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Review: Dewan (2025)

May 5, 2026 5 Minutes

Designer: Johannes Goupy, Yoann Levet

When Dewan first landed on my table, my eyes didn’t go to the rulebook, the components, or even the promise of gameplay. They went straight to that absolutely mesmerizing cover art by Arthus Pilorget. It’s surreal, vibrant, and just the right kind of strange, like a dream you can’t quite explain but don’t want to wake up from. There’s an immediate sense of identity here, a bold, artistic swagger that practically demands your attention. And yeah… I love it.

Beneath that dazzling, slightly offbeat exterior lies something far more restrained: a deeply abstract puzzle game. There’s nothing wrong with that, far from it, but when the art sets the stage this dramatically, part of you can’t help but expect something equally theatrical underneath. Maybe that’s unfair. Maybe that’s just the spell the artwork casts. Either way, I always like to capture my raw, first impression, the unfiltered “wow” before the mechanics settle in. So yes, let the record show: very cool art.

Anyway, enough gawking, consider me thoroughly impressed, and let’s dive in.

I feel compelled to put this piece on my blog; it really defines the term, artwork! Anyone who says that A.I. will replace artists is kidding themselves, a machine can copy it, but nothing like this will ever originate from a machine, no matter how much we invest in them.

Dewan sits comfortably in that delicious design space of deceptively simple mechanics wrapped around a surprisingly deep strategic core. At first glance, it feels approachable, almost gentle… but give it a few plays, and suddenly you’re in deep waters, wrestling with decisions that feel sharper, tighter, and far more consequential than expected. It’s a slow burn in the best way, subtle at first, then steadily revealing layers of tension, bite, and competitive edge. And make no mistake, this game can get spicy once players find their footing. It’s a lot more confrontational than it appears or the rules suggest; there is strong, in-your-face interaction here.

What really elevates Dewan, though, is its ever-shifting landscape. The game is map-based, and crucially, you build that map yourself at the start of each session. The result is that no two games feel remotely alike. Forget rehearsed openings or safe, go-to strategies; this is a game that thrives on adaptability. You’ll need to think on your feet, pivot constantly, and embrace the chaos of a board that refuses to play by familiar rules. I really liked that a great deal; it speaks to replayability and longevity, so we are off to a great start.

I find it interesting how wildly different I saw this map during the first 3 plays of this game and how I see it now. The learning curve is not steep, but there is understanding and meaningful knowledge, a transition that takes a few plays to appear.

I also struggled to pin down a clean comparison, and that’s a fantastic thing. In a hobby full of echoes and iterations, Dewan feels refreshingly, confidently unique.

So right out of the gate, we have a strong opening and a lot of great potential. The question is, does Dewan deliver on the promise? Let’s find out!

Overview

Final Score: (4.05 out 5) Outstanding Game!

If you really want to get a grip on Dewan, the cleanest way to unpack it is to think in three interlocking layers: the razor-thin scoring system, the slick card-driven action engine, and the ever-present, quietly cutthroat area control on the map. The game demands that a player be efficient, which, coincidentally, is how I would describe the way the game was designed.

Let’s start with the path to victory, because this one is tight. Points are scarce, precious, and just a little bit elusive. You’re not racking up big numbers here; instead, most of your scoring trickles in through the completion of story cards (think elegant little objective puzzles). These ask you to control specific terrain types, mountains, forests, and deserts, and convert that control into a sort of resource checkbox. There are a few bonus avenues for points, plus a shared scenario card that sweetens the pot for everyone, but the real magic lies in efficiency, not overwhelming acquisition.

The trick is to chain your story cards together so they overlap in clever, satisfying ways, squeezing maximum value out of minimal effort on the board. It’s less about doing more and more about doing just enough, brilliantly. If that sounds like a hobbit riddle, well, the game kind of is that.

The Story cards tell you what resources you must collect, but you unlock these as you go, and there is no telling what cards will be available when it’s your turn to pick one. This might be the only time a bit of luck can help you. Finding a way to make use of the same resource in more than one story is key to a successful run.

Actions are governed by the card system, the pulsing, strategic heartbeat of the game. Each round, you’re faced with an illusively tense choice: play cards to move across the board and establish settlements (your claim to territory), or pause to draft new cards from a constantly shifting market. It’s simple on paper, but in practice every decision feels like a tiny, meaningful gamble. Efficiency, again, is everything. Waste a move, and you’ll feel it, and while you may have a plan, opportunities difficult to pass up come up all the time, and knowing when to take them and when to pass is kind of the key to the game.

At the start of the game, the board feels wide open, brimming with possibility. Resources seem plentiful, and on the dynamically built map, opportunities are abundant. You might even think, “Hey, this isn’t so hard.” The game will correct that perception rather quickly.

Because Dewan hides a beautifully designed rule at its core: connected territories of the same type only count as one terrain type. I would imagine when the designer came up with that, the rest of the game laid out for him like a solved puzzle.

You might think that having 5 deserts so close together is a lucky break; it will make checkboxing deserts quick and easy, but the reality is that you are looking at one big desert, which is catastrophically bad. It not only forces you across it, meaning you need to collect desert cards to move through them, but settling more than one of these deserts is useless.

Those four cozy mountain tiles clustered near your starting position look like a goldmine… but mechanically, they’re just a single, lonely mountain. Suddenly, the board shifts from inviting to demanding. That one rule, simple, elegant, slightly cruel, completely reshapes how you approach the game. You can’t just carve out a neat little slice of the map and call it a day. You’ll need to spread out, stretch your reach, and compete across the entire board, and you can be certain your opponents will be doing the same.

And here’s the kicker: moving across that board costs cards. Every step, every expansion, every ambitious grab for territory eats into your limited hand. So once again, the game whispers its central mantra, do more with less. The game could have been called “Optimization,” and that would have been on point.

There’s a lot more bubbling beneath the surface, layers of nuance, timing, and tactical brinkmanship, but even at a high level, you can feel it: Dewan is one of those games where the rules are deceptively simple, but the decisions are gloriously, brain-meltingly complex.

And that’s fascinating. Genuinely.

But also very abstract, and if I’m being honest, just a little outside my personal taste. I can absolutely appreciate what it’s doing; there’s a deep, rewarding well here for players who want to dive in, explore, and master its many subtleties. This is a game that could easily sustain dozens, maybe hundreds, of plays for the right audience. It’s well designed, well balanced, everything you could want as a general board game fan, but general is not my sweet spot.

Three times during the game, you will be allowed to slip a card under your board, which gives you both the terrain and resource on that card. This requires good timing and preparation, but is quite important for scoring purposes.

For me, Dewan lands squarely in that familiar category of:
“This is excellent… just not entirely my thing,” which simply means I’m happy to play it, but it won’t necessarily find its way into my permanent collection.

It’s not so much a judgment as it is a preference, but I will say that games like Dewan sometimes win me over, over time. I’m not in a rush to cull it. I recognize that while I have my preferences, sometimes these sorts of puzzly games win me over, and Dewan certainly has the potential to do just that.

Components

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: Outstanding quality through and through, the art is just a cherry on top!

Cons: I would have liked to see a rules reference for this one.

The component quality, judged across my three core pillars: physical durability, artistic execution, and clarity, puts Dewan on a clear path toward a perfect score.

Frankly, there’s very little to criticize here. The components are crafted from thick, resilient stock that feels built for countless plays. Visually, the game leans fully into its charming, whimsical art style, maintaining a cohesive and inviting aesthetic across every piece. The iconography does present a slight learning curve at first, but once it clicks, it reveals itself to be clean, intuitive, and thoughtfully placed; everything communicates exactly what it needs to, exactly where you expect it. And the box insert is exceptionally well-designed, snug, practical, and oddly satisfying in its precision.

The rulebook, however, is where things get a bit more nuanced. My initial instinct was to criticize it. It adopts a “teach-as-you-play” approach rather than functioning as a structured reference guide. While this makes onboarding smooth and approachable, it becomes less convenient when you need to answer a specific question mid-game. Instead of quickly locating a rule, you may find yourself digging through the flow of the gameplay explanation to uncover it.

The vivid and colorful art make this game a pleasure to look at, but I have to say it again, art this good belongs on something less abstract; this artist should be working on RPG’s!

This is a hill I will happily die on: every game should include a dedicated rules reference for quick lookups, especially for edge cases and commonly misunderstood elements.

In Dewan, those questions will most often revolve around iconography and scenario cards, which can feel slightly opaque during your first few plays. That said, this is far from a dealbreaker. The game itself is elegantly simple, and once those early uncertainties are resolved, you’re unlikely to revisit the rulebook at all. The rules are streamlined, logical, and easy to internalize.

Overall, this is a beautifully produced, impressively polished game, one that doesn’t just meet modern board game production standards but confidently exceeds them.

Theme

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: If we were judging the theme on art alone, this would be 5 stars!

Cons: The theme is mostly irrelevant to the game, but as an abstract game, it doesn’t really need a theme.

The theme isn’t exactly the beating heart of Dewan, in fact, it barely registers as a pulse. Outside of its enchanting, fairy tale-inspired art style, there’s very little here to anchor the experience in a meaningful narrative, leaving me with surprisingly little to dig into.

Beyond a scattering of light flavor text in the rulebook, the game offers only the faintest hint of context. You’re… expanding a village, exploring, for reasons that remain charmingly vague and conveniently unexplained. It all feels more like a decorative backdrop than a driving force, pleasant to look at, but ultimately insubstantial. It’s an abstract game, plain and simple.

What this game lacks in theme, it makes up for in great gameplay and, more importantly, amazing style. The vivid use of light here is amazing!

I’m not even sure what else can be said. This is precisely where my tilting system earns its keep. While Dewan’s theme is undeniably thin, almost ethereal in its absence, it also doesn’t detract from the experience in any meaningful way. The game isn’t trying to tell a story, and it doesn’t need to.

So yes, the theme may be wispy, but crucially, it’s also harmless, an aesthetic flourish rather than a foundational pillar in an otherwise abstract puzzle game beautifully executed.

Gameplay

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: Fantastic design, I foresee this game winning some awards.

Cons: Can be quite unforgiving, takes a few plays before it clicks.

While the theme in Dewan barely leaves an impression, the gameplay is the undeniable centerpiece, the beating heart and razor-sharp mind of the experience.

For a game with such elegantly simple rules, Dewan hides a remarkable amount of depth beneath its surface. It’s one of those deceptively “light” designs that quickly reveals a dense, cerebral core the moment you start making meaningful decisions.

If I had to distill what makes Dewan stand out, it’s that it belongs to a lineage of games rooted in mathematical integrity. This is a design built on balance, probability, and precision rather than flashy mechanics or familiar systems. It feels engineered in the best possible way, echoing the philosophies of designers like Reiner Knizia, Vlaada Chvátil, and Alexander Pfister. In that sense, Johannes Goupy and Yoann Levet have crafted something that feels refreshingly deliberate and structurally sound, without the usual copy/pasting that makes it easily definable as “just like X game”.

Where many modern games lean on familiar frameworks, worker placement, deck building, and action selection, Dewan confidently carves its own path. It doesn’t rely on genre shorthand. Instead, it builds tension and decision-making from first principles, and the result is something that feels both fresh and intellectually satisfying.

From the very start, variability defines the experience. Randomized terrain, shifting board layouts, and scenario (or “story”) cards ensure that no two games unfold the same way. Yet impressively, this randomness never undermines balance. The scenario cards feel meticulously tuned, difficult to achieve regardless of your starting position. You won’t luck into an easy 8-point score just because the board happened to favor you. That level of consistency in a dynamic setup is no small feat; it’s careful, disciplined design. Anyone who has ever tried to design a game knows just how painful balancing dynamic mechanics can be. It’s clear this game went through rigorous testing to achieve this result.

The pacing is another standout strength. Every village placed tightens the board, increasing both spatial pressure and urgency. The game subtly transforms into a race, not just to score efficiently, but to act before opportunities disappear. You want to craft perfect, optimized turns… but the game rarely affords you that luxury.

This is a pretty fast-paced game, you’re going to take maybe 12-15 actions before the game ends, and you know you’re doing well if you are the one putting the pressure on other players to keep up. There is definitely a race here; faster is in fact, better. The result is that in a typical game night, you are probably going to play this more than once.

This creates a fun and sometimes frustrating tension. Dewan is a puzzle under pressure, a game where careful planning collides with the constant need to adapt and race to the finish. Mistakes are not easily forgiven; there just aren’t enough turns for you to course correct a mistake.

Player interaction is also more pronounced than it first appears. This isn’t a solitary optimization exercise; it’s a shared, contested space. You need to track opponents closely, anticipating their moves, disrupting their plans, and adjusting your own strategy accordingly. Blocking becomes just as important as building, and though this skill takes time to develop, it is more often than not the key to a tight victory.

One particularly elegant design choice is the terrain drafting system. When selecting terrain cards, you must take two adjacent cards rather than freely choosing any combination. It’s a small rule with enormous implications. Even when the exact pieces you need are visible, they’re often just out of reach. This forces compromise, sacrifice, and creative problem-solving, adding another layer of often painful decisions to the puzzle.

Drafting cards in Dewan is really very key. I’m not even exaggerating that one bad decision, especially when playing with experienced players, can make the difference between winning and losing. It’s very unforgiving, which I actually liked quite a bit.

And that’s really the magic of Dewan. With only two types of actions per turn available, the game manages to feel surprisingly weighty, filled with difficult choices. Every choice ripples outward, interacting with the board state, your objectives, and your opponents’ plans. It’s tight, demanding, and deeply engaging.

That said, this style of design comes with its trade-offs. There’s no real catch-up mechanism. Strong, optimized play is rewarded, and mistakes can be costly. In fact, the game is so tight that even a single bad call can and often will cost you the game. It is a puzzle game that demands perfection. In many games, you may find yourself identifying the likely winner well before the final turn. Fortunately, Dewan keeps things brisk, typically wrapping up in 30–45 minutes, so even a losing position never overstays its welcome. You won’t have to wallow in your defeat for long.

At its core, the gameplay loop is beautifully simple: control space, match terrain to objectives, and position your camps to maximize scoring opportunities. But the path to doing so is filled with clever constraints and constantly shifting decisions that keep every turn engaging.

Dewan succeeds because it embraces one of the purest goals of game design: when you lose, you know exactly why, and you immediately want to try again with a better plan.

That’s not just good design. That’s great design.

Replay-ability and Longevity

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: Dynamic starting setup and unique scenarios make this game very replayable. Works with all player counts equally well.

Cons: Playing with new players can be a little unfair; it’s not that much fun until it clicks for everyone.

The first couple of plays of Dewan, I have to be honest, felt a little… samey. Not bad, not boring, just oddly flat. The competitive edge hadn’t quite surfaced yet, and I struggled to see where the long-term excitement or replayability was supposed to come from. It all felt a bit too neat, a bit too contained, like a clever puzzle that might not have much more to say after a few rounds.

And then, somewhere around the third or fourth play, it clicked for me and I’m glad I stuck around to see it.

That’s when it hit me: everything I thought I had learned was not nearly as useful as I expected. The game’s dynamic, randomized setup completely reshuffles the puzzle every single time. What worked before doesn’t necessarily work again. There’s no “perfect opening,” no reliable flowchart to follow, no cozy strategy to fall back on. Dewan quietly pulls the rug out from under you and says, “Figure it out… again.”

And that’s where it comes alive.

Each session feels like a brand-new puzzle with familiar rules but a wildly different personality. The structure stays consistent, but the execution constantly shifts. The game is constantly demanding adaptation. It’s like solving a new riddle using the same language, recognizable, yet endlessly surprising.

Now, sitting here after about a dozen plays, I feel pretty confident saying this: the replayability here is, for all practical purposes, limitless. You might eventually step away from it, but it won’t be because you’ve “solved” it or fallen into repetitive patterns. This game doesn’t let you do that.

You’re not going to score a lot of points in this game, and most end-of-game scoring is going to be very tight. Every point matters in this game; you have to squeeze it for everything you can get out of it, there is no room for sub-optimal play.

If you have a soft spot for light, puzzly Euro games, the kind that reward clever thinking, efficient play, and a willingness to adapt on the fly, then Dewan is going to feel right at home on your table. It’s a sharp, thoughtful design with a wonderfully dynamic core, and that ever-changing setup does a ton of heavy lifting when it comes to keeping things fresh.

A great design, a tight balance, and endlessly shifting starting conditions, together, give Dewan a replayability that feels not just strong, but effortlessly alive.

Conclusion

I always find games like Dewan uniquely difficult to review, and not because they’re flawed, but because they’re so clearly, so quietly excellent. After decades of playing board games with near-obsessive enthusiasm, and more than ten years of dissecting and reviewing them, you develop an instinct for design, an ability to recognize when something is finely tuned, meticulously balanced, and thoughtfully constructed.

And make no mistake: Dewan is exactly that. It is subtly, almost deceptively, brilliant.

But the beauty of a conclusion is that the analysis is done. The score is set. The critical lens can finally be set aside, and I can just speak as a player.

And as a player, I can say Dewan is a game I deeply respect more than I personally love. It’s excellent, I’m just not its target audience.

It’s an elegantly engineered experience that will absolutely resonate with the right audience. For me, though, it sits just outside my usual preferences. That said, I have no doubt it will continue to hit the table. Its quality all but guarantees it, people will discover it, appreciate it, and want to play it again and again. And importantly, I never found it frustrating or grating in the way more abstract, puzzle-heavy games sometimes can be. It’s thoughtful without being exhausting, challenging without being punishing.

In the end, Dewan is a game I would confidently recommend to players who appreciate clever, finely crafted systems and enjoy abstract, brain-burning puzzles wrapped in a clean, distinctive design.

It may not be my perfect game, but it is, without question, a remarkably well-designed one that will make it someone’s top 10 list.

Boardgame Review, Gaming Articles

Review: Epochs: Course of Cultures – 2025

April 20, 2026 5 Minutes

Designer: Jeffrey CCH

I do enjoy a good civilization game. In fact, if one were to casually browse my gaming shelves (an expedition not unlike cataloguing a particularly nerdy wing of the British Museum), one would find no shortage of grand historical ambitions neatly packed into cardboard. Titles such as Through the Ages, Western Empires, and Nations just to name a few sit there rather smugly, silently judging lesser boxes. One might even say, though only after a modest pause for dramatic effect, that I am something of a connoisseur.

I know, more or less, what I want from a civilization game, but I do delight in being surprised by games in this genre, providing something unexpected. This is precisely where Epoch: Course of Cultures emerges, like a well-dressed time traveller stepping out of a slightly unreliable machine. It presents a civilization-building experience that feels comfortingly familiar, yet curiously novel, an impressive feat that would likely earn a small, approving nod from Sid Meier himself. I would even argue this game has done more for the genre itself than the latest PC disappointment, Civilisation 7, though that is not as extraordinary feat as you might imagine it to be. A topic perhaps for another day.

Overview

Final Score: (3.6 out 5 Stars)

Epoch: Course of Cultures is, at its heart, an action selection civilization builder, which is a wonderfully polite way of saying, “you will spend a great deal of time making big key decisions and then immediately wondering if they were terrible ones.” Beneath the surface, it carries many of the familiar mechanical bones of the genre, but with just enough curious mutations and original ideas to keep things feeling fresh, competitive, and pleasantly tense in that “I may have just doomed my people” sort of way.

Now, civilization games do have a reputation for being… Chronologically challenged. In that context, Epoch sits comfortably in the middle ground. When compared to titans like Through the Ages or Western Empires, a four-hour playtime feels almost refreshingly restrained, like a historical epic that politely ends before your snacks run out. That said, it’s quite the affair compared to your standard board game play time, especially at the preferred 4 player count.

One of the central concepts behind a good civilization game in my opinion, is that it should feel massive, epic.. sprawling even. That approach however, usually comes with several drawbacks, the time needed to play often being one of the primary reasons you rarely get to play them. I love my Western Empires, but getting 5+ players together for a 12+ hour game is exceedingly rare, so it becomes a beloved dust collector instead.

What Epoch does rather cleverly is take a seemingly simple action structure and quietly turn it into something far more devious. On your turn, you’ll do something wonderfully straightforward: play a card representing a development in your civilization, and then choose an action, settling new lands, advancing culture, investing in science, and so on. All very reasonable, yet that play of a card leads to all the actions that include all the core ideas of civilisation building. Production, technology, construction, trade, etc.. All very civilised. And yet, beneath this calm exterior lurks a deeply strategic, wonderfully thinky puzzle that will have you staring at the board as though it has personally offended you.

And there is quite a lot of board to stare at. The game comes with an impressive collection of pieces, icons, tracks, and other paraphernalia that suggest great complexity. But in truth, mechanically speaking, especially by civilization game standards, Epoch is surprisingly approachable. It’s less “arcane ritual” and more “well-organised chaos.”

There is so much built into your action selection card play in Epoch that it feels wonderfully intuitive and powerful each time you pick something. It’s a decision that will pay out over the course of the entire game, making each action central to a larger, grand strategy.

What truly elevates the experience, however, is how tight it feels and how interactive it is in a way modern games in general have been gradually pulling away from. Every action matters. Every decision nudges your civilization forward in a way that feels tangible and earned, with an impact on the other players directly. This subtle but blatant interaction makes you constantly aware of your opponents, because unlike many modern civ builders, Epoch is not afraid to let you go to war. In fact, escalation towards war is one of the core features of the game. Each player’s choices ripple into yours, shaping your next move, whether you like it or not, it’s really only a matter of time before you clash. This is a refreshing change from many civilization games, which can sometimes feel like a group of people politely playing solo games in the same room, with occasional brushes like “oh no, you took the card I wanted”. Here, the interaction is real, the tension is present, and the consequences are just inconvenient enough to be delightful.

Civilization: A New Dawn shares a lot of similarities as a design with Epoch, both games feature an explorable terrain board and an action selection system that drives the game forward, but unlike Epoch, A New Dawn landed rather flat with me and it was the shortage of meaningful interaction between players that I would blame as the root cause for it.

In its own way, Epoch will challenge classics like Through The Ages, though the question remains, where does it rank in the great scheme of this very robust genre? I don’t think you can get away with making a Civilization builder without comparisons, so we will be doing a bit of that in this review.

Components

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: Very flashy and usable. Things are easy to find the iconography is exceptional.

Cons: There are a lot of pieces to this game, and you’re going to need a larger-than-standard table to play it, especially 4 players.

I consider component quality to be important in a civilization game only because these games are, at their core, sprawling puzzles masquerading as historical progress. You are expected to maintain a bird’s-eye view of everything at all times, an impressive feat, given that your brain is already busy calculating the long-term consequences of a decision you made fifteen minutes ago involving what seemed, at the time, to be a perfectly innocent grain surplus.

Analysis Paralysis is not just a possibility here, it’s more of a lifestyle choice. When a single action can ripple five to ten turns into the future, you need clarity. You need visibility. You need iconography that doesn’t require a degree in interpretive archaeology to understand. In short, you need the game to communicate with you clearly, ideally without muttering cryptic symbols like an ancient alien artefact.

Traditionally, this clarity comes from strong, simple rules, but equally important is how the components themselves convey information. After all, if the board looks like a tax form designed by chaos theorists, no amount of good rules will save you and this tends to be the case in many civilisation-building games.

Fortunately, this is where Epoch positively beams with competence. From the cards to the player aids, from the iconography to the general visual presentation, everything is crisp, readable, and, dare one say, rather attractive. It carries a certain aesthetic familiarity that fans of Sid Meier’s work will recognise immediately, as if the game itself quietly aspires to be invited over for tea with Civilization and not embarrass itself.

And it succeeds. This is a production that balances beauty with functionality in a way that feels almost suspiciously well thought out. You will, after all, be staring at this game for several hours, possibly long enough to begin assigning personalities to your resource tokens, so it’s rather important that the experience is visually pleasant. (There are, one suspects, entire galaxies that have been abandoned for less.)

There is no question that Epoch is a sprawling game with tons of “things” on the board, which can be quite intimidating for the average board gamer. This is rather misleading because, despite the very busy board, Epoch is a pretty straightforward game you might compare to your average Euro in terms of complexity.

Like most civilization games, Epoch isn’t something you’ll casually throw onto the table on a whim. It demands time, attention, and a willingness to explain rules to your friends that may, at some point, sound like you are describing the tax policies of a small but determined nation. However, thanks to excellent organisation and intuitive design, the learning curve is far gentler than it could have been. The same game with lesser components would have been far more complex.

In fact, during my very first play, I already felt surprisingly in control, an unsettling sensation in a genre that usually delights in making you feel like a confused ruler shouting at maps. By the second play, it was all strategy, all the time. And much of that ease comes down to components that are not just well-designed, but designed for use.

Well done indeed. Top marks here, no need to consult the Guide on this one.

Theme

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: It nails civilization building with class while including things that are often omitted in other Civilisation-building games.

Cons: It’s missing historical figures, with technological progress being a heavily abstracted concept that has little impact on the game beyond resource collection.

I suspect this section can be handled with the sort of efficiency normally reserved for highly competent civil servants and improbably well-organised galaxies.

The theme of Epoch: Course of Cultures is civilization-building and history, and I’m pleased to report that it achieves this with very little fuss and a reassuring amount of success. It looks like a civilization game, it plays like a civilization game, and, most importantly, it feels like a civilization game while you’re sitting at the table making questionable long-term decisions. In short: it does exactly what it says on the tin, which is more than can be said for a surprising number of things in the universe.

That said, there is a small crack in the otherwise polished marble.

One of the great joys of the genre is the sense that each civilization has its own identity. That playing Persia should feel meaningfully different from playing Egypt, beyond simply having a different colour and a slightly more exotic name to mispronounce.

Epoch gestures in this direction, offering each nation a minor, slightly quirky advantage you can develop over time. It’s a nice touch, pleasant, even, but its impact on the actual gameplay is… modest. So modest, in fact, that you may find yourself forgetting who is playing what entirely, which is rarely a good sign in a game about civilizations and their supposedly rich identities.

These differences don’t meaningfully steer your strategy, nor do they create distinct playstyles. You won’t find yourself passionately debating the merits of one civilization over another, or dramatically declaring, “Ah, but you see, this is exactly what the Persians would do.” Instead, everyone is essentially playing the same game with very slightly different accents.

There is also a noticeable absence of historical figures. No great leaders, no visionary scientists, no wildly overconfident generals making bold claims about invading Russia in winter. It’s a small thing, perhaps, but these human elements often provide a strong sense of connection to history, anchors that make the experience feel less abstract and more alive.

I think Through The Ages is the king of themes when it comes to Civilization builders, mainly because it’s so all-inclusive of the tropes that you hope to find in a Civilization building game. From the people, wonders, techs and buildings, everything has that Sid Meier feel to it, and this is despite the fact that the game doesn’t feature a map at all.

Here, the world of Epoch is curiously… people-less. Civilizations rise, expand, and occasionally go to war, but they do so without the guiding presence of anyone you might recognise from a textbook, or indeed, from a particularly enthusiastic documentary narrator.

It’s not a dealbreaker by any means. The theme works. It lands. But it never quite reaches that smile-inducing moment where everything clicks and you feel like you’re part of a grand historical tapestry. It doesn’t have that “role-playing” aspect of running a personality.

It’s more… a very well-organised spreadsheet of history. Perfectly functional. Just missing a few memorable personalities and faces.

Gameplay

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: Solid, streamlined framework that makes the game easy to teach and learn, making it a far more approachable civ builder than the vast majority of its competition.

Cons: It doesn’t really compete with the classics, it’s a fun alternative, but it’s not going to replace anything.

A proper civilization game, in my view, must achieve three things, rather like a good cup of tea, except vastly more complicated and with a higher likelihood of military conflict.

First, it must deliver a genuine sense of growth and expansion. Not just numbers going up (though we do love a good number), but a feeling that your civilization is becoming something distinct. Your choices should matter. Your path should diverge. You should feel, at least in some small but satisfying way, that you are carving your own slightly questionable decisions into the annals of history.

Second, it ought to feel grounded in history, or at least in something that politely waves in history’s general direction. Playing as different civilizations should feel different. Whether you lean into military dominance, technological supremacy, or industrial might, there should be a strategic identity to your choices, and ideally a way to feel quite smug about them when they work.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, it needs to hold up over repeated plays. A civilization game that can be “solved” is about as useful as a guidebook that confidently tells you the restaurant is at the end of the universe but forgets to mention it’s closed on Tuesdays. There must be room for variation, for adaptation, for strategies that evolve based on circumstances rather than habit. There has to be a way for a local meta to form, and the game must have built-in ways to challenge and reforge that meta without expansions. That is the only way to get replayability long-term with a Civilization game.

Now, achieving all of this in a single board game is, frankly, a bit unreasonable. But that is the burden of the genre. When you are competing with giants like Through the Ages and Western Empires, the inevitable closing line of any review tends to be, “It was very good… but X or Y Civ Builder does it better.”

So, where does Epoch land? Well, rather respectably, actually.

It doesn’t kick down the doors of the genre and declare itself emperor, but it does bring enough interesting ideas to justify its place at the table. One of the most notable things it does is reintroduce something many modern civilization games have quietly abandoned: the map.

Not having a map as part of a Civilization building game was a trend created by Through The Ages, and for a time it caught on, which included games like Nations and Age of Innovation, for example. A map brings a much higher level of design complexity, eliminating it is a clean way to avoid some of those traps. It works for some games, but it does feel like something is missing from the experience, even when it works.

It is not just a decoration here. This is, gloriously, a game about actual presence, about being somewhere, owning territory, and occasionally sending small, determined groups of people to stand on it and argue with other groups of people. Much like Western Empires, there is very much a “dudes on a map” experience.

This is important because somewhere along the way, designers occasionally forget that Sid Meier’s Civilization, the grand inspiration for much of the genre, is, in many ways, also a war game. Position matters. Resources matter. Territory matters. And, crucially, these things can be taken away from you by someone who has decided your empire looks a bit too comfortable.

Epoch understands this, it embraces it.

War is present, impactful, and, importantly, expensive. Starting a conflict is not something you do lightly, unless you are either (a) winning and feeling confident, or (b) losing and feeling vindictive. Both are valid historical precedents.

Dudes on a map are handled quite simply with cubes in Epoch, as the actual military strength elements are driven by cards you can purchase. This makes the execution of war simple, but the strategy behind it, when you should do it, how you should do it etc.., that is an entirely different question. Even after several plays, it was not clear to me where war falls in Epoch so far as strategy goes.

There are two main approaches: a more measured declaration that gives your opponent time to prepare, or a full “I have made a terrible decision and will now commit to it immediately” war-monger stance that lets you attack anyone at once. Both options carry consequences, both reshape the board, and both inject the game with a delicious sense of tension.

Now, a brief warning: Epoch has what might be described as an “old-school personality.” Player interaction can feel… direct. Occasionally pointed. At times, even a bit mean. If you are accustomed to modern board games where conflict is more of a polite disagreement than a full-blown geopolitical incident, this may come as a shock. Personally, I think it’s wonderful. But consider yourself warned, this is less pillow fight, more street brawl conducted with spreadsheets.

Perhaps the most elegant part of the design, however, is how it condenses the entire 4X experience, explore, expand, exploit, exterminate, into a single, streamlined core game loop.

You play a card. You take an action. That’s it.

And yet, that one action encapsulates everything: production, development, technology, expansion, trade, governance, and the general sense that you are somehow both in control and one poor decision away from ruin. Each move feels significant. Each turn alters the board in a meaningful way. You are not idly passing time; you are doing things, and they matter.

I especially liked the handling of government in Epoch. Each government type comes with unique benefits ot the exclusion of other possible selections. It’s a tough choice and needs to be made in cohesion with the rest of your general strategy. There is no going back and making a mistake here can be quite costly.

It’s immensely satisfying.

More importantly, it’s intuitive. Unlike some of its more illustrious cousins, Epoch doesn’t require a lengthy lecture on “how to actually play well” after you’ve learned the rules. You understand what you want to do almost immediately. By your second game, you’re strategising with confidence rather than fumbling through historical guesswork.

This is, frankly, one of its greatest strengths as it is often a key weakness in even the best of the civilisation-building genre games. I love my Western Empires, but unless you have played it a dozen times, I’m going to crush you so badly you’re going to think the game is broken, and there is no shortcut to that education but repeat plays. Epoch is clever enough to avoid that problem.

Randomness, another traditional troublemaker in the genre, is handled with a commendable degree of restraint. Yes, the map can favour some players over others (as maps, and indeed life, tend to do), but the advantages are never so overwhelming that you can predict the winner from the opening placement. The game provides enough tools for clever play to overcome a less-than-ideal start, which is exactly how it should be.

That said, no civilization game escapes compromise, and Epoch is no exception.

The most noticeable absence is the tech tree, that beloved web of dependencies where one discovery unlocks another in a satisfying chain of progress. Here, technology is far more abstract. You invest in it, you gain benefits, but you’re not building toward specific unlock paths in the traditional sense. There’s no “research pottery to unlock granaries” moment. It’s more fluid, less structured, and for some players, that will feel like something is missing.

While I was not a huge fan of Fantasy Flight Games, Sid Meiers Civilization, it did include the tech tree in a hierarchy, and that felt quite right to me. You got a strong sense of progress, and “tech advantage” was a concept built into the game.

Wonders, too, lack a certain… well, wonder. Rather than grand, multi-turn projects that define your civilization, they are more transactional, appearing, being purchased, and providing benefits without much ceremony. There is no standing atop your cardboard empire declaring yourself a golden god of architecture. It’s all a bit more… efficient.

War, while excellent in concept, also carries an interesting limitation: it is often too expensive to be used as a precise strategic tool. Instead, it tends to emerge at the extremes, either from a dominant player pressing their advantage, or from a struggling one lashing out in desperation. The nuanced, tactical “check your opponent” war is less common, simply because your resources are usually better spent elsewhere as this is still a game about victory points.

And yet, despite all of this, it works.

The game remains deeply strategic, richly interactive, and thoroughly engaging. Resource management is meaningful, positioning matters, and the sense of building something over time is both tangible and rewarding. It ticks a remarkable number of boxes for a 4X civilization game, even if it approaches some of them from unusual angles.

There is certainly room for expansion, perhaps a bit more depth in certain systems, a touch of refinement here and there, but what’s already here is compelling.

In short: it’s a civilization worth building again.

Replayability and Longevity

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: Plenty of reasons to play it several times, lots to explore.

Cons: There is a cap somewhere, some limit before you shelv it and never come back to it, this is not an instant repeatable classic.

It may not be entirely fair, but civilization games carry with them a certain grandeur. They are not simply games; they are events. And when you reach for one on the shelf, you are not just picking something to play, you are making a decision of mild historical importance.

That decision, in my experience, is governed by two variables:
How much time do you have, and how many players are involved?

Tell me those two things, and I will tell you which civilization game to play with the quiet confidence of someone who has spent far too long thinking about this.

Many of these “slots” are already occupied by titans.
Large group, plenty of time? Western Empires, no hesitation.
Small group, plenty of time? Through the Ages, a masterpiece.
Large group, limited time? Nations will do the job admirably.

The awkward gap, the one that has always been a bit of a problem, is small player count with limited time. This is the Bermuda Triangle of civilization games, where ambition goes in and slightly disappointing “filler” experiences come out. Sadly, Epoch doesn’t quite solve this particular cosmic mystery either.

Instead, it settles into the 3–4 players, ample time category, which places it in direct, and rather bold, comparison with Through the Ages and Nations, just to name a couple.

Now, this might sound like a dangerous place to be, but here’s the interesting part: Epoch holds its ground surprisingly well.

In fact, it has a distinct advantage. Games like Through the Ages, as brilliant as they are, can be notoriously unforgiving to new players. Your first few games often feel less like building a civilization and more like being politely but firmly dismantled by someone who understands the system better. Nations can suffer from a similar issue.

Epoch, on the other hand, is refreshingly approachable. It’s intuitive. New players can sit down, grasp the flow, and feel competitive far more quickly. With a bit of light strategic guidance, you can have a genuinely good experience right out of the gate, which is, frankly, a rare and valuable trait in this genre.

It also tends to run a bit shorter than both Through the Ages and Nations, making it a strong candidate when you want something substantial, but not life-schedulingly so. And compared to other games attempting to fill this niche, such as various adaptations of Sid Meier’s board game, it stands out as the more compelling option.

Epoch is a very busy game with a lot of levers, it certainly falls into the “heavy” category by most people’s standards, but I would argue for how involved the game looks, it’s considerably simpler than that. If you’re accustomed to playing Heavy Euro’s, you’re not going to find this game complicated at all. It’s actually pretty straightforward.

So yes, there is absolutely a place for Epoch on the shelf.

The more difficult question is: how long does it stay there?

After three plays, I found myself in an interesting position. I hadn’t exhausted the strategic possibilities, nor had I identified any clearly dominant paths to victory. The game is dynamic enough to keep things engaging, but at the same time, the overall experience didn’t vary as dramatically from session to session as one might hope.

The map provides the most noticeable variation, but not to the extent that it fundamentally reshapes your approach. You adapt, certainly, but you don’t reinvent.

My instinct, always a slightly unreliable but occasionally insightful companion, suggests that after perhaps six to ten plays, the game may begin to lose a bit of its novelty.

Now, to be fair, that is not a damning criticism. Most games do not survive more than a handful of table appearances. In fact, if a game sees five plays, it is already outperforming a significant portion of the hobby.

But civilization games are not most games.

This is a genre where longevity is king. Where titles like Through the Ages can be played a hundred times over a decade, and Western Empires, despite requiring what feels like a small lifetime to complete, still returns to the table again and again because of that glorious grandeur.

By that standard, Epoch may fall just short of true immortality.

It is absolutely replayable. It is enjoyable. It earns its place.
But whether it will still be called upon ten years from now, with the same enthusiasm reserved for the genre’s greatest legends, I find unlikely. It lacked that true… umpf! A terrible description, but fans of Civ games know what I’m talking about here.

Conclusion

Epoch: Course of Cultures is, without question, a very good game. If what you’re after is an engaging, strategic experience wrapped in a historical civilization-building theme, and you don’t necessarily feel the need to compare everything to the sacred texts of the genre, then this is an easy recommendation. Particularly for Euro game fans, it delivers exactly the sort of tight decision-making, meaningful trade-offs, and competitive race for victory points that keeps the brain pleasantly occupied and occasionally mildly distressed.

It is thoughtful. It is strategic. It is, in all the right ways, a game that asks you to care about what you’re doing.

However, and this is where we gently adjust our monocle, if you are a full-fledged civilization-building enthusiast, the sort who speaks reverently of Through the Ages and Western Empires as though they were ancient and slightly temperamental deities, then Epoch may feel like it falls just short of true greatness.

Not because it does anything wrong, but because it doesn’t quite ascend to that rarefied level of “instant classic.” It is not, at least not yet, a card-carrying member of what can only be described as the Civilization Building Illuminati, a shadowy group of games that have achieved long-term dominance over gaming tables everywhere, and possibly influence global events (though this is difficult to verify).

That said, there is something important to note: I still very much want to play it again.

Epoch is a very engaging puzzle; there are plenty of moving parts that create depth in the strategy to keep you invested. I think its a good civilization game. It does not, however, dethrone any of the classics in my opinion. It’s kind of doomed to be an alternative to other Civ games I would rather play, given an allotted amount of time. No objections to playing Epoch, but if you ask me “What Civ Game do you WANT to play”, by default answer is not going to be Epoch.

After multiple plays, it hasn’t worn out its welcome. It hasn’t been solved, shelved, or quietly judged. It remains engaging, inviting, and, perhaps most importantly, fun. And in a genre that can occasionally take itself a bit too seriously, that counts for a great deal.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that Epoch feels almost tailor-made for digital play. A platform like Board Game Arena would suit it perfectly. Its streamlined action system, relatively low mechanical overhead, and clean structure would likely translate into a smooth online experience, one where a full game might be completed in about an hour, rather than requiring the careful scheduling of one’s social calendar and possibly a packed lunch.

And really, any civilization that can be built in an evening, or a very long lunch break, is doing something right.

So no, Epoch may not rewrite the history books of the genre. But it absolutely earns its place among them, and for many players, that will be more than enough.

Board Game Reviews, Kick-Starer

Review: Fate – Defenders of Grimheim

March 8, 2026 5 Minutes

If you read this blog with any regularity, you already know that my relationship with co-op games is… complicated. Hot and cold might be the best way to describe it. If I’m being honest, I’d estimate that about 70% of the co-op games I try land somewhere between “pretty abysmal” and “tolerable”.

For a typical group looking for a fun Friday night game, this one really sticks the landing. I think it’s a great family game.

But every now and then a co-op game comes along that, for reasons I can’t entirely explain, just clicks. When that happens, it tends to turn into a full-blown love affair.

A couple of prime examples are Spirit Island and my beloved Lord of the Rings: The Living Card Game. I don’t just like these games, I love them. I quite literally own everything ever printed for The Lord of the Rings card game, and when it comes to Spirit Island, I’m ready to play anytime, anywhere.

I try very hard not to be a hardliner; I don’t want to say “I hate cooperative games”, because I know there are always exceptions, so I’m always ready and willing to try anything. The truth is, however, I have very few co-op games in my collection, and I think that says a lot about where I usually stand with them. Lord of the Rings: The Living Card Game is such an exception. I absolutely adore this game.

Because of this somewhat turbulent relationship with the genre, I usually avoid reviewing co-op games. I like to keep things positive on this blog as much as possible. I simply don’t see myself as the ideal target audience, so why would I offer an opinion on one?

I made an exception for Fate: Defenders of Grimheim for one very important reason: the designer is none other than Jonathan Fryxelius.

If that name rings a bell, it should. Fryxelius is the mastermind behind Terraforming Mars, which I consider to be one of the best competitive board games ever made. It still sits comfortably at number 12 on my Best Games list, an impressive feat considering it was released back in 2016, which has given the entire gaming industry 10 years to come up with something better, and while there have been a couple I could argue for, it stands strong. It also took home the Gamersdungeon Award for Best Game of the Year.

Terraforming Mars is one of the best competitive board games ever made, in my humble opinion, but I also consider it an absolute masterpiece in game design.

Suffice it to say, I’m a fan of Jonathan’s work. While he has spent the past decade steadily pumping out Terraforming Mars expansions, most of them excellent, I’ve always been curious to see how versatile he is as a designer.

So what happens when the man behind Terraforming Mars, one of the best competitive games ever made, decides to tackle the co-operative genre?

Well… that’s exactly what we’re here to find out!

Overview

Final Score: (3.95 out 5) Great Game!

The premise of Fate: Defenders of Grimheim is refreshingly simple. Players take on the roles of Viking-inspired fantasy heroes tasked with defending the town of Grimheim from an assortment of mythical monsters attacking from all sides.

The core game comes with four heroes, but there are two additional heroes (Sindra & Finkel) available in an expansion that is already out now.

At its heart, the game is an endurance battle. One, you technically have no hope of winning. But that’s fine, because victory doesn’t require you to defeat the invading hordes. You simply have to survive long enough for the timer to run out.

That timer comes in the form of a fixed number of turns, and most of the game revolves around plugging holes in your defenses and responding to threats before they get too close to town. It’s all about squeezing the most efficiency out of every action turn. Whenever the heroes fail to stop an enemy, one of Grimheim’s buildings is destroyed. Think of the town itself as a pool of hit points, and when those buildings are gone, so are you.

Fate can be quite brutal if you are not paying attention, this is not a simple dice chucker; there is a fair amount of strategy and tactics to this game. Failing to deal with the swarm of enemies coming at you can cause a collapse in short order.

Running parallel to this defensive struggle is the game’s progression system, which is arguably the real engine driving the experience. Your heroes begin the game relatively weak, armed with limited abilities and modest gear. As the game progresses, however, they gain new equipment and abilities that make them increasingly efficient at doing what heroes do best: killing monsters. That will sound like a relatively familiar game loop to most gamers, it quite literally describes every adventure game ever made.

It’s a simple but addictive concept built on one of the oldest traditions in gaming, a game loop that dates all the way back to the early days of Dungeons & Dragons: kill monsters, gain experience, level up, and become better at killing monsters.

Like Dungeons & Dragons, each hero (think class) comes with unique strengths and weaknesses. Success requires coordination, planning, and careful positioning between players to leverage the strengths of each hero. A little luck certainly helps, too.

The primary luck factor comes from the attack dice. Much like the classic D20, a good roll can turn a desperate situation into a heroic victory, while a bad roll can leave your carefully laid plans lying in the snow. That said, the game does offer enough tactical flexibility that clever play can often mitigate the whims of fate.

Luck does play its part in Fate. The dice are certainly a major component of that luck, but you also have the monster deck, which describes which monsters come out and where. This can create some wild board states, creating a wide range of interesting puzzles to solve.

In many ways, Fate feels a bit like a tower defense game. You’re constantly trying to eliminate monsters as efficiently as possible before they break through your defenses. The key difference is that you’re not trying to wipe out the invading force; you’re simply trying to outlast it.

Given the strategic depth of Jonathan’s Terraforming Mars, I’ll admit I expected something a bit heavier from him. I’m not entirely sure what I was hoping for, but the core gameplay loop here felt a little simpler than anticipated, I would say, kind of predictable.

That’s not to say the game is easy, it definitely isn’t. There are plenty of tactical decisions that will determine whether you win or lose. This isn’t a “roll some dice and hope for the best” kind of experience. There’s enough strategy here to chew on for a while.

The problem is that the puzzle begins to reveal itself fairly quickly, especially to seasoned gamers. After a few plays, veteran gamers will start to see the optimal approaches emerge.

After my first playthrough, I was quite satisfied. The game was fun, engaging, and held my attention. By the third or fourth session, however, the primary challenge began to feel less about solving the puzzle and more about managing the luck of the draw.

Because enemies enter play via card draws, sometimes the game simply overwhelms you. Other times, the threats line up in ways that allow careful planning to shine. In the long run, I suspect this is the kind of game where repeated plays will eventually leave players wanting new scenarios, new monsters, and new challenges to keep things fresh.

And in fairness, the design almost feels built for that. Fate seems perfectly positioned for expansions. If you enjoy the core gameplay loop, it’s easy to imagine eagerly awaiting additional content. There’s plenty of design space here for new enemies, new mechanics, and creative twists on the formula.

While the game does include ways to adjust the difficulty, I don’t think Fate has the near-infinite replayability of Terraforming Mars by contrast. That said, it’s certainly good for several enjoyable evenings at the table.

Which brings me to my general point and core issue I have with co-op games. They have a way of reaching the end of the fun. At some point, you solve the puzzle, and it feels kind of finished. That doesn’t diminish your experience of solving that puzzle, but I think the reason I prefer competitive games is that the puzzle is the other players strategy, which by its very nature is a new puzzle each time you play a game.

Cooperative games, even ones you play through just one time, can still make for an amazing experience; a game’s success is rarely tied to replayability, and I think in the case of Fate that is very true. It’s a fun game that you will experience and feel content that you got your money’s worth, very much as the case might be with something like Gloomhaven.

I suspect the game may have more staying power with a younger audience. Younger players tend to live in the experience of playing “a fun game” more than someone like me, who is dissecting the game. There’s quite a bit of fun to be squeezed out of this particular Viking cow if you simply enjoy pushing miniatures around, fighting monsters, rolling dice, and leveling up. It’s all quite satisfying from that perspective.

For me, however, the experience never quite reached the point where I was eagerly planning the next game night just to get Fate back on the table.

It’s a fun and interesting distraction, a perfectly solid take on cooperative gaming, and certainly a game I might pull out among some fresh-faced youngsters. But like many co-op games I’ve played, it ultimately landed in that familiar category of “that was fine, let’s move on.”

Better than many co-op games I have tried, certainly, but not really of the caliber that holds my interest long term.

But it also reinforced a conclusion I’ve reached many times before: cooperative games just might not be my thing. And even an excellent designer like Jonathan Fryxelius wasn’t quite enough to change my mind on that front.

Components

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: Exceptional component quality, fantastic presentation, solid interface for enhancing the efficiency of play.

Cons: You could go bigger with a box full of miniatures, but I think they did that in the Kickstarter.

When it comes to components, Fate: Defenders of Grimheim delivers exactly what I expect from a $50–$60 board game, and then some. The production quality is excellent across the board.

The artwork deserves special mention. It’s crisp, colorful, and full of personality, immediately selling the theme the moment the game hits the table. That matters a lot in a game like this, especially if your target audience is a younger crowd. When you’re fighting mythical monsters as Viking heroes, the visuals need to carry some weight, and Fate absolutely does.

The game is gorgous laid out on the table, a visual feast that will attract attention.

Just as importantly, the components aren’t just attractive, they’re functional. A lot of thought clearly went into making sure the design supports the gameplay. Information is presented cleanly and logically, allowing players to understand what’s happening at a glance and make informed decisions without constantly reaching for the rulebook.

I’ve always believed that one of the hallmarks of great game design is when you can look at the board of a new game you have never played before, make an educated guess about what things do, and turn out to be right. When that happens, it means the interface is doing its job.

That’s very much the case here.

The main board itself looks like a terrain map straight out of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. It’s not only visually appealing, but also communicates key information clearly. Enemy movement paths, terrain effects, and automated enemy behaviors are all easy to understand just by looking at the board.

The player boards, cards, and miniatures follow the same philosophy. They strike a near-perfect balance between aesthetics and usability. The cards in particular are excellent: the iconography is clear, the layout is intuitive, and it’s immediately obvious what each card does and how it fits into your strategy. At no point did anyone ask, “What does this card do?”

I barely mention the miniatures in the review, and that’s a bit criminal on my part, but they are nice, certainly something you could paint up. Packaged into pairs, they come in a nice protective case so that you can keep your cards and minis safe.

That clarity becomes especially valuable in a game like this, where the table can quickly fill up with heroes, monsters, tokens, and abilities. When a game has a lot of moving parts, clean design isn’t just nice, it’s essential.

The tokens and components themselves are also high quality, with sharp iconography and solid production values throughout.

Put simply, from a component standpoint, this is about as good as it gets. I genuinely tried to find something to nitpick here, if only to avoid sounding overly enthusiastic, but came up empty.

The truth is, the component execution is pretty much flawless.

Theme

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: The fantasy Viking theme is a nice aesthetic choice, and I really like the comic book art style.

Cons: The theme here is kind of arbitrary; you could have put just about anything in here. I think it’s a missed opportunity to do something really original.

The theme in Fate: Defenders of Grimheim is fun, engaging, and well executed, but it’s also the kind of game where they could have swapped out the theme without fundamentally changing the experience.

You could just as easily imagine this system wrapped in a Star Wars, Star Trek, or Samurai epic, and it would function just as well. The underlying mechanics are fairly theme-agnostic, the core concept quite basic. Defend the base with your heroes.

And that’s not necessarily a criticism. It simply means the theme isn’t doing the heavy lifting in the design. In a way, I think it’s a missed opportunity to do something weird/cool/gonzo, aka original. Simply picking a theme and wrapping it around a mechanic is fine, but it kind of becomes less relevant to the game experience at the table.

I often get challenged on my comments about theme. What constitutes an original theme? It’s hard to point to it exactly, I just know it when I see it. Root is a great example. It’s a war game, they could have used Vikings, Samurai’s or whatever else, but creating original factions, wrapped up in there own seting with truly original art this is what an original theme looks like. It’s so good they ended up having to make an RPG out of it.

That said, the Viking setting chosen here works very well. I’ve always had a soft spot for Viking mythology, and Fate blends Norse flavor with fantasy elements in a way that feels natural and cohesive. The monsters, heroes, and abilities all fit together logically, and nothing ever feels out of place or forced.

If anything, the real star of the show here is the artwork. The visual style is consistent, atmospheric, and full of personality. It does a tremendous amount of work in selling the world and giving the game its identity.

Beyond that, there isn’t much more to say. The theme is well implemented and enjoyable, but it isn’t a defining pillar of the game’s design.

It’s a solid execution, just not a critical ingredient.

Gameplay

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: The mechanics are a master class in game design, smooth as silk.

Cons: Veteran gamers might find the game a bit too easy.

Gameplay, the real engine under the hood of Fate: Defenders of Grimheim, is where the game distinguishes itself. There’s some subtle but genuinely clever design at work here.

I’ll try not to get overly long-winded… though as a fan of the designer, I may fail spectacularly at that goal.

The first thing that stands out is how smooth the mechanics are. The flow of the game is remarkably efficient, keeping everyone at the table engaged almost constantly. In fact, the sequence of play is so clean that the game doesn’t even need a player’s aid. After each player completes their first turn, everyone at the table will understand exactly how the system works.

Jonathan Fryxelius makes it look easy, but anyone who has ever tried to design a game knows how hard it is to make something both fun and mechanically elegant. Achieving this level of clarity without sacrificing engagement is genuinely impressive. From a structural standpoint, it’s a masterclass in game design.

At its core, the game gives you a village to defend. The problem, of course, is that you’re defending it with a handful of heroes against what quickly feels like an endless swarm of monsters approaching from all directions. That imbalance is the heart of the puzzle.

Although Fate is cooperative, the reality is that each player largely ends up responsible for defending one direction of attack. You can occasionally assist one another, but even with four heroes on the board, covering every approach is nearly impossible.

Interestingly, this structure solves one of the classic problems of cooperative games: the dreaded “alpha player.” Because there’s simply too much happening in too many places, no single player can realistically dictate the optimal move for everyone else. Each hero has their own situation to manage, which keeps decision-making personal and engaging.

It might look like these two heroes are fighting side by side, but three spaces away might as well be a different zip code. These heroes are in the trenches fighting their own battles.

The overall goal is to leverage your hero’s strengths against enemy weaknesses while developing your character into a more efficient monster-slaying machine. But there are complications.

Heroes will take damage, sometimes a lot of it, and eventually they’ll need to retreat back to the village to heal before returning to the fight. Every action matters, every movement counts, and even a small miscalculation can result in losing a building or two. If a hero actually gets knocked out, it’s an absolute disaster!

The margin between victory and disaster is razor-thin. That tension creates a constant sense of pressure, and within that pressure lies the excitement.

In fact, losing in Fate can be almost as entertaining as winning. When you win, everyone celebrates and congratulates themselves on a job well done. When you lose, the post-game conversation tends to be much more animated as players dissect the moment things went wrong, debating mistakes, bad luck, and missed opportunities before inevitably suggesting, “Alright… let’s try that again.”

Thanks to the game’s streamlined mechanics, these discussions rarely devolve into rules debates. The system is clean enough that players spend their time thinking about strategy rather than arguing about edge cases. When the game ends, win or lose, you know exactly which decisions led you there.

A major part of the gameplay revolves around three different types of hero cards.

First are the Quest and Equipment cards. These function as small missions that reward you with new gear once completed, essentially the board game equivalent of finishing a side quest and receiving a magical item.

The catch is that these quests often require you to do something inefficient, such as traveling to a specific location or defeating a particular monster type. Pursuing equipment can therefore, pull you away from more urgent threats. Chasing powerful gear can be tempting, but if you get too greedy, you might doom the entire group. On the other hand, ignoring upgrades entirely can leave you underpowered in the late game. It’s a beautifully designed tension that forces players to make imperfect decisions.

Equipment cards are crucial to success, but also typically the most difficult to get because of the quest requirements. It’s a good balance between risk vs. reward.

Second are the Event cards. These are one-shot abilities that can dramatically influence a turn, granting extra movement, healing, bonus attacks, or additional damage. They’re powerful tools that reward clever timing and creative combinations. A well-played event card can turn a desperate situation into a heroic moment.

Even cards are less reliable since they are one-time use, so it’s all about timing. By the way, how about this art? So good, I mean, I know I complained a bit about the originality of the theme, there are so many Viking games these days, but man, you can’t complain about the originality of this art, so amazing, I love it.

Finally, there are the Ability cards. These are purchased using gold (which also doubles as experience) earned primarily by killing monsters. Ability cards represent permanent upgrades to your hero and are arguably the most reliable way to grow stronger over the course of the game, though this can be a slow process.

Many of the more powerful abilities require charging before they can be used, meaning you might only unleash them every couple of turns. But when the moment is right, they can produce spectacular results.

Abilities have big effects on the game, things like Suppressive Fire can completetly shutdown an enemy movement, for example. Stuff like that is the difference between winning and losing in Fate; these are key progressions, must-haves to win the game.

In many ways, the game becomes a race to unlock your stronger abilities before the board state spirals out of control. Event cards alone won’t carry you through the late game; you’ll need a solid combination of equipment and abilities if you hope to survive the final rounds.

Each hero begins the game with a unique ability and piece of equipment that effectively defines their class. Some heroes are stronger, some are tougher, some are faster, and others rely on trickery. It’s a very classic design philosophy, straight out of the old Gygaxian playbook, but it works extremely well here. Each hero feels distinct and useful without any of them feeling clearly superior.

The game also includes several setup options that adjust difficulty and length. Importantly, none of these add extra complexity; they simply make the same game harder.

The time tracker offers both short and long game options, though in practice, Fate will usually take a couple of hours unless the players lose early. The tracker mostly affects how long the game lasts when you actually manage to survive.

Another option I strongly recommend is the Monster Dice variant. This die is rolled during the monster phase and introduces small, unpredictable twists to enemy behavior. Once you become familiar with the base system, this rule adds a welcome bit of chaos that keeps things from becoming too predictable.

I think the monster die is probably one of the most effective ways to disrupt game mastery that I think most people will attain on repeat plays. An unscheduled charge or push, for example, can create a whole lot of unexpected chaos, and I think that is really good for this game. It’s a vital part that keeps the players on their toes.

The monster AI itself is straightforward. Enemies move and attack according to clear rules, advancing steadily toward the village. They appear faster than you can realistically eliminate them, which creates the constant feeling of being overwhelmed.

At its heart, Fate is a game about damage control. You’re managing a crisis that is slowly spiraling out of control while trying to survive inside what feels like a steadily tightening pressure cooker.

It’s a compelling system that keeps everyone thinking, planning, and adapting. That said, there are a couple of observations worth mentioning.

For my group, the difficulty wasn’t especially great. On our very first play, we used the highest difficulty setting along with the Monster Dice variant. The game came down to the final turn and the final die roll, a dramatic finish that had everyone cheering when we pulled off the win.

The surprising part was that this was our first game. I was expecting to get crushed.

We had just learned the rules and already managed to beat it at maximum difficulty? For my group, that made the challenge feel a bit soft.

To be fair, my gaming group is extremely competitive and very experienced with strategy games. Designing a cooperative game that truly challenges players like that would probably make the game nearly impossible for everyone else.

And when I later played the game with my daughter and her friends, we were crushed almost immediately.

Their reaction was simple and immediate:
“Wow… this game is so hard.”

So in the end, the difficulty really depends on who’s sitting at the table.

All said and done, I found little to complain about when it comes to Fate other than my own personal bias against cooperative games. I’m clearly not the target audience here, and that is not an issue with Fate; that is just a preference thing. I think this is a really well-designed cooperative strategy game, and I think fans of the genre and this style of play, will find that Jonathan’s take on it is exceptionally well done and polished.

Replay-ability and Longevity

Score:
Tilt:

Pros: The game is easy to teach and learn, making it an attractive choice with a younger crowd or even potentially as a sort of quasi-party game.

Cons: Once you find the groove and win a few games, the fire will die down.

Even if you’re a big fan of cooperative games, I think it’s fair to say that Fate: Defenders of Grimheim has a somewhat limited shelf life. After you’ve beaten it a few times, the urgency to jump back in starts to fade. That’s not necessarily a flaw of this particular game, it’s simply the nature of many player-versus-AI designs.

There are, of course, exceptions. I mentioned The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game earlier, and one of the reasons that game has such extraordinary replayability is the sheer mountain of content available for it. With countless expansions and new quests, every play session can feel like a completely different experience.

Fate, on the other hand, largely offers a single core scenario. The specific circumstances of each game will vary, the enemies drawn, the dice rolls, the choices players make, but the overall structure of the experience remains largely the same.

That said, the design clearly leaves a lot of room for expansion. In fact, the core box almost feels like the starting point for what could easily become a broader game line. New monsters, heroes, scenarios, and objectives could dramatically increase the longevity of the system.

As it stands, I ended up playing the game about half a dozen times with my daughter. Most of those games were losses, and interestingly enough, that actually fuels replayability. Nothing motivates another round quite like getting crushed by a swarm of monsters and wanting revenge.

Until you start winning consistently, that competitive itch will probably keep pulling you back to the table.

Overall, I do think Fate offers enough replay value to justify its price. It’s simple enough to teach quickly, yet engaging enough to satisfy experienced gamers. In fact, the game has a bit of a “party game” energy to it, winning is fun, but losing can be just as entertaining thanks to the post-game analysis and table chatter.

For that reason, I can easily see it occupying a nice niche spot on the shelf. It’s the kind of game you can pull out with a mixed group or a younger audience without worrying about overwhelming them with complexity.

And in that regard, it worked wonderfully with my daughter.

Conclusion

One of the main reasons I like my review system is the use of Tilts. It allows a game to push through to a strong overall score if it excels where it truly matters, even if it’s a little weaker in areas that aren’t as critical to the experience.

I don’t usually explain that in the conclusion, but this review is actually a perfect example of the system working exactly as intended. And I’ll admit, I’m rather pleased with myself about that, because the final score reflects my feelings about this game very accurately.

Yes, the replayability and theme fall a bit into the “perfectly fine, nothing spectacular” category. But that’s not really where this game lives or dies. The real strength of Fate: Defenders of Grimheim lies in its gameplay and its presentation.

This is an incredibly approachable game. It’s easy to get to the table, easy to teach, and within minutes, everyone is rolling dice, fighting monsters, and having a good time. The visual presentation does a lot of heavy lifting here, the artwork, board, and components make the game instantly inviting, and the clarity of the design keeps things running smoothly once the action starts.

While the mechanics are simple to grasp, the game still presents a respectable challenge for the right group. I probably wouldn’t break this out very often for my veteran gaming crew, they’d likely solve the puzzle fairly quickly, but for a typical group looking for a fun Friday night game, this one really sticks the landing. I think it’s a great family game.

And it clearly works well with younger players too. As I’m writing this review, my daughter is already asking if we can play again. Last night we got absolutely crushed, and she’s apparently been developing a new strategy that she’s convinced will win the game “for sure this time.”

So credit where it’s due.

Jonathan Fryxelius is a brilliant designer, and Fate: Defenders of Grimheim is a genuinely fun addition to the cooperative genre. I have a strong feeling that a lot of people are going to enjoy this one.

On The Table

On The Table: Caverna – Cave vs. Cave

July 26, 2025 5 Minutes

I have a bit of a weakness when it comes to board games that check three specific boxes: they’re on sale (cheap), they’re for two players (so my daughter and I can play), and they’re short (so we can actually finish them). If a game meets those criteria, it’s almost an automatic purchase. I don’t read reviews, I don’t check the designer, I just click “buy” and hope for the best.

So imagine my surprise when the game I blindly added to my cart turned out to be designed by none other than Uwe Rosenberg.

Now, if you’re a board game fan, that name probably means something to you. And if you’re like me, it might even come with baggage. My history with Rosenberg’s games is… complicated. They tend to pass through my collection like a summer storm, brief, intense, and ultimately fleeting.

It’s not that I think he’s a bad designer, far from it. He’s clearly talented, with a devoted following and a long list of critically acclaimed titles. But his games and I just don’t click. They usually fall into one of two camps for me: either they’re sprawling, overly complex point salads (Feast for Odin and Agricola, I’m looking at you), or they’re great for a few plays and then dry up completely (RIP, Le Havre).

So when I discovered that Cave vs. Cave, the game I had bought on a whim, was a Rosenberg title, my expectations dropped faster than a poorly-timed worker placement. Still, I cracked it open, gave it a shot, and, well, here we are.

Overview

Cave vs. Cave is a sort of action selection game in which players choose from a shared pool of available actions, and build their personal tableu of of tiles that offer various benefits and score you points.

The tableu is meant to be a cave that your excuvating, but as you execuvate the cave spaces become available which you can then fill with rooms. Each room offers you some benefit (as well as victory points) that allow you to build engines for scoring points, gaining resources and ultimatetly (hopefully) winning the game.

It’s a relatively straightforward game rules wise.

The Cleverness (The Pros)

What Cave vs. Cave does well, really well, is give you that classic Rosenberg-style puzzle in a bite-sized package. The core of the game revolves around the timing of actions and the availability of rooms, and how those two factors interact creates a satisfying little brainteaser. Figuring out how to best sequence your moves, when to grab a key room, or how to squeeze one more action out of a tight round, that’s where the game shines.

In typical Rosenberg fashion, a seemingly simple mechanic reveals surprising depth. Even though the game clocks in at around 30 to 45 minutes, there’s still plenty to chew on. Every decision matters, and the game doesn’t pad things with catch-up mechanics or point explosions. It’s a slow burn, a deliberate race where small efficiencies add up and the player who makes the fewest mistakes usually wins.

What I appreciate most is how dynamic it feels. The randomized room layout and action tile order keep each playthrough just different enough to force you to adapt. There’s real replay value here, and multiple viable strategies to explore. Want to focus on early gold production? Go for it. Prefer to expand aggressively and build up infrastructure? That works too. It never feels like there’s just one obvious path to victory.

In short, Cave vs. Cave is unmistakably a Rosenberg game. From the economic engine-building to the quiet solo-race format, it’s got all the hallmarks, just boiled down into a leaner, faster experience. Exactly what I think fans would enjoy and expect from a 2-player version of Caverna.

The two-player setup shows just how streamlined and straight to it the game is. I can explain the rules to you in five minutes, and we are ready to rock.

The production is of great quality, its pretty, feels good in the hand, nicely illustrated.

The Bad Stuff (The Cons)

One of my ongoing gripes with many of Uwe Rosenberg’s designs and really, with a lot of Euro-style games, is the almost complete lack of player interaction. To be clear, I don’t think this is a flaw per se; it’s a conscious design philosophy. But it’s one that just doesn’t always land for me.

Cave vs. Cave is no exception. You and your opponent might as well be playing two separate solo games with a shared component tray. The only real difference between the solo mode and the two-player mode is the win condition: in solo, you’re trying to hit 50 points; in multiplayer, you’re just trying to beat the other person’s score. That’s it. That’s the interaction.

I can think of any number of games with far more interaction and the same level of complexity that are going to get you that two-player one-hour experience. 7 Wonder Duel for example, I would argue hits that spot perfectly. Suffice to say, I think interaction is important to a game, and its absence here makes me want to reach for other games.

Sure, every now and then, you might grab an action or room tile your opponent had their eye on, but I’d argue that’s more accidental overlap than meaningful competition. You’re not going to intentionally do this to block your opponent, it’s more of that classic, “Oh, I was going to do that,” moment that’s more of a shrug than a strategic block or decision.

So if you’re looking for tension, take-that mechanics, or even just a little tactical disruption, Cave vs. Cave won’t deliver. It’s a parallel play experience through and through, which, again, might be exactly what fans of Rosenbergs probably want and expect. But for those of us who like a little friction in our games, it can feel a bit… sterile.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, my biggest gripe with Cave vs. Cave, its near-total lack of player interaction, isn’t really a flaw, just a matter of taste. And despite that, I have to admit: this game works. It’s a light, fast, and clever little two-player experience that you can set up, teach, and play in under an hour without breaking a mental sweat.

Honestly, every game shelf needs titles like this, games you can pull out on a whim when a friend drops by and says, “Hey, want to play something?” Cave vs. Cave fits that role perfectly. It doesn’t demand a full evening, it doesn’t require a deep dive into the rulebook, and it delivers a tight, thinky puzzle with just enough variety to keep things fresh.

Unlike most of Rosenberg’s heavier titles that briefly haunted my collection before being sold off, this one might actually stick around. Not because it’s a masterpiece, but because it knows exactly what it is: a quick, streamlined Rosenberg engine-builder that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

And that, in itself, is pretty rare.

Best of List, Gaming Articles, Uncategorized

The Big Board Gaming Weekend – 2025

July 13, 2025 5 Minutes

Like every year, my gaming crew gathered for a four-day pilgrimage of BBQ, beer, and board games. We call it Hassela Weekend, named after the sleepy little Swedish countryside village where it all goes down. Now in its ninth legendary year, it’s the crown jewel of our gaming calendar and this blog post is the tale of our latest adventure. Enjoy the chronicles!

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

We began our journey into the weekend with a cozy warm-up while waiting for the rest of the party to arrive. Enter a charming little trick-taking game for four players, The Fellowship of the Ring: The Trick-Taking Game. This beautifully crafted card game is built on the bones of The Crew, the cooperative classic that made a splash in the board game world just a few years ago.

The crew was quite a hit, for a simple trick-taking game to break into the top 100 on boardgamegeek is a big deal.

The concept is straightforward: work together to complete card “tricks”, without knowing what cards your companions are holding. But, like a mischievous ring of power, there’s a twist. Each mission has special conditions that determine how those tricks must be completed. Unlike The Crew, though, the challenges here aren’t static; there’s actual strategy in planning your quest.

Players choose story-driven characters tied to specific chapters in the Fellowship’s saga, and those roles shape the rules and order of play for each mission. The characters you pick affect not only the constraints but also your chances of success, making the pre-mission phase feel like preparing for a trek through Moria with the wrong crew.

The difficulty escalates with each completed mission, starting out light-hearted and deceptively manageable, until suddenly, you’re Gandalf deep in the Mines, clutching your forehead, wondering where it all went wrong. What starts as a breezy filler becomes a real mental challenge as the tension builds.

Personally, I loved it. It fills the same niche as The Crew, a quick, cooperative brain-teaser but I’m a sucker for the theme, and I found the mission structure tied to the characters far more compelling than The Crew’s more generic objectives.

So, if The Crew hooked you, and you’ve ever dreamed of traveling with Frodo and friends, this one’s a no-brainer. The artwork is gorgeous, the components are solid, and it’s easy to teach yet sneakily addictive. A perfect first step on our Hassela Weekend.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Vendetta

During our Hassela Weekend, each player gets to pick a handful of games to bring to the table, and with five or six of us in attendance, that means you’ve got two, maybe three slots to make your mark. So when I chose Vampire: The Masquerade – Vendetta from a massive library of games, know that it wasn’t just a pick, it was an endorsement of the highest order.

You see, most of us in this group are old blood when it comes to Vampire: The Masquerade. We know the World of Darkness like it’s etched into our souls and in some cases, quite literally. Let’s just say one of the crew may or may not be walking around with their favorite clan’s sigil tattooed on their arm. The passion is real.

Vendetta may not be the RPG, but it’s the next best thing. For a brief, deliciously dark hour, it captures the political paranoia, the whispered alliances, and the backstabbing brilliance of the setting with unnerving precision. It oozes theme. On paper, it’s a simple game: you’re battling for control over various city locations to gain influence (points). But in practice, it’s a shadow war made up of meticulous card placement and expertly executed card abilities.

There are quite a few vampire-based card games out there. I think Heritage tries to be a bit closer to the RPG with the legacy concept, and while I think it’s an excellent game, at some point you have to ask yourself if you’re going to take it this far, why not just play the RPG?

Nothing in this game is fair, and absolutely nothing is safe. You’re constantly watching your back, guessing what your rivals will do, trying to outplay them with deception and ruthless timing. Each clan is a twisted mirror of power, all potent in their own right, but no two alike. Success hinges on your ability to read the room and strike at just the right moment.

We played it with six players for the first time, which splits the table into pairs of unholy alliances. It changes the vibe a little bit: you still want to win, but now you’re also dancing with a partner, plotting your shared rise to power. It works, but I think I prefer to plot the destruction of my enemies on my own.

I adore this game. But I imagine, its fangs don’t bite quite as deep unless your group knows the lore. So much of the nuance, the tension, the delicious little faction details will fly under the radar if you’re not already initiated. But for us, it’s perfection. Vendetta is one of the best V:tM tabletop games out there next to the RPG, ruthless, stylish, and soaked in blood-soaked atmosphere.

Raise The Goblets

Raise the Goblets is, in a word, gloriously dumb, and I mean that as the highest compliment. This is the kind of game that absolutely belongs in your collection, not because it’s deep or strategic, but because it turns your table into a laughing, backstabbing mess of theatrical absurdity.

Firmly planted in the “silly party game” category, this one’s all about slipping poison into your fellow nobles’ drinks while desperately trying not to sip something fatal yourself. The goal is to stay alive, take someone out, and toast to your own devious brilliance.

Each player gets a character with a special power, and then the chaos begins: goblets are swapped, rotated, passed, and spiked with poison, antidote, or occasionally, some actual wine. The whole thing plays like a medieval dinner party gone horribly wrong, and it’s magnificent. At some point, everyone has to drink what is in front of them, but while you can occasionally sneak a peek on your turn, there is so much manipulation going on that most of the time, you haven’t a clue what’s actually in your cup.

At Hassela, we tend to fill our days with heavy, brain-melting games, so something like Raise the Goblets is essential. It’s our palate cleanser, light, chaotic, and guaranteed to generate a few dramatic “death” scenes and outbursts of laughter.

It’s easy to teach, ridiculously fun, and family-friendly in a “Disney villain banquet” kind of way.

Blood Rage

There are games and then there are symphonies.

Eric Lang’s Blood Rage isn’t just a game; it’s the hammerfall of modern board game design. In over ten years of writing for Gamers Dungeon, it remains the only title I’ve ever awarded a perfect 5 out of 5. A decade of reviews, thousands of hours at the table, and still nothing has dethroned it.

Its appearance at our annual Hassela gaming retreat is never in doubt. Even on the rare years it doesn’t make it to the table, its box sits there like a slumbering god, watching, waiting. Blood Rage isn’t a question of if, it’s when.

You might wonder why the devotion?

Because this game is pure, unflinching execution. There are no dice, no randomness, no fate to plead with. Just you, your strategies, and the brutal elegance of a system that rewards only the sharpest minds. The best player will win. No excuses. No mercy.

That’s what makes Blood Rage so satisfying. It’s chess with axes. A ballet of blood and fire. Every move matters. Every draft is a prophecy. Every battle, a poem written in steel and rage. It is area control refined to the finest and deadliest edge.

The theme is flawless. This game doesn’t just use Viking mythology, it embodies it. Ragnarok isn’t just a backdrop, it’s the ticking heart of the game. The art is ferocious, the miniatures stunning, and the production so good it makes lesser games look like goat herding simulators.

The question I often get asked is whether it’s really that perfect, and the short answer is nothing is perfect-perfect, but this is as close as you are ever going to get.

If I were to be brutally honest and in the spirit of Odin’s wisdom, I must be, I’d say there is one hairline crack in this otherwise indestructible blade: the monsters. They’re mighty, they’re beautiful, but over the years of play, we’ve seen their impact dulled by one simple truth: they still need an open spot on the board to function. And when the smartest play is to deny those spots, even the most fearsome beast becomes a caged wolf.

Whether that is a real flaw or just a wrinkle is debatable. A battle scar on a veteran warrior, perhaps. And maybe, in some poetic way, it makes the game better because even the monsters bow to the gods of positioning and control. I don’t know, my crew theorizes about this, and I think most of us agree that we wish the monsters were just ever so slightly more effective in breaking up some of the uncrackable strategies that we have developed.

Blood Rage is more than essential in my opinion. It’s foundational. If you care about game design, hell, if you even pretend to, this belongs on your shelf. Not just to play, but to study. To admire. To inspire.

Wonderful game, top marks since the first time I played it.

Valor and Villainy: Minions of Mordak

First introduced to our crew last year, Valor and Villainy: Minions of Mordak made a triumphant return to the Hassela Weekend lineup, proving its staying power with a second round of magical mayhem and villainous gloating.

Honestly, I’m not surprised. Our group is a bit of a chimera: part deep-strategy tacticians, part storytelling adventurers. The games that tend to hit hardest are the ones that walk the line between tactical depth and thematic flair. Valor and Villainy fits that bill like a wizard in a bathrobe, funny on the outside, but hiding real power under the hood.

It’s got a delightfully goofy fantasy setting, brought to life with hilarious writing and some top-tier cartoon art. But don’t be fooled, it isn’t all jokes and japes. Underneath the humor is a legitimately tactical engine. Sure, it looks like a lightweight romp, but there’s meat on these monster-slaying bones.

That said, it does lean toward the adventure side. Most of the game is spent planning your turn to bash baddies, grab loot, and prepare for the grand finale: the showdown with Mordak, the all-powerful antagonist controlled by one lucky player. Mordak’s job is simply to wipe the floor with the heroes before they grow too powerful.

Now, we’ve had a few sessions where the villain felt like little more than a magical punching bag, and I started to wonder if the balance was a bit off. But this year’s Mordak player brought the heat, playing smart, conserving resources, and nearly turning the tables. The entire game came down to a single, heart-pounding die roll. The heroes won again… but only just. Mordak can win. We know this now, and I think everyone witnessed just how it’s done. The days of easy take-downs are over.

It’s a fun ride. Not my personal go-to genre, but as with all things at Hassela, it’s about shared experiences and giving everyone a turn at the wheel. And really, this one’s a crowd-pleaser, easy to learn and teach. A perfect family game. Picture a parent as Mordak cackling across the table while the kids band together to save the realm. That’s good gaming right there.

Viticulture

I’m not here to stomp on Viticulture. It’s a genuinely clever, tight, and thoughtfully strategic game. It has that elegant Euro charm: plant your vines, harvest your grapes, make your wine, and hope the tourists show up. But in the context of the Hassela weekend? It just didn’t pour right.

There are two reasons why.

First: Viticulture sings best at 3, maybe 4 players. At 5 or 6 (and yes, we played with 6), the game stretches out like a long, slow summer in Tuscany. What’s usually a crisp, hour-long worker placement game becomes a two-to-two-and-a-half hour grind. And for a game this streamlined and abstract, that extra time doesn’t add richness; it adds fatigue. The decisions don’t get deeper. They just get slower.

Second: Viticulture is one of those games where the magic reveals itself on the second and/or repeated plays. If it’s your first time or your first time in a long while, you’ll likely spend the first half of the game just trying to remember how the wine even gets bottled. The strategy, the timing, the flow, they all click beautifully, but only once you know what you’re doing. For newcomers, it’s a slow realization that dawns just a bit too late to be competitive, leading to a kind of disappointment. If you could just get a do-over, you would do so much better.

And unfortunately, at Hassela we had the perfect storm: a full six-player game with half the table either new or rusty. That meant long pauses, muddled turns, and a general sense of “wait, I fucked that up!” No one hated it, but no one walked away glowing either. It was… fine. Just fine. And for a game with this much potential, that felt like a bit of a letdown. Especially for me, since I too had that rusty feeling, but after the game, it started coming back to me, and I remembered why I bought and brought the game with me in the first place.

I think Viticulture is a great game. Just not for six players. And not for a weekend like Hassela, where table time is precious and first impressions matter. I’d be surprised if it makes the invitation list again next year, but who knows? Maybe one day, with a smaller group and a little more wine knowledge, it’ll get the second chance it deserves.

Oath

Oath was, oddly enough, the highlight of the weekend for me. But not because I had an amazing play experience, far from it. The actual game session was long, confusing, and at times frustrating. What made it stand out was something deeper: a fascination with the game’s design, its mechanics, and its ambition. It felt like standing at the gates of something brilliant, even if I couldn’t quite get inside or even fully understand what I was looking at.

Right from the start, Oath pulled me in like the first chapter of an epic fantasy novel. The visual design is stunning, with that distinctive Kyle Ferrin artwork (of Root and Arcs fame) giving the game a unique sense of place and personality. But it wasn’t just the art, it was the concept that really gripped me.

At its core, Oath is a political war game. One player begins as the ruler—the Chancellor and everyone else is an outsider, a potential usurper. But it’s not as rigid as that sounds. Mid-game, you can choose to join the Chancellor and become a Citizen, aligning your goals with theirs… or even betray them later down the line. You can be exiled. You can rise. You can fall. The system is feudal, chaotic, personal, layered with intrigue and shifting alliances. That alone is compelling.

But Oath goes further: it’s a legacy game, not in the tear-up-cards sense, but in how the outcomes of each game shape the world for the next. The sites, the factions, the ruling powers, they evolve. Over time, you create the history of this fictional land. And that idea, that’s the sort of thing I live for in board games. Concepts like this add a layer of personalization that develop into rivalries that can become almost a sub-game within a game, and I think in a way that is what Oath is going for here.

Cole Wehrle, in my eye’s, is one of the most intriguing designers to come along in quite a while. From Root to Arc and John Company, he is putting out games that are redefining what it means to sit around a table with your friends and play a board game. I think Oath might just be one of the most interesting one in his design history yet.

Unfortunately, our session didn’t quite live up to that promise. It wasn’t bad, it was just… off. The game’s mechanics are surprisingly clean and elegant. Move around the map with your warband. Conquer sites. Play and manipulate cards. Manage your limited supply of resources. Simple enough. But the depth isn’t in the actions, it’s in how those actions interact with each other, and in the timing, the strategy, and the layers of emergent storytelling. And we just weren’t ready for that, or perhaps better to say that we didn’t find it in what amounted to a kind of learning game.

Most of us spent the first half of the game just trying to figure out what the hell we were supposed to do, not because the rules were complicated (they weren’t), but because the game’s nuance is subtle and entirely dependent on understanding your position in the system. It’s not obvious. It doesn’t hold your hand. And if you don’t “get” it early, it’s easy to get lost.

The result was a session that stretched well past five hours for a game that, if everyone knew what they were doing, probably could have been played in two. Six players were too many, especially for a table where most of us were new to the game, and others who had played it had formed negative opinions on previous, but similar learning games, resulting in the game living up to the resulting negative expectations. Four players might have been better. But even then, I think Oath demands a group that’s fully bought in and committed to playing multiple sessions, building a shared history, and exploring the game’s complex social and political possibilities.

And at the Hassela board game event, that just wasn’t the vibe.

What makes this hard is that I genuinely think Oath might be a masterpiece. I really do. But it’s a strange one, difficult to categorize. It’s not exactly a war game. It’s not a pure legacy game. It’s not just a Euro, or an area control, or an RPG-adjacent narrative builder. It’s Oath. And I think that’s the problem, it might just be a little too unique for its own good.

You have to love this kind of game to even want to “get it.” It’s not about rules comprehension, though; it’s about being attracted to this peculiar blend of theme, tension, abstraction, and emergent narrative. You need a group willing to lean into the strangeness and stick around long enough for the game to reveal its depth. At least this is my impression, whether Oath actually has that depth I would hope to find remains to be seen and I’m not sure I’m going to get the opportunity to find out.

Oath will probably end up back on the shelf, gathering dust based on this first playthrough. I don’t think it quite gripped anyone in the same way as it did me. And that’s a shame. Because I want to try again. I want a second run, maybe even a full campaign with the right group. I want to see what this game can become and whether or not the game I’m hoping to find there actually exists. But I don’t know how to get there, or how to convince four to six other people to go there with me.

I’m not sure any of that makes sense, but basically, to me, the game I experienced during this weekend and the game that is in the box, I suspect, are not the same thing. I like to think of myself as being pretty perceptive and in tune with game design, given that I have been playing and writing about games for several decades at this point, and what I can say is that it’s quite rare for me to find something truly unique like Oath.

I think there is something under the hood here, and I’m very curious to explore it further.

Empires: Age of Discovery

Age of Discovery has long been a flagship title at our Hassela weekend, our own trusted galleon in a sea of changing tastes. It’s hit the table many times over the years, usually to triumphant applause. But this time… something felt different.

It wasn’t the game’s fault, per se. The sails are still crisp, the cannons still loaded. But perhaps the winds of modern board gaming have shifted. Worker placement games have evolved dramatically in the past decade, and Age of Discovery, once a towering conquistador of the genre, now feels a bit like an old empire grappling with new revolutions.

That said, Age of Discovery is more than just a worker placement game, and perhaps that is at the heart of the issue. It’s an abstract colonization simulator disguised in a worker placement cloak. The placement of your workers is only the opening maneuver, a careful disembarkation before the real expedition begins. What unfolds after is a tense struggle for land, gold, exploration, and domination. This is a game of empires, and if you fall behind, you will get crushed.

And in true imperial fashion, it’s not always polite.

Age of Discovery has teeth. Actions taken here can leave scars, players jockeying for position, muscling one another off prime territory, blocking moves, stealing opportunities. It’s not the gentle farming of Agricola or the tidy capitalism of Viticulture; it’s a game that evokes the cutthroat nature of colonial expansion, where every decision echoes with ambition and consequence. In a six-player game, 2-3 players are just going to get left behind in the dust, and you might have a couple of people actually competing by the end for the crown and glory. The game lacks comeback mechanics, so it’s not uncommon to see your empire’s impending failure as early as the end of the first age, a quarter into the game. That is a tough pill to swallow.

Personally, I still think it’s one of the best worker placement games ever made. If I drew up a map of the top 10, Age of Discovery would land firmly near the top. But I’ll admit my chart is a bit outdated. I haven’t explored many newer worker placement titles, maybe because I found my favorite harbors long ago and dropped anchor.

Still, Age of Discovery has what I want: thematic depth, strategic brutality, and a sprawling table presence. It feels like the Age of Exploration. You send your settlers across vast oceans, claim the unknown, clash with rivals, and build your legacy one exploited province at a time. Sometimes the endeavor is a failure, and as brutal as it can feel to be defeated, it’s part of the game.

One drawback I do think the game has is that it can feel a bit long, especially at six players and especially if you’re doing poorly. But then again, empire-building isn’t a short-term project.

If you like your Eurogames with salt in the air and the occasional knife in the back, Empires: Age of Discovery is worth charting a course for. Just remember, this is no friendly trading voyage. This is conquest. This is colonization. And in this game, history is written by the victor.

Bang The Dice Game

Just a quick mention, this staple of the Hassela weekend has been played every year since we discovered it. I have no idea if it’s a “good game” by any measure of the definition beyond the simple fact that it’s silly fun. It’s a perfect filler, and it has the charm of combining hidden identity and the chaos of dice into one game. It’s not quite of the same caliber as Love Letter or Coup, but sometimes games weasel their way into a gaming group’s playlist for ineffable reasons.

Make of that what you will.

Red Rising

Once labeled “absent of any endorphins” at last year’s gathering, I was genuinely surprised to see Red Rising return to the table at Hassela. Yet there it was, quiet and unassuming.

Red Rising is a strange creature. On its surface, it seems like a mere diversion; its rules are straightforward, even sparse, but beneath that veneer lies a machination of choices, a lattice of decisions so tight and intricate that you can actually miss it, which is what I think happened last time we tried it.

Every card you place is both a sacrifice and a step toward dominion. You build alliances in your hand while burning them on the table, all in service of progress across shifting tracks that you have to pace carefully. Every move is a compromise.

What makes it so treacherous and perhaps brilliant is that the end looms like a whisper, never certain, always threatening because it’s based on the very tracks that score you points. You don’t know exactly when someone will trigger the final curtain call, and getting caught unprepared before your hand is ready is devastating, yet stalling it for fear of the end is equally bad. It’s a rare thing: a game where the tension builds without spectacle, a slow-burn conspiracy played in plain sight. I would argue that at the very least, we can call Red Rising clever.

And perhaps that’s why it was better this time. We understood the contours a bit more, the rhythm of its strange economy. The crew around the table, fond of card-driven intrigue, seemed to resonate with it more deeply this time around. The verdict is still out, but for now, Red Rising has earned a cautious reprieve.

It’s a quick affair, once the rules and the general strategy of the game are known. Not quite a filler, not quite a feast, but something like a tactical interlude between wars. I’d return to its cold, calculating corridors again, but I’m not sure I’m ready to recommend it. I would put it in the “curiosity” category. I think some tables might like it.

Dead of Winter

I have a rather tumultuous relationship with Dead of Winter. Sometimes it grips me like a survival thriller I can’t put down, tension rising, frost creeping up the edges. Other times, it drags like a limp dick through snow, cold, sluggish, and joyless. And then, just when I think I’m done with it, some spark reignites the flame like an ex-girlfriend who seems less crazy in a bikini.

The truth is, Dead of Winter has a lot going for it. I love the premise, zombie apocalypse survival with narrative tension. I love games with storytelling, and this one clearly has effort behind its writing. The Crossroads system is brilliant, and mechanically, the game is clever. It should be one of my favorites in theory.

But it’s not.

And the reason is simple: I absolutely loathe the win conditions.

At the core of Dead of Winter lies a conflict, not just between the colony and the undead, but between the game’s mechanics and my philosophy as a gamer. Each player receives a personal objective. To win, you must both ensure the colony’s survival and complete your private task. Tasks that, more often than not, directly jeopardize the group’s success.

Now, thematically, I think it’s on point. It captures the desperation and selfishness of a crumbling world. But as a player, as someone who sees games as a battlefield of wits and willpower, I just can’t abide by it.

Because here’s the deal: I don’t play to help someone else win. If I’m going down, I’m dragging the whole colony into the snow with me. And when that moment comes, the moment I sabotage the group to chase my own victory, tempers flare. People see it as not just selfishness in a game environment, but a sort of player selfishness, and get genuinely upset as a result. I don’t just get in-game exiled, but it draws out real-life irritation. And I get it. But I also don’t. Because to me, a game is a war with rules. We all know what we signed up for. I’m here to win.

The problem is Dead of Winter wants it both ways. It wants cooperative tension and personal ambition. It wants trust and treachery. And in that tug-of-war, it often creates a confused, emotionally charged experience. One I’m not always in the mood to navigate. The game leaves me with an odd kind of dread, not from the zombies or starvation, but from the awkward social fallout that’s almost guaranteed to follow when I sabotage our chances chasing my own victory. It’s made worse by the fact that the game is pretty unforgiving; more often than not, if someone pursues their personal victory, they are likely to tank the game.

Add to that the pacing issues; it’s just too damn long. Even in its shorter forms, I often feel like the frost sets in around the third crisis too many. And this time at Hassela, we chose a long, brutal scenario; it really dragged on, we were on like our third hour when we finally lost the game, and we were technically only 50% done. I think had we actually won and finished the game, it would have easily hit the 5-6 hour mark if not longer.

That said… I still can’t fully walk away from it, and the end game result from this weekend’s game is exactly why. It was hands down the best execution of a betrayer that I have seen in this or any other game, ever..period. Despite screwing us in plain sight, one of the players had us all convinced that he “accidentally” put in the wrong card in the crisis deck, a moment of theatre only a true psychopath could have pulled off. It’s brilliant and hilarious stuff like that, that can only happen in games like this and that may be reason enough to play it.

There’s something compelling about the way Dead of Winter wraps theme, story, and survival in such a sharp, splintered package. It’s a game I admire. It’s a game I sometimes enjoy, but it certainly has some glaring flaws that get in the way of the fun.

Lords of Waterdeep

The final game of the weekend was a stone-cold classic: Lords of Waterdeep, played with the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion.

It’s a simple D&D-themed worker placement game, elegant in its clarity, yet layered with just enough interaction and tension to keep everyone leaning forward. It’s clever without being exhausting, competitive without being cutthroat. A perfect wind-down after three intense days of gaming.

By the fourth morning, we were all running on fumes. The last game is always a bit of a solemn occasion. You can feel the end creeping in: the bags are half-packed, the snacks are dwindling, and the sunlight feels more like Monday than Sunday. But Waterdeep has a way of waking you up. Something about the logic of it, the satisfying little cube puzzles, the gentle engine-building rhythm, just gets your brain clicking again.

There’s interaction here, sure. Intrigue cards, blocking key spots, stealing quests. it’s not a passive game. But the stakes feel friendly. It’s the kind of game where even when someone snatches the agent space you desperately needed, you sigh, smile, and adjust. And let’s be honest, that is the real villain of Waterdeep: someone taking the spot you were eyeing for the last three turns.

I’ve always had a soft spot for this one. It knows what it is. No fluff, no filler, just clean mechanics and a clear path to victory. Everyone knows what to do. Everyone has a shot. Games are often close, especially at our table, where we’ve all played it so many times that victory is more about finesse than luck.

I’m not even sure if it’s still in print. It might be one of the last survivors from our early days, a game that predates Hassela, and for some of us, even predates our friendships. An oldie, but a goodie. And the perfect note to end on.

Conclusion

That’s it, that’s Hassela 2025, the 9th year – done. As is always the case, the games are mostly just a distraction, while I love the competition, the whole point is for a crew of friends to get together and spend a few days away from the hustle and bustle of our lives.

All and all I think it was a good list this year, but I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t introduce more new games. Oath was really the only completely new game to me , unless you count the Fellowship of the Ring Trick Taking Game, which was fun but didn’t really feel “new” in the truest sense.

Oath, however, did have me spinning. I love discoveries like that. Hope to see that one hit the table sometime soon.

Hope you enjoyed the article, see you next year, Hassela!

Overview

Components

Theme

Gameplay

Replay-ability and Longevity

Conclusion

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Overview

Components

Theme

Gameplay

Replayability and Longevity

Conclusion

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Overview

Components

Theme

Gameplay

Replay-ability and Longevity

Conclusion

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Overview

The Cleverness (The Pros)

The Bad Stuff (The Cons)

Conclusion

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Vampire: The Masquerade – Vendetta

Raise The Goblets

Blood Rage

Valor and Villainy: Minions of Mordak

Viticulture

Oath

Empires: Age of Discovery

Bang The Dice Game

Red Rising

Dead of Winter

Lords of Waterdeep

Conclusion

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