Tag: rpg

Dice Throne Outcasts + Dice Throne Adventures Unchained. Part II of II.

Join us for the second part of our review as we look closer at the Dice Throne Adventures Unchained Expansion. Part I showed us the terrifyingly thematic Halloween characters of Dice Throne Outcasts, and now we look at the new solo and cooperative modes of Unchained!

If Dice Throne Outcasts provides the core characters for head-to-head play, then Dice Throne Adventures Unchained gives us more ways to play solo and cooperatively!

We have to 100% clear here; Dice Throne Adventures Unchained is an expansion for Dice Throne Adventures! See above! We really liked the Dice Throne Adventures Expansion (see review here), so when we saw there would be more content, we were excited!  So, in order to use this new Unchained expansion, unfortunately, you do need the Dice Throne Adventures box.  That’s right, Unchained is an expansion for an expansion! 

And to further muddy the waters, you need at least one of several boxes of characters to play.  We’ve been playing with Outcasts and have been loving it, but there’s also Marvel Dice Throne (see review here), X-Men Dice Throne (see review here), and Seasons I and II of Dice Throne (see review here).

In other words, to play Unchained, you also need a core box as well as the Dice Throne Adventures box!

So, if that hasn’t scared you to running away screaming  (“Really? Three boxes total?”), we can look objectively to see if it is worth getting the Unchained Expansion!  I will tempt you by saying that we have two new solo modes AND a new cooperative mode!

Unboxing

The Unchained box is small, but it has quite a bit of stuff.  See Can of Coke above for scale.

The coolest thing is the new Loot cards which can be mixed in with the original Dice Throne Adventures. Loot is just upgrades as you play! See above.  The Legendary cards are even foil! Oooooohh!!

The most fun new rule of the game is that Loot is added instantly to your hand when you get it!  So, there’s a new Loot table for instantly adding stuff! 

There’s also a whole bunch of new Minions (levels 1-4, sorry I-IV).

There’s a new Boss!  The Vault Witch!  

As a boss, she has her own deck (and sleeves)! See above!

In the base Dice Throne Adventures, you can choose to fight the Vault Witch instead of a normal boss, by collecting the Witch Keys: see above.  This allows you to vary the bosses a little in the original Dice Throne Adventures game.

There’s also 3 new sheets (double-sided) for 6 new one-shot scenarios!  

Overall, this looks great and totally fits the feel of Dice Throne, especially the Outcasts set!

Rulebook

The rulebook is a tiny thing.

This rulebook probably gets a B- on the Chair Test. It does stay open and stays flat, and the font is big and readable, and it has lots of good pictures and annotations … but it’s still just a little small.

The components page works well: see above.  

Like all Dice Throne rulebooks, they do a good job labeling pictures and having a good sized font.

Generally, this rulebook was fine.  It even finishes with some useful stuff on the back cover.

Solo Mode: Minion Rush

The game comes with a new solo mode called Minion Rush!  See rules above! 

As you might guess, you just go and fight a bunch of minions (no bosses allowed!).  These new rules span 2.5 pages in the rulebook: see above.

At the end of the Minion Rush (after you die, … and you will die), you get Points for every Minion you killed!  (Harder Minions are obviously worth more). See above as I get 27 points for killing all-but-one minion!

I tried to set-up a Minion Rush using only the new Minions  (see above)… but you don’t quite have enough Minions in the Unchained expansion to do this … you gotta get some from the main box.

I was actually incredibly disappointed you couldn’t JUST play Minion Rush with the Unchained expansion: you need 13 Minions, and the Unchained expansion only comes with 12 Minions!  D’oh!  It sounds stupid, but I thought it would have been nice to need almost nothing from Dice Throne Adventures.  To be clear; for Minion Rush, you STILL NEED Dice Throne Adventures. 

In the end, I played Minion Rush with mostly Unchained Minions!  See above!

It was reasonably fast and fun to play, like 1.5 hours?  You just beat-up Minions!

You have to choose a path to follow … once you start following a path to the left or right, you have to keep going on that path!

As you go, you get upgrades!  And these upgrades persist! See above!  Yay! But so does damage and poison!  Boo!  Basically, it feels like a Dungeon delve!

Minion Rush is a fun way to play solo without too much set-up.  This is another great way to learn the characters!  If you don’t want to me play the Me vs Me solo mode (like we saw in Part I of our review), then Minion Rush is a fun solo mode without too much commitment.  

I used to the solo mode Minion Rush to learn the Raveness character!  See above!

“But Rich!” … I hear you asking. “Why do I need special rules for the Minion Rush??  It feels like I could just play the Dice Throne Adventures and use these rules? Do I really need Unchained to do this?”  

You are ALMOST right.  You need two major things from Dice Throne Adventures: the status tokens (and the back of the Dice Throne Adventures rulebook), but arguably more important thing you need is … the new Loot Chart.

New Loot Zoot Suit

Arguably, the best new rule in Unchained is that you get IMMEDIATELY get Loot into your hand when kill a Minion!  See above for the One-Shot Loot chart!  One of the complaints of the original Dice Throne Adventures was that your deck upgrades went very slowly … you might only get a few Loot as you play per session.  And you might not see it very much!

The new One-Shot Loot chart (if you roll well) immediately puts Loot into your hand.  So, as you kill a bunch of Minions in Minion Rush, your hand is getting better, and better immediately!

So, the new One-Shot Loot chart is paramount to making this Minion Rush work! 

“But Rich”, I hear you say, “Can’t you just make a copy of the One-Shot Loot Chart and play Minion Rush without Unchained?”  No, because you still need the status tokens and rulebook from Dice Throne Adventures.  Why don’t you just support Roxley and quit trying to cheap-out?  They’ve made a great game for you to play … besides, Unchained comes also with new Minions, new Boss, new Loot, and … a new co-op mode!

New Cooperative Mode!

That’s right, people!  There’s a new cooperative mode in Unchained!  Whaaaat?

The One-Shot Adventure is a new cooperative Adventure!  See rules above. 

One-Shot Adventure: Solo Mode!

Technically, the One-Shot Adventure is also a new solo mode, as you can play that One-Shot Adventure by yourself!

This new One-Shot Adventure addresses the problem many people had with the original Dice Throne Adventures … it was too long!  Dice Throne Adventures required an investment in a long, on-going adventure, and there kinda wasn’t a way to just play a one-off!  Now you can!

There are three One-Shot maps (dual-sided), (see one above) and they basically represent a “condensed” Adventure where you fight some Minions on the way to fighting a BOSS!  The map above represents you “going through a dungeon”!  Along the way, you fight Minions, find treasure, find healing, and try to get to the BOSS  at the bottom!!

I played a One-Shot Adventure (see above) solo to see how it worked!    When you play the One-Shot Adventure, you have to embrace needing Dice Throne Adventures, some characters (from Outcasts, but really any), and the Unchained expansion! 

To help myself keep things separate, I actually physically separated the Dice Throne Adventure components on the left side of the table (see above) …

.. and the Unchained and Outcasts components to the right side of the table! 

This helped me keep track of what goes where!

I really enjoyed this solo; it felt like it took all the complexity of Dice Throne Adventures and compressed it into a bite-sized adventure I could play in about 1.5 to 2 hours!

With the One-Shot, you get to fight BOTH a lot of Minions AND a Boss in a smaller time frame.

I really enjoyed this “new” solo mode.  Of course, like we said in the Minion Rush, part of the reason the One-Shot Adventure works so well is that we have the One-Shot Loot chart and immediately get Loot so we immediately feel more powerful as we play!  See above as I already have some great Ghost Equipment out and upgrade cards to fight the new big bad!

The new boss is cool; I have to say I defeated her pretty readily in my One-Shot Adventure, but she was still fun to play.

Again, The One-Shot Loot chart makes this new cooperative work so well.

One-Shot Adventure: Cooperative Mode … Prequel

One big mistake I think we made in playing Dice Throne Missions was NOT playing a quick head-to-head game to learn the characters.  (You might remember my friends were frustrated when playing Missions: see review here).   When confronted with all the new rules of the cooperative modes, I think it’s too easy to get lost.  So, before we jumped into a cooperative game of Unchained (the One-Shot Adventure), I asked my friends to play a quick Head-to-head game.

I recommend this to you and your groups as well.  Don’t just jump into Unchained.  There’s a lot of rules.  Let your players get comfortable with the basic rules and characters they want to play BEFORE you jump in.

Playing a quick head-to-head game first was absolutely the right thing to do;  I know it from both the positive side (my friends above said they were very glad we did a quick pre-game) and the negative side (when my other friends felt frustrated in Missions).

One-Shot Adventures: Cooperative Mode!

So, I shepherded my players into a One-Shot  Adventure!  They generally had fun, although we saw a few problems: 
1) Four players may be too many.  Even though the game moved fast, some times you felt like it took too long to get to your turn.
2) Because it takes some turns to get some of the characters flowing, sometimes having the next player fight the minion slows down your progression.  Both Raveness and the Headless Horsemen suffered from that a little; both of them require a “commitment” to an opponent to see a result.  If the opponent is killed by another fellow player, you feel a little frustrated as you couldn’t “get your character going”.

Both of these problem are solved, I think, by simply limiting the number of players. My friends had fun playing cooperatively, but I think Robert (Headless Horseman) and Becca (Raveness) were a little frustrated getting their characters going.

The other thing to be aware of, (and note that I am not calling this a problem), is that the game isn’t particularly cooperative. It’s pretty much multi-player solitaire as you all just take your turn and try to kill Minions/Bosses. Occasionally, you might help each other with cards that give re-rolls, (“I really need a re-roll! Can someone get me a re-roll?” ), or you might get rid of a status (“Please get rid of this poison!”) If you like cooperative games that are mostly multi-player solitaire with a sprinkling of cooperation, this is a perfect game for you. If you are looking for a more cooperative experience, Dice Throne Mission might be a better choice? (I say this because characters like Cyclops are made for cooperation).

Conclusion

It’s hard to recommend  an expansion for an expansion (remember, Unchained is an expansion for Dice Throne Adventures), but I think Unchained crosses that threshold!  I actually think this is an essential expansion; Unchained fixes two major complaints about Dice Throne Adventures!   

The first complaint about Dice Throne Adventures was that the upgrade path was too slow; it took forever to see new Loot cards in your hand!  The major fix in Unchained is the new One-Shot Loot chart and rules that make you upgrade SO MUCH faster!   You feel powerful quickly, and that’s a great feeling!

The second major complaint about Dice Throne Adventures was that there was too much commitment needed to play it; it took too long  to play the long adventure! Now, with the One-Shot Adventures, you can play cooperatively in one session, fighting both Minions and a Boss!  No need for the long game!

There’s even a new solo mode with the Minion Rush, which makes it a little easier to learn characters!

There are few things to be cognizant of: you probably shouldn’t play the new cooperative mode with the full four players if you can help it.  My friends still enjoyed it, but I think it would have been more fun at a smaller player count.  Two, maybe three players is probably best.

You should also be aware that the new cooperative modes aren’t super-cooperative.  There are occasions for cooperation, but generally the game is multi-player solitaire. It’s not a bad thing, you just need to be aware of what this is.

I also STRONGLY suggest you make sure your players are familiar with the characters before they play; play a head-to-head 20 minute game before ramping up into the One-Shot Adventure, or your players might get mired in rules and frustration.

Finally, would I recommend Dice Throne Missions over Dice Throne Adventures + Unchained for the solo/cooperative game?  It depends on what you want!  Dice Throne Missions has short adventures (two sessions), and simultaneous dice-rolling which moves the game quicker.  Missions is much more super-heroey, and Unchained is more dungeon-delvey!  If you want the One-Shot Adventures so you can just jump in-and-out, then I think Dice Throne Adventures + Unchained is the better choice.  If you just want short-little adventures, the super-hero theme of Missions may call to you! Honestly, they are both good choices! 

I think Unchained is an essential expansion and makes Dice Throne Adventures that much better.  It adds new Minions, new Loot, new Boss, new solo modes, new cooperative modes, but most importantly, fixes some major problems of Dice Throne Adventures.  9/10.

Dice Throne Outcasts + Dice Throne Adventures Unchained. Part I of II.

Welcome to our two-part review of Dice Throne Outcasts and Dice Throne Adventures.  In Part I of this review, we’ll look closely at Dice Throne Outcasts and see what it has to offer.  In Part II of our review, we’ll take Dice Throne Outcasts and use it to play the solo and cooperative Dice Throne Adventures Unchained Expansion!  

The full Dice Throne Outcasts + Dice Throne Adventures Unchained set arrived at my house in mid November 2025!  See above! This was on Kickstarter back in Oct 2024 (about a year) ago.  It promised delivery in October 2025; I think they were trying VERY HARD to make Halloween, but they just missed by about two weeks.  Two weeks late in Kickstarter terms is still very good!

What Is This?

Dice Throne, by itself, is a head-to-head Yahtzee battle dice game.  Each player takes the role of some character, and goes into battle with another character/player!  The two characters battle it out with dice (using a Yahtzee-style mechanism to activate powers)!  It’s best played as a head-to-head game of character vs. character.   There’s a TON of characters in different sets!  We’ve seen the Marvel Dice Throne Set (which we discussed here), the X-Men Marvel Dice Thone Set (which we discussed here), and Dice Throne Seasons I and II (which we discussed here).

This set of Dice Throne is essentially the Halloween themed set: Dice Throne Outcasts!  It has four characters inside!  To be clear, you can JUST buy this and play the head-to-head game by itself; strictly speaking, you don’t need anything else to play Dice Throne if you just want this box!  (If you want to play solo or cooperatively, however, you will need some more stuff: that’s what Part II of our review will discuss).

This box is gorgeous with the art of Manny Trembley. See above and below.

The side lists the four characters in the box.

And the bottom talks about what this is.

I gotta be honest, this cover is a contender for best cover of the year, especially the raven side.

Unboxing

The box top is actually a magnetic wrap-around board! Inside, you get a little cartoon intro to the characters! See above!

The box itself contains four trays, each with different cards and fold outs.

There are also some cardboard tokens which are perfectly fine (see right).  You can also choose to get the acrylic tokens as an add-on; I really like how cool the Acrylic tokens are, but if you are on the fence on getting this game, the cardboard tokens in the box are JUST fine.

There is also a perfectly fine rulebook that comes with it.  The rulebook also has pointers to videos to teach the game.  I even referred to the rulebook a few times to remind myself how to play.  After years and years and years, they have the rulebook down.

There are four characters in the game; they are easy to take out with their game trayz.

And that’s really all that’s in the box.  The game is really contained in the characters, so let’s take a look at those.

The Characters

Over about a week, I was very excited to try this game, so I got a chance to play all the characters in various modes: head-to-head, solo, me vs. me, and cooperatively.

These characters are fantastically thematic.   Each one of these is unique and dripping with flavor!

The Necromancer

The Necromancer uses corpses to summon undead fight for him!

The funnest to play overall was definitely the Necromancer!  His components are just top notch, and the Undead that come out look so cool!  The best part is that he has an ability called (I am not making this up) Corpse Explosion!  When playing a big group, every time that ability was invoked, people either laughed or went “Ew!!” It was very funny.

The Raveness

The Raveness has a Raven which flies around and sucks energy from characters in slight attacks!

The Raveness feels more “subtle” than the other characters is some ways, as she has to get her Raven to the opponents! But the Raven simply “steals” life force and brings it back to her master!  This is interesting because the Raven’s life steal is not an attack that can be defended.  If played well, she can subtly funnel energy back to herself without provoking a Defense Roll!  It was also very thematic to summon the Raven with feathers … I had a picture in my mind of a Raven forming up from the feathers and summoning it …

I like the subtlety of the Raveness.

Headless Horseman

The Headless Horseman throws his big pumkin head on baddies and has tokens to terrorize!

The Headless Horseman was fun to play, as you throw your giant Pumpkin Head on your opponents!  It is a little harder to get the Headless Horseman going, but once he gets going, his pumpkin head is a sight to be seen!

His Terrorize tokens are really interesting, as they can be discarded to Terrorize your opponent with the pumpkin head!

I do think that the Headless Horseman may have my favorite art in this set.

Pale Lady

And finally the Pale Lady slips back-and-forth to lady and werewolf form!

My least favorite was the Pale Lady/Werewolf; not because she’s bad or anything.  She’s weird because she HAS NO UPGRADES. (Normally, most Dice Throne characters can upgrade their board).  I think the back-and-forth between the two sides (Pale Lady/Werewolf) was supposed to emulate some of the upgrades.  She’s definitely a butt-kicker, especially with the bleed tokens she just spews out, but she seemed the least subtle.  I guess that’s very thematic, since she is a werewolf!! GROWL!

The Characters Have Character

It might be trite to say, but the characters in Dice Throne Outcasts have character!  Thematic character!

I still liked every character!  The Necromancer might be the best one to give to newer players, not because he’s simplest, but because he’s so much fun!  The Necromancer might really bring new players into the game … they just might need a little help to operate him.

Solo Mode: Me vs. Me

The base Dice Throne games have no solo mode … BUT you can play in Me vs Me mode, which is just the solo player playing both characters!  I have done this Me vs Me mode for every single Dice Throne set I have gotten!  It’s a great way to learn the characters at your own pace!

The solo player just jumps from one side of the table to the other, alternating play of each character!  I recommend physically changing sides because it helps you “become” that character since it’s just in front of you!  Yes, it’s slightly annoying to get up and go to the other side of the table every turn, but it really does help immerse you into the characters!

If you are curious who won with the Necromancer vs. The Headless Horseman … it was close, but the Headless Horseman won!

If you don’t have anyone to play against, and you don’t have any of the solo/co-op expansions, the Me vs. Me solo mode is a fine way to learn the characters.   In fact, for this set, I played all the characters at least once so I could teach them.  The characters in this set are a little complex, so it’s nice to have seen how the characters work for when your friends have questions.

Conclusion to Part I.

Many of you are aware that I generally really like mostly solo and cooperative games.  Even though Dice Throne Outcasts is a base competitive game, I really liked it!  The art was fantastic, and the characters were dripping with theme!  In fact, I am a superhero guy, I and I think  Dice Throne Outcasts is better than X-Men or Marvel Dice Throne!  The characters are just so well-thought out and thematic!

If you just want a thematic horror-based battle game, Dice Throne Outcasts is fantastic: 9/10.

But if you want to play Dice Throne with a “real” solo mode or a cooperative mode, follow us in Part II as we explore Dice Throne Adventures Unchained …

Appendix: Silly House Rule

I also picked up the Dice Throne Outcasts Hero Sculpts (see above).  These are for the cooperative game only.

They are just some neat little minis you can use on the board when you play Dice Throne Adventures.  They are completely useless in the base game.

Or are they?  We instituted a silly House Rule: the minis can be used as “worker placement” tokens to mark which ability you invoked with your dice!!  Sometimes, your dice can match multiple abilities on your mat, and thisis just a way to denote which one you chose!! See above as the Raveness mini marks us use the “small straight” option instead of a different match.

Or above as the Raveness marks that we used Murder of Crows II.

This is an absolutely silly way to use the minis. But, it helps you feel like you got more for your money if you DID get them.  Which I did.

Top 10 Cooperative Things to Pick Up Before Greater Than Games Goes Away Forever

I have been buying a LOT of stuff from Greater Than Games over the past few weeks to get ready for GMing my first game of Sentinels Comics: The Roleplaying Game! I have played the game many times (with my friend CC GMing), but I have never GMed myself! So, I have been catching up on supplies. Unfortunately, because of the unpredictable tariffs, Greater Than Games has “shuttered” themselves to a large degree, laying off almost everyone, and is just liquidating stock. See news announcement here! (This was a while ago, but I am just buying stuff now)

https://www.greaterthangames.com/blogs/news/greater-than-games-team-reduced-in-response-to-tariff-crisis

I really do hope they come back from this, but I have been trying to get everything I can in case they disappear forever! Here’s my Top 10 Cooperative Things (games, expansions, other) from Greater Than Games to get before they go away forever!

10. Spirit Island

Of all the games in the GTG lineup, I feel like  Spirit Island is the least likely to go away.  Even if Greater Than Games dies completely, I am very confident someone else will pick this up! At the time of this writing, Spirit Island is #11 OVERALL on BoardGameGeek!  I see Spirit Island in Top Solo Games lists all the time (and it made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2017 as well!).  I love this game, and if you’ve never tried it, it’s a great game! It’s almost a euro-cooperative game! I put this at #10 not because it’s my lowest rated game,  it’s just that I suspect this game will never go away; it’s too popular.   Someone will pick it up, even if Greater Than Games falters forever.

(And yes, there are a TON of expansions for Spirit Island, they are all fun, but I almost never play them.  I view all the expansions as Honorable Mentions for this list).

9. Legends of Sleepy Hollow

My group really liked this cooperative game, The Legends of Sleepy Hollow, but it has some wonkiness to it.  See our review here.  But they fixed some of that wonkiness with the Errata (see Errata review here).  If the idea of a cooperative game in the Sleepy Hollow universe sounds fun to you, check this out … and pick it up before it disappears forever!  Just make sure you get the Errata!

Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition

The next three entries all all related to the Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition

8. Disparation*

The Definitive edition of the Sentinels of the Multiverse is “essentially” the third edition of the game.  See our review here for more details.  The Disparation expansion for it … may or may happen.  When GTG first announced they were shuttering, it sounded like they shut down production of it, even though printing had already started!  Over the past 6 months, we had news that maybe it will print, maybe it won’t.  As of this writing, production has started back up again!  So, Disparation may still reach its Kickstarter (sorry, BackerKit) backers.  It’s unclear if this will ever see retail; if you see it, pick it up.  You may never see it again.

7. Rook City Renegades 

The first expansion to the Definitive Edition, Rook City Renegades, definitely did make it to retail, so you might still see it around.  See our review of it here.  If you end up getting and loving Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition, you probably want to pick this expansion up before it disappears forever!

6. Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition

This is the third edition of one of our favorite cooperative games of all time!  I feel like I am Superhero in a superhero’s world, battling villains and working together with my friends!  Take a look at our review and see if you might like this!  This is a rare 10/10 game for us, and you may be kicking yourself if you don’t pick this up before it goes out of print forever!

Sentinels of the Multiverse: Second Edition

The next few entries are related to the second edition of Sentinels of the Multiverse!

5. Any expansion, but especially Rook City!

There are a TON of expansions for the Second Edition of Sentinels of the Multiverse!  They are all good!

But, if I ever do a list of essential expansions for a game, Rook City (for the Second Edition) will be #1 on it!  This is one of my favorite expansions of all time!  The Villains and Environments in here are just so amazing!  This expansion really took the original (second edition) of Sentinels of the Multiverse to the next level!  (I think this is currently only offered as a bundle with Infernal Relics: I have the original).

4. Sentinels of the Multiverse: Second Edition

This is also called the “Enhanced Edition”.  You might wonder why the second edition is higher on the list than the definitive edition!  Well, to be frank, I like it better!  I think the coloring and art make it easier to see cards from across the room!  And even though the gameplay is “less smooth”, I am used to it.  Still, most of my friends liked the Definitive Edition better: See our review here!

It’s possible you might find some great deals on the Second Edition in the used market, so be on the lookout!  Just be careful not to mix editions!  Luckily, the only things for Definitive Edition are the three we list (that and foil cards)!  Just about everything else should work with the second Edition!

Sentinels Comics: The Roleplaying Game

Our last three entries are exclusively for the Sentinels RPG!  And yes, we consider this RPG a cooperative game!  What can be more cooperative than heroes coming together to save humanity?

3. Game Moderator Kit

2. Starter Kit

1. Core Rulebook 

You might wonder why Sentinels Comics: The Roleplaying Game stuff makes the top 3 spots on our list, despite the original card game(s) Sentinels of the Multiverse being some of our favorite games of all times! I think you’ll be able to find Sentinels of the Multiverse card games for some time, but I am not sure the Sentinels Comics stuff will be around! I think that the Sentinels Comics RPG didn’t get a lot of love, but it’s a pretty neat RPG system. My friend CC said it’s his favorite RPG to run! See our review here!

You can dip your toe in the water with The Starter Kit (#2) to see if you even like the game! The Starter Kit comes with pre-generated characters and pre-generated adventures so it’s easy to jump in!!

But of course, the funnest part of Superhero games is making up your own heroes, which the Core Rulebook allows you to do! The Game Moderator Kit is just icing on the cake if you decide you like this system!

Check out Greater Than Games Website (see here) to see if you can still pick up some of these things!

Late To The Party, But The Party’s Still Going! A Solo and Cooperative Review of Tales from Red Dragon Inn!

So, the original Tales from Red Dragon Inn was on Kickstarter way back in October 2021, and delivered to backers in 2024.  It was so popular, they had a second Kickstarter in June/July 2024, and that’s the one I backed!   This cooperative dungeon crawler for 1-4 players looked really cool!

Why didn’t I back the original? I think I was afraid of getting YET ANOTHER DUNGEON CRAWLER (YADC) campaign that I wouldn’t play!

I do love this universe … especially the Red Dragon Inn cooperative Deck-Building game called Battle for Greyport (see review here and here: It’s also in our Top 10 Cooperative Deck-Building Games!)! I love the art-style and the silly vibe of this universe!

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

This is a fairly big mama-jamba of a box: see Coke can above and below for scale.

Ah, this game comes with a first-play walkthrough!  This is a really good walkthrough!

What’s in here?

The game comes with most of the cards and minis in this little grey box.  (Grey box?  Greyport? Get it?)

And some dice.

The minis are pretty good.

Underneath all that are the map packs.

This map pack is pretty huge! See Coke can above for scale.

… and there are quite a few maps for the adventurers to go on!

Underneath the maps are TONS OF PUNCHOUTS.  And by tons, I mean tons by weight!

There are 5 individually wrapped punchout sets (with multiple punchout sheets per set!)

And a new chapter rulebook per set!  Whew!

There are … so …. many … punchouts!

But overall, this looks pretty cool!  I am just scared of how many punchouts there … (but keep reading below …)

Gameplay

This is a cooperative dungeon-crawler where each player takes the role of a different hero … the typical Dungeons and Dragons archetypes are all here: thief, fighter, barbarian, etc.  Despite the classes being fairly generic, these characters have so much … character! 

Each character has some character specific cards giving the asymmetric powers.

For example, Zot (above) has some special Actions specific to his character!  But notice the art and the feel!  This is not your typical dungeon crawler!  There’s character and a sense of humor here!  The game looks light and fun … and surprise! It is!  And pooky!

Players will set up the Chapter of their campaign; see scenario 1 of Chapter 1 above!

One of the coolest parts of this game is that the monsters are all described ON THE MAT!  So, you don’t have to go searching books or monster manuals for the monster info!

The minis are color-coded via bases, and this system works great. I was a little worried that the bases might “harm” the cardboard standees ( … Gloomhaven: I am looking at you …), but the standees stand well and the bases DO NOT harm the cardboard (NOTE: After a number of plays, there’s a little bit of wear and tear, but it doesn’t ruin the cardboard: it just indents it a little).

To keep track of hit points, each mini has a number above it, and  it also a little card associated with the number. See above.

It makes it really easy to correlate the mini with its hit point card!  This system is simple and works surprisingly well! They used colors really well here.

Players operate these heroes, explore the dungeon, and fight the baddies!

This is a fight-em-up dungeon crawler!

Combat is decided by the yellow and black dice.  You might be worried that the game is too random if dice decide a lot, but the dice are pretty consistent.  You will always get at least one success per dice, sometimes you will get exploding dice (which you can reroll over and over) and sometimes you will get some extra epic dice for FUTURE rolls!

If you roll the ! (exclamation point) symbol on the yellow dice, you get an Epic black die (modulo some rules) which you can use on a future turn! My favorite part of this is that you can CHOOSE when to use the Epic dice on a future turn!  This reminds me a little of the Hour of Need system (see review here and here) where current rolls can contribute to future successes WHEN YOU WANT/NEED THEM!  You choose when to use those Epic Dice!  That’s so cool!

This is a Variable Turn Order game: each player and each set of monsters gets a token and one players pulls the token out of a bag to decide when each one goes.  See above.  I was very worried when I saw Variable Turn Order: was I going to have to worry about all the problems and try to come up with a solution?  See a very in-depth discussion of Variable Turn Order and its problems/solutions here!

After all was said and done, the Variable Turn Order system didn’t seem to suffer from the problems we normally see!

Depending on the token you draw, you either get 2 Actions and 1 Shenanigan …

Or 1 Action or Shenanigan! (1 and 2-Player games with partial actions).

Your Actions and Shenanigans are well defined on your cards!  See above!

Note that every character has very different Actions and Shenanigans! It’s funny, that one word Shenanigans kind of implies the overall vibe in this game …

This is all about your characters moving around the maps and fighting baddies!

If you reach the final objective (killing the yellow slime above for scenario 1: see above), you win (… if you survive to the objective phase…)! If any character dies, you lose! There are other losing conditions too, as you get further into the game.

It’s a fun dungeon crawler! And you get to level-up your characters too! As the game gets further along, you can get new cards from THE VAULT which you can use to choose upgrades!

Walkthrough

By far the best part of this game is HOW GOOD the first play walkthrough is!

This Walkthrough takes you through the first 4 scenarios of Chapter 1 in great detail!  There’s no need to read the rulebook ahead of time (well, because there isn’t one) … you are just learning the rules as you play from the Walkthrough!

Coupled with the Walkthrough is also the Chapter Guide (see above).  The Walkthrough tells you when to look at the Walkthrough and when to look at the Chapter Guide for specific set-up.

I can’t tell you HOW MUCH I liked this walkthrough!  Worried about getting into the game?  Naaah … this Walkthrough is fabulous!  It slowly introduces you to all the rules as you go.  This reminds me very much a video game training mode; it works so well!

Incremental Punchout

One thing I was VERY worried about was punching out ALL THOSE TOKENS before you can play!  And guess what!  You don’t have to!  You can punchout what you need as the game flows!

Do you need some monsters?  Just punch them out now when you need them!

This Incremental Punchout philosophy worked really well with the way that the Walkthrough taught the rules; learn a little bit at a time, punchout a little bit at a time!!! So, don’t get overwhelmed by all the tokens … just take tokens as you need them.  I wish the rulebook had emphasized this point, because just LOOKING at the token sheets gave me heartburn! 

I strongly recommend you punchout as you go and do not do everything at once: you’ll get right into the game that much quicker!

What Is This?

How would I describe this game?  In one word: Lighthaven!  Tales From Red Dragon Inn has a lot of similarities to Gloomhaven: it’s a cooperative dungeon-crawler campaign!  Players explore the world, fight monsters, upgrade characters, and quest quest quest.  But the gameplay is lighter, the rules are lighter, the world is “lighter”, the art is lighter and cuter … there’s no Gloom here!  

Like Gloomhaven, Tales from Red Dragon Inn does have a lot of components, but this world just feels just so easy to jump into.  

There is some story here: about as much story as Gloomhaven.  If you are looking for more adventure games, consider games like Arydia (see review here) or storybook games like Tales of the Arthurian Knights (see review here).  If you want story story story, this probably isn’t the game for you … this is a dungeon crawler where you fight monsters!

Solo Play

So, Tales from the Red Dragon Inn does support a solo mode!   (Thanks for following Saunders’ Law!)   In fact, two solo modes!

It’s a little bit of a bummer that the solo play isn’t addressed right up front … you have to go looking for the solo rules in the Glossary (a very complete book!) that comes with the game.  See above.  There are two solo modes; play normal, but alternate between some characters like a multiplayer game …  or play a solo character with a Companion.

The Companion has a special set of cards: see above.  The Companion rules also take up a full page on the Glossary with lots of exceptions to gameplay.  I usually HATE solo modes with lots of exceptions to the rules, so I opted to just alternate between two characters because there are NO RULES CHANGES.  I strongly recommend this is how you play solo; the Companion is still an “extra” thing to play and doesn’t save that much context switch overhead.  At this point, I have played the first Chapter all the way through with two characters and didn’t have any problem going back and forth between characters. In other words, the context switching between two characters didn’t seem to cause me any issues as I played solo.

My solo game was operating Deidre and Gerki.  They made a great team!  These two characters really worked well together; Deidre is better at long distance stuff, but occasionally she’ll get in there and help Gerki!  If she stands NEXT TO some monsters, Gerki gets his backstab ability (an extra die!)  The amount of cooperation between the two was quite good.  

I have spent about 15 hours playing the game solo.  I learned the game solo, set-up the game solo, upgraded, read the Walkthrough solo, and played all 4 scenarios of Chapter 1!  I had a blast!  I loved the simplicity of the system, I loved how the characters can work together well and support each other, I loved the “sense of humor” the art implies, I loved the art, I loved the vibe!

Once you know the game, your sessions can be quicker, but be prepared for your first 4 sessions to take about 15 hours or so!  But, it flies by!  You are having fun and always doing something!

I look forward to more solo sessions, but I had to reset the game (this is not a legacy game, but it is a campaign game and you can reset it) so I could play it cooperatively with my friend(s).

Cooperative Play

My first cooperative experience was a 2-Player game with Teresa.  She brought over a little red dragon as a mascot … it was quite apropos!

For a different experience from the solo game, I played Zot the wizard.  He was funny!

It’s hilarious that the little guy POOKY who helps Zot summons HIM!  (Not the other way around) See above!  That’s hilarious!  And yes, we are convinced this is the rabbit from Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

Like the solo game, we saw some good cooperation as Teresa’s Fiona Character was all melee, while Zot was all distance!  A good combo!

The game also moved much more quickly since I had already played the entire Chapter 1 solo.  A lot of those “15 hours” I spent in the first 4 solo games were shortened considerably!  I think Teresa and I got through Scenario 1 is about an hour!

Playing solo ahead of time significantly increased how quickly we were able to get into this game.  

Will we play more?  Basically, Teresa wants to wait until Sara comes back and then we’ll start a 3-Player campaign!  

I think it was a success cooperatively: it’s always a good sign when your friends ask to continue the campaign!

Story vs Flavor Text

There’s not a lot of story per se, but there is a lot of flavor text that gives the game direction and charm, and helps establish the parameters of the game.   To be clear, you really don’t HAVE to read the flavor text … I didn’t read it all in my solo play, but it didn’t really detract from the game by not reading it.  Teresa LOVES flavor text, so we did read it (see above) and it did contribute to the atmosphere of the game: see above.

What I Liked

Charm: This game has so much charm!   The art style that permeates this game is just so much fun! It stays within the Red Dragon Inn universe … Dragonverse?

Unique Characters: The characters are also so unique and different! For example: the fact that Pooky (the little familiar) summons Zot is hilarious!

Walkthrough:  This first play Walkthrough is exceptional and makes it easy to jump in!

The Dice System:  I was really worried the dice system would be too random, but it’s really not.  You always get at least one success, you can get exploding dice, and you can choose to use Epic Dice if you want for “extra help”!  The Epic Dice system worked well!  You could choose when to use the Epic Dice when you really needed a win!  

Vibe:  This is a light-hearted Gloomhaven … it could have easily been called Lighthaven! Yet, it’s still a deep game with lots of play and meaningful decisions!

Level-Up:  Levelling-up is easy and interesting!  Every character levels up, but it’s not described u pages and pages of tables in a book!  You just grab the cards destined for you, or choose some! It’s really easy!

What I Didn’t Like

SO MANY PUNCHOUTS!  The sheer number of punchouts in this game is terrifying.  Word of advice, just punch out tokens as you need them.  In fact, I ended up trying to put the monsters BACK into the token sheets when I was done with them!  Partly I did this to reset the game, but the game just stores easier if you keep things in the punchout sheets as much as possible. I know, that’s not ideal. 

Part of this was a little foreshadowing too … you saw how many punchout sheets are coming, right?  Do you REALLY think you are going to be able store ALL THESE tokens in bags back in the box?  So, I put as many tokens as a I could back into the punchouts as a favor to future me.

Conclusion

Well, Tales from Red Dragon Inn should have made my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024 because the first release came out in 2024.  But I didn’t get it until the second Kickstarter, so I didn’t get it until 2025!  So, it will probably make my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025 … but it might have to be an honorable mention, just because it wasn’t released in 2024.  Or maybe I’ll just count it as 2025 since I backed the second Kickstarer … not sure …

This is a fun and light dungeon-crawler, but still lots of depth and meaningful decisions.  You fight monsters and you have fun as a group of adventurers!  There is some story here, but it’s mostly just fun flavor text.

Tales from Red Dragon Inn is a great solo and cooperative game: 9/10. It’s so fun!

I think the only reason this didn’t get a 10/10 was because the Variable Turn Order can sometimes be … disappointing.  I wish there had been a way to mitigate/control the Variable Turn Order, but it didn’t get in the way that much. 

 

A Cooperative/Solo Print-And-Play Roll-and-Write Game! Roll or Stand: Jurassic Adventures! The Theme is EXACTLY What You Think It Is!

Roll or Stand: Jurassic Adventures is a print-and-play solo and cooperative roll-and-write game that was on Kickstarter back in March 2025, and it promised delivery in April 2025.  That’s right! One month afterwards!!  And it did it!!!  How did they do that?  Because there was no actual physical delivery; I was sent some PDFs in email after the Kickstarter fullfilled.  It’s a print-and-play!

In order to play, you need to print 3 pages per player (if you want the full campaign). You also need just one copy of the rules (4 pages of rules) and one copy of the campaign rules (1 page).  See above. For one person, you need to print 3+1+4 = 8 pages.  For 4 people, you have to print 4*3 + 1 + 4 = 17 pages.

Ever since my first print-and-play was a little more work and money than I expected (see our review of Legends of Storm City), I picked up a newer printer that was was MUCH cheaper to print stuff on.  I was able to print pages for one solo game and a 4-Player cooperative game without worrying too much about the cost.  (But see our Legends of Storm City review if you want more discussion of how much it can cost to print print-and-play games!)

In case it isn’t instantly clear (see above): this is a roll-and-write with a Jurassic Park theme! The publisher probably won’t get sued for calling it Jurassic Adventures, but you never know!

Let’s take a look!

Printing

What are the pages you need to print?

The rules: See above.  The rules are very nicely done over 4 pages.  The rules have lots of examples! The font, although is a little small, is very nice and, dare-I-say, pleasant to look at?

There were a few times when I wish the rules were a little better, but they do seem to specify everything: you might just have to look through them a little.   Luckily, you can reuse these rules over and over after you print them.

The Campaign Sheet:  See above.  This sheet gives bonuses and starting conditions for each game plus a little flavor text.  You only need one of these for each group (arguably, you can reuse this over and over if you don’t put your name at the bottom).

But the most important pages are the 3 Scenario Sheets (see them above). Each player will need their own copy of these Scenario Sheets to play: this is the one thing of which EVERYONE will have to have their own copy!

Each scenario sheet has four chapters (puzzles) at the top of the page (see above), and a shared preparation area at the bottom.  The player will marking both the top part AND and bottom part up! See below!

Gameplay

Every turn, two dice are rolled (you have to supply your own dice).   These two numbers are shared to everyone playing.

The stamina area “forces” dice to a certain regime; if there is no entry (“charge”) for one of the numbers you rolled, you must decrease that die until you find an empty charge (rolling over back to 6).  Once a stamina line is “filled”, you move to the next line … and possibilities open up again.  Let’s be clear; when the stamina line is almost filled, you have a very good idea what the next numbers will have to be!  This really helps mitigate some of the randomness of rolling dice!

After you get your two numbers, you choose to record one number on the left Preparation side and one number to the right Preparation area. See above.

If you wish to “futz” with your two numbers, you can cross off “ideas” to add or subtract one to the numbers (for you only: this doesn’t affect anyone else).

You record the number to the next empty box.  If you want, you can push-your-luck and “roll”, hoping to add more numbers to you line on the next roll of the dice.

Or, if you want to, you can “Stand” (marking off the leftmost square with a cross) and activate your actions!  You are now committed to act!

The number of actions you get is based on how far you pushed your luck: the longer you wait, the more actions you get.  See above as I get 6 actions when I activate my line!

How many actions do you get?  Your sum (4+2+6 = 12) – rightmost (6) = 6 actions!

Note that you CAN BUST if you put too many numbers on a line!  In the case above, I BUST because my numbers exceed the MAX (10) by being 2+3+1+6 = 12!!  If you do BUST, you lose all the actions of that line BUT you get a booby prize of one of the tools (the rightmost symbol: the binoculars at the right under the 6).

So this is a game about pushing your luck, and knowing when to activate a line to get your actions! The Kickstarter called this a “blackjack-like” mechanism! Basically, push-your-luck so you don’t bust!

Once you have your actions, what do you do with them?  Basically, you mark off lines on the current puzzle!  With each action, you can mark a line!

Which lines?  It depends on the numbers on the line!  On the line above, I had a 2, 4, and 6 which means I can only draw upper left, upper right, and down lines!

That’s right!  You are limited to what lines you can draw by the numbers you used to activate the line!  

This is why ideas and Tools are so important! If you really need to up/down a dice, you can use ideas or tools to draw the line you need!  Be careful!  Ideas/Tools are a limited resource!

After you achieve the current puzzle, you immediately move to the next! 

If you can get all 4 puzzles done before the stamina or preparation lines run out, you are done!

Whether or not you win depends on “how many puzzles you failed!”  If you failed NO puzzles, you get the Success story!

If you have under 1 failure per player, you get the Delayed outcome (which is usually still a success .. see above!)

Play all 3 scenario sheets for a full campaign!

Solo Play

I had my solo copy ready since April 2025, but I just had never gotten around to playing it.  It didn’t take too long to print out (3 months ago), but I was ready to go!

Over the course of one evening, I played through the entire 3-sheet campaign. I took a break after scenario 2 for dinner, but came back to it.  All in all, it probably took about 2 hours to play all the way through, with about an extra 1.5 hours of reading and deciphering the rules.  

The solo campaign is easy to get to the table; it has some interesting decisions as you have to decide when to use your limited ideas, limited tools, which dice to use in which area, when to stand and when to roll!

This is also a very spatial-oriented puzzle, as you have to make sure you have the right line segments to do what you need to on your current puzzle!  The puzzle above starts at the top (3), and you want more “downwards” line segments to help!

There’s a lot of great decisions, but the game moves along at a pretty good clip.  You can have as much analysis paralysis as you want, but generally the game moved along.  I freely admit that I stopped a few times and had some analysis paralysis …

I had a fine time playing solo.  Even though the puzzles are similar in some ways (just draw line segments), they were pretty thematic with the “Jurassic park”-like concept.  There was a good variety over 12 puzzles in the campaign—I saw a neat little story unfold.

Fun solo.

Cooperative

For my cooperative game, I readied myself for a 4-Player game.  I may have overprinted the game; I probably didn’t have to print rules sheets for everyone, but in my group, people like to have their own copy of the rules!

We ended up only playing a 3-Player cooperative game!  

This went over … okay.  The only real opportunities for cooperation are that you can share Ideas and/or Tools.  Thematically, that made some sense!  “Hey!  I got an Idea I can share with you!” Unfortunately, we didn’t end up sharing at all!  The resources are so limited in the game (you only have so many Ideas and Tools) that it never felt good to share them!  Although the opportunity was there, we never availed ourselves of the “sharing”.  

This game was mostly multi-player solitaire. But at least we weren’t getting in each others way.

Pen vs. Pencil

A pencil probably won’t work with this game.  Can you tell I circled the first 5 Ideas above?  No? Me neither!

I ended up using a red sharpie so it was VERY clear when I noted something. See above.

Ah!  Now you can tell I circled the Ideas!

Of course, sharpies may bleed, so I got a paper bag on the back side to handle any bleed through.

The only problem with the Pen is you really can’t correct any mistakes.  Remember my BUST example?  Can you tell that was a 6 on the right?  It was only a 6 after I “sorta” corrected it.  

If you find yourself wanting to play more of this, consider laminating the Scenario sheets and using dry-erase (extra-thin!!) markers; then you can correct them and re-use the sheets over and over.

Small House Rule

The rules specifically say to write the number of actions in the right most area: see above as I clumsily write a 6, and it obscures the direction wedges!

What I ended up doing is writing the number of actions off to the side!  See above as the actions are on the LEFT for the left prep area, and the actions are on the RIGHT for the right prep area!  And then it’s MUCH easier to see which wedges are available for your actions, since the action number isn’t obscuring the wedges!

Things I Liked

Theme: there’s a surprising amount of theme and story 

Choices: I generally feel like I have a lot of choices, and I know what’s coming because of the stamina concept forging the dice.   This had just enough randomness to be interesting, but not enough to infuriate me.

What I Didn’t Like

Too small: the sheets at times felt a little too small! Each scenario sheet feels like it should be two sheets; the top half should be its own sheet, and the bottom half should be its own sheet. I am surprised this wasn’t a printing option. The whole thing does fit on a page, which is nice, but I think if I wanted to laminate this and use dry-erase pens, I’d want bigger sheets. I wish a full-sized upper half and full-sized lower half had been PDFs included in my distribution.

Cooperation: There wasn’t really any cooperation.  Although the opportunities were there, we didn’t avail ourselves of them because the resources were so limited.

House Rule for More Cooperation

How can we cooperate more? One complaint is that the game really wasn’t that cooperative.

Looking back on our cooperative game, the one thing you can do is change the dice separately! The players have to take the dice as rolled, but then each player can spend Ideas “separately” to +- 1 the dice on their board. What if this were more cooperative? What if, as a group, we could decide to spend an Idea and have it change a dice for all of us? This would promote a lot of conversation and lots of interaction! “Well, I really need a 6!” “But we both need 5s!” “Hm, you can save an Idea if you change it once!”

This is just an idea for a House Rule, but it would make the game more cooperative and interactive.

Conclusion

Jurassic Adventures was a mixed bag.  I liked it solo and might play it again: the theme and gameplay was fun!  It was a 6.5/10 or maybe 7/10.  My friend Sara probably wouldn’t play it again cooperatively, (5/10) but my friend Teresa would (6/10).  Although the game bills itself as cooperative, it felt much more multiplayer solitaire … mostly because the resources were so limited that it was too hard to share!   We do propose a house rule that might make Jurassic Adventures more cooperative and more enjoyable, but you may like this “mostly” multiplayer solitaire game as it is.

If you do play this, make sure you play with a pen instead of a pencil; even though you can’t correct your pen without making a mess, you just can’t see the pencil marks!

RichieCon 2025 And Top 6 Interesting Games In The Last Year!

RichieCon 2025 had a lot of drama this year!  We had to get a new venue this year because of … reasons. 

If you want the long version of why we got a new venue, I encourage you to listen to “Tales of Horror” in the Dice Tower Podcast “Where Credit is Due” (timestamp 32:41, see link below)
 
 

New Venue

For RichieCon 2025, we had to go looking for a new venue.  We ended up at Fruchthendler Elementary School!

This venue was great! It was a little expensive to rent it for two days, but it was spacious and easy set-up in!  The cafeteria had plenty of tables!

It even had a stage which we used some presentations (see below).

The best part of the new venue was the sound baffling!  The major complaint we always got from the Rec Center was how LOUD it was.   With the Sound baffles all over the cafeteria, that was not a problem this year!

Because of the cost, we engaged a Sponsor to help defray the costs: Thanks to Return From Subroutine Games for helping out!  See their website here!

Day -1: Getting Coolers

Because of the new venue, we don’t have a refrigerator any more! So, I had to put the call out to all my friends to get coolers to store drinks and perishables in!  In the weeks leading up to RichieCon 2025, I collected about 10 coolers!

We actually ended up having too many coolers, but that’s a good problem to have!

Day 0: Boxception and Sleeve-It!

We end up playing some games as we get ready for RIchieCon … but they aren’t the funnest games in the world!

The Wednesday before RichieCon has become Boxception: The Cooperative Dexterity game of putting boxes in other boxes! 

We end up putting about 200 games into 20 boxes over the night! (Some boxes have tons of games, some have just a few!)

We also spend some time playing “Sleeve-It!”  In this case, Teresa played a solo game of “Sleeve-It!” with the Lord of the Rings Trick-Taking game!

Day 1: The Secret RichieCon House

A large contingent of people rent an AirBNB and stay near Fruchthendler so that it’s easy to go back and forth: it also is a great place to game before everyone arrives!  Most of the out-of-towners end up here over the course of Friday before we have access to Fruchthendler!

Day 2:  RichieCon 2025 Starts!

Day 3, The Last Day: RichieCon 2025

 

Top 6 Interesting Games Since Last Year!

On Saturday of RichieCon, we like to do a little show to bring the RichieCon Community together! In that show, we discuss some games that drew our attention since the last year.  The purpose of this list is to give people some ideas of games to play for the remainder of RichieCon! Without further ado, here’s our 6 questions with answers from Richie, Kurt, and Sam!

#6: What game from the last year surprised you the most?  Good or bad surprise?

Richie: The Secrets of Zorro.  This fun little cooperative game didn’t have a very big Kickstarter, but me and friends really liked it!  It’s quick, it’s fun, and very thematic!  Good Surprise! See our review here to see if you might like it!
Kurt: Wandering Galaxy; disappointing given the awesomeness of Forgotten Waters & Freelancers Sam: Luddite. From watching the comic book into video on the wall in the man cave I was expecting it to be very story driven and thematic and RPG-like. It turned out to be a very fun roll and write that had none of that. See Richie’s review here.



#5: What game in the last year do you disagree with reviewers on?

Richie: Tales of Arthurian Knights.  This game went over like gang-busters in my group, getting played multiple times and getting borrowed for birthday parties!  All of my friends gave it a strong 8.5 (maybe 9), but the the Dice Tower seemed less enthusiastic and only gave it a 6 or 6.5.  We were very surprised!  We loved it!  See our Review here.

Kurt: THE GANG! Tom Vasel didn’t like this game very much, but my group (Kurt’s group) loved loved this game! 

Sam: Soul Raiders. Tom V. thought it was great end gave it an 8. I wanted to like it because it has great art and a great premise but ended up being too random and grindy for the story driven feel that it was giving off. My final score 5.5.  See our thoughts here.

#4: What game (that you paid for) did you really dislike? It’s easy to dislike games other people paid for, but what did you pay for that you disliked?

Richie: I bought and sold two games because I disliked them so much.  Corps of Discovery: in a game where one resource can mean the difference between winning and losing, the rules needed to be tighter.  It didn’t land for me (I gave it a 4/10), but it might for you.   The Dice Tower and other reviewers seem to like this game (9/10), so try it for yourself to see if you might like it.  See our thoughts here.    I also wanted to like Freedom Five sooooooo muuuucch, but I ended up hating it and selling it. I am still very depressed about this: see our very different review here.

Kurt: Bear Mountain Camping Adventure.  It’s all Richie’s fault; he pointed me at the game! I backed it, but when it came in, it wasn’t fun even though the production was gorgeous.

Sam: I don’t actually have one this year… Perhaps because I’ve been both buying and playing less this year I’ve been more selective (sorry Rich) and haven’t both bought and played a game I didn’t like. EDITOR: to be fair, part of Rich’s job is to review games, so he’ll take chances more

#3: What game that came out in the last year that you liked but other’s didn’t?

Richie: Dice Throne Missions/Dice Throne X-Men.  I loved this new system that makes the Dice Throne game work solo and cooperatively, but my friends didn’t love it nearly as much.  See our thoughts here.
Kurt: Link City.  This is pointed at Rich: he said he didn’t like it.  (EDITOR: To be fair, I didn’t love it as much as other people, but I recognized that lots of people did, so it still made the Top 10 Cooperative Party Games of 2024!)
Sam: Ecosfera. This one is the opposite for me – I didn’t like playing it 2 player because it felt like my turns were basically scripted and I had no agency. However others in the group enjoyed it at higher player counts.  See the review here to see what Sam’s talking about!

#2: What was your favorite expansion that came out in the last year?

Richie: Aeon’s End: The Descent.  Aeon’s End is a great cooperative deck-building game with mages working together fighting the Big Bad.  Aeon’s End: The Descent is a standalone expansion in the same universe, but adds the The Friends and Foes module!  This module makes Aeon’s End a little more balanced as it tends to mitigate the Variable Turn Order problems! See our review here for more discussion.

Kurt: Forest Shuffle (Alpine & Woodland Edge)
Sam: Townsfolk Tussle: Foul Neighbors. We played with the expansion characters and bosses and it worked great. Our final battle ended in the perfect cartoon way of pushing the plunger on the dynamite and blowing up both the outhouse and the big bad in one shot. (EDITOR: It was so fun! That’s why it made our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2024!)

#1: What was your favorite game that came out in the last year?

Richie: Marvel United Season 3/Multiverse.  It’s not even close: I spent so much time playing the content of Season 3 and I had so much fun. Sentinels of the Multiverse used to be my favorite game of all time, but I think Marvel United has supplanted it!

Kurt: Tie: Fromage & Fellowship of the Ring Trick taking game

Sam: Limiting to only those released in the last year: Fellowship of the Ring trick taking game. It’s light, fast, thematic to the story, plays well, and is easy to just keep playing and lose track of time while going through the different chapters.  Expanding to played no matter release date: Imperium (specifically classics). I really enjoyed how each civilization feels and plays differently from each other even though they all share common market decks and basic mechanics.

Solsbury Hill

It’s become a tradition that every year, Joe must sing a parody song and make everyone laugh.  This year, I helped and together Joe and I penned the parody Fruchthendler (sung to the tune of Solsbury Hill) as a means to vent our frustration of getting unceremoniously kicked out of the Rec Center.  It’s mostly meant in jest, but with a little heartfelt sentinement!  We also had the audience participate with Kazoos.  No joke. Thanks for Mike H. for directing the world’s greatest kazoo group!  See lyrics below, and video below that!!!

Fruchthendler – sung to the tune of Solsbury Hill

Driving up to Fruchthendler
I could see the parking lot
Left the public defender
Firebird is our new mascot   (Firebird is the mascot of Fruchthendler Elementary school)

This was something of a mess,
Called HOA, they had disclosed
Richie Con would be suppressed
Through attrition, I got hosed

I called Cthulu in frustration
The Swim Team cancelled my reservation,
It’s like that game of Gloom Gloom Gloom,
“Joe”, I said,
“Grab your games, we’re going to clone the zone”

Yeah, clone some zones

The Aquatics had made me blind
The chlorine spewed out from my guts
Our holy grail had been maligned
Our old game venue had been cut

So I bravely ran away
Quest to find a new place to hut
With my minstrels Joe and Mike
And where’d you get them coconuts?

I was feeling down in chicanery

Highly Overbearing Authority  (stop song in cheesy fashion to point out that we satirically re-acronymed HOA)
They won that game of Gloom Gloom Gloom”
“Mike”, I said,
“Grab your games, we’re moving Richie-Con”

Hey –like your mom…

Found a new place to play our games
It’s probably when we want to be
Because of HOA I have no claims
To a place I thought was free

Screwed by faceless bureaucrats
Who close their gates to my party
Add one to my gaming stats–
In their pool, I will pee                –soon as I saw “pee,” I had to go there…

I’m not afraid of their displacement
Even if I have to pay rent
I won that game of Gloom Gloom Gloom
“Kurt”, I said,
“Keep your games, and come to Richie Con!”

“Wha!”

“Hey!”

“Con!”

Most Played Games

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition was played quite a bit! I personally saw at least 3 plays of it!

By far the most played game was Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking game!  We had sleeved it just before, and it was good thing we did!  It was pretty much always being played!

I saw Lon teaching Nana (Japanese version of Trio) quite a bit!

I saw Aeon’s End: Descent played a number of times!

Weird Games

Lon brought a lot of weird games from Japan.

 DroPolter (above) was this weird one like Jacks where you grab things on the table, but can’t drop anything!

Toy Story is a cooperative memory game ONLY in Japan! It was my birthday present!

Nana is the original Japanese game that’s the inspiration for Trio!

There were several RPGs going too!

Kurt R. brought the original Dark Tower game … and it worked!  Did you know that they stored the values in BCD in 128-Nibble RAM memory?  Josh looked it up!  This game is from 1981!!!

Conclusion

After all was said and done, was it worth it?  I think so! I got to see friends from out of town and play games with everyone for my birthday, and that’s what I wanted!

What will happen next year?  I really don’t know!  This was a very expensive and stressful year because of the events leading to the venue change.   I love the new venue, but it is expensive.  Will we come back?  Come back next year and find out!

 

The Dark Quarter: Into the Muck

It arrived!  No, not the physical copy of The Dark Quarter!  That arrived like early 2025!  

But the APP finally arrived at the iOS store!  See above! Late May 2025!  This game is completely unplayable without the app, so my physical copy of The Dark Quarter sat silently in the corner for months, waiting for the APP to be available!  And it finally arrived!  I think I downloaded it May 25, 2025.  I have been really looking forward to this, as it was my #4 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2023 … it’s years late at this point!

So, in any other year, this might be considered weird to get the physical game before the APP is ready, but with the Tariff situation changing daily, I think Lucky Duck/Van Ryder games did the right thing getting to us ASAP!  

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

This is a pretty standard sized box; see Coke can above for persepective.

The game comes with a lot of cardboard tokens (see above),  but I had gone all-in on the Kickstarter and got the nice plastic tokens as well.

I also got the metal coins (see above).

Even though I got the miniatures expansion as well, you will still need some of the little hexes with people on them.

You could play this game just fine with the cardboard, but the upgraded components make you feel…. like you’ve spent more money. 🙂  No, they are nice.

The little plastic cubes denote your ability scores.

And each player will get their own dice (see above, as the dice as color-coded for the 4 players).

There’s some nice Location  cards that will come out (see above) as you explore.

And there’s both objects (see above) and story cards (see below).

What’s that?  Yes!  A QR code!  These cards will be scanned when you play!

The minis are pretty good, but not great.

But the minis are notated with a number on the bottom so you can put them back where they belong (see above and below).

I mean, this game looks pretty good, ya? 

Rulebook

The rulebook is fine.

It fits pretty well on the chair next to me open flat, and the font is pretty big.  This is venturing into A territory (although it maybe could have used a few more pictures) for The Chair Test.

The Components page is well-labelled.

The set-up is pretty good, although there is always confusion in an APP based game: usually the APP sets you up, so do you need this?  You kind of need both the rulebook and the APP for set-up.

The last page has an ICON summary, which is great! … but I don’t think I ever used it once in all my solo or cooperative gameplays.

The rulebook is pretty good, but you don’t spend a lot of time there; you are always in the APP.

Warning! 18+!

You may miss it, even though it is clearly on the box (see above) but this is clearly an 18+ game!  Between language, grisly murders, some sexual references, and just dark imagery, you probably don’t want to play this unless you are ready for a dark, grimy, and morally ambiguous world.

Teresa, who started out censoring the bad language from the APP, was swearing like a sailor by the time we finished our first session!  She really embraced this world! Be aware, this game will corrupt … something?

Gamplay

Each player takes the role of an “investigator/consultant” for the Beaumont Detective Agency.  Each character is flawed in some way, but they are generally seeking redemption (but that’s your choice to make).  

Players use the APP to guide the game.  The APP shows how to set up places of interest (see above):

And you reflect that on your game board.

The boss lady tells you what to do in the APP, and you explore a 1980s New Orleans investigating a murder!

Each characters gets some items they can use, and has some level in 4 different skills/abilities (see above).  These abilities are rolled against, and however many you surpass is how many successes you get.

This is absolutely a dice game!  Almost every turn, you will roll the dice to do “some skill check”.  You always get your two base dice (color coded for the characters: see above), and some extra effort dice.

These effort dice are enabled as you play.  You always get one effort die at the start of your turn, but sometimes you will get more through other actions.

Players explore the city, trying to investigate a murder!  The APP controls the narrative, with the players making choices, and the dice determining success or failure.

You’ll notice a lot of items have a QR code (see above): you will be scanning your items to interact with them.  This may remind you of Chronicles of Crime (that made our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games), and it should!  Lucky Duck (who teamed up with Van Ryder Games to make The Dark Quarter) also made Chronicles of Crime!

Honestly, playing this game reminds me of playing out a Detective series on HBO or Apple+ mini-series.  Story happens, characters develop (or regress!), and a lot of swearing and adult situations occur.   

Solo Play

So, you can play solo (thank you for following Saunders’ Law).  

However, solo play has you take control of two characters: there is no true solo play. See above as I chose to operate both Constance Moreau and Winter Mullins.  

The rules do cover the case where the solo player has to play two characters (see above), and justifies needing at least two characters as “the stories are intertwined; you need at least two characters to get the best out of this!”  And that makes sense; these characters destinies are all tightly coupled!

So, I started a game.  And went back and forth between the two characters.  And I didn’t enjoy it.

The back and forth between the two characters as a solo gamer just didn’t work for me.  It felt like I couldn’t get any thing done, as just as I did one thing at a Location, I’d have to immediately go to the next character.  I remember loving Detective: City of Angels (A Van Ryder game also in our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games) because you had four precious actions on your turn and how you spent those actions mattered! It felt like you could concentrate on a Location and get stuff done!  In The Dark Quarter, I frequently felt like I got to do just “one” thing, and then it was the next character’s turn.  

I played out the first two sessions as a solo player, but … I kinda stopped caring.  I felt like I couldn’t get anything done as a solo player, I was so busy “advancing the story”, I felt like I wasn’t playing the characters or solving the mystery.  I felt like the game was playing me.  

The story was interesting, but I felt like I couldn’t focus.  Some of that  lack of focus was the context switching between two characters, and some of that was going back and forth between the game and the APP, some of that was all the dice-rolling, and part of it was just how “little” I felt like I could do on my turn.  I just had to swap between too many things, and it took me out of the game.

I hoped a lot of these issues would go away when I played cooperatively.  I was expecting to love and adore this game straight out of the box.   I didn’t, and my solo experience wasn’t great.

Cooperative Play

Whew. Luckily, the cooperative experience was much better!  The fact that the focus moves around quickly between characters is actually good in the cooperative game, as most people feel like they get their chance to play; quickly and regularly.

You can see as the board and locations expand out!  The world definitely envelops you as you play!

This game feels “tuned” to work best as a cooperative experience.  The 3-Player game we played was fun!  We ended up playing about 3 hours and still didn’t finish the first play!  But, we still wanted to play more, so we kept playing …

The game, in the rulebook, does a really good job of emphasizing “READ EVERYTHING OUT LOUD!”  See excerpt above.  This really encourages everyone to stay involved with the story and all the decisions in the game.  Even if some decisions are only character-based, everyone stays involved.  I am glad to see that emphasis in the rulebook (see above), and I think that is the best way to play the game.

Good times.  The cooperative play has been a success.  Currently, we have played two weeks in a row, having invested about 6 hours into the game … and wanting to play more!

Solo Vs. Cooperative

It’s really interesting to me that the solo experience fell flat for me, and the cooperative experience worked so well!  It makes sense; the game seems “tuned” to keep stories and plot points coming out, as to keep the players all involved! 

Like a car “tuned” for Sports mode instead Eco mode, The Dark Quarter seems “tuned” to cooperative mode.  The solo mode will work, but the game operates (in my opinion) at a lesser gait.  At least, that was my experience.   (And you have to understand, I love mystery games!)

Length of Game

The game is long. Longer than you might expect.  We played for three hours straight the first session! And three hours the second session!  And we still had a lot to see!  And we still have more to go!

Luckily, the APP can help you save the game between sessions.  There are several points where you can save the game; these intermissions happen about every 45 minutes or so.  So, if you really wanted to, you could just take up about 45 minutes. But given how much set-up and tear-down there is, you probably want to play at least two sessions.  We ended up playing three on our first playthrough.

The App

The APP is pretty good.  We didn’t encounter any real glitches or problems in solo or cooperative play.  Although it took them a while, the publishers did get the APP out and stable.

One problem: the font is probably too small.  We had trouble reading all that text (to be clear; the players read the text out, not the APP), and we wished we had a control to resize the font.  

Another gripe about the APP; there was no UNDO!  This is one of my biggest pet peeves in cooperative APPS; the lack of UNDO makes me me grumpy!  If this were a completely physical board game, UNDOs are easy:  “Oops!  I meant to go to the Graveyard!  Back me up!”.  Nope.  There is no UNDO in this app.   I think this actually slows down gameplay a little: “Are you SURE you want to do that?  We can’t back up!”

In general, the APP seemed to work fine for us in both solo or cooperative play.  It was pretty good.  Be aware, the players still have to read all the text out loud!! The APP does NOT read the text for you!

Dice and Murder

I said this earlier, almost everything in this game is a skill check with dice.  The game seems pretty balanced.   For instance, if you fail, the game typically gives you an “extra” effort die for your next die roll (which I appreciated).

But in the end, The Dark Quarter is still kind of a dice game.  Which I don’t love!  I feel like a detective game should be about following the evidence, making best use of your resources, and generally trying to be smart/clever.

Detective: City of Angels, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, are detective games where you have to be smart.    Although The Dark Quarter is a nominally a detective game, it has more drama in it than I expected.   The dice contribute to that drama, because they make the game more random and unexpected!

When I play Detective: City of Angels or Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, I feel like I am playing a detective show like Death in Paradise, or Midsomer Murders where the mystery is front and center.  When I play The Dark Quarter, I feel more like I am playing a police drama where the mystery is less pronounced.  It’s not bad, it’s just not quite what I was expecting.  

If you want to jump into a police drama in New Orleans in the 1980s with lots of magic and character development and story, this is the right game for you!  If you want more of a mystery, well this isn’t quite that.  But there’s still more than enough mystery to keep you going!

Conclusion

The Dark Quarter is a really interesting game, but you have to know where it fits best.  I don’t think it works great solo, it’s more random than most mystery games, it’s very dependent on the APP, and the 18+ age requirements are pretty stringent.

But, if you find a group that wants to jump in to a 1980’s drama/mystery with lots of adult twists and turns, The Dark Quarter is the game for you!  It’s got great story, interesting interactions, and plenty of character development/regression!   Instead of watching an adult mystery/drama on HBO or Apple+ tonight, consider playing The Dark Quarter instead!

Solo play: 6/10. Cooperative Play: 8/10.  I think most people would probably give this a 9/10, but I think I wanted just a little more mystery and a little less dice-rolling. It’s still really good though.

Corps of Discovery: A Cooperative and Solo Game

Corps of Discovery is a cooperative game that was on Kickstarter back in May 2024. This promised delivery in Jan 2025, and it was about 3 month late, arriving in late April 2025.

This looks like a thematic adventure/exploration game set the in era of Manifest Destiny and Lewis and Clark!  And it is NOT!  This is a deduction game, with bare hints of theme.  The text on the back of the box even hints at this being a thematic game:

“Take command of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery and lead them on a cross-country mission to explore the land … and kill demonic monsters.”

Sounds like a thematic exploration adventure, huh? Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope! Corps of Discovery is a deduction game! A cooperative deduction game, but a deduction game nonetheless! You need to know that going in or you will be severely disappointed by that description.

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

Corps of Discovery is a pretty standard sized Ticket To Ride style box.

Now, we are showing the Ultimate edition of the game, which has slightly nicer components and a few expansions (see above).

The unboxing starts poorly, as you have to “fix” some maps in the game.

See above: as I have to X (or notate) which maps are bad.  Now, they aren’t full maps, there are just partial maps, so one side of the maps is good and the other side is bad!!  So, you still have to keep your “bad” maps, because one side is ok.   This started me off a little grumpy, but at least they fixed the problem.

The main part of the game, the key part of the game is the map holder above: in the Ultimate Edition, this is a beautiful wooden map.

There are some resource tokens (and a holder, which got very badly shaken up in delivery).

Underneath all that are BUNCHES and BUNCHES of maps!

There are different “themes” of folders with different maps: see the training mission folder above.

See the Flora map pack above.

See the Insecta map pack above.

See Vameter map pack above.

Coupled with these folders of maps are missions and the goals. See above.

Underneath all the maps are holders for the tokens for each Map pack.  Note that mine got shaken up a little, so the components are a little wonky.  I wish there had been a discussion somewhere of what all these things were, but you will figure it out … it could have been easier.

Basically, under each hard card are some components for the necessary map pack.

See above for some core components under the Core Game hard card.

The components are pretty nice, but you have to like the comic-book art style of the game. I do, but others may not.

The quality of these maps is a little flimsy, which isn’t a big deal if you are careful.

I was a little underwhelmed by the quality of the components, especially because of the errors on the maps! I did like the variety of maps, the comic-booky art, the wooden resources, and the wooden map holder. My friend Lon texted me after he got his copy: he was less than thrilled with the quality:

“I saw you posting about Corps of Discovery. I will say, I am not super happy with detail and packing quality. The manuals and the backs of the expansion tiles have different numbers of items (that is just bad), so I don’t know which is right. Also, I’m missing 8 tokens…at least I think so. Since I don’t have an actual list of the number of individual resources, but it looks like I’m missing several of those, plus I know I’m missing two water, and 1 Tipi. On top of that they had the errored maps and tokens, with I’ll say substandard ways to fix them (proxy the tokens, and to save a few pennies, we’ll have you “x” out the bad maps, so we can print 2 sheets instead of 4).”

Lon is also talking about the components page: it doesn’t give an accurate count of the resource tokens, so we don’t know if we got them all!!

You saw how messed up they were.  So, are we missing some?  I don’t know! They aren’t clearly enumerated the rulebook!

The component quality left a little to be desired, but I think Lon was grumpier about the components than I was.  The rulebook, however, left me MUCH grumpier than Lon.

Rulebook

I have not been this frustrated with a rulebook in a very long time.  The rulebook looks like it might be okay (it actually gets an A- on the Chair Test),  but for a deduction game where every word matters, this rulebook struggles to specify the rules well.

A few weeks ago, I didn’t love Soul Raiders, but I even reprimanded the rulebook for too many examples.  Oh, if only that were the case this week!

There was essentially ONE example on page 9; and it didn’t do a great job: the example crossed page boundaries, so it made it it harder to correlate the rule with the example.  It also was too small!  I struggled to read the page because it was a little too small in the rulebook! Also, some of the rules we so small because they were hidden in the text of the box!  

See Coke can above for scale: it’s too small!

This is a game where a single resource can make the difference between winning and losing.  Yet, there are so many places where things are poorly specified.    Some examples:

What happens when you discard a Challenge? (see Bait and Trap card above) Are there rules about which one? Can you discard one in progress?  Do you keep the path tokens for the next challenge that replaces it?  This makes a HUGE difference!   The summary icon page at the back of the rulebook DOES NOT show this and offers no explanation in the rulebook.

What happens when you add a Challenge?  (see Pass/Fail on Sweltering Challenge above).  Can you specify where the challenge goes in the day?  Before? After?  Can you put it to the front?  Can you choose NOT to add a challenge?  (Usually, you want to, but sometimes you want to move to the end of the day to reset all your Gear).  Again, there’s no specification anywhere and these rules make all the difference in the world.

What does the ?/Water notation mean?  See above on the bottom of the Landslide card.  I went spare looking for it! 

It’s not on the back page with the summary of icons!! See above!! I figured it could maybe mean three things:
1) discard a water or some other token (I think this is the actual interpretation)
2) make it so the minotaur lines don’t require lossage
3) lose a water ONLY IF it’s on the ? side, or off the board (or remove a ? water from the board)
This is one place where the token iconography failed: the ? side is useful for the players to “mark” what they think resources are.  Corps of Discovery conflates the meaning of ? to be “any single resource” and also “notate where a resource might be”.  Which is it? 

  

The final meaning is not where you expect it on the rulebook: I expected an explanation on the last page with the icons: NOPE!  It’s hidden next to the path rules and Monster Threat Effect on page 10????  It’s not even clear if it’s supposed to be a token?   It sure looks like it from the picture, but I have none of these tokens in my game!!

Another problem: this page 9, which is arguably most important page in the rulebook, does not specify all the rules that appear in the Training Scenario!  It alludes to some of the rules, but isn’t clear.   See this posting over on BGG: With a little help from the internet, I figured out what was going on here.  But I feel like this page needs to explain a few more rules.

In a thematic game, I don’t mind making a few snap judgements for rules, but deduction is all about precision.  This game needs an Index, more examples, more clarifications, and some rules need to be actually specified.

Gameplay

If I said this played like Minesweeper, would you get mad at me?  Players uncover spots of the board grid using deductive rules (board sideways to maybe not give any spoilers; each map is unique).  What’s revealed leads to more clues about what’s around you!

These spots have resources which you use to overcome challenges and monsters.

It’s Minesweeper, with resources and a lot more deduction rules.

10 Plays

I gave myself 10 plays to play the game: I played two of the Training Scenario, six of the Fauna Scenario, and two of the Flora Scenario.  This took place over two weekends with pretty much my the last weekend being consumed by this game.

I was able to beat the Minotaurs reliably in the Fauna scenarios after about 5 plays.

The Flora Scenarios kicked me around.  I lost.  Hard. And I didn’t have fun.

By the end, I was tired of looking for the fun in this game.  After my 10th game, I was done.

Randomness

Like I said, I was able to defeat the Minotaurs reliably after 5 games. But I noticed that my score ranged from 3 to almost a perfect score (27)!  I got “lucky” and just happened to have the right cards come out and the right resources emerge so I was just able to trounce the minotaurs!  This was right after a game where I barely won, and I got 3 points.  The score was more of a representation of “how lucky” I was; one game, I got lucky and obtained almost a perfect score! One game, where I got trounced by my Misfortunes, I won … but barely.   The score meant nothing:  It just noted how lucky I was.  To be clear, I didn’t play THAT differently between games.

In the Fauna games, the game felt VERY lucky; how far you could advance, and when you get the Flora Terrain tokens, just felt very lucky.  (Uncovering Flora tokens means you don’t get the resource, and you have NO IDEA if you will uncover a plain resource or a Flora resource).

In a game where Deduction is such an important part of the strategy, there seemed to be too much luck for me to want to come back to this.

Conclusion

I wanted to like this game so much.  I was initially a little disappointed that it wasn’t particularly thematic, but I still really like Deduction Games, so I was still so happy to move forward with what it was. A deduction game needs tight, well-written, and well-documented rules; sadly, that was not the case with this game!  The rulebook was one of the most frustrating rulebooks I have encountered in sometime.  To add insult to injury, I felt like a lot of scenario-specific rule were also under-specified.  Even powering through the rules and making the “best I can” with the rules as given, I found the game just too random for a game that just leans so heavily on hard deduction.

I gave Corps of Discovery so many chances; I forced my way through ten games, hoping to “finally” overcome the hump of rules.   But I rarely had fun playing: I was always just so angry at the randomness and poorly specified rules.  I am selling my copy. 

Maybe you’ll like it if you can power through it; maybe being forewarned about the pitfalls will help you like it.  Corps of Discovery has a really original premise, and it has some great ideas, but it just never came together for me.  Maybe it will for you.

EDIT: My copy has been sold.

A Comparison of Three Methods For Flattening Your Board Games

What do the three games above have in common?

If you said “They are all cooperative games“, well, you are mostly correct! (Comic Hunters isn’t cooperative by default, but there is an expansion that makes it cooperative! See here). This is a place where we talk about cooperative games, so that’s a good guess.  But there’s something else they all have in common: none of their boards sit flat! See above and below!

You can really see it on Comic Hunters (above): that board just does NOT want to lay flat!

It’s weird, we never thought too much about boards not being flat enough,  but we encountered this problem a number of times in the last few years: Comic Hunters, Plum Island Horror, and Dice Throne: Missions!  These games really emphasized that sometimes a game board needs some flattening.

We’ll take a look at three different (cooperative) games and three different solutions to this problem!  The games of interest all have boards that don’t lay flat!  And they are all different sizes! See above!

  1. Plum Island Horror:  Very large 8-fold board
  2. Dice Throne: Missions:  Medium size 3-fold laminated sheets
  3. Comic Hunters: smaller 3-fold board

Solution 1: Board Butler

The Board Butler is a product specifically designed for the problem of boards-that-don’t-lay-flat.  I have seen advertisements on BGG, so I knew this existed.  I ordered it from their web site and it arrived within a week.  It was like $19.99 + taxes and some shipping (but for some reason I got free shipping).

These are basically little plastic piece you put at the edges to force the board flat.

See Comic Hunters with The Board Butler above.  It only needs 4 of the 6 pieces.

It works pretty well and it was easy to put on: no issues on Comic Hunters.

The Board Butler pieces are small enough that I need 4 pieces for the Dice Throne:Missions board: one at each edge.

See above.  The clear nature makes them relatively uninvasive.

They work well and keep the board flat.  Arguably they could obscure the text at the very bottom, but they don’t seem to.

Finally, let’s look at Plum Island Horror!

For Plum Island Horror, we have to use all 6 of the pieces, which means I can’t put them on the long ends.  This doesn’t strictly need another 2 pieces, but it might have been nice.

The Board Butler pieces work well: they hold the board down, and they don’t get in the way.

Basically, The Board Butler worked pretty well on all three games.  The weakest was Dice Throne: Missions because the Missions boards are thin laminated boards, so they didn’t fit as tight.  They fit securely (but not too tight) on Comic Hunters and Plum Island Horror.

Solution 2: Report Binding Bar

These Report Binding Bars are those little plastic sliders you put onto plastic report sheets.  See above and below.

I found a thread on BoardGameGeek that recommended these: see thread here.  You can order them here:  I got 30 of them for $13.99 plus taxes and shipping.  See above.

On Comic Hunters, they work great!  They are actually being long enough to cover both edges!

The only real complaint is that they are tight.  I was “worried” that by sliding them on, that they would TEAR the board!  They did not, but I was also very careful!  If you go with this solution, you may want to use your finger to “force” the bar open so it’s less tight:

See above as I jam my finger in there to “loosen” it up.

On Dice Throne: Missions, these are the best by far!  They hold the board tight, and they even cover both edges with one piece!  See above! I only needed 2 of the 30 pieces to hold this board together!

These just slip on easily (no chance of tearing since the boards are laminated) and hold the boards stiff and flat.

Finally, we use these for Plum Island Horror. We need 4 of them to hold the board down: see above.   Again, like Comic Hunters, these were a little scary to use because it “felt like” they might tear the board as I put them on.  So, I was very careful.

In all three cases, these held the board down and flat very tightly.  They were the cheapest by far, at 30 for $13.99, so you could easily share the cost with friends.  You probably only need to 6 each!  Even with with Plum Island Horror, you could get by with only 4!!

UPDATE: After sliding these on again and again and again on the Dice Throne: Missions boards, they started to show “slide marks”.  That is worrisome.

Solution 3: Giant Plastic Overlay

From the same thread on BGG where we got the Report Binding Bar, we also found a link for these giant pieces of plastic you can just “plop” on the board and force it down!  See Amazon link here! You get TWO pieces, but it’s $37.99 plus shipping and tax.

You just put it over your board game and “smoosh” it flat!

It turns out it also has a pocket, so if your game fits, you can just put the board inside! See above as Comic Hunters fits!

It works, it keeps Comic Hunters flat, but the plastic overlay is a bit distracting.  It’s especially shiny.

The Dice Throne: Missions boards fit in almost perfectly and look good and flat.  See above.

Plum Island Horror is WAAAY to big for a single overlay.  Luckily, when you order this, you get TWO sheets.  Two sheets work:

The problem is you CANNOT fit this board  inside the envelope (see above) , so they simply have to lay two of them on top.  Since the Plum Island Horror board is so “hefty”, even this solution had trouble keeping the board flat.

In general, this was the worst solution. It was the hardest to see, because it was so reflective, and it was by far the most expensive.  And, for the largest board, it required TWO Sheets.

The only advantage of this solution is that you can WRITE ON THE PLASTIC with a dry-erase marker!!  See above.  If you want to “annotate” your boards, at least you can do that with the overlays.

Conclusion

Which solution you gravitate towards depends on what you want!  The cheapest by far was the Report Binding Bar: it worked on all three boards well, except that it was tight on the thicker boards.  You could order 30 of them and split them between your friends for $13.99!    The best overall solution was The Board Butler; it worked on all boards well, even if it wasn’t “quite as tight” for the Dice Throne Missions board.  The Board Butler was high-quality and I never felt like it was too tight.  The Overlay was probably the weakest solution: it was the most expensive (as you needed two overlays for larger boards like Plum Island Horror), it was very reflective, and it is harder to store!  The Overlay, however, did had the unique advantage that you could write on it if you needed to!

If I were only getting something to fix the Dice Throne: Missions boards, I might get the Report Binding Bars. If I wanted something more general, I would get the Board Butler.  If I wanted to annotate my board with dry-erase markers or keep water off it, I might consider the overlay to help keep my board flat.  It’s up to you.

UPDATE: After seeing the Report Binding Bars starts to leave skid marks on the Dice Throne: Missions board, I think I strongly prefer the Board Butler over the binding bar, even for Missions.

War Story: A Choose-Your-Own Adventure Game Where Choices Really Matter

I pre-ordered War Story from GameNerdz on Oct 17th, 2024. I wanted to play it as soon as possible, so I went ahead and paid full shipping for it (I normally try to get to $75 or so to get free shipping); that’s how excited I was to get this! I paid for shipping to get it sent separately ASAP!

War Story arrived at my house on February 21, 2025 (I noted the date on the tab on the back).  Over about three days I played the entire campaign solo: one chapter a day for three days.  (This is a fully replayable campaign game, but you can also just play single chapters if you like).

What is War Story and why was I was I so excited to get it?  This is a Choose-Your-Own Adventure game set in World War II, but it is unique and different.

Let’s check it out!

Unboxing

This is a smaller box (see Coke Can above for perspective) but it’s actually quite heavy; it’s brimming with books!

There’s thee Mission Books (see above), three big envelopes, one small envelope, a status pad, cards, and tokens. See above: there seems to be quite a bit in here for a Choose-Your-Own Adventure game!

To preserve the longevity and replayability of the game, I went and made a few copies of the status sheets (see above).   See, even though this is a Choose-Your-Own Adventure game, it’s fairly replayable!   You need a status sheet for each game/campaign you play.

There’s a bunch of punchouts and tokens.  The cubes all have different uses that become clear as you play.  Spoiler: the orange cubes are the Nazis! (Although the are called red, they look more orange to me).

As you might guess from the components, there’s more to this game than first meets the eye.  Don’t be fooled by the Choose-Your-Own Adventure monicker: this is a pretty different game.

Rulebook

The rulebook is good.

The rulebook gets an A on the Chair Test: it can sit wide open on the chair next to me, within easy view when I need to see it (which is weird because the Mission Book completely fails the Chair Test: see more discussion below); they really got the Rulebook form factor right.

The Components and Set-Up pages are fine.  It’s a little confusing because the set-ups are intermingled between the mission books and the rulebooks, and there’s a few things that aren’t quite clear (unless you read closely): I had trouble finding where to setting the entry for starting tokens (at the top of the Status sheet).  Just be patient and I think everything reveals itself to you as you read.

And the Rulebook ends with a nice summary of Icons. 

One quick note: I usually don’t like it when rulebooks use “thematic” fonts (this one uses a typewriter monospace font: see pictures above).  This thematic font doesn’t detract too much from reading the rules here, so I’ll give it a pass.

Good rulebook.

Gameplay

There’s a few minor minor spoilers in the pictures below, but they are from the first few minutes of the first mission, so they shouldn’t spoil too much.  Out of context, they aren’t much of a spoiler, but feel free to skip this section if you don’t want any surprise.

War Story nominally plays 1-6 players, but honestly it’s just a solo game where the other players just all help decisions together (kind of like Eila and Something Shiny: see review here).   The player(s) lead a group of 8 resistance fighters in France during World War II.  Your first choice in the game is to choose your crew of 4 for the first missions.

These 4 characters, whose names you must write down, will serve as your Agents during the missions.  You use the tokens to mark where the Agents act (there are 2: one to keep on the card for and one to move into the field; this way you remember which agent is which).

Your Status Sheet gives you a hint of what can happen to your Agents as you play: Survived, Killed, MIA.  See above.  If you think all your Agents are getting out alive, well, good luck to you.

And again, notice we wrote their names down.   I think it brings an emotional connection to the characters a little more than usual.

At this point, you open the first envelope and being reading the Mission Parameters!  See the Top Secret note above (too small to see anything unless you go zooming in, but that’s on you). See above!  This tells you what you need to do to “win” this mission!

Off to the right of the Status sheet are marks for the Primary and Secondary Objective(s); did you succeed? Partially Succeed? Fail?  These will all influence your final score.  

From here on out, it’s all about making choices and reading from the Mission Book. (Mission Book page blurred on purpose).

As you read from the book, things will happen, you make choices turn to entry 17, make a choice, turn to entry 31, and so on.

You have Locations you can visit as you start, and what entry you get in the rulebook depends on the time of day.

As the game unfolds, you will be told to “advance time” and move to the next time space (see As we move fro Early night to Late night).  What this means; what happens when you visit a location depends on the time of day.

It’s a Choose-Your-Own Adventure game!  Player read and choose, read and choose, read and choose … until it’s clear their chapter is up!

Combat

You will get into combat as you play, and combat will also be resolved using a Choose-Your-Own Adventure mechanism.  That’s right, your French Resistance fights the Nazis using a Choose-Your-Own Adventure mechanism!  “Do you shoot the guy coming right at you? Read section 12! Do you shoot the guy hiding in the bushes?  Read section 701!”

And let’s be clear, your Agents can die.

Death

Death is part of this game. You kill Nazi guards with your gun. You blow up Nazis with grenades. And your Agents will die. See above as Christian is the only survivor of Chapter 1. He definitely has some PTSD going.

Granted, you are generally “trying” to sneak around to achieve your objectives, and usually the sneakier you are, the better. But, combat will inevitably come up. And even it though it might seem weird at first to use Choose-Your-Own adventure books as a combat resolution mechanism, it does work. In some sense, you feel more vested in the combat as you are making hard decisions: “Do I shoot the guy coming at me because he is an immediate threat, or do I shoot the guy trying to come up behind me who might be an even worse later threat?” Somehow it feels more immediate.

So, combat will happen. People will die. Your Agents might die. Or you might have to put a bullet in the Nazi’s head. Be aware that death is at the forefront of this game. If that sounds too intense for you, then I suspect this game is not for you and you should just get out now.

Choices Matter

I know some of you (including myself) blanche a little when you hear Choose-Your-Own Adventure.  I still remember (40 years later?) how random my first Choose-Your-Own Adventure book was: The Cave of Time (see above).  What seemed like the right choice lead nowhere and the dumb choice led you to a cool adventure!  It didn’t seem like your choices mattered, you just “did stuff” and see what happened.  Choices didn’t “really” matter; you were just along for the ride.

That is very much NOT the case in War Story.  Of all the Choose-Your-Own Adventure games I have played, it feels like this is the one where the choices matter the most.

First of all, there are other choices in the game besides which entry you read. There will be Skill checks: “If your Sneak is 4+, read entry 12, else read entry 11″. You can choose to raise your Sneak by using Advantage tokens (either from a shared pool or sometimes a separate pool, depending on the Agent): see tokens above. You start with a limited amount of Advantage/Firearms tokens, and you have to choose when it’s best to choose a middling result or when you REALLY need an extraordinary success!!!

Second of all, as the progresses, the choices you made earlier WILL AFFECT your outcomes.  Did you let that Nazi survive?  Maybe that was a good choice, maybe that was a bad choice, but either way … it affects what happens to you later in the game!  See the State Tracker above for game 2 as Events G and M were circled.  Was it good I left that Nazi alive and showed mercy? Or not? Was that Event G?  I hope that doesn’t came back to bite me!!  And it might bite you, or it might help you.

Your choices matter here. They really matter.

Emotional

So, this game is pretty emotional.  You feel … close to the war, you feel close to the resistance, you feel close to death.  My second game of the campaign, all my Agents on the mission died.

I was left with one Agent left (poor Francois) as I headed into Chapter 3.  How well could I do with one agent?  There was so much emotion as my entire squad died … and poor Francois was all that was left.

Over three nights I played through the story.  This game is pretty emotional. Be aware.  

Binding

I need to say something about the binding on the Mission books:  I hate it.  War Story uses the thick glue binding for a large book.   This binding does NOT stay open; it is the worst choice for board games!

We had this same problem with the binding on the Freedom Five books from last year  (see review here), and the binding on the rulebook for the Forests of Admiron (see review here), and the binding on the Batman: Gotham City Chronicles Solo/Cooperative Expansion (see review here).  This type of binding does not lay flat.

You can’t hold these books open unless you completely counterfold the books!  (See above as I try to hold the Mission book open with a little leather thingee).  Even then, the books don’t really stay open!  It’s very frustrating!  If you “slip” and lose your place in the book, you lose the page you were on, as the book closes on you!!!  In my third chapter, I slipped a few times and had to literally replay the introduction three times so I could find where I left off!  It was very annoying and almost put me off the game.

This binding does not work.  Please, I beg you board game companies, don’t use this binding ever again!

I came in to play this game the first day I got it … I was so excited!!!  I saw the binding on the Mission books and I was immediately turned off.  In fact, I was so turned off by the binding, I went inside my house and did my Income Taxes.  The binding was so debilitating that I did my Taxes instead of playing this WONDERFUL game.  

Conclusion

And I don’t feel like I can say too much more, because I don’t want to give anything else away. I liked War Story! This is NOT the Choose-Your-Adventure books of yore, where nothing really matters: this is a Choose-Your-Own Adventure game where choices really matter! And you feel like you have choices!

Be aware that War Story is not for everyone: it’s gritty and people will die.  Nazis will die. Your Agents will die.  You will actively take part in the resistance and shoot Nazis in the head.  But this was the life of the French Resistance in World War II.  I think this game really captures the spirit and vibe of that time.  

I can’t give it a rating except to say you will probably know if you will like it based on the description in this review. I liked it, and I am glad I played it: It felt very emotional and really captured the vibe of World War II (I think; I wasn’t there). But I think you will know if this is for you or not.