New games drive me mad, so why do I keep buying them? There’s that initial rush of satisfaction as you hand over cash, the thrill of looking at the long coveted box, the joy of opening it up and punching it. All of that is swept to one side as I open the rulebook. Or even worse, the rulebooks. My latest purchases – Crossbows & Catapults, Space Alert and Red November – all suffer in different ways. They take something...

Wiz-War – hmmm, let’s be honest, it’s a rubbish name for a game. Now I’m going to cut Fantasy Flight some slack here as the game has a long history. Originally released in 1983 by designer Tom Jolly, the game has gone through seven previous editions before Fantasy Flight resurrected the game this year for an all new swanky 8th Edition. Wiz-War is for 2-4 players, with each player controlling a wizard in a...

I like to think myself a fairly balanced and reasonable person (stop laughing at the back!), giving things the time they deserve before making a decision on whether I like it or not. It’s very rare I just flat out call something rubbish or that I hate it or say that it’s worse than Hitler, but I feel very strongly that 2 of these 3 opinions apply to The Isle of Dr Necreaux (Ok, ok. It’s not worse than Hitler). Buying blind...

It seems a tad ironic that an expansion for Dust Tactics based around the invasion of England should arrive here roughly three months after it’s worldwide release.  Still, as it’s finally with us this seems like as good a time as any to take a look at what’s inside the box. Unlike the previous expansions, Cerberus doesn’t come with any extra map tiles.  Instead, as well as the usual two new heroes, you get the...

Sometimes a game comes sort of out of nowhere, takes you by surprise, and you fall in love with it. RoboRally is such a game. I’d heard of it years ago, long before I was really into board games. For a good chunk of the mid nineties I was a Magic: The Gathering (MtG) player. I did I say player? sorry I meant to say hopeless obsessive, I lost years of my life to that game and a lot of my money, well buying Magic cards and beer as I...

Following on from the first part of the article looking at the rules and miniatures, we ran a demo game to give you a bit more of an idea how Tor Gaming’s Relics plays out.  Click on any of the thumbnails for a larger version of each picture. Setting Up We used two of the Starter in a Can sets – Britanans versus Orcnar.  Both come out at around 150 points.  One thing to note is that (unless we somehow missed it entirely) the...

One of the nice things about writing these pieces is that it gives me some impetus to look through my collection, pick out some of the more interesting or lesser known games, and then to put a bit of effort into painting or playing.  As all I seem to have painted recently is red power armour, I wanted something a little different to focus on and Tor Gaming’s Relics looked like just the thing. Relics is set in a post-apocalyptic...

The run up to Salute (the UK’s biggest wargames show, this year on April 21) is always an interesting time, as many companies use it to launch new products – it’s rare that I don’t come away with a bag full of miniatures for some game system which I will almost undoubtedly never get around to playing.  This year, it’s West Wind Productions’ Empire of the Dead which has caught my eye. (In case you...

Red hot wizard on wizard action seems to be the in thing at the moment! We’ve had  Epic Spell Wars, the re-release of Wiz War and now Mage Wars has popped onto my radar. I’ll be the first admit the name is terrible, I thought it was some old TSR/Avalon Hill thing from the 80s, but no it’s coming out in 2012 The premise is simple – it’s mages of different schools of magic against each other in a fight to the...

Last night I took the plunge and headed to what is not my nearest games club, but the nearest one that I am likely to make with any kind of frequency. Epsom Games Club is held at the Royal British Legion, in Epsom, and when I arrived, it was nice to see there was loads of space, about 15 people there around 4 tables. My initial welcome was cautious and I immediately realised this was due to the fact that all the big games had JUST got...