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There were many secrets during the Cold War, there had to be. One of the most interesting was what was found years later in a hidden bunker somewhere on the outskirts of Berlin. A bunker, where they were trying to make the best game ever. Mechanics from great games like Cockroach Poker, Mascarade, and Love Letter had been unethically mixed together. Their components strewn across the floor. Above them in a glass container on a table, was the culmination of their research: Secrets. Secrets is a 4 to 8 player party-social-deduction-strategy game, based on the Cold War. Players are secretly put onto teams and then duke it out for the most points, or the least if you’re a no good stinking hippy. How to play At the start of the game players are given a team token, this can be either a blue eagle, a red hammer and sickle or a green peace symbol. Once received, players look at their own tokens, and then look at the token owned by the player to their right. If you’ve ever used

Hanabi is the winner of 2013 Spiel des Jahres Award so like Ron Burgundy, it’s kind of a big deal. It’s a cheap 2-5 player cooperative game, where you and your team are putting together a firework show - drunk. The main mechanic of the game has you facing your hand of cards outwards, so that while you can’t see them, your friends can. I’m sure being drunk isn’t the official explanation, but I can’t fathom another reason as to why you're unable to see your own fireworks. How to Play There are five sets of coloured cards: white, blue, green, red, and yellow. Within these sets are cards numbered from one to five. The objective of the game is to create a stack for each of the colours with the numbers one to five in that order. The fine print is that, as mentioned above, everyone can look at your hand – except you. The holy trinity of actions you can take per turn include: giving a clue, playing a card on one of the piles, or discarding a card. Clueing someone comes in

If you’ve never played League of Legends then you are truly blessed. I followed the false prophet for 4 years, all throughout the alpha and beta, and now return yearly for a World Championship pilgrimage. This is not only my way of bragging about owning the King Rammus skin, but it’s also letting you know that, like this review, I am tainted with the stink that comes from spending too much time in Runeterra. Mechs vs Minions is a 4-player cooperative game that comes from the minds that brought us such classics as League of Legends, and League of Legends, and…That’s it. Riot Games has only developed one game over their 11 years - until now. Mechs vs Minions is their first “completely new” game, which raises the burning question: was it worth the wait? Oh, I love a good cliff-hanger. How to Play Mechs vs Minions is a campaign game of 10 levels and a prologue. It’s an Easter egg hunt of mechanics, where you begin with an empty basket and by the end it’s still empty, but the

By all rights this game should be boring. To describe it sounds like work, to play it feels like work. And yet somewhere in between the magic happens, and you have a lot of fun. Let’s have a look. Power Grid plays 2-6 players, where players assume the roles of entrepreneurs each creating a start-up within their home state.  However, like Newton and Leibniz everyone happened upon the same idea at the same time; supplying power to the people. The game has a unique winning condition whereby the winner is the player who can provide power to the most cities. To do this, you’ll need: power plants, suspenders, power grids, a calculator, fuel, a green eye shade, and money to buy all of these. How to Play The rule breakdown gets a bit confusing, more so if you try and follow the rulebook. I’ll do my best, but offer no guarantee that you’ll come out any more knowledgeable. To begin there are five phases to each round: Determining player order  Auctioning power plants  Buyi

Munchkin. If you’ve been around board games for a while, or been into a store that sells any type of card game, or consumed oxygen, then you most likely have brushed up against Munchkin. If your skin hasn’t yet broken out into blisters that’s a good sign you may like this game. I no longer enjoy Munchkin, and haven’t for a long time. It is a game I have fond memories of since it was one of the first games that got me into board gaming. However, compared to any other game in my current collection, it no longer holds up. That said I’m not satisfied with saying that it’s a bad game, or you should not buy this game, without exploring why I think that. With the typical review prologue done it’s time to put your boots on and go spelunking into how this game works. How to play Munchkin is a card game where players take the roles of munchkin, who may or may not be run away Oompa Loompas from a certain copyrighted chocolate factory. It is a light-hearted role-playing game, won by the

This is going to be a good review. Do you believe me? Today I was reading an article about Facebook's 51 different gender options. I quickly browsed the list and was devastated to find that there wasn't a gender for loving small box board games. This was terrible news because I do love small box games. Especially ones with a decent player count, light on the rules and I can put into my bag and take to work. Cockroach Poker, or Kakerlaken Poker, hits these targets with aplomb. A 2-6 player simple bluffing game that's packed in a box that could suffocate an ant - if ants breathed like the rest of us. Did you know that ants breathe through holes in their bodies because they don't have lungs? Damn six legged bastards always ruining my metaphors. Example play from Jacky Pohl on BGG How to play The description on the back of the box describes this game as a reverse set collection game that has nothing to do with poker. It reads like a nerd wrote it. As a nerd