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1 week ago | 
gamingtrend.com | Nick Dubs
I love games that take one or two mechanics and implement them either really cleanly or with a fresh twist, preferably both. It's why I'm always down to play a Knizia, and more relevantly, it's why I was pretty much always in a game of Furnace when it came out. The box identifies Furnace as an engine builder and I mean, I guessssssss, but that's like the people that call Die Hard a Christmas movie. The engine building is set dressing that compliments the real focal point here, the auctions.
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1 week ago | 
gamingtrend.com | Nick Dubs
In the last decade or so, the bar for what would be considered an average board game production has skyrocketed. Gone are the days of utilitarian UI and beige euros; anyone that considers themselves a hobby gamer has a reasonable expectation that anything in front of them will be aesthetically pleasing. Stifling Dark is not such, with art and components that range from passable to actively ugly.
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1 week ago | 
gamingtrend.com | Nick Dubs
As this gig has me reviewing a whole host of games that are outside of my typical comfort zone, I've grown an appreciation for chiller, maybe a bit simpler, games I can put in front of my non-gamer wife and mother and have something to do while we hang out that doesn't occupy all our cognition, kinda like reality TV or non-playoff baseball (aka all baseball in Colorado).
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3 weeks ago | 
gamingtrend.com | Nick Dubs
Most games have a clock of some kind, be it an overt round timer or inevitable game end condition, but not Galactic Renaissance. The first player to score ten points on their turn after hitting 20 (and thereby hitting 30) wins Galactic Renaissance, but if you miss the mark, you're reset to 20 and gotta try again once play gets back to you. "Well easy enough, just do the thing," you say. Oh, my sweet summer child.
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1 month ago | 
gamingtrend.com | Nick Dubs
Let's talk about theming in board games, one of the most controversial spectra for people on the autism spectrum. For simulationist American designs, it's everything, at the cost of all else. In the dark ages of the 90’s, European games only used theme to help players learn rules and integrate mechanics. Nowadays, we've evolved to the point where most games hit a happy medium. Comic Hunters kinda lives there, but also not? Let me explain.
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1 month ago | 
gamingtrend.com | Nick Dubs
When our team first saw TNT Laser Works’ Sage Stones back at the media first look at Origins last year, it was immediately apparent that the boards are works of art, up there with a nice crokinole set. When we got a review copy of the still rather nice leather scroll travel edition, I had to answer if it was a good game or not. After some serious critical consideration, I've landed on the extremely erudite position of: eh, kinda? Sage Stones plays as the lovechild of Go and Sorry!.
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1 month ago | 
gamingtrend.com | Nick Dubs
Since I've started reviewing the LCGs that everyone's pumping out, I've been asked some variant of “is this The One, will it get a scene?” way more than I'd like. It's not that it's a bad question for people who are still brain poisoned by MTG, it's just that it's not one I'm interested in speculating on. What I'm interested in is finding that game that returns me to a time before PTQs, GPs, and the general crowd at competitive scenes sapped the fun out of card games for me.
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2 months ago | 
gamingtrend.com | Nick Dubs
Social deduction is one of those genres that is just inherently fun and understandable. The foundation of a large group playing cooperatively while a smaller group tries to accomplish a diametrically opposed goal is simple and compelling in a way that additional complexity threatens to undermine. Avalon and Secret Hitler are prime examples: every round, the table elects a team that will advance the game state towards the good or bad side winning.
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Feb 20, 2025 | 
gamingtrend.com | Nick Dubs
The trick taking craze doesn't seem to be losing any steam, so everyone's showing off their chops by putting their own spin on the genre. I got my hands on Pete Wissinger and Inside Up's D&D themed entry, and right out the gate, it's got more going on than any other I've played (maybe excluding Arcs). Cards don't have values on them, instead everyone's got a set of polyhedral dice they roll at the start of each round or when playing a card if they don't like the values they initially rolled.
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Feb 19, 2025 | 
gamingtrend.com | Nick Dubs
Ever since Star Realms took the deck building genre by storm, it's felt like every new innovation in the genre that caught my eye and stuck to the two player count wound up being a banger. Undaunted? Awesome. Kapow? Sleeper hit. Star Wars? I'm a fanboy, so of course I love it. But to my eternal shame I ignored For Glory when it debuted, mostly because I couldn't care less about Rome. Thankfully, it came up in our podcast about deckbuilding; I noticed we had a copy in our backlog and checked it out.
