SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters' Clash brings back a game I personally had long forgotten but very much enjoyed at the time of its release on SNK's Neo Geo Pocket Color. One of a smattering of hidden gems on the platform, SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash was a must-have for anyone that owned the handheld in the United States at the time.

Over 20 years since the title's release, Card Fighters' Clash still holds up from a gameplay perspective. A collectible card game in an RPG-lite package, none of the experience is a particular encumbrance. Those familiar with CCG-RPGs of the time, most popularly Digimon Card Battle or Pokemon Trading Card Game, will find themselves right at home with SNK's own entry to the genre.

SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash Review — Living Out an Age-Old Debate

You don't have to be an expert on retro CCG video games to enjoy SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash, though. This is one card game that's just as easy to get into as it is to master, and it's got just enough content not to overstay its welcome. Plus you get to live out the old debate over whether SNK or Capcom was better — in card game form!

In Card Fighters' Clash, you'll get to decide whether you want to start with a Capcom-centric deck or an SNK-centric deck. The one you choose your first time around, of course, will depend on which publisher you like the most. It's much more convenient than the original, which released in two separate versions a la' Pokemon.

Card fighters come from an array of franchises from both companies. SNK fans get characters from classic SNK series like Metal Slug, King of Fighters, and Samurai Showdown. Capcom fans get Street Fighter, Darkstalkers, and even Resident Evil characters as cards.

The flow of card battles is relatively simple. You can place one character card on its own and one as a backup (increase their offensive value) to an already placed card on a turn, as well as play an ability card as long as you have the SP.

Some character cards have abilities, and all of them have a shortlist of characters that can back them up. Though some characters can be backed up by cards of the opposing faction as well, meaning some SNK characters can be boosted by Capcom characters and vice versa. This means you do not have to stick to a single faction to make a successful deck.

Like other CCGs of its time, SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters' Clash isn't particularly difficult. Once you grasp the battle system and how to get cards by willing battles and trading across the game's arcades and other locations, you should be able to handle most of its content from start to finish provided you keep your deck updated as you rack up cards of B rarity or higher.

The most cumbersome part of the game is still the deck editing UI, just as it was back when I played it 21 years ago. Messing about with your decks is a bit of a pain thanks to the rudimentary UI, but it's not remotely a dealbreaker, particularly if you're a fan of either SNK or Capcom's '90s releases.

This Switch port starts by default with a mock Neo Geo Pocket Color HUD surrounding the playable portion of the screen. It's a nice touch for SNK fans, and especially those who used to have the handheld platform. Though I found myself just enlarging the playable portion of the screen as soon as I could.

SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash Review — The Bottom Line

Pros

• Intuitive card battle system that's just as fun as it is simple.
• The chibi pixel art for each classic character and their variants is a treat.
• Very solid port that runs great and changes nothing.

Cons

• Aspects of its UI may be troublesome for players expecting something more modern.

SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash was a game I loved dearly at one time and have had a wonderful time coming back to in 2022. Fans of both SNK and Capcom can find plenty of enjoyment here, whether in the gameplay itself or just in the card art — just don't expect the bells and whistles one might expect from a modern CCG video game.

[Note: SNK provided the copy of SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters' Clash used for this review.]

Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone (ConcernedApe) recently revealed there's a Stardew Valley board game in the works. It's a tabletop take on the popular farm-sim game meant for up to four players. It's available now for $55, though it only ships to the U.S. at the time of writing.

The Stardew Valley board game replicates a regular game of Stardew Valley. Players need to save the valley from the nefarious Joja Corporation, which means restoring the Community Center through completing a set of random goals and making friends along the way.

Time passes and weather patterns change as players draw a card from the season deck each round. Just like regular Stardew Valley, forging friendships with the town's various characters unlocks new Community Center bundles, and players upgrade their various skills, such as fishing and mining, by completing challenges.

The biggest challenge, though, is coordinating actions each round to get the maximum amount done and push towards completing one of the required goals. Barone said the Stardew Valley board game's "depth and complexity" means it's intended for those experienced with tabletop games already. He also provided the game's full rule book so players can see for themselves whether it's the right choice before purchasing.

It sounds as if the Stardew Valley board game is a separate project from the other two new SV games Barone is working on, which means there's even more Stardew Valley in store aside from the recent 1.5 update.

[Source: Stardew Valley Developer Blog]

What did you think of top board-game adjacent picks, and are you going to pick up any of the games we listed here?

Sound off below, and don't forget to leave a comment if you've found any other killer board game-style titles on Steam we should check out.

If you've already played all our picks, don't forget to take a look at the companion list of direct board game adaptations here.

Wargroove

Buy it on Steam here

Wargroove is essentially the fantasy counterpart to Tiny Metal, and an even more faithful successor to the Advance Wars style from the Game Boy Advance days.

The overall strategy and tactics clearly draw on board game design, and while there is a single player campaign, this is a game that's super fun to play in multiplayer matches. Despite the cutesy sprite graphics, there's also a surprising amount of depth going on here.

Tiny Metal

Buy it on Steam here

With Japanese anime characters but very western-influenced unit and vehicle design, Tiny Metal is an odd little hodgepodge of a strategy title that takes clear influence from Advance Wars.

If you want a tactical, modern-day style game that's simple to jump into, Tiny Metal gets the job done, and the top-down view with turn-based combat gives it a clear board game flair.

Slay The Spire

Buy it on Steam here

Take a roguelike and sprinkle in a little deck building and you've got Slay The Spire, which manages to hit just the right combo of randomness and difficulty to become truly addictive.

You'll die, a lot, but have a ton of fun doing it, and there's a different layout every time of course so you'll want to keep trying again and again.

Book Of Demons

Buy it on Steam here

This has got to be one of the most unique, interesting twists on the classic ARPG style in quite some time. At first, Book of Demons seems exactly like Diablo: we're picking one of three classes and heading beneath a church to start killing skeletons by the dozen, but then things take a turn.

Rather than free movement, your hero moves down pre-determined board game style paths, and both combat and leveling are handled via a card system.

This is all reinforced by the paper mini art style. It literally feels like playing a board game where you have to stick your paper tokens into plastic bases.

Warhammer Quest

Buy it on Steam here

Want a tactical fantasy game that draws heavily on tabletop rules but not crazy about D&D? Warhammer Quest is the game for you, and as an added bonus it actually utilizes a top-down view and token pieces just like a real board game.

It's a classic loot 'n sell title where you get random quests to clear out dungeons of goblins, skaven, and so on, sell all the goodies you found to the merchants in the next town, and then do it all over again!

King's Bounty Crossworlds

Buy it on Steam here

Stripping out everything extraneous and focusing on what players really want, the original King's Bounty and follow-up Armored Princess scratched a very specific itch.

The series combat is along the lines of Heroes Of Might and Magic, but there's no city or resource management beyond building up your armies and leveling your hero.

An extreme focus on turn-based combat makes this a very satisfying series for board game fans. If you're looking to jump in, I recommend picking up Crossworlds, since it has both the expanded version of Armored Princess and the DLC.

A full-fledged King's Bounty 2 is also currently in the works and due out sometime in 2020.

Blood Bowl 2

Buy it on Steam here

And now for something completely different! Yeah, those are orcs in jerseys facing off against humans and undead on the football field. Obviously, the rules of football get a facelift in Blood Bowl 2, since these players like to kill each other.

Even if you don't care for sports-balling (and boy, I really, really don't) this is still a fun series for board game fans. Its complex, hard, and features a ton of strategy to learn.

Unlike most of the rest of this list, Blood Bowl is actually an adaptation of a specific existing tabletop game, but it's changed enough to be its own thing in the PC version, and the animations definitely take it to a new level.

Warhammer 40,000 Gladius: Relics Of War

Buy it on Steam here

Considering the impact Games Workshop has had on the tabletop industry, from war games to board games and even card-based titles, it shouldn't be much of a surprise they've got a huge number of PC crossovers as well.

While a lot of the Warhammer universe is pretty lackluster in video game form, there are some hidden gems. Gladius sees a massive shift away from the real-time strategy of classics like Dawn Of War and towards a very board-game focused take on the 4X genre.

If you like a slower-paced game where you have to sit and think about your strategy, this is the one to pick in the Warhammer 40,000 series.

Dicey Dungeons

Buy it at Steam here

Most board games feature polyhedral dice in some capacity, but this one actually has you playing as the dice! Other than taking on the role of some d6s, the schtick here is that you need to constantly adapt to rules changes and new characters.

While its wildly random, and it can be very hard, the end result is something like a cute and funny version of Darkest Dungeon but with a gameshow aesthetic.

Age Of Wonders: Planetfall

Buy it on Steam here

I don't think anyone saw the announcement trailer going the way it did for Planetfall, as the developers announced a surprise switch from fantasy to sci-fi in the long-running Age Of Wonders series.

Although this is a turn based strategy game with heavy 4X elements, if you really boil it down, Planetfall basically plays like a complex board game with animations.

From managing resources and diplomacy to exploring the map and dealing with randomized elements, there's a ton here for board game fanatics to love.  The recent Revelations DLC also just added a host of new elements and enemies, with another faction due to arrive in the next expansion down the line.

Armello

Buy it on Steam here

What you get here is essentially a board game built from scratch as a PC strategy experience. It's too complex and animation heavy to work as a real board title you'd pick up as a hobby store, but it works great as an online title. The clear Redwall / Mouse Guard flavor doesn't hurt either!

Combining several different styles all at once, Armello is part turn-based strategy, part card-based random mechanics, and part RPG. Although it has a single-player campaign and AI missions, keep in mind Armello is very much meant to be played online against other players.

Hand Of Fate 2

Buy it on Steam here

I'm honestly surprised there haven't been more games like Hand Of Fate and its sequel, because the core concept is such an obvious winner for tabletop fans who want a PC game.

There's a literal board with a digital card-dealer sitting across from you to pull from the deck and see where the story goes. In a way, Hand Of Fate is like a single-player advancement of those old VHS-based board games.

To keep things fresh, Hand Of Fate 2 switches to real-time action during the combat segments for a satisfying blend of video and board game styles. Of course, RNG plays a huge role here, as you can end up with devastatingly difficult or very easy encounters depending on what hand you are dealt. 

As the library of titles at Steam continues to grow at an exponential rate, its become clear that a game doesn't have to be a huge budget AAA affair to warrant dozens or even hundreds of hours of play. 

There are plenty of games with tried and true board or card mechanics that can suck you in and never let go, whether you prefer fantasy, sci-fi, modern day tank combat, or anything else.

Ready to ditch the first person shooters and try out something more tactical? Let's take a look at the the top 12 board game-adjacent entries currently available!

Most of these picks aren't direct 1:1 translations of an existing board game, but are rather tactical strategy entries with board and card elements added into the mix.

In other words, if you dig in-depth board games but want to play something on PC instead of at your dinner table, you'll love these Steam titles.

Looking for direct adaptations of famous board games instead? Check out our list of the 12 best Steam board games currently available -- from Zombicide to Ticket To Ride and everything in between -- over here.

That's it for our look at the 12 best board games currently available on Steam. Of course, there are plenty other PC board games out there, as our list only scratched the surface with the best overall picks.

Are you planning on picking up any of our Steam board game recommendations, and do you have a favorite board game that didn't make the list? Let us know in the comments below!

Small World 2

Developer: Days of Wonder
Price: $9.99
Buy it here

The world is too small for the both of us, so it's time to go to war and see which fantasy species comes out victorious! From merchant humans to alchemist rat-men, Small World 2 has a ton of combos to play with as you quest to conquer the overly small world.

Small World 2 is a lot faster to play than many other fantasy board games, and with randomized faction abilities tweaking the rules, there's lots of reason to jump back into another quick game.

Ticket To Ride

Developer: Days of Wonder
Price: $9.99
Buy it here

The wide range of topics available in hardcore board games is honestly pretty impressive. We've gone from world-destroying disease outbreaks to fairy battles and delivering love letters. Now we're going to... ride a train?

Yeah, it's more fun than it sounds.

In Ticket to Ride, you must build up your railways and link cities before your opponent does. If you dig games like Settlers of Catan, you'll love Ticket To Ride. There's a ton of DLC available for the digital edition as well, so you won't run out of content anytime soon.

Lords Of Waterdeep

Developer: Playdek, Inc
Price: $14.99
Buy it here

Although it's also a D&D game, Lords Of Waterdeep is completely different from Tomb Of Annihilation — or any of the other D&D board games, like Wrath of Ashardalon or Castle Ravenloft.

Rather than plundering a dungeon or fighting off orc hordes in Lords of Waterdeep, you'll spread your influence across the city by constructing buildings, engaging in intrigue, and completing a variety of quests.

No considering it's quite a bit cheaper than the original physical version, the Steam edition of Lords of Waterdeep plays faster than the board game as well. You can play for three or four hours while referencing various rules.

Tales From Candlekeep: Tomb Of Annihilation

Developer: BKOM Studios
Price: $15.99
Buy it here

There are times when you don't necessarily want to jump into some 100-hour RPG like Kingmaker or Baldur's Gate 2. You'd rather just play some random dungeon adventure.

That's where the various D&D board games come in, with tile-based procedural gameplay that offers a quick way to jump into a random quest without much fuss.

It's fast, fluid, and filled to the brim with treasure to loot, especially when picking one of four classic Forgotten Realms hero types.

Love Letter

Developer: Nomad Games
Price: $6.99
Buy it here

One of the very best things about Love Letter is its concept — you need to get a love letter to the princess, but everyone in the castle is standing in your way, including the princess herself.

Guards might stop you, handmaidens might refuse to deliver your declaration of love, or you might accidentally tick off the Princess and really screw yourself out of a win.

While there is a decent amount of strategy and bluffing involved, Love Letter is extremely easy to pick up and learn, and mostly appropriate for all ages.

While Love Letter is unquestionably better when played face to face with people you know, it's still a fun (and quick) time on PC via Steam.

Twilight Struggle

Developer: Playdek, Inc
Price: $9.99
Buy it here

When it comes to historic board games in the digital realm, Twilight Struggle is in the genre's upper echelon. This tabletop experience puts you in the role of either the U.S. or the USSR, and your goal is to change history during the cold war.

It's strategic and fun without being overly complicated and has a good deal of replay value. Best of all? The UI isn't a giant mess like a lot of board game adaptations. Whereas many struggle to stay faithful to the original while switching to a keyboard and mouse setup, Twilight Struggle stays the course. 

Pandemic

Developer: Asmodee Digital
Price: $9.99
Buy it here

I'll be honest: I haven't been as enamored with the original Pandemic board game as the rest of the gaming universe. Clearly, though, I'm in the minority because everyone seems to fall over this title from Z-Man Games.

Pandemic is a game about saving the world from, well, a pandemic. Pandemic is complex, difficult to master, and easy to lose, which makes it perfect for a certain subset of masochistic players.

It's worth noting, though, that the digital version of Pandemic is very much a single-player experience.

Faeria

Developer: Abrakam SA
Price: $24.99
Buy it here

I'm going to bend the rules just slightly here. Faeria is more collectible card game than board game, but it ventures just far enough into board game territory to fit.

Faeria is interesting because while the base mechanics are very much in the vein of Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering, it has a "living" board that players control.

To reach the enemy player and get in a few swings with your creatures, you must first build a board to them. Such a design brings all sorts of fun complications to the standard CCG mechanics. Give it a whirl if you want to try something new with a heavy card game emphasis.

Mysterium: A Psychic Clue Game

Developer: Asmodee Digital
Price: $6.99
Buy it here

"Clue" in the title is most definitely not an accident, because Mysterium is essentially a continuation of Clue's classic gameplay — but in a more exciting setting. 

Aided by a ghost, your group of psychic friends will need to deduce the identity of a murderer and find out where a death happened and by what means.

When you want something fairly easy to pick up but don't care for zombies or dungeon-delving fantasy epics, Mysterium is the one to pick. 

Zombicide

Developer: Berserk Games
Price: $9.99 (DLC for Tabletop Simulator)
Buy it here

This Kickstarter-backed zombie board game took the world by storm a few years back. In November, it raised $3 million to fund a brand new second edition.

If you like zombie games but don't have the patience to set up a physical board, then the digital Zombicide needs to be on your shortlist.

One thing to remember about this version of the game, though, is that it isn't actually a one-to-one adaptation of the board game. Instead, this is a DLC pack for Tabletop Simulator.

It takes a little getting used to, but you can play full games of Zombicide with all of the original cards and minis in an online session with a friend. You can also flip the table in a fit of rage and screw up all the cards if you want, but that's up to you.

Scythe

Developer: The Knights of Unity
Price: $19.99
Buy it here

You've probably seen those killer pics that put giant, smoke-belching robots in places and times they have no business existing. Scythe takes that idea and builds a whole board game around it set in 1920s Europe.

Your goal in Scythe is to take the role of a faction — from frozen Nordics to machine gun-wielding Soviets — and conquer the world in a 4X format. Adding a wrinkle to things, each faction has a secret objective in each playthrough, keeping things fresh. 

Oh, and did I mention there are enough mechs here to make any Mechwarrior or Battletech fan gush with oil. 

Gloomhaven

Developer: Flaming Fowl Studios
Price: $24.99
Buy it here

For fans of dungeon-delving, Gloomhaven has everything you could want as a board game — except the often prohibitive $140 to $200 price tag.

One of Gloomhaven's biggest draws on Steam is that you get to play the full game at a fraction of the actual board game cost, and it won't take up your entire table to play.

There are plenty of tactics to utilize in this squad-based dark fantasy tabletop game, and there is infinite opportunity to destroy enemy creatures and upgrade your characters.

Gloomhaven on Steam is still in Early Access, however, and is currently missing a number of key features like multiplayer co-op. There will be big changes coming to the game ahead of its full launch, including campaign and additional tweaks.

For more, check out our Early Access impressions of Gloomhaven. 

Want to jump into one of those big, complex board games but want to drop a few hundred dollars or spend hours learning the rules? There are plenty of digital tabletop games ready and waiting to be picked up on Steam. We've culled out the low-quality ones to find the 12 best Steam board games available right now.

Besides saving your table space (and your wallet), most of these digital recreations let you play with friends online so you don't need to rely on everyone showing up for a Friday night game session.

For this list, we're leaving out the strategy games that take heavy influence from tabletop offerings but aren't actually digital conversions of real board games.Check out our companion list of those awesome titles that board game fans will love over here.

What do you get when you pair the creator of Magic: The Gathering, Richard Garfield with Jeopardy! World Champion, Ken Jennings? Turns out, it’s a brand new board game currently on Kickstarter called Half Truth. 

Produced by Studio 71 along with Nighthawk Games, Half Truth will be the go to game on game night when you want to see which one of your friends has the bigger brain. With Ken Jennings crafting the questions and Richard Garfield creating the board game infrastructure, Half Truth is the perfect choice to show off your knowledge (and learn some new facts as well).

I was lucky enough to talk to Richard and Ken about working together on Half Truth as well as all things board game related.

GameSkinny: From Jeopardy genius to board game creator, what drew you to create Half Truth with Richard? What challenges did you and Richard face while creating the game?

Ken Jennings: Richard is a game legend, so when he tracked me down to ask if I wanted to work on a trivia game with him, it was a real highlight. It was like King Arthur asking you to join the Round Table. 

The big challenges for me in editing all the trivia in the game were, first, to make sure there were no factual goofs, because that would be embarrassing, and I'd get angry emails from unforgiving, pedantic trivia fans, and second, to make sure the game had a question for just about anything someone could be a well-informed "geek" about nowadays.  Hairstyles, punctuation, pastries, reality TV ... we wanted to make sure that whatever your thing is, the game has a question about it.

While the game has the trivia master in Ken Jennings, the other side of the duo is no stranger to the card game genre. Richard Garfield is the creator of Magic: The Gathering, which is one of the most successful card games ever!

GS: Magic: The Gathering is one of the most popular card games in the world, what brought you to create a knowledge-based board game?

Richard Garfield: I am interested in all games, and I encourage all new designers to play games outside their comfort zone and learn what makes them appealing to their fans. After reading Braniac, I realized I hadn't done that for trivia games in any serious way, and Ken's book jump started me down that path. Of course, I had played such games before, but I had viewed them as narrow games that were dominated by players with useless knowledge. 

Braniac got me to view such games as, potentially, at least, a lot broader than I had before — where every player has a chance to shine, since everyone has their own unique knowledge. It also made me realize not all trivia questions are a matter of, "I have the knowledge or I don't." The best questions can involve leaps of intuition and metagaming and educated guesses.

When you see Ken Jennings and trivia in the same sentence, you tend to think of his historic stint on Jeopardy!. For Half Truth, I was wondering if we were going to be answering simple questions or ones that you would see during Final Jeopardy. 

GS: What style of questions can players expect to be stumped by when they play the game? Is there a large variety of difficulty between questions? Are they just generic trivia questions or are they separated into broad categories?

KJ: The game works like this: each card has a category on it, like "Animals with blue tongues." Then there are six possible answers listed, three right and three wrong, and players have to place bets on which answers they believe are the true ones. 

If you're the trivia know-it-all in the room, you obviously have an edge, but everyone can play along on every question and have a good time. I think people will be surprised by how well they do. We're all smarter than we think.

GS: What was it like working with Ken on Half Truth? What were some of the challenges that you faced while creating the game?

RG: It was great working with Ken; he was very open to learning what worked best for the special form of question we have in Half Truth; and he was good at sharing his broad knowledge of trivia question construction to educate us to make them even better. And, as I suspected from his books, his tone had an excellent amount of humor and playfulness for our needs.

The biggest challenge in the game's creation was probably that our skill at making questions increased throughout to the point that we had to constantly go back and improve what we had done before.

Board games are meant to play with friends. Some board games (Monopoly) take friendships to a whole new level by destroying them. Where does Half Truth lie on that scale?

GS: Will friendships be broken because of this game like other board games, or is this game more of a learning experience to give you more knowledge just in case they get their shot on Jeopardy!?

KJ: Jeopardy! is cutthroat! This is a comparatively chill party game. I hate playing a trivia game and feeling stupid on half the cards. This is a trivia game designed to make people feel smart. 

If your friendships suffer, that's a personal issue of your own, and Richard and I accept no legal liability.

GS: Is this a game to show off how smart you are to your friends? Or is it a game where you can learn new info as you play?

RG: It is both. There is a wide range to the sorts of questions, and everyone should be able to find something they have unique knowledge of. Also, every question has three true and three false answers, so you have a 50% chance of answering correctly even if you know nothing, but a lot of the time, you will be able to improve those odds even if you aren't 100% certain.

For example, Words in Lady Gaga's "poker Face:" a) Moolah b) Chess c) Muffin d) Russian e) End f) Spades. Here, someone who knows the song can get all three correct for a nice bonus. Someone like me has heard the song but doesn't know any words outside "m-m-m-m-y poker face," but I still have hooks into the question, I can make educated guesses on what isn't a word and what is likely to be among the many words I don't know.

I could even see myself — if I was behind and needed to press my luck — guessing two of them. I really can't see myself guessing three unless it was my only chance to win the game.

GS: While card games always had a spot on store shelves, they have been starting to find a new home on phones and tablets.

Do you feel that the digital game is a lesser experience compared to being in person at tournaments? Or do the digital games offer a better experience and allow for people to enjoy the game and possibly migrate to the physical game as well?

RG: There are pros and cons. Nothing can replace getting together in a single room with friends and playing a game. It is a wonderful way to socialize and connect in this world where people are increasingly networked yet often increasingly physically isolated.

However, the convenience of having access to players any time, and having a moderator (the device) which takes care of all the busy work and makes sure everyone is playing correctly ... these are real boons to a game player.

And, while I don't think you can replace face to face game play, digital social worlds are meaningful in their own way — and their value can't be discounted.

GS: Are there any inspirations from current board games or past experiences that helped you design this game?

KJ: A lot of it came from a childhood of watching Jeopardy! Jeopardy! taught me that trivia isn't just retrieving facts, it can be like solving a puzzle or a riddle. You're not just playing against your competitors; you're trying to analyze and outsmart the person who wrote the clue.

I think Richard and I were also influenced by trivia games like Trivial Pursuit where everyone has to sit around and wait for one person to answer each card, which we hated. In Half Truth, everyone gets to play on every single question. 

GS: What were some of the early prototype ideas for the game before you both agreed on the final design?

RG: The architecture of the game was complete before Ken was involved; and it took a few months of tinkering with ideas before I got that to a place I liked it. Of course, in a game like this most of the value is in the content you deliver with it — and Ken contributed around half the questions, and helped us identify what made questions work best.

You could say that I provided the hardware — the game rules — and Ken was the lead programmer.

When someone interviews Ken, you have a responsibility to try and stump him with some hard to answer questions. So I did my duty and tried. 

GS: You are one of the most prolific game show contestants, and you are now creating a board game. Without using the internet, can you answer these board game-related questions? One: What was the European name of Chutes and Ladders before it came to the U.S?

KJ: Snakes and Ladders 

GS: Correct! Two: Who was the original designer of Monopoly?

KJ: Ugh, I know this and can't come up with the guy's name. I thought about this all morning and eventually remembered that Alfred Butts is the name of the guy who invented Scrabble. I think I should get partial credit.

GS: Partial credit was given. The original designer of Monopoly was Elizabeth Magie. Three: What year was Settlers of Catan created?

KJ: I first played it in 1998, but I imagine it had been kicking around Germany for longer. 1996 maybe?

GS: It was originally created in 1995 by Klaus Teuber. Super close! 

---

Whether you are a certified brainiac or you are looking for a new board game for your weekly game night, Half Truth is there to give you a challenge that will teach you some new fun facts as well.

You can support Half Truth on Kickstarter right. The game is expected to ship starting December 2019.

GameSkinny would like to thank Richard and Ken for taking the time to talk to us. 

When Monopoly Gamer was released last summer, it at first appeared to be just another rebranding of the classic "fast-paced property trading" game, only this time aimed at appealing to fans of classic Super Mario Bros. As it turned out, however, Monopoly Gamer offered a novel spin on the tried-and-true formula, and even if it didn't manage to forever dethrone vanilla Monopoly, it provided an interesting and somewhat faster-paced take on the classic formula.

This spring, Hasbro has again teamed up with Nintendo for the second entry in the Monopoly Gamer series. However, this incarnation's theme revolves around everybody's favorite kart racer. In Monopoly Gamer: Mario Kart, two to four players start off by choosing their kart racer (current options include Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Toad, with additional racers to become available -- for an additional price -- at a later date).

Your choice of kart racer is actually a more strategic decision than picking between tokens in traditional Monopoly since each racer has its own unique Power-up Ability that is activated by landing on one of the board's Super Star spaces. Mario, for example, gets to collect three coins each time, whereas Toad can choose to drop up to five coins and move forward the same amount of spaces.

Rather than starting off with boatloads of pastel-colored paper bills, you begin with 10 coins, and you'll spend most of the game slowly moving around the circuit, purchasing or paying rent for landing on Mario Kart-themed properties, such as Rainbow Road and Moo Moo Meadows. You roll two dice, but one of them is a Power-Up die. What this means is that you'll move anywhere from one to six spaces a turn but also activate one of six Mario Kart-themed abilities every time.

Maybe you'll roll a Green Shell and force an opponent to drop coins on whatever property they happen to be sitting on, or perhaps you'll roll Coins and simply collect three coins from the bank. Whatever the case may be, you'll be dropping and picking up coins on just about every turn.

Once you've finally made it all the way around the board (which, despite having fewer spaces to cover, still takes a while since you only use one die to move), you pass GO and flip over a Grand Prix card. This starts a race that each player can voluntarily enter by paying a few coins as an entry fee. Far removed from the high-octane action of the video game series, these races require you to simply outroll your opponents. There are prizes for first, second, and third places, and the winner also holds on to the Grand Prix card, which is also worth points.

Unlike old-school Monopoly, this game doesn't end once a single player has managed to bankrupt his or her (possibly former) friends and family members. After the final Grand Prix race has run, players tally up the points they've accumulated from properties owned, Grand Prix race cards collected, and coins amassed. Then, just like always with Monopoly, one person walks away bragging while the others vow to never again play a board game with the winner.
Image courtesy of GameStop

For the most part, I enjoyed my time with Monopoly Gamer: Mario Kart, but I nevertheless have a few gripes with the game.

To start, there's no Yoshi available upon launch, and asking me to pay $2.99 down the line for a "Power Pack" so that I'm not stuck with Luigi again strikes me as a little too similar to what we're seeing in the video gaming world right now. 

Secondly -- and perhaps due to some anomaly in my own playthrough -- it seems like there should be far more single coins available. By game's end, my group and I still had a sizable stack of the five-cent cardboard punch-outs but had resorted to using actual pennies in lieu of the one-cent pieces. I haven't seen this complaint elsewhere, though, so maybe this isn't happening to others.

Finally, with all the focus on power-ups, dropping banana peels, and coin exchanging, my favorite part of Monopoly seemed lost in the shuffle: Only two or three times did I get to giddily demand that my loved ones "PAY UP!" when landing on my property. There aren't any houses or hotels, and every time I managed to land on a property I wanted to purchase, I was too broke to purchase it (largely because I was getting Thwomped and barraged by Spiny Shells on nearly every turn).

Monopoly Gamer: Mario Kart is a unique take on a formula that somehow hasn't really grown tired even after all these years. It deserves its place in the gigantic pantheon of Monopoly games, and I have to give it credit for not just being yet another rebranded version. But at the end of the day, I'd probably rather just horde railroads, open Community Chests, and stick with the classic.

Monopoly Gamer: Mario Kart is available now at GameStop, with plans to extend to other retailers this summer.

Jack Box Party Pack 5?

We're cheating twice with this one, but hey, this still deserves some credit. We're only speculating that Jack Box Party Pack 5 is in the works and will come out in 2018; it's a pretty safe bet. 

Some might take issue with the fact that it's a video game, but give us a chance to defend ourselves with this one. Jack Box Party Packs are THE board game alternative for parties. They're not your in-depth Euro-style board games, but every once in a while it's fun to play a simple game and enjoy a few laughs. Games like Quiplash and Fibbage bring memories of board games like Balderdash. There's typically themed trivia in the party packs, and my personal favorite, Tee K.O., is a unique take on Pictionary if it were mixed with a caption contest. The best part about these "board games" is that setup and clean up are super easy, not to mention nobody has to keep track of score.

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We hope you enjoyed this list of our most anticipated board games this year. Are there any other games out there you think are worth looking forward to, let us know in the comments below!

Argonauts: 2nd Edition

From Alcyon Creative comes Argonauts: 2nd Edition. I must admit I am a fan of Classical Greece and the mythology from Greek culture. Long before the Trojan War and Homer's Odyssey, which many of us learn about in school, there was a different group of heroes who teamed up for an epic quest for the Golden Fleece. Enter Argonauts, a game that follows the tale of Jason, his comrades, and their quest for the Golden Fleece.

Take on the roles of heroes, like Hercules, Atalanta, and Peleus, with your friends or on your own. Get on your ship, The Argo, and overcome famous obstacles like the Calydonian Boar or the Sirens! The 2nd edition of this game brings an updated rule book, updated cards, and even a little Argo miniature. Set sail and have fun, you might even learn a thing or two.

The Kickstarter for this edition ends at the end of March 2018 and we should see it around November 2018.

Dominion: Nocturne

Dominion has been around for a while now, and this deck building game has a ton of re-playability. Each expansion adds a unique element to the game and can stand alone from any other expansion, though Nocturne does require the base game. 

Published by Rio Grande Games, Dominion: Nocturne launched in October 2017, but we're still counting it. Each time you play Dominion you can try several unique strategies, depending on which cards are available to choose from. This particular expansion has been greatly received by those who have played it and adds extra levels of complexity to an already deep experience. While in-depth, Dominion is still relatively easy to understand for first time players and we can't wait to get our hands on this particular expansion for it.

Isles of Terror

Not to be confused with the mobile games publisher of the same name, Voodoo Games is a German company with a few board games under their belt since they started in 2014. Now with a bit of experience, they bring us Isles of Terror. This title is just finishing up its Kickstarter campaign and is expected to be available November 2018.

Isles of Terror looks to be a re-imagining of Settlers of Catan with more player autonomy. The aim of the game is victory points, with each adventure offering different starting states for the board. This game might take a bit of extra time to learn, but, we can't wait to try this game competitively, co-op, and even solo!

Cooks & Crooks

Andres Novelo and Luis Munoz came together to create what feels like the board game version of Overcooked, if you were trying to screw your friends over instead of helping them. They even allude to drawing inspiration from a co-op video game on their Kickstarter page: 

The gameplay from Cooks & Crooks looks fairly straightforward, almost like Sushi Go!, and the art has a cheesy aesthetic that'll make you smile. The Kickstarter campaign runs until March 8, but the game reached its base goal in just seven hours when it launched earlier this month! The game is expected to release around August 2018, so get your frying pans ready for this "cooky" time.

Stuffed Fables

Stuffed Fables features stuffed animals as they go on an adventure to save the little girl who loves them, and it seems like a great option to play with children! Players will have to work together to achieve victory on a unique storybook game board. The miniatures in the game are even paintable, allowing for an even more rewarding experience. Check out the overview in the video below.

Plaid Hat Games has done it again! The creators of Summoner Wars (not the mobile game Summoners Wars), Ashes: Rise of the Phoenix, and the BioShock Infinite board game are tremendous at writing clear, concise rules that leave no room for confusion. The rule books often have plenty of FAQs with easy-to-understand answers, so you'll never be left on your own scouring the Internet for a solution to your peculiar question.

Stuffed Fables was released on Feb. 1, 2018.

Whether we're waiting for Season 3 of Pandemic Legacy, or trying to scrounge up some money for the hefty price of Kingdom Death: Monster when it's back in stock, or if we just need a break from video games, there are a ton of great board games coming out in 2018. We can't wait to try some of them. 

Let's be honest, you can only play Monopoly with your friends so many times before you're out of friends. 

Whether you're a hardcore gamer who only plays Euro-style games, or a more casual player who wants a few laughs, we've compiled a list of board games which should be able to satisfy most people. Without further adieu, here is our list of five board games (and one bonus video game) we can't wait to try in 2018.

It's more common than people would assume to laugh in uncomfortable situations. Laughing is a defense mechanism; according to the BBC, we laugh because we expect pain. So, please don't think something is wrong with you because you laughed when you shouldn't have (and please don't waste everyone's time by saying, "I'm such a freak," when you laugh because you're not and nobody cares). 

But what happens when everyone's laughing and no one can tell if the laughs stem from true humor or because they don't know what else to do?

That's how playing Asmadi Games's We Didn't Playtest This at All feels. 

As the title would suggest, this game is random, fast, and completely ridiculous. Everyone is dealt two cards, someone at random is selected to go first, and then they draw a card and pick between three cards what their action is going to be.

The objective is to win, and as soon as someone wins, everyone else loses. There are ways for players to lose one at a time, and there's even a card that says everyone who is still in play wins. 

There's a card that says, "If you play this card, you lose. No, really," and there's a card that allows someone to win immediately as long as everyone else playing is visibly wearing blue. 

Each round lasts about one to five minutes, so most of this game consists of playing again, and the cards are random enough to ensure that something different happens each time. 

Sounds fun, right? 

Honestly, it's hard to tell. Maybe if everyone was drunk, the rounds would last longer, and people would feel more of a sense of accomplishment when they won because it took so long to get there (as playing games with drunk people often entails being there for a long time). As it stands -- as a sober party game -- We Didn't Playtest This at All might not be as fun as the box makes it out to be (though the intrigue of the banana sets the bar high). 

Most people like to play games they have an opportunity to win. And though the objective of this game is to win, if someone can just draw a card that lets them win as long as they're a girl and everyone else playing is a boy, it takes out the competition and motivation to keep winning.

Doubtless as it may appear with some, people do like to work and feel a sense of accomplishment from their hard work paying off. 

And though the randomness of this game is appealing at first, the more times someone plays this game, the more they'll realize that their win relies on the luck of the draw. 

Since this game is entirely made up of playing over and over, the randomness stops being so random, and players start to wish that they had a drink in their hand so that something more exciting than rock-paper-scissors would happen. 

It's hard to say if We Didn't Playtest This at All is or isn't fun. People could be laughing because it's funny, or they could be laughing because the shock value of someone just losing because they said the word "you" threw them through a loop. 

And can a game really be fun if you don't know why you're laughing? 

Think back to your Red Dead Redemption days. You remember? Those blessed hours spent running through the countryside, shooting people and skinning animals? Of course you do. 

Just as I'm sure you remember the mind-numbing hours you spent playing the knife mini-game and gambling on liar's dice. Just one more time, one more time, and I'm sure you won't nick your finger this time, or lose all your money. 

But guys! Those are real games! You can play them in real life! (Proceed with caution for the knife one.)

And if you like them enough to play them in real life (seriously, dude, don't cut off all your fingers), then the fast-paced card game Coup is sure to fuel that gambling itch in your heart. 

Released by Lone Oak Games, Inc. in 2012, Coup takes place in a future where money rules the world and players try to screw people over to get more money. Each player has two "influences," or character cards, they hide from the other players. These influences give players special actions that they can use to access more money -- or, players can lie and say they have an influence that they actually don't have, and other players can gamble with their own influences by calling their bluff (meaning if one player calls another's bluff and the former is wrong, they lose one of their influences). As soon as someone loses both of their influences, they're forced into "exile" and have lost the game. 

Last man standing wins. 

Up to six people can play, and here's where having a large social circle works in your favor. This game takes up to 20 minutes tops to play, and that's only if you like to bicker and chuckle a lot with your cohorts. Seriously. If you play with two people, there's a winner in, like, two minutes -- if that. 

So if you want to play and have a fun time doing it, you're going to have to turn some acquaintances into friends as you lie to their faces and kill their influence. 

Because as much fun as having more people to play with is, bluffing is the real clincher for this game. Though it's easy to take your guaranteed one token, it's more fun to say you have a certain influence that allows you to grab three tokens -- and it's even more exciting when you know that someone risks losing their influence if they accuse you. 

Bluffing games aren't for everyone. It's easy to lie on Red Dead Redemption because your opponents are AI and they can't catch you on your tells. 

But if you have a lot of friends and enjoy telling silly little lies, pick up a copy of Coup for about 15 bucks. 

Of course, if you don't like the game, you can always try to avoid stabbing your hand with a knife (last time, I'm serious, don't play this game in real life unless you're not afraid). 

And that was out gift guide for Final Fantasy fans

Hopefully you found the perfect gift for the person your life who hasn't stopped playing Final Fantasy for the past 30 years. Whether it's in the form of a jewelry, upholstery, or tomfoolery. 

And if all else fails, just get them Kingdom Hearts which has a ton in common with FF, including a whole bunch of characters. 

Chocobo's Crystal Hunt

Price: $19.99

Buy It: Amazon

Why get another Monopoly set featuring beloved characters when you can get a whole new board game about them entirely? Like this chocobo board game, Chocobo's Crystal Hunt. You get to try to steal some crystals from the other chocobos before they get to yours first. Seems fun, cute, and competitive.

How great is that? Your very own Final Fantasy board game surrounding the cutest creatures around. Now if only Popocho could be there...

It's affordable too, so grab this game for a list price of $19.99 and go crazy.

A Final Fantasy Periodic Table 

Price: $6.99

Buy It: eBay

For the gamer who likes both Final Fantasy and paying attention in science class, get them this awesome silk poster depicting the periodic table as Final Fantasy characters. I don't know why this exists or why I haven't found it before, but it doesn't matter anymore -- I once was lost, but now I'm found. 

Display all your nerdy tendencies with this guy for a list price of $6.99.

Final Fantasy IX Playing Cards

Price: $27.00

Buy It: Etsy

You know what's just as fun as video games? Card games. And though you could settle with the old, bent cards you rummaged up from the bottom of your grandma's junk drawer, why not try something newer. Something fresher. Something fresh as heck, like these Final Fantasy IX playing cards. They're beautiful, they're $27.00, and they will be the talk of the party if you bust them out and make all your friends play Go Fish (because at least everyone knows how to play that game...).

Also if you think you've got what it takes to design your own Final Fantasy deck, head over to this website and go crazy. 

The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy Book 1

Price: $29.99

Buy It: Amazon

Don't try to look me in the face and say that you don't think the art in Final Fantasy is beautiful. Just try saying those words. I dare you. 

For the people in your life who enjoy looking at art outside of the video game, this art book is the perfect gift. It's like giving them an art gallery they don't have to go outside of their house to visit.

What's more, there's three of these bad boys. Get the bundle of all three for $76.68 or buy the first book in hardcover for a list price of $29.99. 

NES Entertainment Flask - Final Fantasy Edition

Price: $19.99

Buy It: Amazon

No, this is not an NES cartridge (though what kind of audacity would I have if I was like, "Oh, you're at a Final Fantasy gift guide? Here's 10 gifts. Number 1: Final Fantasy.")

This is actually a flask. Like, for drinking. Fun, right? There are a few parody titles to choose from, but this is the Final Fantasy—excuse me, Fine Ale Fantasy—though personally, I'd go for the Double Flagon one...

Pick your poison today for only $19.99.

White Mage Hand Warmers

Price: Your precious time.

Buy It: 8-bit Knits

Y'all like knitties?

Sorry -- sometimes when I get excited I start speaking in tongues. And discovering the knitting wonders of 8-bit Knits has got me very excited. Sometimes you just want to hand-make a present for someone, and there aren't always a lot of nerdy patterns readily available.

Thankfully, 8-bit Knits has created their own nerdy patterns -- like a Princess Leia buns hat or a Phoenix Wright hat -- and shared them with the world. And most of them are free, including this dope pattern for White Mage hand warmers.

So warm your best friend's hands this season with only the cost of yarn and your fortitude (too bad there's not a spell to increase patience).

The Great Ultros Off Kanagawa Throw Pillow

Price: $27.00

Buy It: Redbubble 

Maybe you like your video game merch to be subtle. I know I do. I love that rush when someone who doesn't play video games says, "This is cute", and you get to drop the, "Thanks, it's from a video game!" bomb. So let's get subtle with this mashup pillow of Ultros and the painting The Great Wave off Kanagawa. It wouldn't even matter if someone didn't know this was a Final Fantasy villain -- they'd just think it was a neat twist on the classic painting, and you'd get to sit on your couch in smug satisfaction just knowing what it really was.

You can buy the pillows in various square sizes ranging from 16 inches to 36 inches, with the choice of buying only a  cover or including a pillow.

Snag your 16" x 16" pillow (with insert) today for $27.00.

Cactuar Scarf

Price: $24.92

Buy It: Redbubble

Is there anything in this world that can keep a cold heart warm? Probably not. And I doubt this Cactuar scarf would suffice as it's more decorative than functional in cold weather, but hey -- it's super cute. So bundle up your bae's aesthetic this holiday season for only $24.92.

Maybe the thoughtfulness of the gift will warm something. 

NieR: Automata Red Agate & Onyx Bracelet

Price: $97.99

Buy It: Square Enix

If you're not frightened by expensive price tags, then venture your heart and wallet directly to the Final Fantasy source -- the Square Enix Store. You can find a lot of great merch there, such as items from NieR Automata. Or, more specifically, this red agate and onyx bracelet. Like, how cute is this?

However, the NieR products are only available for pre-order right now, with an unofficial release date of February 2018. So, in addition to the cash you're gonna have to drop for this gift, you'll also have to write a heartfelt "IOU" or a heartfelt "hope you can wait two months, lol."

Final Fantasy X - Yuna Pendant Necklace

Price: $47.50

Buy It: Etsy 

Sometimes when you wear the right necklace with the right outfit, it starts to feel like the planets have aligned and the sun's rays shine solely on your face. Just think of the power you could project if you paired a killer cosplay with the actual necklace the character wears.

So grab the necklace of Final Fantasy X's beloved Yuna, and finally know what it feels like to be the master of your own fate.

Alternatively, if you have a wallet bigger than a Titan, there's another Yuna necklace on the Square Enix website that you can purchase for $220.99.

It's a scary world out there. Just when you think you've got your bearings on all the monumental changes happening around you, suddenly something new happens, throwing you off balance once again.

Despite all the unpredictable changes that can happen at any given moment, at least there's one thing in this world that is inherent for everyone -- Final Fantasy. It's been there for as long as you can remember, and you can't recall a time when you've ever thought, man, sure wish Final Fantasy would just leave my life forever.

In fact, you want more Final Fantasy in your life, and what better way to do that than to give great gaming merch to friends and family! Maybe they're not prepared for the changes in their life either, so here's a way to give them another reminder of that constant presence in their life.

With these 12 excellent 2017 board and card games, you'd probably never run out of Saturday night gaming fodder. That being said, there were a whole lot more that released this year besides what we listed in the preceding slides!

There were several expansions for the various Fantasy Flight Cthulhu Mythos games, as well as plenty of other sci-fi, horror, and resource management board games.

What did you think of our picks for the best board games of 2017, and what titles did we miss that should have been included? Let us know in the comments below!

Santorini

Price: $49.99
Buy It On: Amazon
Number of Players: 2 - 4

This three-dimensional game can be for the whole family, but more of the strategy will be geared towards the adults. "Strategy" is the key word here, as each player races to build to the top of a tower while trying to hinder their opponents from doing the same. Each player has a unique way to break the rules a little, and things can get seriously competitive as the game progresses towards the end.

First Martians

Price: $49.99
Buy It On: Amazon
Number of Players: 1 - 4

This game definitely won't be for everyone (if you want fast-paced fantasy, look elsewhere), but if you liked the desert island survival scenarios of Robinson Crusoe, you'll know exactly what to expect from First Martians.

The point of the game is to survive the harsh Martian environment, with several different game modes available, including a linked campaign that must be tracked with a companion app.

Survival is key, with players deciding whether to take risky actions that could have good rewards or instead play it safe and conserve resources. Life on Mars is brutal, and so is this game!

5-Minute Dungeon

Price: $19.99
Buy It On: Amazon
Number of Players: 2 - 5

The title isn't being facetious -- there's a downloadable timer app for the game, so every game is actually five minutes.

It's a fast and fun game where you and a few companions try to tackle the dungeon boss within the time frame allotted. Things get frantic and frenzied as the timer ticks down and you work hard as a team to reach the end. 

Rick and Morty: Total Rickall Card Game

Price: $15.00
Buy It On: Amazon
Number of Players: 2 - 5

With far less complexity than many other games on this list, Total Rickall is a fun diversion to pull out every now and again between bigger games. Essentially, it's the episode of the same name from Rick And Morty, with the goal of figuring out who is real and who is an alien parasite.

You can get through a game in about 20 minutes, but since the parasites are randomized, it's worthwhile to play several times in a row. If you like a little more complexity, there's an advanced rule set that expands the game out to six players and has two people at the table take the role of secret parasites.

Dark Souls

Price: $120.00
Buy It On: Amazon
Number of Players: 1 - 4

This one was in limbo for a long time but finally saw official wide release in 2017. A devastatingly hard single-player experience like Dark Souls might seem like an odd game to translate into a co-operative multiplayer board game, but it works.

Like the video game, you've got to figure out the right attack patterns to use while trying to gain souls, and if you die, you respawn back at the bonfire. The flavor of the game is translated surprisingly well into the tabletop medium, and it really forces tactical cooperation between players.

Gloomhaven

Price: $219.99
Buy It On: Amazon
Number of Players: 1 - 4

There are times where it feels like board game designers are competing for who can build the most absurdly oversized box with the most game pieces. They can all stop trying now, because Gloomhaven wins.

This box weighs more than 20 pounds, and there's a whole lot of content to justify all that weight. What you have here is essentially a dungeon crawling game, but with a bunch of twists to keep players on their toes that will delight anyone used to the standard formula.

There's seriously more than 100 hours of play you can get out of Gloomhaven while the campaign unfolds, with each successive game building upon the last rather than everything resetting each time you play. Just make sure you've got the room to play and the time to paint the minis!

Gloom In Space

Price: $21.00
Buy It On: Amazon
Number of Players: 2 - 5

The original Gloom and its Cthulhu expansion let the goth gamers have fun killing off family members in horrible ways, and now you can die terribly in space as well!

Notice the red shirt on that character on the box? That's you -- a group of space explorers who aren't destined to live long while exploring the galaxy. Your job is to come up with hilariously entertaining stories of how your red shirts die while your opponents try to keep your hapless explorers alive and happy instead.

It's a race to the bottom, but with tribbles and alien princesses this time around instead of Poe and Lovecraft. For a fun game night with the adult friends, you can't go wrong with Gloom or its various spin offs.

Too Many Bones

Price: $124.95
Buy It On: Chip Theory Games
Number of Players: 1 - 4

If you haven't played a dice building game before, this is a crazy fun one to jump into with your friends. Rather than building decks of cards, you put together pools of dice, with 136 custom dice included in this game as your goblin-like gearlocs embark on misadventures. 

While it takes a bit of effort to learn, you can have a blast building up your dice pools for your gearloc character and taking on bigger challenges. If you can't get enough of this style, a successful Kickstarter campaign just wrapped up for follow-up game Undertow, which is slated to land next year.

Red Dragon Inn 6: Villains

Price: $39.95
Buy It On: Amazon
Number of Players: 2 - 4 (or up to 6 with the other base games and expansions)

It's sort of hard to believe just how many Red Dragon Inn base box sets and character expansion cards have come out at this point. That first game was an absolute breath of fresh air in the tabletop scene, and now years later, they are still just as fun.

Part 6 puts you in the role of the villains instead of the heroes, but don't worry, the base gameplay remains the same: buy drinks for your friends to make them pass out, gamble until you've won the whole treasure horde, and try to remain conscious long enough that the inn doesn't get all the gold!

Bears Vs. Babies

Price: $29.99
Buy It On: Amazon
Number of Players: 2 - 5

We all know that Cards Against Humanity set the gold standard for card games to keep adults interested while drinking around the gaming table, but it also gets old fairly quickly as the same card combos keep coming up.

That's where a host of other amusingly offensive card/board mashup games come in, offering a different take on the NSFW style with games like Joking Hazard or Exploding Kittens. From the fine folks at The Oatmeal behind Exploding Kittens now comes an even more baffling mashup: Bears Vs. Babies!

The goal here is to build horrifying monstrosities that can take on an army of evil killer babies, so basically, a good time will be had by all. Don't forget to pick up the NSFW expansion pack to add in all the jibbly bits and various other offensive cards that will make grandma blush.

Fallout

Price: $69.99 
Buy It On: Amazon
Number of Players: 1 - 4

Featuring scenarios based around both Fallout 3 and 4, Fantasy Flight is translating the beloved post-apocalyptic franchise to a tabletop setting for your gaming group. Players build their own survivors based around the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. ruleset we all know and love, then go out and explore the wasteland, with solo play possible.

This one is just now shipping to pre-order buyers after Thanksgiving, so all we have to judge at the moment is some unboxing videos and clips from people who played demos at Gen Con, but it looks to be very high quality. Expect this one to deliver the Fallout experience to your weekend gaming group, with all the free roaming and raider-slaying you could want.

Besides this entry from Fantasy Flight, board game developer Modiphus also has a totally different take on the tabletop Fallout experience coming next year under the title Fallout: Wasteland Warfare.

Le Neckbeard

Price: $20
Buy It On: Jason Anarchy Games
Number of Players: 2 - 4

A perfect card game for video gamers, Le Neckbeard is a wonderfully self-aware and hilariously NSFW game that celebrates (and skewers) the social awkwardness of the gaming crowd.

Your goal is to save some beautiful Waifus (from Japanese body pillows and booby mouse pads to the killer high school girl from Yandere Simulator) from the greasy hands of your rivals. Along the way, your neckbeard will have to summon sodas and deal with dreaded real-life responsibilities, like doing the laundry or talking to your actual girlfriend.

If your group can take a little good-natured self-criticism, they'll love this tongue-in-cheek game. Le Neckbeard was originally only available for Kickstarter backers, but a limited run of new decks is now up at the Jason Anarchy Games site.

There's only so many rounds of Elder Scrolls: Legends to play or so many Destiny 2 raids you can embark on before you have to actually sit face to face with your friends for a game night!

For the hardcore gamers, there's no shortage of epic board games that are every bit as fun as their digital counterparts, with some actually ending up considerably more in-depth than anything on console or PC.

If your group consists solely of adults, then all the better, because these games take strategy and frequently include themes that aren't for the little ones. Sadly, there was no new Drinking Quest entry this year, although new edition Liquor Before Honor will hit next summer (so keep your beer nice and cold while you wait).

The sting of that missing franchise can be soothed somewhat by the slew of high-quality games that landed in 2017, with 12 in particular that are well worth playing.

Although the focus is on "board" games, here we're going to go ahead and include card games as well, since the line between them frequently gets blurred, and some of the raunchiest fun for adult games will always come from the card-based entries.

Star Wars: Imperial Assault is a miniatures game that can be played as a fully fleshed-out campaign with up to four Rebel players and one Empire player or as a competitive scenario-based skirmish between two players.

Given its branching structure, the campaign can be drawn out or a bit of snowball -- even prematurely ending if both Empire and Rebels agree that one side has grown too strong. However, even players who haven't finished a full campaign will probably be well-acquainted with General Weiss and his personal AT-ST's Epic Arsenal, as there are several mission events that pull him dramatically into the story. 

Playing as the Imperial player for most of my campaigns, I've always felt that moments like those really made Rebel players feel that they were up against the most powerful military force in the galaxy. Sure, Stormtroopers, Imperial droids, and hired guns are great and all, but nothing says "Unlimited power!" like dropping a giant AT-ST figurine onto the table.

So Maybe It's Time to Hire New Engineers

On the other hand, General Weiss, or even just a regular AT-ST, is a pretty rare sight on a skirmish battlefield. And for a long while, there weren't any viable Vehicle deployment cards in Imperial Assault's skirmish mode.

To begin with, the AT-ST and General Weiss from the core game are grossly overpriced for skirmish, especially since you never get to deploy them for free, as you do in the campaign.

As impressive as their attack pools and surge abilities are, there's almost no attack that would be worth 14+ points if they only got to attack once each round. I've always thought this was a bit of a shame, as AT-STs are fairly iconic vehicles from the Star Wars franchise, and I actually think the two figures represent the mythos very well, point-cost notwithstanding.

But with the release of Return to Hoth, we were given the SC2-M Repulsor Tank. It was a start to in the right direction for that battlefield prowess and panache -- unfortunately, it wasn't any better when it came to point-cost.

If 14 points was an appropriate cost for the AT-ST, then 10 might have been fine for the Repulsor Tank. But like the AT-ST, the SC2-M struggles in comparison to other 14- and 10-point cards, respectively.

For 10 points, the tank is flimsy, and Focus Fire doesn't make up for the tank's middling attack pool and surges. The card could have benefited from a source of free movement points (like Captain Terro's Mounted ability), which would have allowed it to make use of Focus Fire more often. Superior mobility for the SC2-M would've also better fit the into Star Wars lore, given that it's supposed to be a scout tank.

Jetpacks as Vehicles? ... Close Enough

Ironically, the Empire's elite Jet Troopers were the first widely-played Vehicles in competitive Skirmish lists for Imperial players.

The eJet Troopers boast a fantastic statline for their cost, with the ability to soak two or even three hits and a triple-die attack pool. The real fun presented itself when these were paired with the Overrun command card -- and no other Vehicle will ever be able to abuse that card quite as well as these guys can.

But while the eJet Troopers may count as Vehicles and are loved by many Imperial players, I don't really think they qualify as the towering assault walkers that we've all been waiting for. They most certainly aren't AT-STs, and they most certainly don't carry the gravitas of Chicken Walkers, either. 

Smaller and Better

However, with the upcoming release of the Heart of the Empire expansion for Star Wars: Imperial Assault, we may finally be receiving a viable Imperial-style walker in the form of the AT-DP.

To be honest, when compared to the AT-ST, I'd give the AT-ST the edge in nearly every regard -- except for point cost. While the AT-ST might have a slightly better attack and a better defense, I'd say those advantages are worth two or three points at most -- certainly not six points.

However, one advantage that the AT-DP has over the AT-ST is its Assault ability. While I don't hold Assault in particularly high regard, I think that it's a pretty great interpretation of the AT-DP's ability to rain death far and wide. Where the AT-ST was able to surge for area-of-effect blast damage, the AT-DP has the capacity to attack multiple targets in one turn, and at a nearly identical range.

The AT-DPs Charge Generators are what keep its attack damage on par with the AT-STs blue-red-red die pool. The ability also makes up for the lack of a Targeting Computer, and I think that it's a really cool way to represent the wear and tear of battle, which is something we've never to seen in Imperial Assault (or really most games, for that matter).

For 9 points, I think the AT-DP will serve as the back-line artillery that the AT-ST was meant to be for your Imperial armies. It will be the tank piece that rounds out Skirmishes and brings Imperial Assault more in line with the great battles we've seen portrayed in the Star Wars universe. Essentially, this is the tank you're looking for. 

So, for all of the players who've been waiting for a massive assault walker to round out their Skirmish lists, the Heart of the Empire expansion probably can't come soon enough.

Rob Daviau is a tabletop game designer responsible for some fairly well-known board games. You might be familiar with his haunted-house twist on cooperative games, Betrayal at House on the Hill, or his contributions to the miniature-based war game Heroscape. But far and away, his most well-known achievement is the Legacy system.

So far consisting of Risk Legacy, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, and SeaFall, the system boils down to a basic principle -- after a game is completed, it doesn't fully reset. Instead, elements of previous games carry over to future sessions in the form of stickers you place on the board, secret compartments within the box that contain new mechanics that open when certain criteria is met, and even ripping up cards. It can be difficult to have a continuous campaign, as it more or less requires a consistent gaming group, but if you're able to pull it off, it can make for some really unique fun.

Daviau currently has numerous new games in the works, including a sequel to Pandemic Legacy, and he was able to find time in his schedule to let us ask him a few questions.

GameSkinny: Do you remember how you first had the idea for Legacy?

Rob Daviau: (laughs) Yeah, I get asked this a lot. The short version is that it was just a brainstorm at Hasbro about Clue, and it was a combination of a joke that I made, about how they shouldn't keep inviting these people over to dinner because they keep murdering people -- along with sometime in the same hour -- and I don't remember exactly when we were brainstorming and I was looking at assumptions that games have, and how to turn them on their head. And I said, "What if the game didn't fully start over each time? What if it had some sort of memory of what happened before?" And in some sort of combination between that joke and that comment, we came up with the idea.

GS: So objectively, your most popular game is Pandemic Legacy: Season 1. It's been sitting at #1 on BoardGameGeek for what feels like ages at this point.

RD: Yeah, a year and a half. Which is a short run to be at #1 there. So we'll see how long it lasts.

GS: I believe Season 2 has been coming along in the background, and so, without giving away spoilers for those who haven't had a chance to play through the first one, what has it been like to work on what's essentially a sequel to a board game? And will there be options to have experiences with the first game carry over to the new one?

RD: So I finished Season 2 about a year ago. So it has been translated into different languages during that time, proper art [has been] done, production, manufacturing... Because of the success of Season 1, it had a big production run here, which is great, but it's just took a long time to get all the games because I wanted them to come out at the same time, because Legacy games can be, or have spoilers... They didn't want to do some here, some there, you know, trickle in.

I started the sequel before the first one came out. The game was going to come out in October of 2015, and we started Season 2 at the beginning, or April, of 2015. So there's this weird cycle of starting before the other one comes out.

So the good news is we had no idea how successful it was going to be, so we weren't sort of constrained or crippled or otherwise affected by its success when we started Season 2. And in many ways it was great because we had tried to figure out in Season 1, how a Legacy game would work as a cooperative game, and how it would work specifically in Pandemic, and we had already done a lot of that work and didn't have to reinvent the wheel there. What we did have to do is say, okay, we did all these cool things in Season 1; how do we not just do the same thing again in Season 2? So it was like pushing ourselves to come up with whole new ideas.

In answer to the second part of your question, there is no mechanical connection between Season 1 and Season 2. Season 2 takes place 71 years into the future. Because of the different end states of Season 1, and we didn't know at the time how many people would finish on a high note or a low note, there's a lot of variables about how a player's world can look at the end of Season 1. And so we made the decision to just move it -- sort of reunite the timelines, I guess. By moving it 71 years into the future you can say, okay, these people did these things, but -- and I'm not gonna spoil it -- then something else happened, and then you all sort of ended up in the same place.

And I know that's a disappointment to some people who wanted it to fully connect, but we were trying to figure out -- the variable end states would have left dozens, if not hundreds, of places we would have to pick up from and all have it work, and that was a bit of a difficult matrix.

GS: Yeah, makes sense. Is there any idea of a tentative release window, or is it still too early to tell?

RD: It's going to be in the fall. The reason -- and I keep meaning to email and ask if they have a specific date yet, at least behind the scenes -- because the game has all sorts of complexity with scratch-off materials and stickers and scoring and collation and pack-out, and because of the high print volume, they really didn't know how long it was going to take to do it. And so if they said, okay, it's going to be, make up a term, August 31, and then there's 10 days of delays in production because some glue isn't drying because of the humidity in China, that presents a huge problem. So I think they're waiting for the games to be done and on a ship and maybe even cleared customs in all countries before they turn around and say, okay -- so it's gonna be a pretty short window. I think they're gonna say, like, one month from now or three weeks from now, when that comes. I would expect it to be -- they've said fall, so my mind's September, October timeframe.

GS: The Legacy system has been pretty successful, to the extent that other designers have also tried their hands at making Legacy games with that system. Do you have any thoughts on that?

RD: Well, it's flattering. There have been a number of games that have [been] very close cousins to what I'm doing, which is the nature of things. Like, "I like it but I want to do it my way." So you have a game like [Fabled] Fruit, which is a card game that picks up where you left off, but there's nothing permanent. You could always start over. You have games like Gloomhaven, which has been wildly successful, which has Legacy campaign elements, but in a very different way than what I'm doing. It's much lighter, the Legacy elements. There is a Netrunner campaign game, I think, that has some stickers and rule changes, but I don't play Netrunner, so I haven't played that game. If there's others I'm missing, I would like to know because I'd like to sit down and play -- I mean there's the Escape Room games that have all come out this year that I know are inspired by escape rooms, but also are sort of one-time consumable puzzle games, so maybe were inspired by Legacy as well, hard to say. But I haven't played one that's sort of really close to the types of things I've been designing. But I'm hoping to.

GS: Well, my next question was going to be if there were any favorites that weren't made by you, but you kind of answered that I guess.

RD: Well, I'm looking for one where people come out and say, 'This is something Legacy', like 80% of what I did. I feel like the other ones are more like 40%, so they're cool. T.I.M.E Stories kind of did the same thing but it's a little different. It's fun to sort of have these one-off experiences in games, where the designers can make them-- they can control the experience more, because they don't have to deal with infinite replayability.

GS: Looking back at your three big Legacy titles -- Risk, Pandemic, and SeaFall last year -- what are some ideas that you hit on that you think have worked especially well? And is there anything you wish you'd done differently?

RD: There's a couple things in all of those games that I would do differently, to various degrees. Well, maybe not Risk, interestingly enough, just because it was the first one and so it was just a crazy mishmash of ideas. There's some little things, I feel like there's a couple rules that weren't that great, I would change what I call the triggers to two of the envelopes to open in a different order. Like, I really want this to open before this one most of the time.

Pandemic, Matt [Leacock] and I messed up both conceptually and executionally something -- when you're about 2/3 of the way through the game, if you're sort of falling behind and we want to get you back on track, we have a little way to do [that] ,so that's sort of clumsy in concept and clumsy in execution, that justifiably we get some criticism for. Also we did some weird numbering mistakes. Like we have the big packages that you open, and there's eight of them numbered one to eight. And then the dossier doors also start over at one to eight, so you don't necessarily know which number to open. In Season 2, the packages are one to eight, and then the dossier starts with 10. There's no duplication of numbers.

SeaFall I really like, but the feedback has been that it needed another round of development. I think it had taken so long that the publisher and myself were -- I was done. I couldn't figure out any way to do anything new with it and I thought it was perfect. The publisher knew I wanted it out the door and they just kind of put it out the door, and I think looking back now, I can certainly say, 'Oh, I wish that one of us had said hold on, give us six months to play it and chop it and make some edits on it.' So that one was so big and so sprawling and I was trying to grow a business at the same time that it both consumed my time and didn't have enough time, ironically. So, you know, there's always things in games I've worked on that once they're out and you get feedback or you just get some time on it, you say, oh, okay, I could have done that differently. I think that's just the nature of it.

GS: And things that you think worked especially well?

RD: Well, the whole concept of permanently making change and having a campaign, the very conceit itself seems to have struck a chord. Which was a complete shock to me when Risk came out. Like, I thought there would be a few really crazy role playing gamers or something who would get into it.

I think the story we ended up putting in Pandemic Legacy resonated with people, which is interesting because it takes place over the course of something like 18 cards. There's very little that we tell you about the story, and it's just interesting how people put together the story. There's a hidden packet in Risk Legacy that I still continue to enjoy, and that was so whimsical that I don't know when or if I'll ever do that again. There's something that people who get like 2/3 of the way through SeaFall and open a packet -- there's a little trick in there that I also particularly like that I'm being coy about, that I think is great and fits narratively and people have really had sort of a jaw-dropping moment for it.

So yeah, it's weird. Some of the things that I think of for Legacy games are not necessarily just game design ideas but experience ideas, almost like magic tricks. What if we hid something? What if we hid something in plain sight? These sorts of things. I'm happy to be able to think that way when thinking about a game.

GS: What do you see as the future of the Legacy system? Do you see a sort of future or a way you want to evolve it?

RD: I don't know. I mean, they take a lot of time. And I'm working on a number right now, but in my head, I'm not gonna take on too many more right now, because I would love to work on some things that are a little smaller and a little easier. And I suspect like any trend in gaming, books, music, food, that people will be like, 'Okay, I've had enough of that, now I want this over here'. And so I don't think it'll go away. I think it'll have its little curve and go down, like deckbuilders or something. I don't think it's gonna be the type of thing that's all I'm making, where I'm making three a year for the next 10 years. I'd be surprised if that happened. If that happens, great, but that would be surprising.

GS: Before we wrap up, next month, you're dipping into Lovecraft a bit with the release of Mountains of Madness. From the premise, it almost sounds like a sort of Betrayal at House on the Hill setup, where it starts out fully cooperative, but your teammates slowly get crazier and crazier as you progress. Can you speak to any similarities or differences between the two?

RD: Well, there are more differences than similarities, and that's one of the interesting things about this. No one becomes a traitor in this game, and there's no hidden traitor. The game is entirely cooperative, but the players, all of them in various ways, become more and more inefficient at being cooperative due to their madnesses that they get. At its heart, it's a communication game. I used to call it a party game but that's not quite an accurate term.

Really, the heart of the game is all players have 30 seconds on a sand timer to communicate what they're going to do as a group, what cards they're going to play to deal with things, which is interesting. Some people just mess that up right out of the gate. Like, very simply, there's a sand timer and they just panic. Because when the timer goes off you can't talk about or clarify any plans, you just have to play the card or cards or don't play the cards you think everyone agreed to. And then what happens is as you both succeed and fail, because it's a Lovecraft thing, you get more and more restrictions on what you can communicate. So you might have a madness that you can only communicate with the player on your right. You do not talk to anyone else, you do not listen to anyone else, you do not hear anyone else. You start putting four people around a table, each with these various conflicting madnesses, and it becomes a real challenge to communicate effectively.

GS: So you're challenging another board game preconception -- that players will always be able to talk at will with each other.

RD: Yeah, a little bit, but this is the reason I called it a party game. Most party games do something about communication restriction. Pictionary, you can only draw. Charades you can't talk at all. Codenames, you can only say one word and one number. So a big part of party games is restricting communication and trying to get people to understand things without the use of just being able to say it. So in some ways, this hits that party game genre, but it's not a party game, like it's not a wacky social game, right? Like, there's strategy and you have to figure out when you're gonna spend some certain chips and where you're gonna go.

GS: Lastly, anything else you want to say to get people hyped for the game?

RD: It's different. Like, it's interesting, I enjoy Cthulhu, but I'm not super into the mythos. I appreciate it for what it is and I find that there's a lot of Cthulhu games that really speak to the people who know the world, and I've tried to make a game that was just more accessible that happened to be a Lovecraft-Cthulhu theme. You don't have to know all the lore and the creatures and the words and the backgrounds -- essentially, it's just an interesting communication challenge. So I think it's a Cthulhu game for people who have been daunted by Cthulhu.

A big thank you to Rob for taking the time to answer my questions!

Here's a link to Rob Daviau's website. You can also check out his page on BoardGameGeek, or follow him on Twitter.

Board games have been a great past time for years gone by. Since their conception, they have always stuck to three main principles -- strategy, luck or diplomacy, with a combination of the three sometimes appearing. The experiences range from role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons to guessing games like Pictionary, and even physical skill on the odd occasion like Jenga. Fandom for these types of games has soared since the late 1990s with forums, documentaries and even cafes jumping in on the action.

As the digital world continues to make its mark on the world, board game makers have caught wind of this and brought many of their creations into the mobile gaming realm. With that in mind, here are some of the best mobile board games for Android users if you're after some classic board game action.

1. Elder Sign: Omens

Based on the celebrated Elder Sign board games, the Android version allows up to four players to prevent a series of monsters called the Ancient Ones from erecting the demon god, Azathoth by finding long-lost relics. This version adds to the original charm of the card-and-dice game by incorporating a detailed interface and streamlining its card effects. It also adds an inventory system so that players can enjoy hours upon hours of the otherworldly gameplay.

Buy Elder Sign: Omens on Google Play

2. Catan

Based on the ever-popular Settlers of Catan, Catan allows up to four players to create multiple settlements and roads, as well as possess large armies, all while bartering with rivals for precious resources. The mobile version is also host to an online multi-player function that provides an element of competition with fellow Catanians in the quest to be Lord of Catan.

Buy Catan on Goggle Play

3. Carcassone

This mobile version of the beloved board game uses the tiles of the original for the game's main aim, which is to collect the most points by way of land and followers. Mobile Carcassone allows online gameplay for up to six players or AI interaction for a highly enjoyable game night of fast-paced fun.

Buy Carcassonne on Google Play

4. Suburbia

Another tile-based board game, Suburbia thrives on collecting buildings like stores, museums and of course suburbs. The aim is simple: build to your heart's content and fill your town with as many people as possible. This particular version allows AI interaction and online multi-player alongside a single player mode for endless gameplay. SimCity fans will not be disappointed.  

Buy Suburbia on Google Play

5. Galaxy Trucker

Like the original board game, Galaxy Trucker lets the player build a ship in real time so they can deliver goods across the galaxy in the fastest possible time against their opponents. The mobile version breaks this down into the two simple steps of ship building and space travel, which are then put to use in the single player campaign or multi-player modes. Aspirational truckers who have always wanted to travel to space, look no further.

Buy Galaxy Trucker on Google Play

6. Pandemic: The Board Game

This co-operative board-turned-mobile game allows up to four players to work together in order to save mankind from four simultaneous outbreaks. With an 'undo' system, easy interface, single player modes and pass-and-play multiplayer, the mobile version adds a new dimension to this classic game for intense, but friendly gameplay.

Buy Pandemic: The Board Game on Google Play

7. Ticket to Ride

The mobile adaption of the acclaimed board game follows the original concept of claiming railways to various cities on a cross-country trip. However, it also expands on this by incorporating notes from the conductor, cross-play with other tablets and phones, pass-and-play multi-player, AI interaction and multiple country expansions. All of this culminates into endless railway antics for any player who wants to unleash their inner train conductor.

Buy Ticket to Ride on Google Play

8. Neuroshima Hex!

Acting as the mobile spin-off of the celebrated Polish board game, Neuroshima Hex! allows as many as four players (human or AI) to lead armies in a game of tact in the war against machines.  This version has the potential to provide many hours of gameplay with its easy interface, multiplayer and single player modes, and elevated levels of difficulty for those who want an extra dose of challenge in their mobile gaming.

Buy Neuroshima Hex on Google Play

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Looking at this list should give Android users hope that more and more physical board games venture over to the mobile arena. Many assets and aspects of board games seem to effortlessly transfer to digital platforms (whether it be multi-player functions or world building), so as the future and past continue to merge, players may soon have all of their board game favourites at the tip of their fingers. 

Have you tried out any of the games in our list? Do you have any other recommendations? Let us know in the comments below!

Today, Hasbro will be launching its first-ever subscription service, known as the “Hasbro Gaming Crate”. A first for the board and party game industry. This service will include access to new and exclusive games that can be delivered straight to your home, every three months, for a price of $49.99 per crate.

The subscription window for the current series of crates will run from now until the early fall. Each crate will include three games, along with related products that follow the specific crate's theme. Hasbro will offer two distinct crate varieties:

• The Party Crate: Catered towards parents, college students, and young adults in general with adult themed games ranging from: Judgemental, Box of Rocks, and Speak Out: Joe Santagato Edition.
• The Family Crate: Geared towards families with children, but with games designed still in mind for all age groups with titles like: Mask of the Pharaoh, Leo Goes to the Barber, and Tricky Wishes.

To pick either of these boxes up for yourself or a family member, you can check out Hasbro's official website for more information.

Will you be checking out Hasbro's new subscription service or game offerings? If so, let us know in the comments. And for everything board and party game related, stay tuned to GameSkinny!

When I first saw this game, I had to ask myself "What kind of insane board meeting happened to let this thing come to life?" with a sort of bemusement. Fantasy Flight Games, the producer of many Star Wars and Warhammer board games, is not known for quick cash-grabs. They produce high-quality content, there's a lot of thought that goes into their games, and they're a big part of the reason we're going through a sort of board game renaissance these days.

Gears of War is known for tight, cover based shooting, with tension and stress behind each movement as you out-flank and out-play your foes. Its campaign missions are intense, demanding your focus for the entire length of a stage. Even on the easier difficulties, it's rare for you to be given a chance to "stop caring and run forward". How do you convert all of this to a medium that is generally turn-based while still including the core Gears of War gameplay?

Well. Gears of War: The Board Game does it perfectly. I'm still somewhat in disbelief over it.

How Gears of War: The Board Game Plays

We'll start with the basics. It's a one-to-four player co-operative game, meaning you can sling it with up to three mates, or go it alone. You choose from the four primary COGs of the original trilogy -- Marcus, Dom, Cole, and Baird, each with a small ability that gives them a slight edge at particular strategies.

You choose your mission -- the campaign-style format meaning you should probably start with mission one if it's your first show -- but the lack of a heavy story means you can tackle them how you please. You set up your map from various cardboard components, giving each level a unique layout before you get going.

This technically is in the 'dungeon crawler' category of board games, but it avoids the trappings of the genre that require a lot of bookkeeping. How much health and ammo you have, how many more shots that grub needs to go down, what special abilities you have, and much more are condensed and refined to keep the game's pacing tight.

Your guns can essentially shoot forever unless it's a special weapon like the boomer. However, you can spend ammunition tokens to get more powerful attacks, with the risk being that once you run out of ammo, that gun is useless to you unless you find more.

Enemies simply have three states of health: full, wounded, and dead. Each state has a target number you need to hit with your attacks for enemies to die, any amount of damage bringing them to the wounded state, which makes eliminating them slightly easier. This means teamwork will preserve ammo and take out enemies before they can even get an attack off. The sheer thematic perfection of the game is what gets me going, and it's mechanically efficient, too.

Your health is represented by your hand of cards and your orders. These let you perform special maneuvers. However, when you spend them you no longer have them as health, and you don't recover it very quickly! Getting behind cover and waiting out the action is the way to recover, again, and it's incredibly similar to how the video game plays. It's bloody genius, and I love it.

And if you go down, you're not out -- you're crawling on the ground until a teammate can get to you, pick you up, and get you an order card back in your hand.

Even the enemies are great. You've got your basics: grubs, grenadier -- "theron guaaards" to quote Baird -- and they all have unique mechanics. But then you get the crazy stuff, like berserkers, who, similar to their video game counterparts, can't truly be harmed without the hammer of dawn. They're blind, but move closer to player characters every time they make an attack option, ready to pummel you into the dirt if you're unlucky enough for them to actually hit you.

The components of this game are gorgeous, too, with highly rendered miniatures that evoke the setting. Each is ready to be painted, though they're color coded with red for player characters and gray for enemies if you're busting out the acrylics.

The tiles used to construct your mission layout are evocatively illustrated, divided into sections that dictate your line of sight in a very simple, clear-cut manner. It even provides cover points for you to slip in and out of that give you a defensive bonus against enemies -- or them one against you.

There Are, However, a Few Flaws

This wouldn't be a fair review without pointing out some flaws. The game can run a little bit long sometimes, expect to spend at least an hour, and can get a little bit dull when players run out of ammunition and are just firing pistol shots. A lot of work can go into a failed mission, dice rolls can be cruel, and if you're not the type to accept that as part of a challenging game, this might not be for you.

And while technically the board game contains no gore or blood, it is based off a M-rated product, which you should keep in mind before giving it to teenagers. However, if you can get past those flaws, it's an absolutely beautiful product.

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Gears of War: The Board Game might be a bit of an older game, but I'm calling it out for you primarily because it's such an amazing example of design. And if you missed out on it, you'd really do yourself a service to try and find a copy. It's incredible fun for a group of competitive players, challenging enough where you're not guaranteed to win every mission if you don't play optimally. There are moments where the whole team is cheering good shots, sighing with relief over enemies missing, and panicking as that berserker draws closer and closer.

It's hard to snag a copy these days, but keep an eye out for it. You never know where out-of-print board games will show up.

Deadly Premonition, the flawed but amusing quirky cult classic from Japanese developer Swery, has been re-imagined as a 2-4 player board game on Kickstarter. Not only has it been fully funded, but it has reached over double its funding target in less than a week, and is still going strong.

At time of writing, the game has been on Kickstarter for less than seven days, and has amassed over $113,000 -- far surpassing its initial goal of $50,000. The game also apparently reached its target goal in only 8 hours. 

Deadly Premonition: The Board Game seeks to translate the intrigue and detective skills portrayed in the original Deadly Premonition into a strategy card game of sorts. You must apply the appropriate strategy in order to discover the accomplice to the killer of Anna Graham.

In the words of the game's creators from the Kickstarter page:

"You have each been assigned a line-up of six townsfolk to investigate. Your suspects begin in the “incriminated” row until you provide evidence that they should be presumed innocent. Once all your suspects have been cleared of guilt and you have proven yourself to be a trusted detective, you can begin to go on the offence to identify which player is the hidden killer by extracting information from incriminated suspects on their board. Correctly identifying an accomplice of the hidden killer wins you the game!"

These mechanics explained within the Kickstarter paint Deadly Premonition: The Board Game as a murder-mystery that plays somewhat like a cross between Guess Who? and Secret Hitler.  

You can watch the extended campaign video for the board game in the video above in order to learn a bit more about its rules and find out about its creators. But if you just want to skip that step and get straight to the good stuff, then you can check out the official Kickstarter page.

Rio Grande Games' popular card-based board game, Race For the Galaxy, is now available on mobile phones. And like dedicated gamers are wont to do, players are looking for advice on how to play more effectively.  Here are some insightful tips which can help you enhance your play and advance your empire.

How to Advance Your Empire in Race for the Galaxy

Plan Things Out

It's better to have a bad plan than no plan at all. Playing random cards and hoping for the best won't get you anywhere without help from other players. Instead, try to be flexible and adapt to the cards you draw. This provides a much better alternative to just waiting to draw the cards you need to execute a specific plan, which could cause you to lose before you even realize it.

The Goal is to Win, Not to Follow a Strategy Perfectly

The game gives you some advice when it comes to using different strategies, and most of the time following this advice will help you -- in addition to helping you eliminate the lesser options. But you may have to adapt your strategies to different situations and change things up a bit to decide what you feel might be the right move. It's always good to evaluate your options and consider the different possible outcomes when deciding what to do.

Separate Cards as Play and Consume/Trade

Play cards will be those you plan to use, while consume/trade cards are those you don't need or don't really help you much.  Consume/trade cards can help you later on when you may need a more expensive card to help get you out of a tight spot.

As much as having play cards will help you, you should only have about two or three at a time. It's more beneficial to play a helpful card and save a few to play later than it is to keep 5 cards for a future plan which may not even work out depending on what happens. Playing an expensive card which ends up hurting you in the end rather than helping is the worst possible outcome. But as long as you can adapt and analyze future possible outcomes, you should still be fine.

Have Patience -- Plans Will Take Time to Execute

In the beginning of each game, you should be playing cards to set up your position. It may be a bit different from what you might have originally been planning, but it will help you get card flow earlier. If the cards you need for your plan to be successful are expensive, it's safe to assume you'll need more cards to consume/trade in order to obtain and play them.

Getting an Explores or Windfall Worlds card to consume/trade early on can be helpful. After consuming/trading some unneeded cards a few times, you should have at least a few cards you can play quickly -- especially if you need to catch up with your opponent. At this point it should also be easier to generate cards when using a Consume or Produce strategy, or using Military or Develop strategies, which require less card flow.

Consider Different Options and Don't Just Focus on One

Focusing on a strategy which does one thing well -- like getting a high military score or getting all of the Develop boost cards -- can be an appealing method. But beware: it tends to produce unalterable results, which can make it easier for your opponent to create plans based around your strategy and predict your next possible move.

It's better to have a mix of different strategies and keep your opponent guessing, rather than focusing on one solid (yet predictable) strategy. Having a more flexible strategy helps make it easier to adapt to different situations and can help you recover quicker, since being more flexible will give you more options rather than having to wait things out for a single specific card.

A Bad Hand Is Usually Better Than an Empty Hand

Even if you don't have the best hand, you still may have something you can play which may help you in the future. With an outright empty hand, you'll have to focus on regaining your hand while your opponent gets the upper hand. 

If you still have cards in your hand, however, you can use Explore for something that will help you, and at the very least put up a front of working toward something significant (even if that's not the reality). You could also put up a facade to mess with your opponent so they either think you have a plan when you don't, or they believe your plan is different from what it actually is.

Although having an empty hand is bad, there still may be a situation which calls for it. When this happens, make sure you have a way to refill it quickly; within a round at most. Otherwise it could cost you the game.

Be Ready For Anything

It's not a bad idea to have a Development and a World card available when possible. You can structure the cards you save around this, and from there you can develop a more intricate strategy.  If another player chooses to consume and the move would take away a card you need to trade , then consider Consume/Trade as your action choice that round as well. You might have something taken away -- but you also have the chance to get something else good or maybe even better.

We hope these tips helped. What strategies do you like best? Let us know in the comments!

The Fallout series has taken the RPG world by storm on PC, consoles, and even on mobile. Now Bethesda is bringing the series to yet another medium by partnering with Modiphius Entertainment to create Fallout: Wasteland Warfare -- a tabletop game. 

In a teaser shared via Facebook, Modiphius Entertainment showed off some new miniatures we can expect in the game -- including Deathclaws, Nuka Cola machines, and even the T-60 power armor from Fallout 4. The picture is accompanied with by this caption:

"Fallout: Wasteland Warfare - command a crew of detailed 32mm scale minis through PvP, co-op & solo tabletop missions."

There is little other detail on Wasteland Warfare aside from the image and caption. We can assume that staple characters and beasts from the series will be included, but it is still unclear what exactly we can expect.

Modiphius Entertainment has used Kickstarter in the past to elevate their games to success, but at this early stage we have no idea whether they will take this route or move the game straight to retail. 

In the meantime, a new website for Wasteland Warfare has been created while we wait for word on an official release date and other info.

Are you excited about this new way to experience Fallout? Are you eager to try it out? Les us know in the comments!

You're not alone if you've been getting the "Text Not Found" error in Pokemon Duel. With so many people hopping on the game's fresh servers, there are bound to be issues. And this is the biggest one.

Those of you who played Pokemon Go at release may remember the terrible amount of technical issues with the game around release, almost all of them serverside due to heavy load. This appears to be what's happening with Pokemon Duel as well, which shouldn't be a surprise considering Pokemon is one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world.

The "Text Not Found" error indicates a server-side issue and appears to be related to server-side maintenance. There is nothing wrong with your game if you are getting the "Text Not Found" error. There is no fix just yet.

Pokemon Duel had some time to float around the Japanese Google Play and iTunes through last year before we even got Pokemon Go, and this international release has been launched in 64 countries at a time -- which means the game's servers are under some serious load.

Freezing and crashing, oh my!

Another issue that those who gave Pokemon Go within the first few months are the freezes. Like Go, Pokemon Duel freezes occasionally. With the former that meant losing Pokemon you were trying to catch, with the latter it means you either have to wait for the game to unfreeze itself or restart the app.

Many players are also seeing the game fail to launch. Some may argue this is worse than the game freezing, but I disagree -- when it freezes, you lose progress. When you can't launch the game at all, at least you're not losing anything.

Some players have been reinstalling the game after several failures to load. This seems like a good idea in concept, but the official Twitter recommends players not uninstall the game as their data will be difficult to recover later.

It seems waiting out the issues is the best course of action. Pokemon Duel is out to a rocky start but considering the tenacity and size of the Pokemon fanbase and interested parties, much like Pokemon Go even after the fad ended, Duel will live on even past the initial interest boom. You've just got to wait it out.