Tabletop Games Blog

The bitumen road had given way to a well-maintained dirt track. My monster road train was stubbornly ploughing on, throwing up red dust behind it in giant plumes. From time to time I could see kangar…

I recently had the honour to be tasked with donating most of the 2023 Spiel des Jahres, Kinderspiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres nominations and longlist titles to good causes on behalf of S…

London's ageing underground network is creaking and groaning. It can no longer keep up with the exponentially increasing demand of daily commuters and rising tourist numbers to the UK's capital. It's…

Fresh off the back of demoing games for Asmodee at UK Games Expo 2023, I wanted to share my experiences with introducing people to a new game. I think demoing and teaching games are two similar, but …

I visited the show last year as a member of the press. I spoke to a lot of exhibitors and spent time in the evenings catching up with friends and playing a few games. However, this year was different…

Most of the earliest card games were trick-taking games played in the 800s in China. These will have felt quite different to our modern eyes. They didn't have the concept of trump cards or trump suit…

Gosh! The tiles were almost like dominoes, but square instead of rectangular. They came in a combination of six shapes and six colours. Every time you laid out tiles with the same colour, but differe…

Pretty much every hobby game contains some sort of score which measures who is in the lead and decides who wins the game. That's undoubtedly true for competitive games, but sometimes also for coopera…

We were a band of feared Viking warriors of Borg on the Lofoten islands. Our chieftain had tasked us with assembling a cunning and mighty crew, collecting provisions and journeying north to plunder g…

Card games date back to the 1400s with Karniffel, or Thuringian Karnöffel, often listed as the oldest one, at least the oldest in Europe that we know of. As a popular trick-taking game in Germany for…

Before the dawn of time, Gaia, our Mother Earth, gave birth to the first trees. With their strong trunks and majestic crowns, they quickly converted the fallow land into fertile soil. They cherished …

When you publish a review every week, there is a certain amount of pressure to frequently play games that are new to you. Even if you bear in mind that I sometimes re-review a game and that once a ye…

The tigers were stealthily making their way onto the meadow, where the goats were grazing. Watching their calm and coordinated approach made you believe there was going to be only one outcome - and i…

If you are a veteran board game hobbyist, you will have learned a lot of terminology and mechanisms. You will instinctively know what a draw deck is and that you usually shuffle a discard pile into a…

"Troll!" came the shout from the battlements. "Where?!" we shouted back. "Southeast!" was the reply. Darn it. We didn't have any archers defending our fortress in that direction. It was fortunate tha…

Apart from being a great way to meet new people and make new friends, just like any other hobby, for many of us in the hobby, playing board games is a social activity. We enjoy spending time with fri…

The two of us were strolling along the beach. We could feel the damp sand underneath our feet. We stopped for a moment to dig our toes in and take a look around. There were plenty of beautiful object…

Yes, my dear friends, Tabletop Games Blog is 5 years today. When I posted my first article, I didn't know where I was going with this and had no idea about the journey the site would take me on. Sinc…

It was dark in damp. Of course, that was not unusual for the Tacora Cave, a giant underground system which was strewn with precious jewels and priceless artefacts. Those were the reason why we were h…

The other day I noticed how similar books and board games are. The thought was triggered when I held a board game box in my hand and then plonked it on the table. The sound it made was very much like…