Expand Your Game

Trails and Tails: Review Information: Mechanics : Roll and Move, Take That Player Age :  6+ Player Count :  2 - 4 Time to Play:  20 - 40 Minutes  Year Published: 2026 Basics : I have always enjoyed when current games bring back a mechanism from childhood. Mancala games or the games that do a twist on chess are easy examples. Trails and Tails takes the premise of snakes and ladders into modern gaming. More importantly Trails and Tails takes roll and move and really opens the decision space on the standard  not often used mechanism.  Trails and Tails has players moving up, well, a snakes and ladders board. This time there are no ladders but only falls (or animals eating).  To move players have a set amount of dice each round that they can add or minus two dice together each turn and move that amount. This counts for even negative values allowing the player to move backwards.  With two to four dice thi...

Panda Royale: Review Information : Mechanics : Drafting, Roll and Write, Dice Rolling Player Age :   8+ Player Count : 2 - 10 Players Game Designer: Jake Jenne, Nate Jenne Game Artist : Nate Jenne BGG Weight: 1.18 Publisher : Last Night Games Time to Play: 2 0 - 30 Minutes  Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.  Year Published: 2024 Introduction: Panda Royale is a roll and write game that instead of focusing on player agency when using a dice the player agency comes in selecting dice. With over 100 dice in the game this is the most dice chucking roll and write game I can think of. Through ten rounds players are going to draft die into their engine in the attempt to score the most points each round. The hook to this is there's a lot of dice that all score differently and contain different die values.  Dice Anatomy: Yellow Die: Each player will start with a yellow d6. These die score by the sum of their values...

Dice Throne - Mystic Brawler: Review Information: Mechanics: Engine Builder, Head to Head, Yahtzee Mechanism, Variable Player Powers, Take That Player Age: 8+  Player Count:  2 - 6 Time to Play: 20 - 40 Minutes  Game Designer: Manny Trembley, Nick Malara, Nate Chatellier Game Artist:   Manny Trembley, Gavan Brown Publisher : Dice Throne Year Published: 2026 Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher. Introduction : I personally am a massive fan of variable setup games in particular head to head games. Dice throne is essentially mixing head to head games and Yahtzee. For the initial review of how the mechanism work click here . This review however, is focusing on the character Mystic Brawler. Dice Throne is a system that is constantly looking at how they release their expandable game. So far there have been numerous sets of four character packs and duel character packs of two characters. Spanning over forty characters. ...

Sagrada Remastered: Rapid Review Information: Mechanics: Dice Rolling, Pattern Building, Sudoku Player Age: 15 + Player Count: 1 - 4 Players Time to Play: 30 - 45 Minutes  Publisher : Floodgate Games Game Designer: Adrian Adamescu, Daryl Andrews Game Artist: Peter Wocken Year Published: 2025 BGG Weight: 1.72 Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher. Rundown : Sagrada is a dice placement game about designing stained glass windows that feels very much like a sudoku puzzle brought into board game form. I have reviewed the first edition of the game here . This review is a combination explaining the game but also diving into the differences of first and second edition.  In 10 rounds players are placing dice in pursuit of legally being able to place more dice but also in pursuit of public and private scoring conditions. Each round players will be snake drafting dice choosing from dice equal to the player count plus one. This starts wit...

Cosmos Empire: Review Information: Mechanics:  Dice Rolling, Engine Building, Set Collection Player Age: 11+ Player Count:  2 - 8 Players Time to Play: 15 - 45   Minutes  Game Designer: Martin Brandel Publisher : Bigger World Games Year Published: 2022 Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher. Introduction: Cosmos Empire is a dice resource generation game. Think Machi Koro, Valeria Card Kingdoms or space base. Cosmos Empire's twist on this growing genre is firstly the game is closer to filler weight and it gives a player more immediate agency in dice adjustment. Game Anatomy: Cards: The game is mainly compiled of cards. Each card will have the cost to purchase on the top left. The card type at the bottom of the card, this will either be bio, spirit or tech, each type has cards that create synergies from that type. On the bottom right is the dice result that will trigger the production generation followed by the amount of re...