as a concept ends up infiltrating on a bit of your creative power over your character’s backstory creation because now you have to incorporate that class somehow into the “who you are” part of your character.

Legend in the Mist takes a very different approach. No classes, no pigeon holding, just pure freedom.

Instead of stats and classes, character creation begins with four themes. Each theme represents a defining aspect of your hero, such as their personality, training, background, or devotion. Within each theme are several “Power” tags, short descriptive phrases that give that aspect texture and meaning. These tags might be broad and human, like “a good listener,” or deeply specific, such as a family heirloom weapon passed down from a sibling. Every theme also includes a weakness tag: a flaw, doubt, or vulnerability that can complicate your hero’s journey.

Together, these themes and tags form a living portrait of the character. They tell you who this person is, how they tend to act, and what matters to them, not in abstract terms, but in language that naturally invites story. Personality, training, and motivation aren’t just written down for flavor; they’re embedded directly into how the game is played.

The layout of a character sheet in Legend in the Mist is very different from what you might be used to in a typical RPG. You don’t have stats or a class. Everything is built around the abstract, narrative concept of themes and tags.

And that’s only the foundation.

Beyond your core themes, characters in Legend in the Mist constantly pick up story tags, temporary descriptors born from events, choices, and consequences in play. These can be positive or negative, representing things like injuries, emotional states, allies, favors owed, fleeting advantages, or dangerous complications. Alongside these are statuses, which measure the intensity of conditions affecting your character. Together, they reflect how the story is actively changing you.

What’s striking is that nearly everything in the game flows through this same language of tags. They are the connective tissue between narrative and mechanics: small pieces of story that can be leveraged for advantage, turned against you as complications, or evolve over time. The game doesn’t ask you to step outside the fiction to resolve actions; the fiction is the system.

We’ll get into the mechanical details of how tags are invoked, spent, and transformed in the full review. For now, it’s enough to say this: if a game wants to be truly story-first, and Legend in the Mist absolutely is, while still remaining a game with structure and consequence, it needs a bridge between those two goals. Themes and tags are that bridge.

They are the fuel that drives play forward. The cues players use to justify bold actions, accept meaningful consequences, and understand why the story unfolds the way it does. In Legend in the Mist, story isn’t something that happens around the rules, it’s what the rules are built from.

It’s this aspect of Legend in the Mist that defines the experience and, in a sense, is “how” the game is about the story defined in very clear and uncertain terms.

The Construction of Story

Legend in the Mist spends a surprising amount of time explaining how stories work as a principle. On the surface, that might feel unnecessary; after all, this is a role-playing game. Why pause to teach storytelling? I would argue personally that any role-playing game should assume its reader has never played a role-playing game before, but generally, I think the act of storytelling is typically built into the “how to play this game” of the book. As a story is such a fundamental part of Legend in the Mist mechanic, knowing how to play the game and how to write a good story is practically the same thing.

The answer lies in how deeply this game commits to the idea of story-first play.

In many traditional RPGs, the story is emergent. Take Dungeons & Dragons as a familiar example. You don’t need much narrative structure to begin: “We’re adventurers seeking treasure and glory, there’s a dungeon over there, let’s go”. What the story becomes is largely the result of mechanical interaction, combat rolls, spell effects, saving throws, and unexpected outcomes stacking on top of one another. The narrative grows organically from what happens at the table.

Legend in the Mist works in the opposite direction.

Here, the mechanics don’t generate story on their own. Instead, they respond to it. Without a tale taking shape, without tension, stakes, and meaningful choices, the system has very little to push against. The rules are designed to bloom only when fed drama. In that sense, story isn’t a byproduct of play; it’s the soil everything grows from.

Because of that, explaining how to construct a story isn’t optional; it’s essential. There is no hidden narrative engine quietly assembling plot from dice rolls. If you want the mechanics to engage, you must give them something to engage with. That means structure. It means buildup. It means understanding how scenes, conflict, and consequence fit together.

Good storywriting doesn’t have to be complex; in fact, Legend in the Mist kind of pushes you to write simple, more straightforward stories as a guiding principle, as the game is not so much about plot as it is about character story development. Tremendous effort is taken in the book to explain the processes of creating and narrating a story in the game.

This isn’t a flaw. It’s a deliberate design choice.

To support it, Legend in the Mist breaks storytelling down in a clear, almost academic way, more reminiscent of a high school theatre or creative writing class than a traditional RPG manual. The book walks you through narrative fundamentals: narrator exposition, quests, conflicts, scenes, and how these elements connect into a rhythm of play. Each “round” of the story introduces challenges, discoveries, twists, consequences, and resolution, all framed to ensure that player choices genuinely matter.

The goal isn’t complexity, it’s clarity, but that clarity requires a clean process, and it’s exactly what you get from the book.

By formalizing story structure, the game ensures that adventures remain dynamic and responsive. Choices aren’t just flavor; they alter the direction of the tale, reshape characters, and leave marks that don’t easily fade (in the form of story tags). The result is an evolving narrative built around player decisions, rather than a prewritten plot the players merely pass through with real consequences to the character sheet and future resolutions, motivations, and so on.

In effect, Legend in the Mist functions as a strong tutorial in how to tell stories within an RPG framework. While the techniques are presented through the lens of this specific system, many of the lessons are broadly applicable to any game that thrives on narrative play.

Veteran players may find parts of this approach almost rudimentary, and that’s very much the point. Legend in the Mist isn’t interested in sprawling epics that require flowcharts, encyclopedic NPC lists, or intricate political webs. It aims instead for clear, direct tales: journeys with emotional weight, hard choices, and consequences that can later be retold as legend.

Simple system. Simple stories.

That simplicity isn’t a limitation; it’s the design goal. Legend in the Mist is built to tell stories that are easy to grasp, easy to play, and easy to remember. Stories shaped at the table, carried away afterward, and shared like folklore. And if the game does what it sets out to do, those stories won’t just be adventures; you’ll remember them as legends.

Conclusion

Is there more to Legend in the Mist than what I’ve covered here? Oh yes, far more. This is a substantial book, clocking in at nearly 500 pages, and at first glance that might seem at odds with the relatively simple, almost understated way the game presents itself. How can something so focused and restrained take up that much space?

The answer circles back to where this article began.

While Legend in the Mist is unquestionably a story-first system, designed from the ground up to support narrative play, it is still very much an engine. A robust one. This is not a loose pass/fail framework that gestures vaguely at story and leaves everything else to player improvisation. It is a fully realized role-playing game with a carefully constructed mechanical core, one that actively facilitates storytelling through structure, consequence, and momentum. That kind of design requires rules. A lot of them. Just not the kind most players and GM’s expect out of your typical RPG.

In many RPGs, the bulk of the rules are dedicated to tactical combat, exhaustive equipment lists, spell catalogs, and scenario-driven problem-solving. By contrast, Legend in the Mist devotes much of its page count to teaching you how to plan, design, and execute stories, and then providing a system that supports that process end to end. Large portions of the book are effectively a guide for players and Narrators alike, explaining how this style of play works, why it works, and how to make it sing at the table. To truly unpack everything the game offers would require a far deeper dive than this preview allows.

Suffice it to say, the system is not “simple” in the way light RPG’s are that mean to be story-focused by getting the rules out of your way, quite to the contrary in a way, Legend in the Mist is a heavy rule system that is focused on supporting storytelling. That said, it doesn’t mean the game is hard to learn or requires a lot of memorization; that is not the case either, but you will have to study the game’s purpose and learn its intention to get the most out of it.

What I’ve outlined here barely scratches the surface, but I hope it serves its purpose: either sparking your interest, or making it very clear that this isn’t the game you’re looking for.

Which raises an important question: who is Legend in the Mist for? It’s tempting to say “everyone,” and I’m sure the creators would welcome that answer. But I think the truth is a bit more specific.

If you’re an RPG aficionado, someone who enjoys exploring the breadth of what this hobby can be, Legend in the Mist feels like a must-try entry. It taps into a lineage of narrative-focused design that’s confident, intentional, and refreshingly unapologetic. In that sense, yes, it’s for everyone who loves RPGs as a medium, not just as a game, and wants to explore something new and fresh.

More practically, though, if I were to sum it up, this is a game for the theatre kids.

If your enjoyment of role-playing games comes primarily from tactical combat, mechanical optimization, and strategic mastery, if the “game” part of RPGs is where you find your fun, this likely isn’t your system. The goal of Legend in the Mist is not to present challenging tactical puzzles, but to leave the table having told a meaningful story.

If you love games like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, or Draw Steel, games where tactical depth and mechanical systems are a core part of the appeal, you may feel like entire subsystems are simply missing here. That’s not a value judgment. It’s a recognition that Legend in the Mist commits to the story in such an all-encompassing way that it leaves little room for switching between “game mode” and “story mode.”

This game is almost entirely story mode.

For me, that commitment is what makes Legend in the Mist such an exciting discovery. I’m genuinely curious to see how it lands with my own group, who already gravitate toward narrative-heavy play and strong story-driven rulesets. I have a feeling this is a game that will thrive at our table, and one we’ll be talking about long after the dice stop rolling.

And really, that feels like the highest compliment a game built on legend can receive.

Best of List, Board Game Reviews, Gaming Articles

Top 20 Boardgames Of All Time 2025 Edition

Leave a comment

It’s been a little over a year since I last put this list together, which in board game time feels like forever. New games hit the table, old favorites get dusted off (or sometimes left to gather dust), and my tastes inevitably shift around. Regardless, its time for an update!

Just to be clear, this isn’t a “definitive best board games of all time” as some sort of objective super truth. Think of it more like a snapshot of where of one gamer’s favorites, right now! Everyone loves a good list, so let’s get into it!

If you’re curious, you can check out last year’s list to see what’s changed, what’s dropped off, and what’s managed to hang on.

20. War Of The Ring

Marching triumphantly back onto the list is War of the Ring, the gloriously overstuffed epic that lets you replay the entire The Lord of the Rings saga on your tabletop. One player leads the scrappy Free Peoples, the other unleashes the Shadow Armies, and what follows is an asymmetrical slugfest for the soul of Middle-earth. If theme were lembas bread, this game would keep you full for weeks. It’s basically Tolkien in a box, minus the singing (thankfully).

That said, this is not a casual weeknight affair. War of the Ring is long, chunky, and rules-heavy, with a learning curve steep enough to make even Gandalf sigh and ask for the rulebook. If you don’t play it regularly, expect a fair bit of page-flipping and “wait, how does sieging work again?” moments. For me, that means it lives on the shelf more than the table, but when it does hit the table, it’s pure wizardry.

I actually managed to get a game in this year, and wow, every dramatic dice roll, desperate last stand, and nail-biting corruption check reminded me exactly why this game is legendary. That single play was more than enough to earn its way back onto the list.

Fun fact: I reviewed this game way back in 2015. The review predates my scoring system, my current writing style, and possibly my dignity. It makes me cringe a little, but it’s still out there if you’re in the mood for a nostalgic (and mildly painful) trip down memory lane.

19. Tapestry

Holding firm at number 19 is Tapestry, and honestly? It’s still here for exactly the same reasons as last year, no drama, no surprise plot twists, just consistent excellence.

It’s often billed as a civilization-building game, but in practice, it feels much more like a gloriously thinky race. Every turn is about timing, efficiency, and wringing maximum value out of your actions like you’re trying to get the last drop of toothpaste from the tube. It’s very much a Euro at heart, with players mostly fussing over their own tableaus, but there is more interaction here than your average “everyone quietly solves their own puzzle” affair.

And wow, is it pretty. The production is pure eye candy: chunky components, satisfying boards, and those minis, especially if you snagged the Kickstarter version, are absolute table magnets. There’s also a small mountain of expansions if you decide you want more Tapestry in your life. Bonus points for being playable online for free on Board Game Arena, which makes it dangerously easy to squeeze in “just one more game.”

One of Tapestry’s greatest strengths is how approachable it is. The rules are easy to teach, but the strategic depth really opens up over repeated plays. The downside? Civilization balance can be a little… let’s call it enthusiastically uneven. Once you know the game, certain civs definitely start to feel like they’re playing on easy mode. It’s not broken, just a bit lopsided in a way experienced players will notice.

Even so, Tapestry remains one of my go-to recommendations for anyone who loves a smart Euro with a focus on efficiency, long-term planning, and strong table presence. For me, it’s a rock-solid collection staple, and a game I’m always happy to see suggested.

18. Western Empires

Next up is Western Empires, and… okay, full honesty time: I almost don’t know why this game is still on my list. I basically never play it in person (even though I do own it), it’s been nearly 30 years since the last time, what was back in the day called Advanced Civilization, hit the table. You can play it online, and occasionally I do, but the online games take so long they feel like a mild lifestyle commitment. And yet, somehow, my gut refuses to let it go. Western Empires is such a stone-cold legend that leaving it off would feel like rewriting history. And history, as this game loves to remind you, is already cruel enough.

This is the purest form of an event game. It supports up to nine players, and if you’re feeling truly unhinged, you can combine it with Eastern Empires to create Mega-Civilization, a glorious 18-player monster. Playtime? A casual 12–18 hours. Yes. Hours. Bring snacks. And backup snacks.

Each player guides an ancient civilization across thousands of years, watching it rise, collapse, and somehow stagger onward anyway. On paper, it’s part area control and part economic trading, but in reality, it’s more of a historical survival simulator. Disasters strike. Wars explode. Calamities ruin your perfectly sensible plans. Eventually, you stop feeling like the brilliant architect of an empire and start feeling like a stressed-out crisis manager just trying to keep civilization from falling apart this turn.

But… that’s the magic. Western Empires isn’t just a game; it’s an experience, and a completely unique one at that. There’s nothing else quite like it in the entire board gaming hobby. It’s big, messy, demanding, and slightly ridiculous… and for that reason alone, it absolutely earns its place on this list.

17. Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan

Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan quietly slides down the list this year, and not because it did anything wrong. This one is a victim of circumstance, not quality. It’s a strictly two-player affair, and right now I don’t have a reliably available opponent who’s eager to regularly reenact feudal Japanese power struggles. As a result, poor Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan sits on the shelf, unfairly punished for demanding exactly one dedicated rival instead of a whole crowd.

Which is a shame, because this game is excellent. If you’ve ever been curious about block wargames and wanted a perfect on-ramp, this might be the gold standard. It delivers real depth without drowning you in rules, elegance without stripping away meaningful decisions, and replayability that gently rewards repeat plays instead of aggressively demanding them.

It’s fast, approachable, and refreshingly easy to teach. Sekigahara is one of those rare games you can put in front of almost anyone and be confidently playing in no time. The blocks are satisfyingly chunky, the design is clean and purposeful, and the rules are so clearly written that ambiguity barely even attempts to sneak in. Seriously, this rulebook deserves a polite bow of respect.

While writing this, I keep asking myself why it doesn’t hit the table more often. The theme is strong, the design is razor-sharp, and the experience is consistently tense and rewarding. Sometimes, the greatest enemy of a great board game isn’t flawed mechanics or bad balance; it’s just the cruel logistics of finding the right person willing to sit across the table and scheme with you. Oh, and life… life in general gets in the way of boardgaming.

16. Syncanite Foundation

The new kid on the block, and one I admit I’m a little hesitant to crown so early. Its place on this list feels… provisional. The future is uncertain. That said, good luck prying this game out of my hands right now, because I am completely infatuated. I would argue almost every time I do this list there is a game on it I just recently discovered and frankly not all of them make it to the next list, but for now….its my list people, I do what I want!

Syncanite Foundation is a four-player political slugfest and one of the most unique board game experiences I’ve had in a while. It throws conventional design sensibilities out the window, offering a dizzying array of victory conditions, an unapologetically harsh tone, and a generous helping of “take-that” gameplay. The mechanics themselves evolve as the players do, shifting the ground beneath your feet depending on the choices made at the table. Comfort is not on the menu.

I think it’s a great game, but even if you don’t, any true board game aficionado will find the experience fascinating a the very least. It’s bold, strange, and wildly experimental. In a hobby that sometimes feels a bit too safe and standardized, Syncanite Foundation is a sharp left turn into uncharted territory. If you have any appreciation for originality, this is one you simply have to experience.

It doesn’t hurt that the game is absolutely gorgeous once it hits the table. The presentation alone makes it an easy sell, dripping with visual appeal. While the rulebook could definitely use a bit more love, this is not a light game by any stretch, once you push past the learning curve, what awaits is something genuinely unlike anything else out there.

In my book, it has earned its spot here. While I can’t promise it will still be standing years from now, I can say this: at the moment, it’s the game I want to play!

15. Through The Ages: A New Story Of Civilization

It’s been a very long and happy love affair, but Through the Ages takes a gentle step down the list, not because it’s stumbled, but because it’s simply been lived with. Think of this less as a fall from grace and more as a well-earned semi-retirement, complete with a gold watch and thunderous applause.

At this point, I’ve logged well over 100 games across both physical and digital tables, and it remains one of the most fascinating designs in my collection. I’m always happy to play it, but truth be told, the genre it helped define has grown crowded. With so many newer civilization-building games vying for attention, my enthusiasm naturally leans toward fresh experiences rather than revisiting something I know quite literally inside and out.

That said, if you’ve somehow missed this one, you’re in for an absolute treat. Through the Ages is a towering achievement in civilization gaming, the benchmark, the measuring stick, the game by which all others in the genre are judged. Few titles capture the sweep of history with such mechanical precision and strategic depth.

An expansion released a few years back does breathe some new life into the system, but familiarity has a way of revealing cracks over time. One of the biggest lingering issues is player count. While officially a 2–4 player game, anything beyond two can stretch into an epic, and not always the good kind. Add even a hint of analysis paralysis and you’re staring down a six- or seven-hour session, which is simply too long for what is, ultimately, a regular game night and not a special event.

Downtime is the real culprit here. Turns can take ages, interaction during those stretches is minimal, and the pacing can feel glacial. For that reason, I strongly recommend the digital version on Steam, which dramatically smooths the experience and trims away much of the friction. There’s also a free version on Board Game Arena, not quite as polished, but still far preferable to trudging through a full in-person session.

As a two-player experience, it’s solid. At three players, it truly shines, but everyone needs to be experienced. In a 4-player game, you’re going to have time to do your taxes between turns. Either way, Through the Ages remains a masterpiece, just one I now admire slightly more from a comfortable distance and less often.

14. Dune Imperium

I love the Dune universe. No, scratch that, I adore it. It’s one of my all-time favorite science-fiction settings, standing shoulder to shoulder with giants like Star Wars and Star Trek. The politics, the mysticism, the sand, chef’s kiss.

As a board game, however, Dune: Imperium doesn’t really demand that love from you. In fact, it barely asks for familiarity with Dune at all. At its heart, this is a worker placement and card-management game, and a good one that could work with pretty much any theme with factions in it; the connection to the setting often feels more cosmetic than essential. I find this to be generally true of all worker placement games, so it could just be me, but worker placement games, this one included, simply don’t evoke theme for me.

As it slides down the list, that disconnect is the primary reason. I want a great Dune game, and while this is undeniably a great game, it doesn’t quite deliver a truly great Dune experience, if that distinction makes sense. The mechanics hum along beautifully, but they rarely evoke the drama, tension, or thematic weight that defines the universe. It’s mostly just an excellent worker placement game, one of the best in fact according to me.

I admire the design, I think it’s genuinely brilliant. But I find myself playing it less and less, largely because worker placement as a genre has started to wear thin for me. Looking at this list as a whole, there are very few pure worker placement games left standing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this one eventually drifts off my radar entirely before too long.

Still, context matters. If I am going to play a worker placement game, this is absolutely the one I’d choose. The blend of hand-building, measured conflict, solid pacing, and meaningful interaction elevates it well above most of its peers. Even as my tastes shift, Dune: Imperium remains a standout, just not quite the sandworm-sized experience my love for the universe keeps hoping for.

13. Star Wars Unlimited

This one’s a little tricky to explain, considering it debuted at number five on last year’s list, but this isn’t a fall from grace so much as a game finding its permanent residence. Infatuation is a short-term condition. Eventually, games settle into your regular rotation, and that’s exactly where Star Wars Unlimited has landed.

The truth is, I haven’t kept up with the latest releases, not due to a lack of interest, but because collectible card games are expensive. A single booster box can cost as much as two full board games, and at a certain point, the expanding card pool starts delivering diminishing returns. More options don’t always translate into a meaningfully better experience.

I already have a frankly irresponsible number of cards. They’re fantastic. I love them. I will keep them forever. I will happily play Star Wars Unlimited anytime, anywhere, with zero complaints. What I won’t be doing is aggressively chasing future releases, because I just don’t see the benefit anymore.

It’s a bit like buying the ninth expansion for a game you already love. At some point, you have to ask yourself: do I really need more of this, or would I rather explore something new? What is the limit?

For me, the answer is three. Three expansions. That’s my limit. I bought the first three sets, had a great time, and now I’m content. I can build a dozen decks without breaking a sweat, and I don’t feel even slightly under-served for options.

Will I cycle back into heavier play at some point? Almost certainly. But for now, this is a game I enjoy comfortably, not obsessively, and there’s something very healthy about that.

All that said: great game, genuinely love it, and it absolutely earned its place on this list. I don’t see it going anywhere anytime soon, just no longer screaming for my wallet’s attention like it used to.

12. Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars is one of those games that never truly leaves, it just waits patiently until it’s time to return. I go through phases where I play it obsessively, largely thanks to its excellent digital implementation, and every time I do, I’m reminded just how absurdly versatile it is. It’s fantastic for competitive play, endlessly accommodating in how you approach it, and, most importantly, it has never “broken” for me no matter how often I revisit it.

It rises on the list this year, a fluctuation that feels entirely natural for a game that’s permanently embedded in my rotation. Some titles come and go. Terraforming Mars simply orbits.

The game is exceptionally well supported: meaningful expansions, strong digital options, and a healthy, engaged community all help keep it feeling alive. Of course, none of that would matter if the core design weren’t rock-solid, and it absolutely is. Deep, rewarding, and genuinely strategic, this is a game that consistently rewards planning over luck. Despite the presence of card drafting, I’d argue there’s remarkably little randomness here; success is earned far more often than it’s stumbled into.

What really sets it apart is the sheer breadth of viable strategies. There isn’t just one path to victory; there are dozens. The strategic well is so deep that even after nearly fifty plays last year alone, I still actively want to get it back on the table. That’s a rare quality.

I named this my Game of the Year back in 2016, and nearly a decade later, it’s still part of my regular gaming life. Very few games can claim that kind of staying power. Fewer still can do it without feeling stale. Terraforming Mars just keeps on terraforming, slowly, methodically, and apparently forever.

11. Hansa Teutonica

I honestly can’t fully explain this one. I don’t even own it, and I probably play it once a year at most, so how does this unassuming cube-pusher keep finding its way onto the list?

The simplest answer is this: every single time I sit down to play it, I’m immediately struck by the same thought, why on earth am I not playing this all the time? There are plenty of games on this list that I actively obsess over, many of them ranked lower, and yet somehow this one keeps quietly, stubbornly inching its way upward year after year.

What sets it apart is the interaction. It’s just a little sharp around the edges. Yes, it’s a victory-point-salad, cube-pushing Euro, but it carries a kind of tactical brilliance that doesn’t rely on the genre’s most overused crutches like role selection or worker placement. It feels smart without feeling scripted. Honestly, if Great Western Trail didn’t exist, this would probably be my favorite Euro game outright.

It sticks the landing in so many ways, and its approachability alone earns it a place here. I’ve played a truly irresponsible number of Euro-style resource management games, there are far too many of them, but this one stands out as something special in a very crowded field.

I think a lot of that comes from how it stretches player interaction. Despite its clear lineage in classic German Euro design, it never feels like a quiet multiplayer spreadsheet. You’re not just optimizing in parallel, you’re actively competing with the people around the table, which is rarely the case in Euro games, and that tension elevates the entire experience.

In short: elegant, interactive, and quietly brilliant.

Great design.

10. Great Western Trail

Kicking off the bottom of the top ten is the great Euro love of my life: Great Western Trail. And what a sordid history we’ve had together. I bought it, bounced off it hard, gave it another chance, kind of liked it… and then, somewhere along the way, it quietly became indispensable. Fast forward nearly ten years, and I genuinely can’t think of a single month in the last five years where I didn’t play it at least once.

It’s a permanent fixture in my rotation on Board Game Arena, where I’ve logged over 100+ games digitally, and that doesn’t even count the physical table time.

Why? Honestly… I couldn’t tell you. There’s just something deeply satisfying about this game loop. Card collection, victory point pressure, constant player interaction, and a dizzying array of viable strategies all intertwine to create game states that feel fresh, tense, and mentally stimulating every single time. It scratches an itch I didn’t know I had until it refused to stop scratching back.

What really seals it for me is how original it feels within the Euro space. I struggle to meaningfully compare it to anything else, and that’s saying a lot in a genre where déjà vu is practically a feature. When you play Great Western Trail, it only feels familiar because you’ve played Great Western Trail before, not because it reminds you of three other games stitched together.

I’ll also admit something slightly embarrassing but completely honest: I think I love this game in part because I’m pretty good at it. I just get it. And being good at this game isn’t easy. Not because it’s overly complicated, but because it’s packed with subtle nuance that takes time to internalize. Even once you do, there’s no way to “solve” it, no dominant strategy, no auto-win formula. It remains fiercely competitive no matter how experienced the table is.

I love it. No qualifiers, no caveats.

Without question, it’s my favorite Euro game.

9. Warhammer 40k 10th Edition

Has something gone terribly wrong with this list? What is a miniature game doing among the best board games of all time?

Fair question, and yes, this one needs an explanation.

At some point, trying to rigidly separate board games, card games, miniature games, and everything in between just became exhausting. I’m a tabletop gamer, full stop, and this list has quietly evolved into my favorite tabletop experiences rather than a taxonomy exercise. If you look far enough back, you’ll see miniature games have appeared here before, Star Wars: X-Wing and Star Wars: Armada both had their time in the spotlight during the 2010s. So this isn’t unprecedented… just mildly controversial.

That brings us to the obvious follow-up question: of all the miniature games I could have chosen, why Warhammer 40,000?

Because it’s been part of my life, on and off, for nearly forty years. This was one of my earliest gaming touchstones, right alongside Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. Even during periods when I wasn’t actively playing, its absence from this list always felt… wrong.

In 2025, however, I came back to it in a big way. I played a lot, started a brand-new army, Tyranids, and spent frankly ungodly amounts of time painting tiny space monsters with more care than most adult responsibilities deserve.

Now, let’s be clear: I’m not convinced Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition is a great design. But I am convinced it’s a great experience. And when you combine the gameplay with the hobby aspect, the spectacle of a fully painted army on the table, and the sheer narrative excess of the setting, it earns its place here.

I love the universe; there’s usually a 40k novel sitting on my nightstand, and while the hobby is outrageously expensive (only a fool would enter it without hesitation), the reality is that it’s given me decades of incredible memories. I regret none of it.

It does require a measured approach. You need a sense of humor at the table, discipline with your wallet, and a willingness to manage your enthusiasm rather than surrender to it completely. But approached with the right mindset, Warhammer 40,000 is an unmatched blend of game, hobby, and spectacle.

For that alone, it deserves a spot on this list.

8. Paths Of Glory

Alright, now we’re truly getting into the weeds.

Unlike most genres of gaming, I’m a relative newcomer to historical wargames. My first real exposure came through a wonderful title called B-17 Flying Fortress Leader, but Paths of Glory was easily my most ambitious leap into the deep end.

And it paid off, because I absolutely adore this game.

This thematically rich, card-driven masterpiece spans the entirety of the First World War, capturing not just the scope of the conflict but its drama. Every card, every decision, every front feels weighted with historical consequence, making the experience as narratively powerful as it is strategically demanding.

There’s a significant amount of “chrome” here, using the term correctly, I hope, and for someone not raised on historical wargames, the rules were genuinely challenging at first. But once the core systems click and you begin to engage with the deeper strategic and tactical layers, you discover something truly special. This is a level of tabletop gaming depth that few genres can offer, and even within historical wargames, Paths of Glory stands tall.

It’s also a brutally difficult game to win, especially when you’re a late bloomer facing seasoned veterans. But one of the great joys of this space is the community itself. There’s a calm, thoughtful, almost scholarly atmosphere to historical wargaming, a patience and maturity that makes learning, losing, and improving feel deeply rewarding rather than frustrating.

Over the past year, I’ve made a real effort to learn this game properly. Its nuances, its long-term planning, its subtle interplay of risk and restraint. I’m still far from graduating beyond novice status, but with every play I can feel myself improving incrementally and meaningfully, and that alone is incredibly satisfying.

This is not a game I recommend casually. If you’re merely curious about historical wargames, there are far better entry points. Paths of Glory is a graduation, a title you arrive at once you’re ready for something truly heavy, demanding, and profound.

From front to back, it is brilliant.

7. Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul

There’s no question that card-driven influence-control games, niche though they may be, are among my favorite two-player experiences. I own quite a few, and more than one appears on this list, but Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul has enjoyed a recent resurgence for me. In fact, I effectively rediscovered it, and doing so left me wondering how on earth this game ever fell off the list in the first place.

For the uninitiated, this genre, made famous by Twilight Struggle, is a form of area control built around multi-use cards. The core idea is simple, but it has been explored through many fascinating variations in games like Washington’s War, Successors, Hannibal & Hamilcar, and my beloved Imperial Struggle.

Caesar: Rome vs. Gaul earns its spot here for one very specific and very important reason: it’s far more approachable than most of its peers. A common hurdle in this genre is deck knowledge. In many card-driven games, knowing what cards might appear is a critical strategic skill. Until you’ve internalized that information, you’re essentially learning by losing, often repeatedly. Twilight Struggle is infamous for this, and it’s why newcomers can spend a long time getting comfortably trounced before things start to click.

Caesar largely sidesteps that problem. The cards are straightforward, intuitive, and less about surprise timing and more about responding to the evolving board state. As a result, I can teach this game quickly and have a new player competing meaningfully almost immediately. That alone makes it an easy and appealing choice to pull off the shelf.

Beyond accessibility, I genuinely love how it handles its history. The game captures the Roman conquest of Gaul with clarity and flavor, without burying the player under a pile of academic detail. It feels like a proper member of the historical wargaming family, just one that’s welcoming, lean, and refreshingly light on ceremony.

It’s challenging, endlessly replayable, and remarkably easy to get into.

I love it, and it absolutely belongs on this list. It’s also easy to recommend to just about anyone interested in the genre, though I would probably argue for Washington’s War if this is your first segway into the genre; that’s even more approachable and arguably a candidate for this top 20 list, as it too is a fantastic game.

6. Old School Dungeons and Dragons

Alright, this one’s less a single game and more a category, and I’m fully aware that this alone is going to rub a few people the wrong way. The phrase “old school D&D” is hotly debated territory, guarded by a passionate community that often treats it less like a genre and more like a hereditary title. Who gets to claim it, define it, or pass it on is… contentious, to say the least.

For me, old school D&D comfortably includes Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, as well as B/X-style descendants like Old School Essentials (and by extension BECMI). I also include some more modern interpretations that clearly carry the same spirit, Dolmenwood, and yes, I’ll even dare to say Daggerheart.

But ultimately, I don’t recognize old school play by rulebooks or edition numbers, I recognize it by approach.

Old school D&D is a reactive storytelling system. Worlds are invented on the fly. Characters emerge through play rather than pre-written arcs. The game doesn’t care about your narrative aspirations, and the dice certainly don’t care about your feelings. Triumph feels earned because failure is real, frequent, and often hilarious. The mechanics don’t bend to accommodate you, they push back. When you win, there is a satisfaction to it because you know the odds were against you and only through cleverness can you succeed.

I love adventure games that understand when to challenge me, when to obstruct me, and when to simply get out of my way. Most modern RPGs, in my experience, don’t capture that balance. With a few rare exceptions, many contemporary designs lean hard into mechanical power fantasies, highly curated tactical experiences where success is expected, survivability is guaranteed because balance favors the player, and failure is politely escorted out the back door. I find that… dull.

Even stretching the definition further, there are non-fantasy games that tap into the same ethos. Titles like Vampire: The Masquerade, Alternity, and classics like Shadowrun all scratch that same itch: player-driven stories, dangerous worlds, and systems that don’t promise fairness.

Put plainly: I don’t love the direction modern role-playing has taken. I don’t think most modern RPGs are as much fun as these older designs, and I genuinely believe that, archaic mechanics and all, old school games still represent the most compelling form of role-playing available.

They don’t protect you.
They don’t flatter you.
They let you play.
and most importantly, they allow stories to emerge

5. Empire Of The Sun

If Paths of Glory is a graduation in the world of historical wargames, then Empire of the Sun is a doctorate. This is, without question, the most complex, most demanding, and deepest game I have ever played. It doesn’t depict the Pacific War, it is the Pacific War, rendered in exhaustive operational detail and somehow compressed into a single box.

This is the ultimate challenge. It is the most complex ruleset I have ever learned, and I quite literally need to play it two or three times a year just to keep the rules from evaporating out of my brain entirely. Miss a year, and you’re relearning it from scratch.

That warning label firmly in place, Empire of the Sun is also one of my absolute favorite lifestyle games, an endeavor rather than a pastime, and I have loved every frustrating minute of it. Rules layered atop rules, exceptions piled onto exceptions, and a heroic amount of linguistic gymnastics all combine to create an absurdly steep learning curve. But the payoff is extraordinary: one of the most detailed, authentic, and strategically rich tabletop experiences ever created.

I typically manage two full games per year, each taking roughly two months to complete. It’s a massive commitment. That said, if you can manage it, playing the game in a single sitting is the best way to experience it. Expect an extremely long night. Even with two experienced players, you’re looking at roughly six hours. And yes, it’s worth every single minute.

Despite its scale, the game is intensely interactive. The “you go, I go” structure means constant engagement, and because you’re executing the Pacific War at an operational level, there are no small decisions. Every move is a major operation. Every action reshapes the strategic landscape in meaningful ways.

This is not a game you casually try.
It’s not even a game you learn easily.

But if you commit to it, Empire of the Sun rewards you with an experience few games, of any genre, can match.

One of the best games ever made.

4. Twilight Imperium

This game has been on my best-of list since before I was even keeping one, and for me personally, there’s no ambiguity here: Twilight Imperium is one of the best tabletop games ever made.

That statement, however, comes with a lot of caveats when it comes to recommending it. While this game speaks directly to my gaming soul, it is absolutely, unequivocally not for everyone. In fact, I’d argue it’s niche enough that it’s probably not for most people.

So who is it for?

Twilight Imperium is an epic 4X event game for three to six players that takes anywhere from five to eight hours to play. It’s complex, unapologetically dense, and built around a deep well of strategic and tactical decision-making. It doesn’t streamline itself for convenience, and it doesn’t soften its edges to widen its appeal, because it is exactly what it intends to be.

That intentionality is important. When I read critical reviews of Twilight Imperium, the most common complaints are almost always about features that were deliberately designed into the game. Those criticisms usually say more about mismatched expectations than about the game itself.

For the right group, Twilight Imperium is magnificent. It’s a gorgeous, sprawling science-fiction experience that lets you guide an interstellar civilization through diplomacy, warfare, politics, and ambition in a fiercely competitive 4X environment. The variability is staggering. You could play this game a hundred times and never have the same experience twice. When it works, it’s pure joy, when it doesn’t, it’s hell on earth.

To find that joy, you need the right people. Finding five or six like-minded players who want to commit an entire day to this kind of experience is hard. In my immediate orbit, that group simply doesn’t exist, which means the game spends far too much time gathering dust, an unfortunate fate for something this special.

There is, however, hope on the horizon. A digital version was announced last year for Steam, and honestly, there may be no game in existence more in need of a proper digital adaptation than Twilight Imperium. I have high hopes that it will finally connect fans across distance, scheduling conflicts, and adulthood, and that I’ll soon find myself knee-deep in glorious sci-fi chaos once again.

I can’t wait.

I love this game.

3. Lord of the Rings: The Living Card Game

The Lord of the Rings: The Living Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games is my favorite card game ever made, but probably not for the reasons you’d expect.

I play it almost exclusively solo. While it’s an excellent game at any player count (and particularly strong at two), I rarely make an effort to get it to the table that way. Instead, this is my daily ritual. I set it up on a small gaming table in my office and run a game or two each day. I’ve kept that routine for years now. Occasionally, I take breaks, but for the most part, I’ve been happily cycling through its overwhelming library of expansions again and again, and somehow it never gets old.

That’s the magic of it. I never tire of this game. It offers a fully realized, deeply thematic board gaming experience whenever I want it, without scheduling, negotiation, or compromise. I enjoy the solitude, but even more than that, I love the puzzles. This game is brutally difficult, demanding precise deck construction, careful play, and long-term planning. No matter how many years I’ve invested in it, it never truly gets easier; it just invites you to fail more intelligently.

At this point, I own nearly everything ever released for the game, which means the collecting phase of the hobby is mercifully behind me. That said, it’s worth acknowledging that living card games are not cheap, and I’m always hesitant to recommend it casually for that reason alone.

But if you love The Lord of the Rings, and if you love card games, especially deep deck-building experiences, there is simply nothing else like this. Nothing even comes close.

This is one of the most challenging, elaborate, and rewarding card games I’ve ever played. I adore it, and it earns its place on this list with grace, confidence, and an absurdly large stack of cards.

2. Imperial Struggle

Imperial Struggle is a difficult game to explain, and that, more than anything else, is why it remains such a tough sell and a relative unknown in the wider board game sphere.

At its core, it explores the century-long global rivalry between Britain and France, rendered in an abstracted but highly coherent way that ties just enough mechanical logic to historical reality for everything to make sense. It’s also a member of the card-driven influence-control genre. Either of those elements alone can already be a hurdle for many players. Together, they create a niche within a niche.

Then there’s the learning curve. Imperial Struggle, I would not say is unforgiving to new players, but it’s fairly demanding. Not so much in rules comprehension (though still there is some complexity), but definitely in strategic depth and understanding the core principles behind winning. It’s entirely possible, easy, even, to lose the game by the second round if you misstep early. That kind of punishment, paired with a fair amount of rules overhead, makes it a game that’s hard to table and even harder to recommend casually.

And yet.

If you give it a real chance, if you power through those first few games and reach the inevitable light-bulb moment, a remarkable strategic landscape opens up. The game suddenly reveals an astonishing number of viable paths, long-term plans, and tactical pivots. It’s like stumbling onto an obscure novel series you’ve never heard of and realizing, halfway through the first book, that it’s quietly brilliant. That’s what discovering Imperial Struggle feels like.

It’s not an easy journey, and having a good teacher helps enormously; this is not a game that gently teaches itself. But I genuinely can’t think of another game more worthy of the effort.

Every time I play, all I want to do is reset the board and go again. I want to try that strategy instead. Or this opening. Or see what happens if I lean harder into a card I previously dismissed as useless. And without fail, cards or systems I once questioned eventually reveal their purpose. A few games later, it clicks: oh, that’s how this works. The discovery never stops.

What makes this even more impressive is how tight the design space actually is. There aren’t endless systems layered on top of each other, just a remarkably robust framework that takes many, many plays to fully internalize and master, but rewards you for doing so.

Importantly, while the learning curve can be called “moderately heavy”, the game itself is logical. Hidden information is limited, and it doesn’t lean nearly as hard on encyclopedic card knowledge as some of its genre cousins, including Twilight Struggle. The strategic dynamics are deep, but they’re also coherent.

This matters. When you lose your first game of Twilight Struggle, you often don’t even understand why until you’ve lost ten more and the systems finally come into focus. In Imperial Struggle, the reason for your loss is painfully obvious, even in game one. The board state tells a clear story, and improvement comes immediately. It’s an intelligent game, but it never makes you feel stupid.

There’s no question that this is my favorite game in the card-driven influence-control genre. And honestly, it goes beyond that, it’s very close to being one of my favorite games of all time.

But, as Yoda famously said:

“No… there is another.”

1. War Room

Ever since the day I received War Room, as a birthday gift, the tradition of playing it once per year, on my birthday, has become one of my most cherished gaming rituals. It’s not just a game day; it’s an event. One I look forward to all year.

I’ve sung the praises of War Room on this blog for years, and its position at number one has never been in doubt. Not once. That hasn’t changed.

What has changed is my perspective. After enough plays, the glow of novelty fades and what remains is something far more valuable: understanding. At this point, War Room is a game I know, and know well. I wouldn’t change a single word of the review I wrote back in 2019, but time and experience have added some clarity worth sharing.

First and foremost: War Room is undeniably random. That’s not exactly a revelation, you roll handfuls of dice to resolve combat, but the deeper randomness lies in timing. In War Room, when something happens is often just as important, if not more so, than what happens.

Take the opening round. Whether Japan acts first, or whether the U.S. and Britain do, can define the entire shape of the war from that moment forward. It’s arguably the single most impactful moment in the game, and it hinges on an oil-bidding contest in round one. The same is true between Russia, Germany and Britain in Europe. That decision doesn’t determine who wins or loses outright, but it absolutely dictates the next two to four rounds of the war, what survives, what burns, who the aggressor gets to be and how starved or flush each nation is with resources during the most critical opening moments.

Bidding is usually very close, so often, even with bidding, the turn order is decided randomly due to ties.

You can debate the “correct” strategy endlessly, and people do, but that’s part of the joy. The point is that chance plays an enormous role throughout the game. Yes, you can mitigate it through deterministic choices, but control always comes at a cost. The more certainty you demand, the more resources you burn. That tension, do you invest, or do you gamble? is at the heart of War Room.

And it’s both the game’s brilliance and, perhaps, its greatest flaw.

Because War Room is brutally unforgiving. Despite its enormous scope, you actually make far fewer decisions than you might expect. Each nation gets six moves per round. Most games end in three to five rounds. Over a twelve-hour session, you’ll make roughly eighteen to thirty truly meaningful decisions, and those decisions will define everything.

Here’s the paradox: War Room wants repeated plays. It begs for mastery. It’s an event game that secretly longs to be a lifestyle game. But its size and length make that nearly impossible. If you’re lucky, you’ll get one game per year. Maybe two if the stars align. You never quite get enough repetitions to fully explore its strategic depth.

It took me five years, five plays, to even begin forming basic conclusions about what works and what doesn’t. That’s a glacial pace by any standard. And so, inevitably, players fall back on the one thing the game always allows: luck. Let the dice decide. Hope for the best.

That doesn’t make War Room bad. Not even close. It simply means that most games are played closer to high-stakes gambling than to pure strategic optimization, despite the fact that the system is absolutely capable of supporting that deeper play.

And yet… I love it.

None of this diminishes War Room in my eyes. If anything, it makes me wish I could play it more. I wish I had the time to truly live inside its systems, to explore every nuance and edge case it offers. My only real regret is that this game didn’t exist when I was fifteen years old, with endless weekends and nothing but time.

Fifteen-year-old me would have played the absolute hell out of this game.

So yes, without hesitation, without qualifiers:

The best game ever made. Period.

Board Game Reviews, Gaming Articles

Review: Syncanite Foundation by Syncanite Games 2025

Leave a comment

In the world of board gaming, true originality is exceedingly rare. Hundreds, if not thousands, of games hit the market every year, and more often than not, I can glance at a box and say something like, “Ah yes, this is basically X, but with a dash of Y and a sprinkle of Z.”

That probably makes me sound a little jaded, and maybe I am, but I don’t mean that as a criticism. Games building on other games is how this hobby evolves. Iteration is healthy. Innovation is to be commended, but originality is something else entirely. Genuine white elephants don’t come along very often.

Syncanite Foundation is one of those rare beasts.

This is a game I struggle to describe through comparison, because it doesn’t slot neatly into anything else I know. It doesn’t borrow a familiar skeleton and dress it up differently. It’s not some evolution of existing mechanics that I recognize. It’s neither European nor American, despite having a German designer. It’s a game that marches to the beat of a drummer I have yet to meet, and possibly doesn’t care if we can keep up.

In fact, even on the Kickstarter site, the publisher struggles to mention some of the games you might relate to this one, listing Root, Hegemony, and Twilight Imperium, but that is a wild stretch at best. The only thing this game has in common with those games is that all three, like Syncanite Foundation, are white elephants. Rare, unique games that really don’t conform to gaming norms any of us are familiar with. Notably, all three of those games can be described as “hard to teach” and “hard to grasp”, perhaps some might even call them “complex”, all sentiments I think you will find Syncanite Foundation has in common.

That’s why my experience with the game, for better or worse, was consistently exciting, curious, and engaging… while also, at times, frustrating and confusing. Exploring a game that feels untethered from the rest of the hobby gives it a strange kind of edge. Expectations bend. Assumptions break. You’re forced to recalibrate how you think about play, progress, and even success.

I’ve been obsessing over this game for a while, turning it over in my head, trying to figure out how to talk about it. Even writing this introduction proved more difficult than expected.

Syncanite Foundation is complex, not just because the rules have weight, because they do, but because of how its systems collide and stretch the game beyond basic explanations of the rules. Player actions don’t simply advance the game; they reshape it. Decisions ripple outward, altering mechanical interactions and sometimes completely redefining the game state on the fly. There’s no familiar formula here, and even the playtime refuses to behave, ranging anywhere from a brisk 45 minutes to sprawling 3–4 hour political epics. I suspect you will find yourself playing this game several times and running into entirely new mechanics and interactions even after several plays.

Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so, at least it’s not what I would quantify as bad design; quite to the contrary, it’s fascinating and fresh, but it’s not a game that will simply snap into place for you the first time you play it.

From session to session, this game will feel like an exploration. More than once, your group will deliberately poke at the mechanics, perhaps even confident you understand what will happen, only to watch the game spiral off into unexpected states, forcing you to rethink everything you thought you had under control.

That all sounds very abstract, and that’s intentional. Because I should warn you up front: as I explain this game, you probably won’t fully get it. In fact, even after a few plays, you still might not. Syncanite Foundation is unorthodox in both structure and philosophy, but when the pieces finally do click, when that moment of awareness hits, something genuinely brilliant reveals itself beneath the chaos intended for you to discover by the designer.

You may find yourself, as I did, realizing that you’re playing something that feels like more than just another board game. For aficionados like me, that’s the sweet spot, for many, I think this will be “something weird”. Something hard to wrap your head around, and it might even leave you uninspired. Sentiments I have heard often about truly unique designs like Root, Hegemony, and Twilight Imperium. It is the bane of true originality to suffer at the hands of mass popularity and conformity.

Not trying to bust anyone’s balls, but this is the sort of reception Root got when it was released. A game, I would say, is probably one of the most brilliantly intricate asymmetrical games ever made, true originality in the world of board games, and people were still calling it “Shitty version of RISK”. I get you might not like it, but stuff like this is just pure ignorance and shows a lack of appreciation of game design. Unfortuantetly I think Syncanite Foundation will have to endure stuff like this.

If you’re an obsessive board gamer with a taste for the unusual, a tolerance for uncertainty, and a curiosity strong enough to explore unfamiliar territory… this is one of those games that is going to give you unusual in spades.

Overview

Final Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star (4.4 out 5) Fantastic!

Any conversation about what Syncanite Foundation really is has to start with its backstory. This isn’t optional flavor text. The game’s mechanics and its narrative are so tightly intertwined that going in without at least a basic grasp of the world will actively make the game harder to learn and harder to appreciate. So what is the world about?

At the center of the story is Syncanite itself: a rare, immensely powerful crystal that fuels this strange sci-fantasy world at the dawn of its industrial age. Syncanite is energy, influence, wealth, and longevity all rolled into one. It powers machines, enables magical feats, reshapes economies, and destabilizes entire nations. If that sounds a bit like spice from Dune, that’s not an accident. Syncanite occupies the same narrative role as a resource so valuable that society reorganizes itself around its control.

To manage this miracle substance, a governing body was formed: The Syncanite Foundation. Officially, its role is benign, overseeing the mining, refinement, and distribution of Syncanite for the good of the world. Unofficially? Well… power rarely stays transparent for long.

The Foundation quickly transforms from a regulatory council into a shadow government, quietly steering politics, economies, and wars from behind the curtain. Its leading members are oligarchs, wealthy, influential figures who understand that true power isn’t held by kings or generals, but by those who decide who gets access to the resource everyone depends on.

That’s where you come in.

In Syncanite Foundation, you play one of these oligarchs: a powerful, morally flexible architect of global manipulation. You aren’t trying to save the world. You’re trying to rule it. The game tells the story of how you pursue that goal, and whether you succeed or fail, through secrecy, influence, betrayal, and carefully timed chaos.

One of the most striking design decisions is that the game has no victory points, no public progress tracks, and no obvious way to tell who’s winning. Power is opaque by design. Much of it is hidden behind influence cards, the most powerful utility in the game, capable of sweeping changes in the blink of an eye, making it quite difficult to accurately assess another player’s position at any given moment or their plan for victory.

The game really revolves around the Crisis Cards, which, when any are triggerered simultanously causes a major upsetting event at the table, altering the game state, they add new mechanics to the phases of the game, and they open up victory conditions for the game. Each is unique, and the interaction between them can create some wild effects on the game.

This uncertainty feeds directly into the game’s tone. Syncanite Foundation thrives on paranoia. You’re constantly conscious of the fact that someone at the table is closer to victory than they’re letting on, and that they might be about to pull the rug out from under you. That fear drives players to act preemptively, often ruthlessly, which in turn validates everyone else’s worst suspicions. It’s a self-reinforcing cycle of mistrust, and it’s completely intentional.

Where the game truly distinguishes itself, however, is in how its mechanics evolve.

Rather than presenting a fixed ruleset from start to finish, Syncanite Foundation unlocks new systems as the game progresses. These shifts are driven primarily by influence cards and political agenda votes, which can trigger world-altering events. A war might erupt, suddenly introducing a full “dudes-on-a-map” layer and unlocking a domination-based victory condition. Other events can reshape new options for economies, alter political power mechanics, and each will redefine what winning looks like.

Operation cards beyond their effects, which I think are best described as extreme, cause the Crisis cards to inch closer towards being triggered. The more of these operation cards are played, the more chaos is sewn into the game. It’s a wonderful consequence for the games most impactful action players take in the game.

Crucially, these events don’t just add new mechanics; they radically disrupt the existing game state. Economic balance shifts. Political alliances crumble. Board control changes overnight. And because players only directly control which influence cards they play and how they vote, the game can flip from “I’ve got this under control” to “everything is on fire” in a single moment. Which is why so much table talk is imminent, as you not only need to manipulate the mechanics from your seat, but you have to convince others that it’s in their best interest to act with or support you by making it seem like it’s in their best interest. Diverting attention to something other than your plan.

This subtle element of the game, however, doesn’t immediately appear on your first play, as simply grasping a concept like “how do you win” or “how do you prepare for winning” may be out of reach in your first game. Initially, you just do stuff; the thing that makes this game’s wheels spin is probably going to take a few plays with the same group before it all jives.

Adding another delicious layer of cruelty, victory conditions themselves are tied to cards you receive at the start of the game, and those cards can be lost through assassination and other interactive methods. It’s entirely possible for an event to unlock a victory condition you no longer possess, forcing you into the grim position of defending against a win condition you have no way of achieving yourself. You’re not trying to win, you’re trying to stop someone else from doing so. But they don’t know which it is, and so the paranoia spins on.

This constant propagation and mutation of mechanics is the beating heart of Syncanite Foundation. It’s what drives the relentless political maneuvering, the desperate deal-making, and occasionally the outright begging for mercy. What emerges is a kind of controlled, paranoia-fueled chaos, where each player scrambles to stabilize the world just long enough to exploit it. That control, if it’s even achievable, is at best temporary, so you have to act decisively and time your plays perfectly.

There is one game Syncanite Foundation reminds me of a little bit, New Angeles. They share the same sort of paranoia, voting, and secret victory conditions as Syncanite Foundation, but even this comparison is a real stretch. I can say, however, that I like New Angeles for that very reason. I love games where you really feel like you’re playing against someone in more than just a kind of abstract way.

As a unique gaming experience, I found Syncanite Foundation to be absolutely brilliant. It’s just fun…

But it’s also brutal.

Syncanite Foundation is unapologetically a “take that” game of the highest order. Single-card plays can completely dismantle long-term plans. Direct, player-driven setbacks are frequent, dramatic, and personal. Feel-bad moments are not edge cases; they’re part of the design. Many things in the game feel outrageously unfair and too powerful. This is a game about power, and power is rarely gentle. For better or worse, the mechanics capture the spirit of these nasty politics perfectly.

Whether that excites you or terrifies you will depend entirely on your group. Syncanite Foundation does not apologize or offer any condolences or alternative for what it is, it’s kind of a take it or leave it deal.

Components

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt: christmas_star

Pros:  Nice art, very high-quality components, especially the cards.  Everything is built to last.

Cons:  Many misprints, vague card descriptions, and many missed translations in the English version.  Tiny fonts on cards that are hard to read.  Even the updated rules manual leaves a lot to be desired.

I’ve already gone into considerable depth on the components of Syncanite Foundation in my earlier preview, which you can find HERE, so I won’t rehash everything in full. Instead, here’s the condensed version.

In short, the component quality is outstanding. The artwork is genuinely fantastic, and the overall visual presentation of the game, from board layout to iconography, feels cohesive, confident, and deliberate. This is a game that knows how it wants to look, and it executes that vision exceptionally well.

There is no question that this is a beautiful production; tremendous effort was put into the presentation here, and no cost was spared on the component quality, but many elements are just impractical for gameplay. Legibility of cards, clarity of writing, and proper translations are, in the end, far more important than how pretty a game is. Practical use and playability absolutely trump artistry when it comes to board games.

My primary criticism of Syncanite Foundation remains unchanged: text size and legibility. Some of the cards suffer from very small fonts, compounded by the stylistic choice of white text on a black background, often layered on top of foil. While undeniably striking from a distance, this combination is rough on the eyes and very impractical. When playing Syncanite Foundation, you’ll want strong lighting and, if you’re anything like me, your favorite reading glasses close at hand.

It’s also important to address the rulebook situation again, because it directly impacts the usability of the components, especially if you are working with the first printing.

The printed manual included in the box (1st printing), by the publisher’s own admission, is insufficient for actually playing the game. To get Syncanite Foundation to the table, you’ll need to download the updated rulebook. That said, the irony here is almost impressive: the physical manual does an excellent job as a conceptual overview, while the updated rulebook does a comparatively poor job of conveying the big picture but does a decent job with the rules.

In practice, you’ll likely want both. One as an introduction and thematic walkthrough, the other as a functional rules reference.

Even then, I wouldn’t call the updated rulebook good by modern rulebook writing standards. All the necessary information appears to be present, but it’s poorly organized and inefficient to learn from. Expect unanswered questions, frequent rule lookups, and a fair amount of head-scratching during your first attempts to play.

It doesn’t help that some of the cards can be a bit vague, and the rulebook doesn’t really explain them. There is a wiki page, however, and you can find some answers there, but this wouldn’t be necessary if the wording on the cards were a bit more structured.

As a whole, however, aside from a few hiccups, for example, there are several places where German was used in the English version of the game, it’s mostly well done. Enough for a passing grade.

Theme

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt: christmas_starchristmas_star

Pros:  The game’s theme and mechanics are in perfect concert in this well-established and creative world.  This is a game that knows exactly what it wants to be.

Cons:  Some may object to the cruelty and direct nature of how that theme is executed mechanically.  It’s an edgy game.

When it comes to theme, Syncanite Foundation doesn’t just open the door, it rips it off the hinges and asks you what you plan to do with the wreckage. This is a rich, deeply textured world where mechanics and narrative are tightly interwoven, and every design choice feels intentional. The result is something genuinely extraordinary.

One of my favorite thematic touches is how operation cards feel like fragments of history rather than abstract effects. Each one carries the weight of an event, something that happened in the world you’re collectively shaping. Because these cards tend to be so impactful, they become moments players remember. Not just mechanically, but emotionally. “That time you dropped Hostile Takeover” is going to be a sentence that gets repeated long after the game ends.

A huge effort has gone into giving Sycanite Foundation a fantastic backdrop with a website dedicated to elaborating on the world, the people, and the history of this wonderful setting. I love it when a board game gets the RPG treatment.

That sense of living history is reinforced by the game’s “shifting sands of time” effect, driven by large-scale events triggered directly through player conflict. Political revolutions, economic monopolies, the outbreak of war, the rise of tyranny, these aren’t minor modifiers or temporary inconveniences. They are global disruptions that fundamentally alter the trajectory of the game. The board state changes. The balance of power shifts. The future rewrites itself. New mechanics are introduced.

What I love most is that this forces players to think beyond the immediate moment. Playing a card or approving a law isn’t just about what it does now; it’s about what kind of world you’re creating afterward, as each card played brings the game closer to triggering one of these world-shattering events. Decisions echo forward. Consequences linger. And that narrative persistence makes every choice feel heavier, more meaningful, and far more satisfying.

The theme here is, quite frankly, chef’s kiss. It’s executed brilliantly and delivers exactly what I was hoping for when I first cracked open the box and read the introduction.

If there’s any drawback at all, it’s this: Syncanite Foundation can be a cultural shock to groups that aren’t prepared for how viciously on-theme it is. The winner won’t just feel victorious, they’ll feel dominant. The losers won’t just lose a game, they’ll walk away slightly stunned by how cruel and surgical the experience can be. That brutality is absolutely intentional, and it fits the world perfectly, but it’s not going to be for everyone.

This game probably should come with a warning label.

Things can get nasty.

Gameplay

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star

Pros: Highly dynamic and evolving mechanics, tons of moving parts to explore, so many different ways to win and approach the game.  Strategic exploration is robust.

Cons: This is a mean, edgy, take-that game that can feel unfair and brutal.  It’s not going to connect with everyone.

Alright, this is the part I’ve been quietly dreading.

Not because I dislike the gameplay (quite the opposite), but because there is simply no way to explain how Syncanite Foundation plays without leaving you with a long list of unanswered questions and a faint suspicion that I may be lying to you. I’m not, but the game has a habit of undermining anyone who tries to summarize it too cleanly.

Let’s start with something reassuring: Syncanite Foundation is not an especially complex game in the traditional sense, at least not at the start. I’ve learned far heavier rulesets and far more procedurally demanding systems. Where this game becomes intimidating isn’t in how much you have to remember, it’s in how deeply the mechanics interact and how wildly those interactions can evolve. I’m convinced I’ve only scratched the surface of the possible game states this system can generate. I think it will take many plays to really get your head around the possibilities and strategies hidden within.

Learning and teaching complex games requires excessively strong rulesbook writing. I cite Empire Of The Sun as a prime example of one of the most complex games I have ever learned to play. If it were not for the amazing indexed, reference-style rulebook, learning to play Empire Of The Sun would be impossible. Syncanite Foundation is just complex enough that it really needs this treatment. As it stands, even with their latest updated rulebook, learning to play Syncanite Foundation was a tough challenge.

And that’s where teaching the game becomes… problematic.

When you teach most games, players quite reasonably ask questions like, “What happens if war breaks out?” or “How dangerous is that strategy?” In Syncanite Foundation, any honest answer to those questions begins with “Well, it depends…” and ends with you apologizing later when the game does something completely different from what you predicted.

There are simply too many interlocking systems, too many conditional triggers, and too many player-driven variables to make reliable promises about outcomes. The game will, at some point, contradict you. It’s probably best to let players discover things on their own.

That said, we should at least try to describe how things begin, because the opening moments are deceptively calm.

At the start, everyone operates under nearly identical conditions. Players choose a character role that grants a unique ability, but otherwise, the field feels level. The game proceeds through a structured cycle of four major phases. During these phases, players place armies, collect resources, convert those resources into influence cards or additional forces, occasionally sell assets for capital, vote on laws, and finally execute role abilities before resetting for the next cycle.

The cycles (rounds) are broken down into four relatively simple phases, but as the game progresses and Crisis cards are triggered, entirely new mechanics are added to the game, in some cases, entirely new mini games. The game gets more complex as it progresses, especially when multiple crises are triggered at the same time.

On paper, it’s all very reasonable. Almost comfortingly simple. After the first round, you’re deceived into thinking this will be a simple game.

And then the cards start flying.

Most influence cards are operations cards that can be played at almost any time, and they are not subtle. These cards are powerful, disruptive, and always contribute counters toward one of five global events: Revolution, Monopoly, Military, Triage, or Tyranny. Many of them also strip victory condition cards from players’ hands. Even early-game laws on which players vote on using the other type of influence card, called bribery cards, can destabilize the board to such a degree that a global event triggers far sooner than anyone expected.

By the time you reach the second cycle, and certainly by the third, you are no longer playing the same game you started. What that new game looks like is impossible to predict because it depends entirely on which events have triggered, in what order, and how they’ve collided with one another between the layers of influence cards and laws you have put into place, and the impact on the resource you manage to walk away with, among many other things, like player role abilities.

It’s going to feel like a dizzying array of out-of-control events, and it’s not a simple thing to get your head around all of the interactions and how you should form a strategy to win the game around them. In our first play of the game, it felt like we mostly did stuff just to see what would happen. We had no idea how to control the game enough to form a winning strategy.

Take the Triage event for example, for example.

The first thing that happens with this event is that suddenly, the market dries up. Inflation may spike or collapse. Resources become scarce and nearly worthless or potentially gold mines to buy and sell. At the same time, players are pressured by the Dignity and Honour victory condition, which demands donations of food, goods, and Syncanite, or else they lose victory cards. If you’ve already lost the Dignity and Honour victory card by this point through assassination or some other effect, congratulations: you’re now stuck defending against a win condition you can no longer achieve yourself, yet are forced to contribute or fall further down the rabbit hole.

And that’s just one event.

Now imagine that layered with a Military escalation. Or a Headline card played by the Censor that swings military power dramatically. Or a war erupting mid-cycle. Or a player getting crushed so badly they become a Pariah, instantly shifting into an entirely different victory framework, emerging as a completely different threat to your victory altogether.

In our game war broke out, triggering a “Dudes on a map” mini game. While the war itself was not the direct cause of a victory, its effect allowed other victory conditions to become attainable, and we ultimately ended up with an elected victor through the Tyranny Crisis. It was a cool end and showed just how interactions between the Crisis cards and their subsequent victory conditions can alter the game in difficult-to-control ways.

I understand that as I say those things, it probably makes little sense to you as you read this review, and rightfully so, my only point is that there is a lot of “stuff” happening in this game.

This is why Syncanite Foundation is so difficult to describe: the game state is fragile. Every small push has the potential to unlock entirely new systems. What was once a semi-passive, worker-placement-style resource grab can suddenly turn into a full-blown territorial conflict. Last round, you were carefully optimizing. This round, you’re playing RISK for survival.

And this keeps happening.

Every event, every law, every assassination, every influence card has weight. Nothing is trivial. Everything lands somewhere between “severe inconvenience” and “absolute catastrophe.” The game is about managing chaos, not controlling it, because true control is an illusion here. At best, you’re projecting confidence while desperately trying to stay afloat.

Which brings me to what I believe is the game’s hidden core mechanic and intent: player psychology.

Table talk, bluffing, accusation, persuasion, and gut instincts, I think, will matter just as much as the cards and systems once players grow accustomed to the games intracacies. With so much information hidden and power levels so difficult to assess, perception becomes reality. A player is never more than one influence card away from detonating the board, regardless of how weak they appear. That uncertainty fuels paranoia, and paranoia fuels interaction.

People will talk. They will vent. They will accuse. They will form alliances and break them five minutes later. And all of that, the social pressure, the manipulation, the narrative chaos, isn’t just emergent behavior. I think it will ultimately be the game.

I could keep going, but to fully explain every system would require an article longer than the rulebook, and honestly, it isn’t necessary to determine whether this game is for you.

At its heart, Syncanite Foundation is a highly interactive resource and card management game with evolving mechanics, brutal take-that elements, and constant “gotcha” moments. Like games such as Root, Hegemony, or Twilight Imperium, it’s almost certainly going to be a love-it-or-hate-it experience for most.

As for my friends and I?

I (we) think it’s pretty awesome.

This is a political game with teeth, one that fully commits to its theme and gives players the mechanical tools to be exactly what the game wants them to be: power-hungry oligarchs, lying, scheming, manipulating their way toward dominance.

It’s mean-spirited joy.

An unfiltered “screw you” simulator.

So… is Syncanite Foundation perfectly balanced?

That’s a harder question to answer than it first appears, because the way this game reveals its balance is, frankly, a bit deceptive.

One of the core challenges when learning Syncanite Foundation is that your understanding of the game arrives in sudden, jarring moments, usually right as the current game state crashes head-first into your assessment of how well (or how poorly) you think you’re doing. That’s a mouthful, but it matters.

The psychology of the game is hard to wrap your head around, but the practical reality is that you are never “losing” in Syncanite Foundation. There are always outs, like the Paria victory conditions. When things get really bad, you become a Paria and can ultimately turn the game in your favor. Understanding that and recognizing how that works is going to take a few plays of this game, but it is a key to unlocking this games briliant balance.

What I mean is this: there were points during my play where I was absolutely convinced I was losing badly. Not “behind but maybe recoverable,” but hopelessly behind. My opponents seemed to have insurmountable advantages that I had no realistic way of matching.

I failed to secure much Syncanite at all. As a result, I had almost no influence in voting, and more importantly, I couldn’t acquire the coveted permanent cards from the Bribery deck, cards that don’t just feel but are completely overpowered. Watching other players stack these advantages while I floundered made it very tempting to label the game as unbalanced.

And honestly? If you stopped the analysis right there, that conclusion would feel reasonable.

But Syncanite Foundation has a trick up its sleeve.

If you fall far enough behind, so far that you lose all of your standard victory cards, you don’t just limp along hopelessly. Instead, you become a Pariah. And the truly wild thing about becoming a Pariah is how dangerous you suddenly are.

When you enter Pariah status, you gain a new victory condition that is, easier to achieve, completely secret from the other players, impossible to steal or remove, and exclusive to you alone

It is, without exaggeration, one of the most aggressive comeback mechanics I’ve ever seen.

This creates an incredibly delicate equilibrium. Everyone at the table is highly motivated to win, but no one wants to crush another player too thoroughly. Push someone too far, and they stop being a non-factor and start becoming an uncontrollable threat. A Pariah is often far more dangerous than all the players still competing over the default victory conditions combined.

So… is the game balanced?

I would argue yes, but I completely understand why it might not feel that way, especially in your first few plays.

The real issue is that Syncanite Foundation layers mechanics within mechanics within mechanics. To fully appreciate how balance flows through the system, and how many paths to victory actually exist, you kind of need to understand all of it. That’s a tall order, particularly early on, when players are still just trying to keep their heads above water.

The key takeaway is this: it is almost impossible to reach a point in Syncanite Foundation where you truly cannot win. There are no victory points. Victory conditions shift constantly. No matter how bad things look, there is almost always an out.

The problem is that discovering this takes time.

I strongly suspect that many players will bounce off this game before reaching that realization. And I’m not entirely sure whether that’s a flaw in the design or simply the cost of ambition. It is, however, a potential problem, both for players and for the publisher, because this is exactly the kind of sophistication that often results in lower reviews from people who never quite crack the code.

In that sense, Syncanite Foundation isn’t alone.

Games like Root and Hegemony, which the designer compares himself to quite accuratetly are filled with negative reviews from players who bounced hard off their asymmetry and unconventional balance. Not because those games are broken, but because they demand patience, curiosity, and a willingness to be uncomfortable while learning.

Syncanite Foundation lives firmly in that same space. It dares to be different, and that alone guarantees it won’t be universally loved.

Replay-ability and Longevity

Score: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star
Tilt: christmas_starchristmas_starchristmas_star

Pros: This is one of those games that could easily become a lifestyle game.  Infinite possibilities with infinite outcomes.

Cons:  It might be hard to find a steady gaming group that is willing to engage in a game with this depth regularly.

I’ll keep this part short and sweet.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that you could play Syncanite Foundation a hundred times and never have the same experience twice. The sheer number of interacting systems, hidden information, evolving mechanics, and player-driven chaos makes repetition almost impossible. Every session will reshape itself based on who’s at the table, which events trigger, and how aggressively or deviously people choose to play.

More importantly, this is a game that rewards scheming. If plotting, manipulating, and maneuvering behind the scenes is your idea of a good time, this design has an almost inexhaustible well of replay value.

That said, Syncanite Foundation is clearly ripe for expansion, and in fact, some already exist.

The most substantial is The Great Council Box, which expands the game to support up to six players and includes everything needed to make that work smoothly. That expansion is on its way. It also adds a solo mode, quality-of-life upgrades like player mats, and incorporates The Dignitary Pack, a system that introduces powerful, hero-like characters who can join your empire with unique abilities and effects. The Dignitary Pack itself can also be acquired separately as a standalone expansion.

My game was just the standard package, so I did not have any of these elements to review, but it’s not a hard stretch to imagine that this game would be a lot of fun with six players, albeit probably quite a long one.

The design space here is enormous. Additional global events (or alternate versions of existing ones), new player roles, more dignitaries, expanded influence decks, fresh laws, and new bribery cards would all slot naturally into the system. There’s plenty of room for Syncanite Foundation to grow over time.

That said, and this is important, none of that feels necessary.

The base game is already dense, ambitious, and loaded with content. There’s more than enough in the box to explore before expansions even enter the conversation. This isn’t a framework waiting to be finished; it’s a fully realized experience that simply could be expanded, not one that needs to be.

And honestly? That’s exactly how it should be. Expansions should be luxuries, not necessities.

Conclusion

I think it’s important to say this right up front: Syncanite Foundation is not a game for everyone. And that’s not a criticism, it’s a statement of intent. The overwhelmingly positive tone of this review, I hope I passed on here, exists for one simple reason: this game feels like it was aimed directly at my gaming soul. It presses all the right buttons for the kind of player I am, and as a result, it sticks the landing for me in a way few games do. I reckognize its not gaming perfection, but I’m not talking about a perfect game for everyone, I’m talking about a perfect game for me.

Which is strange because up until this box arrived at my house, I had no idea it existed. I’m not some zealous kick-starter who waited patiently for a game they “just knew” they were going to love, writing a positive review to defend my bank account’s honor. This was a review copy that arrived at my doorstep. I genuinely opened the box with zero information about what was inside; I just had that “what the hell is this” expression on my face and a natural curiosity to explore.

Truth is that this is a bold, ambitious design that stretches the very idea of what it means to sit down and play a tabletop game. It has its own energy, its own rhythm, and it generates atmosphere almost effortlessly. I would never claim it’s a perfectly engineered system, because it absolutely isn’t, but what it is is thrilling, devious, and unapologetically sharp-edged. The fun here comes with teeth, and I love that.

Most game nights are casual affairs. You grab something off the shelf, enjoy a few hours with friends, and everyone goes home happy. I love those nights. But Syncanite Foundation carries a different kind of weight. It has that “Let’s play Twilight Imperium” energy, the kind of game that makes you plan the evening around it, stay up later than you should, and keep replaying moments in your head afterward. It’s not quite an “event game,” but it’s certainly not typical by any stretch. To me, it’s a genuine gem.

I can understand how the designer arrived at a comparison of Syncanite Foundation to Twilight Imperium. There is very little mechanical relation between the two, but both games have a sort of abstract psychology built into them where the game really lives beyond the mechanics. Playing Twilight Imperium is more than just a typical board game night and I think Syncanite Foundation taps into some of that.

I’ve been around long enough to know exactly who I wouldn’t introduce this game to. My more Euro-leaning friends, the ones who want to push cubes, optimize quietly, and relax, would find Syncanite Foundation stressful, confrontational, and downright mean. That’s not a flaw in the game, nor is it a problem with that audience. It’s simply how this hobby works. Not every game is meant to please everyone, no matter how loudly the majority of the internet insists that Brass: Birmingham is the universal peak of human game design achievement. For example, I found it to be .. meh… It was ok.

Syncanite Foundation instead carves out a fascinating niche of its own. It’s messy. It’s volatile. It’s confrontational. And it’s absolutely not afraid to make players uncomfortable in pursuit of its theme. I genuinely hope it finds the audience it deserves, because we need more games willing to step outside the safe, familiar, and frankly overworked confines of comfortable cube-pushing design.

It dares to be different, and different it most certainly is. For better or worse.

I, for one, am a fan.

Hidden Gems, Kick-Starer, On The Table, Role-Player Game Reviews

Preview: Demidirge: Fanged Funnel – Shadowdark Adventure

Leave a comment

A small but vicious little kit landed in my bucket this week: a Shadowdark RPG adventure headed for Kickstarter in the near future called Demidirge: Fanged Funnel.

At first, I hesitated to do a preview. Normally, if I’m going to write about an adventure, I want to run it first, spill some blood, break a few characters, listen to players argue about marching order. But then I remembered: I’ve been a DM for so long that I can smell a good dungeon from a cold read. Also, this is a preview, not a review, so nobody needs to clutch their pearls. I think I’m on solid ground here.

What really hooked me wasn’t the premise, the stats, or even the promise of grisly player death (though those are all respectable selling points). It was the art.

Classic black and white ink art has an uncanny charm and ability to inspire, love it.

Now, I’m no art connoisseur, but I read a lot of adventures and RPG material, mostly scavenging for ideas to steal for my own tables. And these days? A lot of RPG art blurs together. It’s competent. It’s polished. It also often looks suspiciously like it was generated by a machine that’s never rolled a saving throw in its life.

Demidirge, however, is something else entirely.

This is unmistakably original, hand-drawn ink art in that grimy, old-school style, raw, evocative, and absolutely smashing. It’s the kind of art that doesn’t just decorate the page; it dares you to run the adventure. And honestly, this is one of the things the OSR does right. There’s a genuine love of illustration here, a reverence for the weird, the nightmarish, and the slightly unhinged, something that’s increasingly rare in the broader modern RPG space (and yes, I say that as someone perfectly comfortable using AI art myself).

The art in Demidirge is the sort of stuff that crawls into your brain and starts whispering encounter ideas. It’s moody. It’s grotesque. It’s inspiring. Old-school gamers are going to eat this up.

And here’s the thing: great art makes you want to read the adventure. That’s exactly how this module got its hooks into me. You’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but when you see this cover, you’re absolutely going to crack it open and see what horrors are waiting inside.

The Adventure

There are three things you need to know about this adventure, but fair warning, as always: if you’re a player, stop reading now. Seriously. This is a funnel. Knowledge is a liability. Spoilers ahead.

First, this adventure is written for Shadowdark, the current darling of the OSR scene. That said, like most good old-school modules, the bones are system-agnostic. You could run this with just about any OSR ruleset without breaking a sweat. That said, Demidirge is very deliberately tuned for Shadowdark and even includes a bespoke zero-level character creation framework designed specifically for this nightmare. You’re not playing “peasants who happen to be here”, you’re playing tunnelers, and that distinction matters mechanically and thematically.

Shadowdarks success as an RPG is uncanny; it’s spoken about in circles that stretch well beyond the OSR, at this point its practically mainstream. One day soon, I predict the OSR is going to give Wizards of the Coast a run for their money. It’s growing by leaps and bounds.

Which leads neatly into the second thing: this is a funnel, and it wears that badge proudly.

If you’re not familiar with funnels, here’s the short version: instead of lovingly crafting a single hero, each player controls a small crowd of level 0 nobodies. These unfortunate souls are fed into a lethal gauntlet with the full expectation that most of them will die screaming, dissolving, or being recycled into something worse. The lucky few who survive crawl out the other side as first-level adventurers, scarred, changed, and usually carrying some deeply troubling memories.

I’ve always loved funnels (Dungeon Crawl Classics remains my personal poison of choice), because they’re one of the best onboarding tools tabletop RPGs have ever produced. Minimal rules. Immediate stakes. Constant laughs punctuated by sudden, shocking death. They’re perfect for non-gamers, party games, or just reminding veteran players that life is cheap and heroism is earned. Demidirge understands this completely and leans into it hard.

Now for the third element, the one that really elevates this adventure from “cool funnel” to “oh hell yes, I need to run this.”

The entire funnel takes place inside a shared nightmare.

One of the sort of quirks of classic funnels is that you have very little to work with; you are not going to find the answer on your character sheet. Survival requires clever players. Still, the players are given some tools in this adventure that may very well prove useful.

The characters believe they are workers in a vast subterranean mining complex known as the Malic Mindshaft, a living, bureaucratic hellscape of quotas, rival labor crews, holy management cults, and acid-filled tunnels. In reality, they are prisoners trapped inside the mind of an inhuman entity called The Hermit Queen. Their physical bodies hang elsewhere in the real world, sealed inside organic coffins, while their consciousnesses are forced to dig ever deeper toward something called the Sunless Horizon. The queen’s nest of sorts from which she is attempting to escape, and the players are inadvertently helping her to do so by digging her out.

Their real objective, though they won’t realize it at first, is to notice that something is wrong. To pick up on anomalies. To question the reality of the tunnels. To recognize that the rules of the world don’t behave quite right. Only by collectively triggering enough psychic “cracks” in the illusion can they awaken… at which point the nightmare ends in spectacular fashion and the survivors emerge into the real world as first-level characters.

This setup is brilliant for two reasons.

First, it gives the GM enormous freedom. This is a dream. A hostile one. Reality can glitch, contradict itself, loop, or outright lie. NPCs can behave inconsistently. Dead crews can reappear. Shadows can move wrong. You are encouraged to mess with player expectations, and the module provides a long list of concrete tools, events, rival crews, nightmare phenomena, and outright body horror, to do exactly that.

Second, and this is the real GM gold, Demidirge is setting-agnostic by design. Because the adventure ends with the characters waking up somewhere in the real world, it can slot cleanly into any campaign setting. You don’t need lore buy-in. You don’t need a starting town. You don’t even need to explain where the characters are from. They wake up, alive, confused, and hunted, and now your campaign begins.

For me personally, that makes this an ideal opening adventure. I’ve been planning to kick off a Dolmenwood campaign and have been wrestling with how to start it in a way that feels strange, unsettling, and memorable. Demidirge: Fanged Funnel solves that problem completely. Drop the players into the nightmare, let them claw their way out, and then unleash them into the woods with no safety net and a head full of questions.

That’s a hell of a session one.

Conclusion

I’ve been intentionally vague about the finer details of this adventure, and that’s very much by design. The two questions people usually want answered are “What is this adventure about?” and “How do I actually use this in my game?” I hope I’ve given enough context to answer both, without robbing anyone of the joy (or horror) of reading it for themselves. And yes, that includes DMs. This is very much an adventure best experienced fresh.

What Demidirge: Fanged Funnel offers is that classic OSR, “trust the referee” style of adventure design. You’re given strong impressions, clear themes, and a well-organized structure, tables, factions, events, and evocative bite-sized descriptions, rather than pages of boxed text and rigid scripting. The module assumes you know how to run a game, and more importantly, that you want to. It’s fast to read, easy to internalize, and leaves the real magic where it belongs: at the table.

That’s one of the OSR’s greatest strengths. Instead of overwhelming you with lore dumps and hyper-specific contingencies that immediately fall apart once the first sword is drawn, this adventure gives you the tools and trusts your instincts. Once play begins, the dungeon breathes, reacts, and mutates based on player choices rather than a prewritten flowchart.

There are key elements that matter, of course. The slow discovery that the characters are trapped inside a nightmare is central to the experience, as are the unsettling monsters and factions that inhabit it. The adventure is carefully seeded with obstacles that double as clues: rival tunnel crews, bureaucratic cruelty, ritualized labor, and nightmarish events that don’t quite add up. Everything subtly pushes the players to dig deeper, literally and figuratively, while quietly hinting that something is very, very wrong.

Mystery is notoriously difficult to pull off in tabletop RPGs. Players are clever, suspicious, and prone to setting things on fire just to see what happens. But here, I think the author genuinely succeeds. The truth is neither obvious nor handed to the players, and I fully expect many groups won’t survive long enough to unravel it at all. This is a funnel, after all. Death is cheap. Insight is not.

Players will need to bring their A-game, and probably a few spare character sheets, if they want to make it to the other side.

In short: this is a great story, thoughtfully constructed, beautifully illustrated, and deeply engaging. It’s weird, cruel, and imaginative in all the right old-school ways. If you’re looking for a funnel that does more than just kill characters, one that leaves survivors changed, this is absolutely worth picking up.

Highly recommended.

Board Game Reviews, Gaming Articles, On The Table

Syncanite Foundation: Impressions & Unboxing

Leave a comment

UPDATE: A New Manual for Syncanite Foundation can be found here.

This afternoon, my mailbox delivered a rather pleasant surprise: a review copy of Syncanite Foundation. A new boardgame of cutthroat political conspiracy that was kick-started last year.

Now, to be clear, the surprise wasn’t that the game arrived. I was fully aware it was on its way, having worked with the marketing team handling review copies. The real surprise hit the moment I laid eyes on the box. Before a single component was revealed, Syncanite Foundation was already speaking my language and making a strong first impression with its awesome sci-fi fantasy vibe.

I’m a relatively small-time reviewer, with only occasional appearances in some real journalism, thanks largely to a few connections I have to the game industry by sheer accident. The result of that in the last 10 years has been a loyal audience and a steady group of regular readers, but most publishers I work with that send me review copies tend to be fairly niche affairs. Interesting, often clever, but clearly operating within a smaller production scope. This, however, felt a bit different even though Syncanite Games is indeed a very indie operation. The box alone radiated confidence: polished, striking, and unmistakably professional. This didn’t just feel like a passion project punching above its weight; it was more like a heavyweight newcomer stepping into the ring for the first time. A new kid on the block, sure, but in the immortal words of Micky Goldmil, “You ain’t no bum, you ain’t no chump.”

As I cracked open the box, it became immediately clear that this was a game made with serious intent. There’s a level of care, cohesion, and sheer love in the presentation that demands to be met halfway. This wasn’t something I could casually glance over. If the game was going to put in this much effort, the least I could do was put on my reviewer hat properly and reciprocate.

So, with expectations officially raised and curiosity fully engaged, let’s get into it. This is going to be a two-part article review. First, we will do a sort of first impressions and unboxing, where I will simply look, read, and explore the game, that’s today. The second article will be a full review I will put together after a few play sessions with my local gaming group.

Overview

Cracking open the box, I did what I almost always do first: I reached for the rulebook. Not out of habit alone, but because I genuinely had no idea what Syncanite Foundation actually was. This isn’t a game riding on the coattails of a well-known franchise, yet from the moment you lift the lid, it’s obvious that this thing wants to be more than just cardboard and plastic. There is magic here. My instincts, as it turns out, were right on the money.

Pretty is an understatement; Syncanite Foundation laid out on the table is art.

The artwork immediately suggests a strange crossroads between science fiction and fantasy. At first glance, I caught faint echoes of Final Fantasy in the aesthetic, ornate, confident, and unapologetically dramatic. That impression lasted about five minutes. Once you start reading, it becomes very clear that this isn’t borrowing a skin from somewhere else. Whatever this is, it’s very much its own beast, an original work perhaps inspired by but not photocopied from other sources.

The introduction reads less like a rulebook and more like the opening chapter of a novel. The prose flows, sets a tone, and gently reminds you that you’re stepping into a fully realized world rather than learning how to push cubes around a board. It’s here that the curtain lifts: Syncanite Foundation is set in The World of Arkanite, a setting originally created as a novel and now being expanded into something far more ambitious, all by the confident hand of a designer with a plan. From the looks of it, this isn’t just a board game release; it’s a deliberate attempt to build a larger media universe. With a polished website, extensive lore, and clear narrative intent, this feels like a foundation stone rather than a one-off project. A respectful nod to the designer here: this is how you do worldbuilding.

One of my favorite things that publishers do is to create lore for a board game and give it proper treatment. Twilight Imperium’s Guide To The Imperium is a fantastic example.

I’ll admit, I’m an easy mark for games with a strong narrative backbone. I want my mechanics supported by meaning, my components backed by context. Syncanite Foundation wastes no time delivering exactly that. When I sit down to teach this game, we will be starting with story time, and that is going to resonate with my gaming crew, who are all avid role-players.

So what is this world about?

Without claiming deep knowledge just yet, it’s hard not to see familiar inspirations bubbling beneath the surface. There’s more than a hint of Dune in the way power revolves around a single, world-shaping resource. Touches of Game of Thrones appear in the ruthless political maneuvering, while the shadowy, authoritarian edge made me briefly wonder if a bit of Judge Dredd snuck in through the back door. At its core, this is a game about oligarchs, powerful figures who never sit on thrones, but who quietly decide who does. They pull strings, shape conflicts, and bend the world to their will… all while competing with each other for supremacy.

That competition centers around Syncanite itself: a miraculous, dangerous crystal that fuels industry, progress, and influence. Like the spice of Dune, Syncanite is less about what it is and more about what it represents. Control it, and you control the future. But, and this is important, it’s not the endgame. It’s simply the spark that lights the powder keg.

A steam entry for Syncanite Foundation can be found for a digital version of the game in the works, which speaks to the ambitions of its designers.

All of this lays the groundwork for what feels like a genuinely strong narrative-driven strategy game. Interestingly, while it shares no real mechanical DNA with Twilight Imperium, it gave me a similar vibe. Not in scope, mechanics or length, but in philosophy. War doesn’t seem to be the point here. Conflict is a tool, not a goal. The real game is intention: reading the table, manipulating perceptions, making promises you don’t intend to keep, and choosing the exact right moment to make your final move. This is supported by the core win objectives in the game, there are no victory points or progression-based conditions, it’s a winner-takes-all game, and anyone can win at any time by meeting one of the game’s politically fueled objectives.

Victory conditions are tied to one of five events that trigger under certain board game states. These events alter the rules of the game and can exist simultaneously. This speaks to the potential dynamics of the game and player impact. I love the concept.

Even from a first read-through of the rules, it’s obvious that Syncanite Foundation is going to live and die by table talk. Accusations, alliances, bluffs, quiet deals, and that inevitable moment where someone leans back and says, “Fine. Let’s do this.” All promises between the nuance of rules and the intended playstyle of the game.

All told, this feels like exceptionally solid footing for something special. Expectations are set, curiosity is high, and I am more than ready to get this one to the table.

The Components

Board gaming in the 21st century, especially anything with a Kickstarter pedigree, immediately triggers a small internal alarm for me. Years of experience have conditioned me to be cautious. I’ll say this plainly: I would rather play an ugly-as-sin cube pusher with brilliant design than an overproduced, miniature-stuffed spectacle that mistakes excess for depth. I’m a gamer first. Eye candy is a very distant second.

That said… reality has a way of complicating principles.

If you glance at my collection, you’ll find more than a few games that are undeniably gorgeous. Because the truth is, I don’t want to choose. I want both. I want a sharp design and visual presence. And if I’m being completely honest, even excellent games that are hard on the eyes tend to get passed over when it’s time to decide what hits the table. A game can be good, but if it looks like homework, it’s fighting an uphill battle.

All of which brings us to Syncanite Foundation, a game that wastes absolutely no time announcing itself as a looker.

Whoever oversaw the art direction, component choices, and final production had a clear, confident vision, and more importantly, an understanding of what modern board gamers expect visually. Every decision here feels deliberate. One can only hope (and I genuinely do) that this level of care extends just as deeply into the gameplay.

Because make no mistake: this is a stunning production. Not “nice.” Not “solid.” Stunning. This game is, quite frankly, a work of art.

Component quality is excellent across the board. Cards, tokens, and the main board all feel premium and durable, clearly built to survive repeated plays rather than a single unboxing glow. That said, this level of quality is increasingly the baseline expectation these days. Cutting corners on materials is no longer acceptable, so I’d frame this less as exceeding expectations and more as confidently meeting them.

One thing I always look for in any board game is the ability to assess the game state with a quick glance. The way markets are handled with cubes and a little tray makes looking up prices of goods quick and easy. Simple and straight to the point.

Where Syncanite Foundation truly flexes is in its artistic ambition.

The main board features richly detailed, geographically inspired digital artwork that is nothing short of gorgeous. Despite the visual density, clarity never suffers. Lines are crisp, iconography is readable, and information is presented cleanly, exactly what you want in a game that expects players to stare at the board for hours.

The tokens follow suit. Each is visually distinct, satisfyingly weighty, and just tactile enough to invite idle fiddling. They come surprisingly close to that coveted “poker chip” feel, the universal gold standard of board game tactility.

But the real showstopper here is the cards.

The artwork, line work, and layout are lavish to the point of indulgence. These aren’t just functional components; they’re miniature paintings. Each card feels like it deserves a pause, a moment to be appreciated before being put to work.

The cards are beautiful, there is no doubt, but the black cards with glossy, foil text make reading them very painful. Fortunatetly only select cards are done in this foil style, but as a whole, the legibility of cards is a pain. Its a real shame.

One problem this game will always have is that even with glasses, I struggle to comfortably read the cards, a terrible sin and flaw that undoes some of that extraordinary artistic effort. The choice of white text on a black background, while undeniably stylish and maybe even thematically appropriate, is a nightmare. Add to it that some cards are black with gold foil writing, and you’re quite literally pulling out a magnifying glass to read some of the cards. It’s a bit of a tragedy.

The Rules & Rulebook

The original rulebook that came with the game was a bit of a mess, but an updated rulebook was released (v 3.2) as of this writing that attempts to address the issues of the original.

As it stands, the rulebook included in the box does not actually teach you how to play Syncanite Foundation. Nor does it provide functional setup instructions. What it does offer is a high-level overview of the game’s ideas and intentions, almost as if it assumes the existence of a second, missing document that handles the practical business of actually getting the game to the table.

That overview, despite lacking instruction, is genuinely well written, the manual laid out well, and worth a read as a preview to the digital document available online (here).

A manual with a nice presentation that sets the tone, gives a good overview of a game, and sets the stage for an exciting tabletop experience is absolutely critical to the success of a game, in my opinion. I see it as something extra that should come in addition to a rules reference. Some companies have normalized this, and I would love to see more of it.

It’s evocative, inspiring, and a pleasure to read. It successfully communicates tone, ambition, and theme, and it left me excited to play. Unfortunately, when you reach the final page, that excitement gives way to confusion. You’re left wondering if a rules reference accidentally fell out of the box. As a teaching document, it’s simply insufficient. You cannot set up or play the game using this book alone. Fortunatetly the, the updated digital rulebook is the answer; it brings the game into alignment with the ambitions laid out in the one that comes in the box and gives you the needed instructions.

At its core, Syncanite Foundation appears to operate across a series of structured phases where players claim territory, gather resources, and leverage those resources to advance long-term agendas tied to distinct victory conditions. Much of this is done by manipulating the board state through influence cards and effects.

Where the game truly seems to come alive, however, is in its free-form political layer.

Negotiation, table talk, and outright manipulation aren’t just encouraged, they’re assumed. Influence cards can be played at almost any time, regardless of turn order. You can interrupt, retaliate, or derail plans mid-conversation. There’s something delightfully unhinged about the idea that someone can cut you off mid-sentence with a card that completely alters the situation. Conceptually, I love this. It carries a strong role-playing energy and leans hard into player-driven narrative.

You can see that clarity of writing is not Syncanites Foundations strength. Even in the game material like the Cycle Chronicle Guide, English and German are commonly mixed up, with elements not translated properly. In reality, this is not a big deal, but it illustrates a rush to release, rather than to perfect.

It also firmly places the game in what I’d call the “mean” category.

This is not a gentle experience. If the rules deliver on their promise, Syncanite Foundation will sit comfortably alongside games like Diplomacy or Game of Thrones: The Board Game, where betrayal isn’t a possibility; it’s a requirement. Ruthless play isn’t antisocial here; it’s the engine that drives the game.

For my group, that’s pure gold. We enjoy confrontational designs with sharp edges and “take that” mechanics, provided everyone at the table understands the social contract: this is a game, not a personality test. But years of gaming have also taught me that not every group can handle that style of play. If you tend to take setbacks personally, or if direct player aggression sours the mood, this game may very well bounce off you, though it’s far too early to make any final judgments. We will see how this pans out when I do the final review after a few play-throughs.

Mechanically, though, I’m deeply intrigued.

While comparisons are inevitable, Syncanite Foundation ultimately feels like a bit of a white elephant design, something unusual, ambitious, and difficult to neatly categorize. In that sense, it reminds me strongly of the work of Vlaada Chvátil, particularly titles like Through the Ages, Galaxy Trucker, and Mage Knight. Games that are unapologetically themselves, full of bold ideas, and largely incomparable to anything else on the shelf.

That kind of ambition is exactly what excites me as a gamer.

Conclusion

Syncanite Foundation is, without question, a visual feast. It presents a bold, confident concept and carries with it an enormous amount of potential. I genuinely want this game to succeed, and I’m eager to get it to the table. But art and enthusiasm alone doesn’t make a game playable or good. I can be a tough critic when it comes to gameplays, especially if you get my hopes up and make no mistakes, you’ve got me excited, Syncanite Foundation, the pressure is on!

An extraordinary amount of effort has clearly gone into the presentation, the worldbuilding, and the physical production. All admirable and original efforts worthy of praise and attention. Now it’s time for the real test, the mechanics and gameplay, to see if the game delivers on its promise.

With an updated rulebook freshly printed out, a game session scheduled and an excited crew already hyped up from my depiction of the game, it’s time to play some Syncanite Foundation!

UPDATE: A New Manual for Syncanite Foundation can be found here.



Dedicated To All Things Gaming