Posts By Adam Roffel

I’m generally not a huge fan of games that have strong take-that mechanics, which means a lot of dueling 2-player games don’t appeal to me. At GenCon 2025, I had the chance to get a quick overview of how it worked from a Luma Imports representative, and I was actually intrigued. Not only did the game look fantastic, but the card play and engine building looked really interesting as well. It will be the table presence, though, that will get…

The deeper we get into 2025, the less likely I am to get excited about yet another duel game; however, when companies take massive euro-style games and turn them into something bitesize and for two players, I’m still going to be intrigued. Yokohama Duel doesn’t have the biggest box, but for $35 USD, you are getting a ton of components and content, and hopefully, the Yokohama feel! What I’m most impressed by in this production is how much content Synapses…

Whenever I open anything large than a little card game, we always try to take a two-article approach to our content: one article to go over the game’s components, and another to review the game. I was actually expecting to find a lot more inside the box when I opened my first ever Unmatched title, and was surprised – yet surprisingly delighted – by how little there was. Still, why not go over everything that comes in this box, which…

Solstis was a game I was really interested in just based on the look of the box. It looks like a cozy and fun 2-player game that is both relaxing and competitive. I think that probably accurately reflects the intent of the game, but I was personally left unsure of how I felt after about a half dozen plays. Don’t get me wrong, the concept here is actually pretty interesting. Players are drafting tiles from a central display by “capturing”…

Large and unnatural board game boxes really suck to store, and I’ll openly admit I haven’t purchased games in the past simply because of their sheer size. Almanac: The Crystal Peaks probably would have been one of those games, but after seeing someone playing it at GenCon 2025, the table presence was so impressive I had to try it. Lucky for me that Kolossal Games reached out and provided a copy for me to review, so let’s take a look…

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Unfortunately, I hear that saying all the time, I even tell people that, and yet I’ve been passing on Thunder Road Vendetta for years now because, “I don’t like racing games.” Frustratingly, outside of knowing there was a bit of edginess you don’t find in something like Heat: Pedal to the Metal, I just assumed this was a game about racing from A to B, and whoever…

I’m a massive Lord of the Rings fan, and the past 12 months have been great for Lord of the Rings board game fans. Lord of the Rings Duel (a reimagining of 7 Wonders Duel), The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring Trick Taking Game, and now The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship. All of the games have been fantastic in their own way, but Fate of the Fellowship is one of the best…

Although the timeframe and theme of Gatsby wasn’t as interesting to me as I first thought before opening the box, the colorful artwork and nifty little wooden pieces makes me want to give the game a shot. That, and I love to have two player games in the house for my wife and I to play. I’ve been swayed by nice components and art before, so can Gatsby do that for me too? Honestly, I only have one gripe with…

Small little card and dice games are something I’m generally a pretty big fan of. I love a game with a bit of substance, but one that can also be played in 10-20 minutes. I’m always awarding some nice bonus points to games that look or feel amazing as well – it seems that Pina Coladice, a game I picked up at GenCon 2025 from Hachette USA, fits all of those requirements. In Pina Coladice, players are rolling a group…

Thunder Road Vendetta is a game I’ve looked at often but never pulled the trigger on. To be honest, I should have done more research because I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. Heat: Pedal to the Metal is a decent enough game, but I wasn’t really into the racing genre as much as I thought I would be. Turns out that while Thunder Road is a race, it’s a lot different than Heat, and I’m going to like it…

Cooperative-Competitive games are generally not things I enjoy, especially if played with the wrong person. While Castle Panic is a great game, giving the “win” to whomever kills the most monsters might make some players purposefully lose if they don’t feel they can win. We’re Sinking: A Pirate’s Dilemma has a similar idea, although the game is much more competitive than cooperative. That said, this isn’t our game review so you’ll have to wait to see what I ...

As much as I love Nintendo, some of the decisions they have made so far this generation with the Nintendo Switch 2 have baffled even me. As we have stated in the past, we thought that, although brilliant fun in an odd way, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour should have been a pack-in title with the Nintendo Switch 2. Over the past week we’ve been playing Nintendo’s latest release, Drag X Drive, and once again we are a bit confused:…

I’ve always said that the board game space seriously lacks food related games, but all I had to do was type in “Food” and “Board Games” into Google to be proven very, very wrong. So I’ve remade my previous statement as follows: “The board game space lacks food related games that I want to play.” Enter Food for Thought, a much deeper game than your average food related game (which tends to be very card based, by the way). While…

When it comes to campaign games, or even standalone experiences with involved stories, I’m basically going to love them. That said, I’ve played a fair number of games that have a pretty good story, but the production quality is subpar at best, making the entire experience so much less enjoyable. If you’ve ever had the chance to play games coming from Van Ryder Games or Lucky Duck Games, you know the quality is always superb. With almost no knowledge of…

When Star Wars Shatterpoint first launched my father-in-law and I were all into it. Asmodee Canada and Atomic Mass sent us box after box, and we reviewed them all and got them all painted. As time has gone by, we’ve gotten pretty busy on the website, which is a good problem to have. We are working with more publishers and designers than ever, so we cannot always cover everything. So for about 9 months, we took a break from Star…