What has a giraffe, Marie Curie, Poseidon and the Three Little Pigs got in common? It feels like I’m setting myself up for a lame Dad joke! But actually these seemingly unrelated things are all cards from the co-operative card game, Similo. It is available in Animals, Wild Animals, Fables, Myths, History, Spookies and a couple of popular IPs. Sure, it has artwork that lends itself to a younger audience but don’t be fooled, Similo is for all. Read on to find our why! ©boardgamereview.co.uk TLDR: click for final thoughts and scores Setup One player adopts the role of clue giver, the ..read more

Back in 2019 when John Hammond was nursing some pretty nasty bite marks, another Jurassic Park was being built. In fact lots of mini dino parks were being planned by board gamers playing Draftosaurus. This family weight drafting game offered slick gameplay and a little more safety than Hammond’s vision – we all know how that ended after all! So you wanna read a review of Draftosaurus? You’ve been so preoccupied with whether you could, have you stopped to think about whether you should? ©boardgamereview.co.uk TLDR: click for final thoughts and scores Setup All players get a board ..read more

Advert: this experience was gifted byTulleys Farm, this has not affected our opinion. The whole family was buzzing at how good Mutiny was at Tulley’s. So after a quick bite to eat we went straight in for our pre-booked slot at SpellCraft. You can read more about Mutiny in my review here. Walking into the welcome area of SpellCraft we were greeted with a thematic entrance, with fake shopfronts and other cool witchy décor. ©boardgamereview.co.uk I was quite surprised that at this point we were split into two teams. Without too much thought I paired up with George (12) while the oth ..read more

Advert: this game was gifted by Hachette Board Games UK, this has not affected our opinion. I was in the faraway lands of Spiel Essen, Germany, when I first heard mention of the card game Faraway. Those that read My Top 10 New to Me Board Games will know I missed out on actually securing my own copy of this card game. Deciding I would try a friend’s copy before buying it. Then playing it and realising I needed it in my life – only to return to a ‘Sold Out’ sign. No need to feel too sorry for me, because the lovely people at Hachette Board Games sent me a French copy of the game, one of onl ..read more

Advert: this game was gifted by Matagot & Friends, this has not affected our opinion. Knowing little about it, when I first saw a glimpse of Footprints at Essen 2023 it looked like a stone age racing game. A little part of me was hoping for Flintstone style cars powered by feet underneath and certainly the occasional yabadabadoo! I’ve subsequently discovered it isn’t really a racing game, but it kinda is… read on to find out more! ©boardgamereview.co.uk TLDR: click for final thoughts and scores Setup Set up the main board, placing cave tokens in the relevant spaces. Give each playe ..read more

Advert: this game was gifted by Matagot and Friends, this has not affected our opinion. Troyes, Lost Cities, Twilight Imperium, Rajas of the Ganges, and Dice Hospital are among the many board games that have been reimagined as roll/flip and writes. I can’t think of any that have made the transition vice versa though. Until now… Tucana Builders is one of the first, if not the first, board game to have been created based on a flip and write game, Trails of Tucana. I enjoyed my plays of this route building game so I was excited to hear of the board game reimplementation. Let me tell you more ..read more

Advert: this game was gifted by Rebel Studio, this has not affected our opinion. Anyone who knows why Nick Fury wears an eyepatch, knows that cats in space is not such a whacky idea! Okay, maybe that isn’t the best argument, but cats are cute right! So why not put them in astronaut suits and get them to explore new planets! This is exactly what you do in MLEM: Space Agency and this is my vague excuse of an introduction to this push-your-luck board game! ©boardgamereview.co.uk TLDR: click for final thoughts and scores ©boardgamereview.co.uk Setup Roll out the neoprene game mat and pl ..read more

Advert: this game was gifted by Bombyx, this has not affected our opinion. I can’t say the name of this game without sounding like a pirate. Those that know me, will know I am partial to talking like a pirate and wearing a pirate tee. All that is irrelevant though as Knarr is based around other seafarers, the Vikings! I know it’s hard to believe, but that was my introduction to my review of the game Knarr… ©boardgamereview.co.uk TLDR: click for final thoughts and scores Setup Place the board on the table and place scoring markers and income track markers for each player. Shuffle the tw ..read more

I know you’ve been eagerly waiting to hear about my board gaming year since you read my last one in 2022! I’m sorry to have kept you waiting but that is how the Gregorian calendar works. I think it should be decimalised anyway, but that is a discussion for another day! Of course, you could also be thinking this is incredibly self-indulgent, but you’re here reading it so you must be a little bit interested! Once again the Board Game Stats app that I log all my plays on displays some pretty outrageous numbers. A total of 296 games were played 972 times! More importantly, I sat at the gaming t ..read more

I played more new-to-me games in 2023 than I did in 2022! 153 new-to-me games sounds as bonkers to me as it does to you! That’s ridiculously close to three new games every week! To whittle down this list to my top ten is therefore understandably pretty tricky. So here they are, in no particular order… 3 Ring Circus A game that really got me excited this year was 3 Ring Circus. This ticked all the boxes for me personally. Solid gameplay and beautiful artwork combine in this deliciously thinky game. Oh man, just thinking about it makes me want to pull it from the shelf again. It is a corke ..read more