Jacob Daneman – Board Game Quest

The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game Review

Jacob Daneman — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 14:06:15 +0000

As we approach two-plus years of the Trickaissance (the resurgence of interest in the game hobby of trick-taking games, highlighted by such hits as The Crew, Cat in the Box, and even the heavier space opera Cole Werlhe opus Arcs), we’ve now seen quite a few variations on the popular mechanic. The Crew was an […]

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Nekojima Review

Jacob Daneman — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 13:50:59 +0000

Nekojima is a 1-5 player dexterity game based on the cat islands of Japan from Hachette Board Games which may be played competitively, cooperatively, or solo. While the nekos (cats) are indeed in the game, the central element is carefully balancing electrical poles with brightly-colored string between them without letting the whole infrastructure come tumbling […]

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Sausage Sizzle Review

Jacob Daneman — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 16:48:31 +0000

SAUSAGE. SIZZLE. SAUSAGE. SIZZLE. SAUSAGE. SIZZLE. This was the insane chant my wife heard emanating from our basement game room at 11pm one evening while she was trying to sleep. “Could you keep it down please” she pleadingly texted me. No ma’am, impossible. The vibes were simply too real, the energy too hyped. The stakes […]

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Castle Combo Review

Jacob Daneman — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 14:10:59 +0000

I first came across Castle Combo, the 2-5 player tableau-building game by Grégory Grard and Mathieu Roussel and published by Pandasaurus Games, on Board Game Arena, the online board gaming platform. Although it wasn’t the first time I had seen it done, it was the first time I chose to engage with a game I […]

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Zoo Vadis Review

Jacob Daneman — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 11:53:48 +0000

Let’s say you’re, oh I don’t know, an Armadillo. You live in a zoo, and therefore, your deepest desire is to become the zoo’s star attraction. Surely every animal in the zoo dreams of being the most gawked at living thing in any cage in the complex, right? So what else is there to do […]

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La Famiglia: The Great Mafia Wars Review

Jacob Daneman — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:13:19 +0000

I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse. No seriously, please don’t refuse it, we need exactly four players to play this game. I’m speaking of Capstone’s 2023 release, La Famiglia: The Great Mafia Wars by Maximilian Maria Thiel. In my quest to review only heavy 2-4 hour-long Euros that require exactly four players […]

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Deal With The Devil Review

Jacob Daneman — Wed, 23 Aug 2023 13:20:28 +0000

Do you have friends? Exactly three friends, to be specific, who are all clamoring for a crunchy Euro experience while peppering in mechanics like hidden roles, blind trading, and a little app assisted gaming? Also, is the state of your eternal salvation… malleable? Well, my satanic little hellspawn—Deal with the Devil, a worker placement, social […]

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Eleven: Football Manager Board Game Review

Jacob Daneman — Tue, 02 May 2023 13:14:24 +0000

After this year’s FIFA World Cup, I found myself in a familiar position: energized by watching football (FYI, I will be referring to soccer as football throughout, don’t @ me), wishing it was a bigger part of my life. But where in previous years, that fleeting feeling of longing would quickly subside/be waylaid by day-to-day […]

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Top 10 Trick-Taking and Ladder-Climbing Card Games

Jacob Daneman — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 13:04:26 +0000

As mentioned (and perhaps coined?) in my recent review of Thrones of Valeria, we are in the midst of a magnificent Trickaissance. There has been an absolute boom in games that rely on the primary mechanic of “trick-taking,” or the adjacent mechanic of “ladder-climbing.” If you’re interested in why that may be, there’s an excellent […]

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Sea Salt and Paper Review

Jacob Daneman — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 14:20:14 +0000

As I was walking through the 2022 Gen Con convention hall, a modest little table caught my eye, set up for French publisher Bombyx. A couple of very nice Frenchman were sitting there with a very small box and a fresh steaming batch of croissants (ok, maybe they didn’t have croissants). This tiny box had […]

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