Handmade Fair September 2017 (and ticket discount offer!)

With all the recent board-gaming excitement and my ridiculously long break I've written nothing about craft-based-nerdery since Christmas! As if to redress the balance, I was reminded that it's time to start booking fun trips for 2017!

Cardboard - Star Wars: Destiny dice game review

A long time ago, in a living room far, far away...

This week I'm taking a look at the Rey and Kylo Ren starter sets for Star Wars: Destiny, a collectible card and dice game from Fantasy Flight Games. Each player brings their own deck to the table, centred around a character (or characters) from the Star Wars universe and packed with weapons, equipment, events and support characters that will hopefully leave them as the last team standing.

Cardboard - Mystic Vale card game review

Druids, fancy see-through cards and a substantially reduced chance of ruining your game with a drinks spillage. What more could you ask for in a deck-builder? Cue Mystic Vale, newly crowned Origins card game of the year!

UK Games Expo 2017 Highlights

It's official: the UK Games Expo is currently the world's third largest board gaming convention having welcomed over 16,500 unique visitors to the Birmingham NEC and Hilton Metropole over the last weekend, including a very excited and over-caffeinated me.

Cardboard - Yamatai board game review

If you take a look at my game shelf there's a notable trend towards picking up every game I see with a Japanese theme. From Tokaido to Takenoko, Mottainai or Hanabi, I think I have a small obsession - but it hasn't let me down yet! Let's start by going down the list of reasons for me to be excited about this game:

• Colourful shiny box: check
• Days of Wonder: check
• Japan: check
• Lost, ancient, mysterious kingdom setting: check
• Smile-based reward system: wait, what?

Yamatai is the latest offering from Days of Wonder, designed by Bruno Cathala (Five Tribes, Dice Town, Shadows Over Camelot) and Marc Paquien (...Yamatai). With the prospect of a rewarding smile from Queen Himiko at stake, 2-4 players strive to become the most prestigious builder as the capital of Yamatai takes shape on an archipelago in ancient Japan.

Cardboard - Codenames Pictures giveaway

I love, love, love the original version of Codenames, the word-linking party game from the awesome Vlaada Chvátil (Galaxy Trucker, Mage Knight, Dungeon Lords) and having tried out a prototype of Codenames: Pictures at last year's UK Games Expo I decided that I liked this version even more!

Now the proud owner of my own copy of the game, I thought with the anniversary of my first game approaching it would be fun to share the love and give away a copy to someone in the UK - see below.

UK Games Expo 2017

I can't believe it's been a year since the last UK Games Expo. In just under a week it'll be time to make the trip up to the NEC Birmingham again for another weekend of games, friends, fun and food, and I can't wait!