Review: Pandemic Fall of Rome - All roads lead somewhere

By now it's hard to find someone in the board game hobby that hasn't had some experience of the Pandemic series of games. Be it the original, Legacy, The Cure, or Contagion, it's likely board gamers will have come across the series in some capacity.

Pandemic: Fall of Rome by Z-Man Games, designed by Matt Leacock and Paolo Mori, uses this Pandemic system to create a game all about the sacking of Rome by the barbarian hordes. The marriage of theme and mechanics is a match made in heaven as it produces a smooth, tactics-based experience that will please beginner hobbyists and seasoned veterans alike.

As with Pandemic, Fall of Rome is a cooperative experience in which players take the roles of key positions from the Roman Empire, each with their own unique abilities, to stem the flow of Anglo-Saxons, Goths, Vandals, and Huns and find peace for the empire.

Each player's turn takes the format of 4 actions, chosen from a list of shared actions and their unique character's ability, such as march (move), sail, recruit legions to help defend and attack, and form alliances. Following this the active player draws two cards from the player deck. These cards consist of city cards (as with Pandemic), bonus actions, and the dreaded revolt. Revolt cards cause a revolution to break out in a specified city, air-dropping a battalion of barbarians often deep into Roman territory. After this, barbarian cards are drawn equal to the current invasion level and the hordes progress along preset lines, making their way to Rome. The revolt cards cause the barbarian discard pile to be reshuffled back on top of the deck, making it more likely that places recently attacked will be attacked again. Much like with Pandemic, when there are already three cubes representing a single barbarian nation on a city space, and another needs to be added, the barbarians sack the city and spread to all neighbouring areas. 

In order to win, players must either completely clear the map of barbarians, or make peace treaties with each of the attacking armies within the time it takes to reach the bottom of the player deck, or before any army manages to reach and sack Rome. This is no small feat and our first game ended in failure, though we came tantalizingly close. Close enough to make me want to play again!

The process of making peace treaties with the various hordes relies on assembling hands of city cards matching the colour of the army that you wish to make peace with. This sounds simple but the mechanic that controls the trading of cards so one player can assemble the correct hand is particularly difficult. As with Pandemic, cards can only be swapped between players when they are both in the city that matches the card being traded. On a substantial map, this takes a great deal of planning and cooperation and each of the barbarian hordes requires a different number of cards to appease them.

Naturally, forming a peace treaty does not stop the armies advancing on Rome. Only when you have made peace and/or defeated every single horde is the game won.

The application of the proven Pandemic system to a tactical warfare game feels incredibly natural and there is a nice balance of needing to react to events as they unfold, and making tactical plans. Even on the most basic difficulty there is a real sense of danger in the massing hordes of enemies that makes every turn feel like it counts. The board is always satisfyingly full of colourful cubes and small legion markers so you really feel like you are holding enemies off from all sides.

A particularly satisfying mechanic was that of recruiting legions and leading them to battle. In order to keep the enemy at bay it is essential to erect forts around the map and use these to recruit legions that will not only stand guard against the advancing armies, but can be lead to other locations to fight. The battle mechanic relies on rolling a number of dice depending on how many legions you have with you (up to three) and the results will either remove legions, barbarians, a mixture of both, or activate one of your character's special abilities (which aren't always good!). It's a basic system, but rolling dice and removing cubes remains a satisfying experience.

The only downside I can record is in the special ability of the Barbarian Queen character (I think this is the name of the character). This ability is tremendously useful but relies on peace treaties being made with the various hordes. This is a challenge to achieve so leaves the player with the Barbarian Queen unable to use their special ability for a significant portion of the game.

As with most cooperative games, the rules allow for a solo experience, where the player takes command of multiple roles in order to defend Rome.

Fall of Rome is a fun game that for me stands out among the other Pandemic titles as a fresh experience but with a familiar mechanic that reduces the learning curve and allows new players to get into the real meat of the game as quickly as possible. As cooperative games go, I rate this one very highly. There is plenty of space for joint tactics but also individual decision making. If you've played any other Pandemic game you will feel right at home with this one. Likewise, if you have never played Pandemic, maybe the theme isn't for you, this is a relatively easy game to learn.

Review: Wandering Towers - Dude, Where's My Wizard?

We first played Wandering Towers, from Capstone Games, in December 2024 at our local tabletop convention, and I instantly fell in love with it. It perfectly balances strategy and luck, while being quick to learn and relatively quick to play to offer a very smooth and well designed experience for 1 to 6 players.

The board itself is unique in that it comprises a circular ring that the players will move their wizards and towers around. The towers are lovely, 3D folded card models that look intriguing and are great fun to play with.

The central premise of Wandering Towers is that players are attempting to get all of their wizards into a tower named Ravenskeep and fill all of their potion bottles while doing so. As soon as one player satisfies both of these win conditions the game comes to an end. The way in which players move their wizards around the board is by playing action cards that either move their wizard meeples, or the towers they stand upon. When towers land on the same space they stack on top of each other in a very satisfying way. This stacking of towers not only allows players to steal mana from wizards and therefore fill potion bottles, but it also provides an additional difficulty and is becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of where all of your wizards are, in the classic "ball under a cup" style. Whenever a wizard finds their way to Ravenskeep, it moves around the board, creating an almost constantly moving target. This element of chaos keeps all players on their toes and never lets anyone get too comfortable with their strategy.

The gameplay is smooth with very little downtime. Each turn, players will play two action cards, or discard their entire hand and move a tower of their choice, clockwise around the board. As they begin to fill their potion bottles there is a risk-reward mechanic where these can be spent to cast spells that unlock further opportunities to move wizards and towers clockwise or anti-clockwise around the board. These spells are chosen at random at the start of the game from those available in the box, and the instructions indicate that the more spells you make available, the more strategic the game becomes. However, I would suggest that rather than strategy, these spells inject a satisfying amount of chaos as it becomes harder to predict what each player is able to do on their turn.

While the theme of the game is charming, the core mechanic and purpose is abstract enough that the theme never gets in the way if magic and wizards are not your thing. You could easily strip the wizarding theme from the game entirely and it wouldn't lose anything from the enjoyment. That being said, the artwork is charming and definitely draws the eye.

Since first playing it at the tabletop convention, I have since picked up a copy of the game and it has made it to the table a number of times and never fails to entertain. Designers Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer have delivered to us a real tabletop staple that deserves as much space as other modern classics.

Review: Deep Regrets - No regrets backing this

Fans of the video game Dredge will absolutely love Deep Regrets by Judson Cowan and published by Tettix Games. The game blends a little bit of dice placement and a little bit of push-your-luck to deliver a satisfyingly creepy fishing experience that sees players competing for the highest value haul of creatures by the end of the game. Not everything beneath the waves is as it seems, however. Borrowing heavily from Lovecraftian horror and Edmond Halley's hollow earth theory, Deep Regrets contains many "foul" creatures that will force players to gain regret cards, which pushes player's madness to higher levels. Although the player with the most regret at the end of the game will suffer a penalty, there are advantages in the number of dice you can use and even discounts at shops in port that come with losing yourself to the madness that spreads beneath the sea.

The artwork, also by Cowan, makes this game really stand out as something special. The sheer number of different creatures is reminiscent of the Wing/Wyrn/Finspan games and allows for a lot of replayability before you truly know everything that lurks beneath the briny depths. The quality of the game is mirrored in the quality of the assets and extra care has gone in to reducing the amount of plastic in the packaging. This was thanks to the efforts of Cowan who, following a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, wanted to ensure there was no hypocrisy in designing a game about the ocean while also introducing more plastics into circulation.

Deep Regrets also comes with a satisfying solo experience that allows a player to take the role of a scientist completing a survey of the oceans and recording the many fair and foul creatures they dredge up. This solo mode hits a more relaxing tone than the main, multiplayer game, with less focus on the madness and regret mechanics, and no down-time in port. However, it stands alone well as an enjoyable experience and will guarantee that owners of the game will get more of their money's worth should they struggle to get a group together to play.

Thanks to the huge success the game received on Kickstarter, Cowan has since developed Shallow Regrets, now taking late pledges on Kickstarter, with Button Shy Games. Shallow Regrets is advertised as a pocket-sized game of Deep Regrets made up of only 18 cards and packed in a vinyl wallet for maximum portability. The Kickstarter page also promises a solo mode in which players will go up against fan-favourite character Frod to make the biggest catch. The popularity of Deep Regrets saw Shallow Regrets make its pledge goal well within the time limit.

Cowen has also announced that this summer will see a Kickstarter launch of Even Deeper Regrets, an expansion on the main game, that promises even more disturbing fishing, deeper madness, and a wealth of new regrettable decisions. This campaign will also allow backers to grab a copy of Deep Regrets if they have any regrets of not backing the game the first time around.

Overall, Deep Regrets is a satisfyingly meaty game to play when played with the maximum number of players, yet simple to pick up, and the theme is well executed. A must have for any fans of eldritch horror as a genre, and a fascination with the horrors that lurk beneath the waves.

Review: Tiny Epic Defenders - Tower of Terror

I am a huge fan of Scott Almes's Tiny Epic series. I think the man is a genius when it comes to condensing genres that typically span entire weekends and take up multiple tables into sweet little 1-2 hour experiences. Whilst they will never fully live up to the in-depth, crunchy nature of some of their larger cousins, I think they pay wonderful homage to the themes and make them far more friendly to the average table top or cafe. Furthermore, Almes always takes time to ensure there is a suitable single player mode built into the games wherever they will work well. 

I recently got hold of a copy of first edition Tiny Epic Defenders and quite unexpectedly it rose to be one of my favourite quick games. When it comes to condensing a genre, tower defense, into a short, cafe friendly experience, Almes really hit it out of the park with this one. Whilst all Tiny Epic games are relatively low complexity, games such as Tiny Epic Dungeons can often get slowed down by a rule book so thorough that you'd be convinced it cane in a much bigger box. This is not the case with Tiny Epic Defenders. All mechanics have been boiled down into such a neat package the rule book is only a few pages long and can be digested easily right before the first game.

Defenders, is a cooperative experience for 1-4 players, who take on the role of heroes drawn from classic fantasy stock; orcs, elves, skeletons, mages, knights. Each of these heroes come with their own unique special ability, though not all are created equal, allowing for future challenges if you find yourself cracking the formula for success (if you know it, please let me know).

The turn system relies on a deck of cards that are shuffled and drawn one at a time. This deck contains both enemy and player turns meaning each round is luck of the draw when each player is able to take their alloted 3 actions. This helps to keep players feeling as though they are having to play reactively and flexibly in order to keep on top of the hordes of enemies.

Enemy cards target specific areas of the kingdom, which will cause the threat in that region to rise. Should the threat level ever rise to critical point, the region is considered lost and the location bonus action will be unavailable for the rest of the game, plus any future attacks to their region will instead be directed at the capital city. Of course, should the capital city fall it's game over. Players can position their characters in locations and defend them against the onslaught by taking damage rather than raising the threat level of the region. 

Each round of the game adds further enemies to the turn deck, meaning the waves of enemies get more ferocious as the game progresses, culminating in the arrival of a boss enemy. These large monsters require slaying for the game to be considered complete, all while constantly maintaining defense against the unceasing onslaught.

TE Defenders offers a very polished experience without an ounce of fat on it. It takes up very little table space and perfectly encapsulates the tower defense genre into a very small box and quick experience. Of course, this will probably fall short when you are after something to really get your teeth into, but for what it is, it is a very impressive little game.; 

Also in my collection but as of yet untested is the TE Defenders expansion: Defenders Dark War, which expands on the available characters and final bosses, plus the need to defend caravans of refugees fleeing the various realms of the kingdom. Dark War also introduces the Tiny Epic staple gimmick ITEMeeples, small meeple figures that are able to hold even smaller weapons. Ultimately these don't add anything to the actual game play but they are quite cute. Sadly, I have a first edition copy of Defenders, meaning I only have the regular meeples that cannot hold items. If I cared that much I could easily borrow the ITEMeeples from TE Zombies, but I just don't think I'm that bothered.

All in all, TE Defenders is a solid edition to the TE collection and stands out for how neat of an experience it is.

Review: Paper App Dungeon - A Pencil Mightier Than The Sword

Regular readers will know that I'm a fan of any board game that can provide a solo experience. These are perfect for when your social battery is low or if you've got some time on a lunch break and need something with just the right amount of crunch to keep your mind off work. As such, games that are designed as a solo experience entirely and also fit neatly into a pocket, tend to get me excited. So you can imagine the thrill I felt when I slipped and fell into my Friendly Local Gaming Store (FLGS) and discovered Paper App Dungeon by Tom Brinton, published by Lucky Duck Games.

Paper App Dungeons, or PAD if you will (because it's like a note pad...), is a solo experience that puts one in mind of classic PC desktop, time-filler games. It has a charming retro style, simple colour palette, and comes with a pencil designed to act in place of a D6 (P6), which truly makes this one of the most portable and space-friendly games I own, beaten only by Regicide.

The aim of the game is ingeniously simple. Roll the P6 (one of my few criticisms of the game is that P6 is unpleasant to say out loud) and move through the dungeon that number of spaces. Diagonal on odd numbers and orthogonally on even numbers. The only catch is that you cannot change direction until you have moved the full number of spaces or you collide with an obstacle. Retracing steps is discouraged but not technically against the rules. In this fashion you work your way through each layer of the dungeon, looting chests, fighting monsters, and regaining health. Every so often there are "shops" where you can trade hard-earned coin for boosts, extra health, and other useful items to use in the coming levels.

This is where I get to my first major criticism of the format. The pages in each note pad are unique due to random generation so no two dungeons will look the same. This is fantastic in one sense as it allows for a high replay value if you choose to purchase multiple pads (though it is a shame they are essentially single use unless you want to go through and erase all your pencil markings, which is entirely possible). However, I found on my first playthrough that there is no clear difficulty curve. Hard levels were just as common as easy ones.

When playing, you carry health and coins over to the next level, unless you are killed, in which case you tally a death on the tombstone at the end of the book, and start the next level with full health and no coin. Sadly, what this inevitably translated to was my character dying right before I found my way to every shop location so I never had any money to spend on fancy upgrades. This left me feeling like I didn't really get to experience everything the game had to offer.

This frustration was compounded by what I would consider my second criticism, the lack of player autonomy. Although the player can choose the direction of travel, the limitation of travelling diagonally or orthogonally based on the result, coupled with the often tight spaces and the encouragement not to retrace steps, in practice doesn't leave much choice for the player. To be favourable, this does help in what I would call the game's "smooth brain" appeal, but there is a lingering feeling at points of the game playing itself, which the player gets to watch.

These points aside, I would still recommend this game to anyone who has ever used minesweeper or pinball desktop games to pass a scant amount of time. Each level takes no more than 5 minutes to complete, unless you are very unlucky and get trapped in a small corner, constantly rolling the wrong numbers of pinging off walls, which is quite funny to watch really. Plus the premise is so straightforward, it's a very age-accessible game.

The game comes in at under £10 in most retailers and I would say it certainly gives that back in entertainment value.

As a final note I would like to admit that I don't really understand why it's called Paper App Dungeon (OK I understand the first and third words, just not the second), so if anyone can enlighten me, I would appreciate it.

Have you played the game? Am I being too harsh in my criticism? Let me know in the comments down below.

Review: Final Girl - A board game with a Killer theme

I'm sure we're all familiar enough with horror films to recognise the "final girl" trope. This is the character (due to convention it tends to be a female character) who is left standing at the end of a horror film surrounded by the remains of her fallen companions, usually victorious in defeating or evading the horror that has pursued them for the last 90 minutes. She often portrays some characteristic that the film-makers, or society, feels embodies the one "worthy" of survival. Perhaps she has been the voice of reason, compassion, or she's simply a virgin and therefore not deserving of a gruesome death. 

This character has managed to stick it out to the end, either through kick-ass bravery, or just screaming and stumbling far enough through the woods that they get picked up at the highway. Their journey has been transformative, terrifying, and usually good for 3-4 sequels.

Final Girl, the board game now on "Season 2" releases (I'll get into how that works more below), places you in the shoes of one of many possible, and legally distinct, Final Girls. You are constantly caught on the back foot, fighting for time, and a helpless witness to the growing horror of the situation, while given just enough hope to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Final Girl has condensed this age-old scenario into a loving homage to the many, many hours of screen time given over to our favourite horror cliché.

How do we kill something that's... already dead?!

That's it for the flowery introduction. What exactly is Final Girl?

Final Girl is the rarest of table top games, one that has been designed to be played solo from the ground up. A smart choice considering the aim of the game is to make you feel alone, but that isn't the first thing that makes the game intriguing.

I mentioned above that Final Girl feels like a love-letter to the golden age of horror, and this goes well beyond the theme and mechanics, to the make-up of the game itself. The foundation of the game is the Core Box, which all players will need to purchase in order to play the game, but does not allow you to play the game by itself. Much like the artwork of the boxes, this game harks back to the time of the VHS. Simply buying a VHS player was not enough, you had to actually buy a film to put in it. Think of the Core Box as the VHS player and the various expansions as the videos ready to be loaded in.

The Core Box comes with some universal components that will be used across all games: health tokens, action cards, meeples, etc. and each individual "Feature Film", as the expansions call themselves, comes with a location, a foe, a choice of Final Girl, and specific components to match. 

For example, the first Feature Film I purchased was "Frightmare on Maple Lane" featuring Not-Freddy-Krueger, Dr. Fright, who hunts his victims in their dreams. The ingeniously designed boxes come with location and enemy specific rules, tokens, cards, everything you need to play. So you load these components into your game, grab your popcorn, and enjoy the show!

These boxes tend to be released in waves that the designers are calling Seasons. While I understand the terminology has its uses, I do worry when board games use this term as it might put off potential players who "haven't played season 1 yet", even though that really makes no difference.

The Feature Film boxes themselves are not overly pricey, averaging around £16 if purchased from your friendly neighbourhood board game shop, so after an initial splurge to get set up, adding further experiences isn't prohibitively expensive and they offer considerable replay-ability.

Furthermore, there is the added bonus of being able to easily mix and match all Final Girls, enemies, and locations to create completely unique experiences. Feel like Creech Manor is too claustrophobic for your battle with the Poltergeist? Why not take them to Camp Happy Trails? Or maybe see how Dr. Fright handles himself in the Storybook Woods from Once Upon a Full Moon?

He was never really dead...

The game operates in phases with players spending action cards, purchasing cards for future turns, fulfilling the killer's moves, then planning for the next turn. Each killer and location is unique enough to make it difficult to describe the game in full detail but your standard win/lose-condition is kill or be killed. The Final Girl has already had her character development so now it's the showdown.

The killer will perpetually hunt you and the various other "victims" that spawn around the game map. With each kill, their blood lust increases along with their movement distance and strength, even unlocking their dark powers, which invariably make the game considerably harder. This unavoidable levelling up of the enemy is what helps keep the player feel they are working against the odds and makes the ultimate success or death even more exhilarating.

Actions such as sprinting , searching, and fighting can only be used if you have the necessary card in your hand, but even then it requires a dice roll to succeed, with only a 5 or 6 on a D6 considered a definite success. Of course, as the killer gets stronger so does the horror level which can reduce the number of dice you get to roll for each action.

Time, aside from being a key currency in the game used to purchase actions and often forfeited for unsuccessful rolls, it is represented through the deck of Terror cards. This deck indicates what horrible events or actions your nemesis does each turn. Once depleted your time's up and you move into the End Game. The killer unleashes one final power in their attempt to stop you, which unless you're in a strong position already will usually spell the end of your Final Girl.

A really neat mechanic the game uses for it's health trackers for both Final Girl and the killers who can actually be, well... killed, is the Final Health Tokens. These tokens act as the final health markers for both hero and villain but once they are spent they are flipped over. The back will reveal a number of hearts from 0-3 that the character regenerates. I love the suspense this creates. The murderer lies prone at your feet and you hold your breath as you check to see whether they are truly dead or if they will spring back in a final jump-scare cliché. Or perhaps it is you who has been defeated and you get to punch the air as your Final Girl, beaten and bruised, finds the inner strength to pull herself up and rescue her young charge from the clutches of the poltergeist?

If you're successful in defeating the threat, the game includes a reward for the Final Girl you are playing as. A small envelope comes with each Feature Film addressed to each of the Final Girls inside with instructions to open after a successful game. I won't say any more than that here but I will note that it was a nice surprise to find a legacy element in the box. It felt like a pleasant after-thought on the part of the designers.

He's slicing off his own fingers!

You can probably tell that I think very highly of this game, and I'm not the only one. My local board game shop has said that Final Girl has become one of their top-selling games this year, which is a pretty high accolade for a solo game.

Whilst the mechanics, the artwork, the theme, and the novelty of the Feature Film pick-and-play design are all excellent reasons to enjoy Final Girl, the thing that stands out for me above all else is its capacity for story telling. Everything about the game is built to recreate a scene we all know well, from the flavour text on the item cards to the titles of the Dark Powers, and this all works together to create an environment that activates the player's imagination. Each success and failure adds another line to the unfolding story so that by the end you will be completely invested in the experience.

Although this is a solo-game at heart, I think there is a lot to say for sitting around a table with some friends and enjoying it together. We're all comfortable sitting around a horror video game such as Alien: Isolation and taking it in turns with the controller. This is the board game equivalent. It is a game designed around one character but I think it can entertain an audience of more. 

As ever I recommend pairing this game with theme appropriate music, specifically some 80s-style Horror Synthwave. Nothing like hearing the chilling sounds of Ki Ki Ki Ma Ma Ma to get the hairs on your neck to stand on end...

Have you tried any of the Final Girl games? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Final Girl is designed by Evan Derrick and A. J. Porfirio. Artwork by Tyler Johnson and Roland MacDonald. Published by Van Ryder Games.

5 Game Pieces That Look More Delicious Than They Should

I talk a lot about the importance of the tactile element of board games and how much the experience is improved with the inclusion of high quality pieces, but it's come to our attention that some game pieces are perhaps more delicious-looking that they have any right to be. So, following an incident yesterday in which an unnamed person taste-tested a game-piece, here is our list of 5 Game Pieces That Look More Delicious Than They Should:

[Editor's Disclaimer: I cannot stress this enough, please don't put game pieces in your mouth.]

5 Board Games To Get You Started

Mainstream board gaming titles really dominate most shelves in your average high-street shops (Waterstones, and the like), meaning it can be difficult for people getting into the hobby to find new games that aren't intimidating.

Or perhaps you need a gift that goes beyond yet another version of Monopoly or Cluedo (I'm looking at you Monopoly: Bass Fishing Edition). To help we have compiled a list of board games that are well priced, accessible, and can be found easily online or on the high-street.

Review: It's a Wonderful Kingdom (Solo Mode) - Good Game, Bad Name

On an absolute spur-of-the-moment impulse buy I got my hands on "It's a Wonderful Kingdom" by OriGames (Designer: Frederic Guerard; Art: Anthony Wolff). I am always on the look out for games that accommodate solo-play and I was intrigued by the theme and found the box-art rather pleasing.

(We were actually in the shop to pick up Wingspan, which we are excited to try).