Arborea is a fantastic explosion of colour, intricate detail and a devilish knot of strategy.  There is a lot going on, a lot for your eyes to take in and a lot to think about, but once you pare it all back, the premise of the game is straightforward, it’s a worker placement game, after all, so your turn comes down to placing a worker, activating workers and clearing down your turn.  Keep these three things held firmly in your mind and you will make it through this game.

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This article is here to help you buy an awesome board game-related gift for your friend, colleague or loved one.  If you are new to the hobby of tabletop gaming, or just looking to buy a gift for someone that is, we here at Polyhedron Collider, are going to help you out.

We’ll have suggestions for various budgets and we’ll try to cover all corners of tabletop gaming.  However, we won’t be making suggestions to go and buy the latest and hottest game as buying games themselves for someone else can be quite delicate and can be highly subjective.  Instead, the aim here is to suggest tabletop game adjacent products that will enhance and complement a current collection.

Important to mention that we are not affiliated with any of the companies listed here.  Polyhedron Collider has not and will not receive anything should you choose to follow any of these suggestions or links.  Everything listed here is based on our own experience and personal wish lists. 

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Bonfire is a game that gives you options with a side of options.  It’s a game where you have to meticulously plan your turns well in advance, you have to consider not only what actions you need to take to realise your plan, you have to plan how you are going to get the actions in the first place.  There are lots of moving pieces, and although the theme is almost transparent, everything just seems to click and come together seamlessly.

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Don’t be misled by the bright and vibrant art in this game.  Don’t let the cute dice with bees on or the colourful wooden bits distract you.  This game may look light and cheerful, but it is not, the simple rules of this dice placement game quickly build within a few turns you will feel the full weight of each of your decisions.

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Simply put, Finishing Touches gives you more Canvas.  All the things that are good about Canvas, well, there’s more of that stuff in this expansion too.  It’s the second expansion for the rather innovative game of creating works of art one layer at a time.  That cool innovative stuff has already happened, it’s already there in the DNA of this game and this expansion isn’t trying to add any more.  What Finishing Touches is doing is building on that foundation and giving you some more stuff that you enjoy when you play.

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As far as board game themes go, it is pretty niche, Age of Comics: The Golden Years is about the comic book publishing industry of the 1940s.  So, chances are if you’re reading this, it’s because you like the idea of a board game about comic books (of which there are frighteningly few) and you want some validation that you’ve made a good purchase or you need to be tipped off the fence.  

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The latest episode of board game chat has a distinctly Royal theme, as we talk Kings of Ruin (not Kings of Leon), Kingdom Come Deliverance, and The King’s Dilemma. We also talk about Bonfire but couldn’t stretch the royal analogy far enough.

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This two-player market manipulation game is all about weighing what you can gain against what you are going to lose.  In this game about two rival merchant guilds duking it out for dominance along the bank of the Nile players will have to try and plan, will have to make the best of a bad situation and try and get the timing of every sale just right to reign supreme.

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It has been said (I’m sure) that games are an attempt to simulate and distil life, therefore, the closer a game comes to encapsulating the essence of that activity i.e. farming or building a rail network, the better the game is.  By this measure, Decorum it could be argued is hands down the best game ever made.  The problem is, trying to agree on how to decorate your house with your significant other is something I don’t want to do in real life, let alone in a game.

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Full to the brim with haggis and Irn Bru, the boys return from their adventures North of the Wall. Sid and Andy recount their gaming at Tabletop Scotland, while Rory takes us through current Kickstart Rise and Fall. We then dip into the mailbag to answer questions about long games and our biggest gaming regrets.

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Rise & Fall is a great big open world civ building game, with light rules but with a great deal of intricacy.  The game starts with literally building the unique world in which you'll play, its a game about creativity: create the world, create your empire, and don't mess it up!

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Uluk is like a cake.  Like a birthday cake or something like that.  A good quality sponge with some jam and cream slapped on top, followed by another layer of sponge, then all dressed in icing or buttercream and covered in chocolate or sparkles etc.  This may sound like an odd analogy, but in a game about harvesting ingredients and making meals it's quite apt and will hopefully make sense as you read on.

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The News Collider is back again!  Brimming full of the latest and greatest bits of board gaming news from around the table top gaming community....but mainly about Gen Con.  And the awards dished out at Gen Con.  And some of the unpleasantness that happen just before Gen Con.

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Back from a short hiatus due to bugger all board game news and a bout of COVID, but it’s here the latest and greatest bits of board gaming news from around the table top gaming community.

In this week’s News Collider we learn about the board games based on the very popular mobile game; Worlde, a new Stranger Things game from Rob Daviau and CMON and of course the new trailer for next year’s Dungeons & Dragons movie!

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Moon is a pass and play board game of building the most fantastic base on the lunar surface, a place where the denizens of Earth will flock to explore and experience the sun cresting the curve of our planet, to feel weightless and something else.  Some folk will say this game is like another well-known drafting game, but those people are idiots.

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Welcome back to the News Collider, collecting the best, most interesting and strangest tidbits of board gaming news from around the tabletop gaming community.

This week we take a look at the rise and rise of solo modes in board games, a quick look at the Kid’s Game of the Year Award winner and the new album and record label from Critical Role.

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Come and build your city, your Acropolis! Command the high ground and adorn the hill with lush gardens, dispersed markets, grand temples and lest we forget the barracks to protect your homes and people.

In other words, Akropolis is a 3D tile-laying board game of building an ancient Greek city, in short, it is bloody brilliant and I strongly suspect this will be a mainstay of my gaming shelf for a very long time.  So if that’s all you’ve come to this review for, there you go, just go and buy it for an extremely reasonable 25 rips; but, if you’d like to know how and why this game deserves some of your precious table time, read on:

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The News Collider is back again with the best bits of the board game and tabletop game news from around the internet.

Crowdfunding fans can rejoice as Backerkit announce they too will be joining the fray with their very own platform, and one of the first games to launch will be the Miniatures of Gloomhaven from Cephalofair! And if the noises you made when you got out of bed this morning weren't enough of an indicator of your age, you’ll be thrilled to learn that Magic the Gathering Turns 30 this autumn. There’s also a Pokémon card that sold for close to a million dollars and because we all need more paints for our minis, Games Workshop is releasing some more.

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It's the magnificent return of the News Collider! Back by no demand whatsoever, but I know you've been wanting it, so here it is.

The thumb has been pulled from the arse and I've rounded up the best bits of board gaming news from around the internet, plus a little tidbit about Monopoly. 

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This year’s UK Games Expo was fantastic, if you managed to get along over the three days you’ll know that already, but if you couldn’t make it, I hope that these first thoughts and impressions of the games we played in some way help salve that wound.  We walked the halls, we caught up with old friends, chatted to publishers, distributors and designers and of course, we played lots of games, and those that we didn’t get a chance to play one or more of us picked up a copy to play later.

We’ll discuss in more detail our top picks from the event in the Collider Cast Episode 114, but in the meantime, he’s a quick rundown of what we played and our first thoughts:

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The UK Games Expo 2022 is just around the corner (Friday 3 - Sunday 5 Jun 2022 in fact), so the boys from PHC take a look at the publishers, events, and most importantly games that are going to be at the show.

You can buy tickets and find out more information here: https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

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Spelljamming across the universe, on a scary nautilus that frankly looks absurd!

Yes we are back with another dose of tabletop gaming banter. We look at upcoming Dungeons & Dragons products, attempt to rid the world of super heroes in The Reckoners, go spelunking in Above and Below and explore some retro solo gaming in Stormweavers.

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Fresh from filling his face and playing games at Airecon, Andy takes us through the latest version of Libertalia. We also talk about dice placement in Origins: First Builders and venture into the dark streets of Yarnham in Bloodborne: The Board Game.

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Normality is (kind of resumed) as we talk about some board games that we have been playing (as Andy would put it). We vie for control of Victorian London in Nanty Narking, join Deep Purple for a spot of Galaxy Trucker, and Andy loads his llama in P'achakuna.

We also answer questions from the mail bag, well one question, but its quote a big one.

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The everlasting month of January may have come to an end, but we are still in a New Year mood, as we look forward to the games coming out in 2022 and say what we are most excited to play over the coming year.

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2021 has been and gone and to mark the passing of this gallstone of a year, the Polyhedron Collider chaps go through their usual round up of what the year had to offer in the form of plastic and cardboard. We also discussed some games that didn't set our pants on fire and of course the much-coveted Insert of Choice award from our resident weirdo.

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