1st Impressions of Arcs, Things in Rings, Courtisans, Ark Nova: Marine Worlds, and more!

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Courtisans

4 Plays (4-5 Players)

If Biblios and Botswana (aka Wildlife Safari) had a baby, a very evil baby, it would be Courtisans. It turns out that evil babies are fun.

Courtisans uses the basic player turn premise of Biblios — look at three different cards and put them in three different places. It then combines that idea with the shared investments and value manipulation of Botswana. Yet it also takes the passive aggressive rudeness of those two games and cranks up the savagery to eleven.

On your turn, you’ll look at your hand of cards and decide which one to keep, which one to give to another player, and which one to add to the banquet table. The banquet table functions as a way of determining whether each suit will be esteemed (worth positive points) or fallen from grace (worth negative points). This value is determined by simple majority — which side of the table has more cards of that color? If more cards of that suit are above the table, then it becomes a positive suit during end-game scoring, and you want lots of cards of that color in front of you (each card being worth positive 1 point). But if you or your opponents are working to sabotage a color, then you don’t want that color in front of you at the end of the game, otherwise it will put a dent in your score.

Most cards have no special ability, yet the fact that you can play them to a few different locations grants plenty of flexbility. Do you keep the card and hope it scores you a positive point? Do you nail another player with it if it looks to be worth a negative point? Do you manipulate the end-game value of that suit?  Do you award it to another player so they become invested in helping that suit be esteemed? 

These interesting decisions contain even more wrinkles thanks to the special ability cards. Each suit has several of them. The noble is worth two cards instead of one. The spy is played face down and only revealed at the end of the game. The assassin kills another card in the area it was played to. The guard is unkillable. These special roles introduce even more spice to a game that was already quite spicy. Players also each receive two secret objectives at the start of the game. These objectives push you to help or sabotage a specific suit or feed your neighbor a certain suit so they end up with more than you. For each objective you fulfill, you’ll get a bonus 3 points. 

As a quick 20-30 minute game, Courtisans delivers with funny and cutthroat moments. Competitive groups will have to decide carefully which players to target so that nobody runs away with an easy victory. And there will be plenty of opportunities to nail each other either out of petty revenge or cunning calculation. I’m always happy to find a new card game like this that is a hit with the entire group and begs repeat plays. 

Prognosis: Good

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Ark Nova: Marine Worlds

1 Play (2 Players)

Ark Nova: Marine Worlds is exactly the kind of expansion that most fans want from the game — more deck mitigation, more card market flow, more animals, more card abilities, more strategic wrinkles, and fancy upgraded player pieces. Unfortunately for me, this expansion also represents the killing blow of my love of Ark Nova. Mind you, it’s not really the expansion’s fault that I stopped enjoying Ark Nova, at least not directly.

Ark Nova sadly followed the same doomed path that many past games of my collection have gone: 

1. Acquire new game and enjoy it over several plays.
2. Stop playing game for roughly a year while gaming tastes and preferences gradually morph over time
3. With the release and acquisition of a new expansion, finally have the motivation to revisit the game
4. Discover that I no longer enjoy the game as much as I used to
5. Sell the game and expansion

Many other titles have followed a similar trajectory including Dice Throne, Railroad Ink, Fort, Dice Forge, Downforce, Nidavellir, QE, The Quacks of Quedlinburg, and Welcome To. Notably, most the expansions for these games were quite good (except for the painful Dice Throne Adventures and Welcome To: Outbreak). But the problem is that I unknowingly lost my love for a game and didn’t realize it until the expansion motivated me to revisit it.

In the case of our latest play of Ark Nova, I found myself impatient with the entire system. Rather than enjoying the huge zoo-themed sandbox, I felt the experience was too long, too convoluted, and too cluttered with effects and abilities. So while I believe that the expansion is good for the game, I feel that the game is no longer good for me.

But the expansion does feature exciting new opportunities for those who enjoy Ark Nova. At the start of the game, players draft powerful upgraded action cards (replacing 2 of the 5 with juiced up versions). These unique cards add another layer of starting asymmetry on top of the unique maps, and they feel great to utilize. My cards let me sell worthless sponsorship cards for money and mark animal cards on the display for bonuses. My opponent was able to pull off wacky exploits of her own with her cards.

The other most exciting feature is obviously the marine animals and the aquarium tiles that accompany them. Beside the additional variety they bring, these expansion cards introduce two new features:

1. A coral symbol found on many of the aquatic animal cards shows a bonus, and when played the coral symbol triggers all of the coral symbols in your tableau. This allows players to create a growing engine of bonuses if they lean hard into aquatic animals.
2. A wave symbol on many of the expansion cards causes the market row to flow more frequently by flushing the oldest card in the display.

You can tell that the design team aimed to address some of the biggest complaints of the core game. A faster flowing market means that players can more easily find specific cards they are looking for. There is even a new university tile that lets you dig through the deck for a specific animal type that you desire. 

Other components in this expansion add up to a well-rounded offering overall: more bonus tiles, more objective cards, more sponsorship cards, more variety for a game that was already packed to the gills with variety. I expect that most fans will find more to love about Ark Nova within its expansion. Sadly, I find myself no longer a fan due to the exhausting demands of the game — I simply find more fun out of playing multiple faster and more focused games in the same amount of time. But I still consider this a well-made expansion.

Prognosis: Fair

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Klink 

3 Plays (3-4 Players)

Review copy provided by publisher

Klink is the kind of silly dumb filler game I’m happy to stumble across and bust out before or after a main event game. The fact that it comes in a small package and sells for dirt cheap at retail means it knows its purpose well. When Rebel Studio (publisher of MLEM, my favorite release of 2023) offered to send me a review copy of their new title, Klink, I was happy to take it for a test spin.

In Klink, 3-5 players are aiming to score the least points by the time the game ends (after a player reaches 77 points over multiple rounds of play). Each round, one player starts by grabbing two cards from the facedown deck, peeking at one of those cards, and then deciding whether to keep both or pass them along to another player. If kept, the cards are flipped and their values revealed. If passed along, the next player follows the same steps — peek at one card and decide whether to keep them or pass them along. You can only pass the cards to a player that hasn’t peeked at one of them, so if the cards get passed to all players then the last player is forced to keep them. The silver lining for this possibly unlucky player is that they start the next turn by grabbing two more cards from the deck and beginning the cycle anew.

Each card displays a number ranging between -5 and 20. Notably, there are no cards valued in the teens, and all of the cards (except the 20) have duplicates in the deck. Duplicates are very desirable in Klink, because just like Bitewing Game’s own Gussy Gorillas, a pair of numbers will cancel out (these get flipped face down but remain in front of the player). Pairs are almost always great, because usually you are erasing points (which are bad in this game). Furthermore, a run of 3 numbers is also desirable because earning this run allows you to utilize one of the face-up ability cards. These powerful cards let you do things like dump your bad card on another player, trade cards with another player, flip one or two of your cards face down, end the round immediately, and more.

So keeping positive value cards isn’t always a bad thing thanks to pairs and runs of three. And the final wrinkle that really makes Klink sing is end of round bonus points. A round ends when one or more players have 10 or more cards in front of them (face down or face up). Then players add up the face-up values in front of them for their round score, but the player with the most card gets rewarded with 10 negative points and the player with the least cards (but at least one card) gets penalized with 10 positive points. Any player with zero cards in front of them simply scores 0 points (which is hard to accomplish unless the group is exclusively targeting others in a round).

Klink offers players the tantalizing (but risky) decision of gunning for 10 cards to end the round and shed 10 points off their score. But that can easily backfire if they don’t get enough pairs to cancel out some of their higher cards. Having only a few cards is great for the end of round scoring… unless you have the least cards and get nailed with the bonus 10 point penalty.

The clever scoring system combined with the dramatic peeking, passing, keeping, and revealing makes for exactly the kind of filler game that hits the sweet spot for most groups with plenty of laughs and groans. Klink is a very swingy game with a whole lot of luck at its core, but it gets away with such antics by being surprising, exciting, and quick. A bit of electric energy is usually all I want from a filler game anyway.

Prognosis: Good

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Heat: Heavy Rain Expansion

2 Plays (5-6 Players)

Heat lives up to its name by remaining one of the hottest board games on the market. And while it didn’t necessarily need an expansion yet to stay relevant, we’ve got our first one in the form of the Heavy Rain expansion. 

Heavy Rain comes with a set of components for a 7th player (the orange race car), a very welcome addition for any group that has that exact count on a game night. But the star of this expansion is found in the two new racetracks and additional car parts cards.

One of the race tracks features the titular “heavy rain…” sort of. It’s more about the aftereffects of heavy rain, namely puddles. These flooded spaces found in front of the corners of the Japan track make it harder for players to slow down. If you shift down a gear when you are on a flooded space then it costs you an extra heat. This forces players to either slow down earlier (to avoid the added heat penalty) or swallow the cost and possibly regret giving up that heat later. It’s not a huge game changer by any means, but it does introduce some welcome variety to the tracks.

Speaking of variety, both tracks introduce another new feature: chicanes. Chicanes are basically a double corner with the same speed limit and the same modifier (if you apply a road condition there). This makes it much harder for players to blast through a turn if it is a chicane because you are paying the heat penalty twice. So usually these become major bottlenecks that force all players to down shift significantly. Once again, it’s a feature that doesn’t feel drastically different from the usual Heat experience, but it does introduce a few new wrinkles to the decision making.

Finally the upgrade cards present a new ability called “super cool.” As a publisher, you know you’ve made a good board game when you can call a symbol the “super cool” symbol. This ability lets the player look through their discard pile and remove Heat cards from it (which go back on your Engine spot). That’s a huge advantage because Heat is a highly valuable resource that normally takes much more time and effort to get back after it has been spent — and that keeps it from clogging your hand as well! Good stuff.

All in all, Heat: Heavy Rain is neither an essential expansion nor a major “game changer.” It’s simply more variety for a solid game that was already filled to the brim with variety. It’s good new content, mind you, but certainly most sensible for groups who already get a lot of plays out of the base game.

Prognosis: Good

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Expressions

5 Plays (3-4 Players)

Expressions is a quick cooperative card game of limited communication and clever deduction that reminds me in a lot of ways of The Crew. 

The deck is made up of 5 suits each numbered 1-10. Most of these cards are dealt out to the players, and the objective is to guess as many cards in each other’s hands as possible. On your turn, you can either guess a card in another player’s hand, or give a clue about your own hand. 

If you give a clue, then you’ll end up playing a card in front of you that gives information about the rest of the cards in your hand. That certainly makes it easier for players to figure out your hand and other players’ hands, but it comes at a cost. Each card played in front of you will end up on the “agony” side of the score pile (i.e., negative points). On top of that, the game has a countdown timer where cards that weren’t dealt out continuously get added to the agony side until the deck runs out and the game is over.

When you’re brave or confident enough to guess a card, it’ll either result in a big reward or a big penalty. A correct guess lets the guesser and guessee each discard a card to the “harmony” (positive point) side — and one of those cards is obviously the guessed card. An incorrect guess forces the real holder of the card to place it in agony (along with a bonus card from the guesser). Even just a handful of wrong guesses can cost you the entire game, because you need to have more harmony cards than agony cards in order to win.

The key to success in Expressions is giving out the best clues that allow for the most efficient guessing. Each card lets you play it in 4 orientations allowing for 4 possible clues. It can communicate to your teammates the following:

• This was the highest card in my hand of this suit
• This was the lowest card in my hand of this suit
• This was the last card in my hand of this suit
• I have more cards of this value in my hand

Those who are familiar with The Crew, another cooperative card game with limited communication, will notice that 3 of the 4 clues in Expressions are ripped straight from The Crew. Still, there are some key differences in how these games play out.

In Expressions, a clue stays displayed in front of you until it no longer applies. For example, if my red 8 was the highest card in my hand, it will stay in front of me as a clue until I run out of reds in my hand, at which point I finally discard the red 8. This kind of up-to-date information is obviously very useful to the rest of the table as they try to work out who is holding which exact cards.

Furthermore, the very act of guessing exact cards out of each other’s hands feels quite different and precise compared to The Crew’s more opaque information and flexible conditions.

To its credit, Expressions has always been enjoyable for the entire table every time we’ve played it. The only problem is that it exists in the same universe as The Crew, and it doesn’t fare well in terms of depth and longevity. While you can make Expressions more difficult for experienced players simply be cranking the round timer down, it still ends up feeling like the same challenge every time. Meanwhile, The Crew (both Quest for Planet Nine and Mission Deep Sea) offer comparatively infinite challenges that present a much higher skill ceiling. 

The only thing that Expressions has it its favor is that it is slightly more approachable and easier to grasp compared to the starting missions of The Crew. But I’d rather walk newcomers through a couple quick intro rounds of The Crew before jumping into wackier scenarios than settle for another samey play of Expressions.

In the end, Expressions is a solid experience because it borrows many great ideas from The Crew. But if you’re going to throw your hat into the same ring, you better bring something significantly different or better, otherwise what’s the point?

Prognosis: Fair

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Things in Rings

8 Plays (3-5 Players)

Things in Rings is one of the latest small box releases from our friends over at Allplay, and it is also one of their most unique. 

Players are racing to rid their hands of five colorful thing cards, charmingly illustrated by Snow Conrad with an obvious nod to Dr. Seuss artwork. These things must be placed into the proper area — either inside or outside of a Ven-Diagram of 3 rings. Each ring has a secret rule known only by the “Knower” — one rule relates to the word, another to the attribute, and another to the context. So the secret rules could be something like “Exactly 5 letters. Flammable. Only owned by wealthy people.” And players must deduce these rules by observing where the things end up over time.

If a player places a thing in the correct spot, they get to place another card. If they place it in the wrong spot, then the Knower repositions it to the correct place and the player must draw another thing card and end their turn. Simple as that.

Initially, you’ll work off of object association. If a sword goes into the blue ring, then surely an arrow goes there as well, right? WRONG. Usually. As you see more items get added to the rings, you’ll begin to recognize patterns. These are much easier to spot if you’ve played the game a few times, which gives a better grasp of what the possibilities are for the ring rules.

This is the type of game that usually breaks the brain of any newcomer on their first play. They’ll cautiously add a card to a ring only to get immediately corrected, and then watch in bewilderment as an opponent cracks the code and starts throwing down a stream of things in the correct places. That’s not a big deal because each game tends to last about 10 minutes. With a little more experience, they’ll have a better grasp of how to figure out the rules.

I’ve observed that some players simply don’t have the patience to get to that point. They’ll play the game once or twice and ask to move on to a different game. Either it never clicked for them and they felt lost the entire time, or they simply didn’t care for the challenge.

As for me, I’ve had a hoot with Things and Rings. As the Knower, it can be challenging to determine whether some things fit a rule or not. Sometimes you are making judgement calls based on the illustration of the card itself, or based on the average version of a given object. As long as you are consistent with your judgements, that should be enough to help players figure out the rules.

As a regular player, you’ll feel like a genius when you figure out the rule of one or more rings. You’ll even encounter a bit of emotional whiplash when you think you’ve solved a rule only for a unique object to enter the table and shatter your assumptions. It’s always funny when the table reacts to a newly positioned thing with shock and disbelief. I spent half of one game assuming that a context rule was “Can be used as a weapon” only to later find out that the real rule was “Useful.” 😆 What does that say about my psyche? Best not to let it trouble me too much and just laugh it off. Hey, my theory was bulletproof right up until mittens entered the ring.

Another highlight of the game comes after it is over, when one player has placed their final card (thereby winning the round) and the entire group tries to figure out what exactly the rules were before the Knower reveals them.

The game offers a huge deck of thing cards and a wide array of rule cards — each ranked with a difficulty of 1-3 stars. I don’t see this one running out of steam, even with a regular group. There is also a cooperative mode if you prefer to crown more than one player.

As far as deduction games go, there are very few that are as colorful, social, charming, quick, and addicting as Things in Rings. Furthermore, it forces you to think outside the box and recognize patterns in new and unusual ways. Recognizing those patterns and solving the ring rules is a constant delight for me. With the right group, Things in Rings is a triumph.

Prognosis: Good

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Arcs

4 Plays (2-3 Players)

Review copy provided by publisher

I’ve been on an interesting journey with Cole Wehrle’s designs over the past few years. After finally talking myself into trying Root in 2020 and loving it, I immediately dove in Pax Pamir: Second Edition a month later. Both of these titles proved to become some of my favorite board games to play over the ensuing months and years, and that continued with the release of Oath and John Company: Second Edition. 

The reason Wehrle designs hit the spot for me is that they are such refreshingly unique and highly interactive experiences that stand out in today’s modern gaming landscape. They don’t shy away from situations of king making, dramatic swings of fortune, or brutal interactions. Cole is less concerned about keeping things fair or perfectly balanced and more concerned about allowing for memorable moments, brilliant comebacks, and dynamic politics.

The only problem with the Wehrle Way is that these games are all tough to get into and tough to get to the table. They don’t just demand a long rules explanation, but they also require a dedicated group of regular/repeat players. These games usually start out opaque and unwieldy and take multiple plays to fully grasp and appreciate. As much as Leder Games and Wehrlegig Games try to easily onboard newcomers, there is just no avoiding the fact that these boxes are optimized for deeper exploration rather than light sampling. For most publishers, this kind of product would be a tough sell. Unsustainable, even. Fortunately, when you’re the best in the business, a niche product such as these can attain more mainstream success. Yet that means you are all the more likely to end up with some curious gamers who wander in to this niche genre and completely bounce off their first play.

As I’ve relocated for work and changed my gaming groups in more recent years, I’ve sadly found it harder and harder to get Wehrle designs to the table. I just don’t have the consistent group of Wehrle-loving gamers like I used to. And thus games like Oath, which I last listed as my Number 1 Board Game of All Time, has only seen 1 play at my table in nearly 2 years. Root and John Company have likewise been better at collecting dust than anything else. Why expend so much energy teaching these games to my current gaming circles if I know that most of them won’t be dedicated or interested enough to make it a regular experience? I’ve come to accept that these games are currently in a hibernation phase until the right group reemerges someday.

Much of what I described above holds true for Arcs. It is still a Cole Wehrle game, after all. Yet for the first time in a long while, I finally have a glimmer of hope at enjoying the Wehrle Way more frequently moving forward. Unlike the other favorite titles mentioned above, Arcs manages to be more easily teachable and approachable than the rest. It also shakes out to be a shorter game on average. Mind you, it is still plenty difficult to grasp the strategies as a newcomer. It’ll take time and patience to really get good at. But by separating the heavy campaign from the core competition, the team at Leder Games has managed to remove more barriers to entry than ever before (at least for a Wehrle design). It’s enough to make me feel eager rather than exhausted at the prospect of teaching the game to newcomers. But then the next question becomes, “Is this a game worth teaching?” My answer is, “Absolutely.”

Arcs is aptly described as a “fast-playing space opera.” Meaning it successfully provides a lot of the meaty sci-fi goodness of titles like Twilight Imperium, Eclipse, or other huge 4X games in a more condensed experience. Sure, it may technically be missing an X or two from its gameplay, but it still manages to feel epic and dynamic nonetheless. It gives players a fascinating blend of tools and objectives, allowing them to pursue a variety of unique strategies. Perhaps you’ll work to expand your faction, build up your economy, and stockpile valuable resources that can grant both huge benefits and major points. Maybe you’ll amass a fleet of ships and use it to bully others around — collecting their corpses as trophies and raiding their settlements for loot. Or maybe you’ll seek to influence the court with your agents and secure for yourself a powerful tableau of card abilities while taking rivals captive along the way.

To categorize Arcs as just an “area control” game or a “tableau builder” would be a disservice to its depth and scope. It’s possible for any single play to be heavily one and very lightly another, and that can be different for each player within the same session. But one core thread that is inescapable, regardless of how the meta takes shape, is that of hand management and trick taking. The gears of this space opera are spun and greased by the cards that are dealt to and played from your hand in each Chapter of the game. Each Chapter is made up of multiple rounds, each of which are essentially a trick where one player leads with a suit and all others must copy, surpass, or pivot to another suit. 

By participating in this trick, you’ll dictate both who leads the next trick and what actions you’ll take on your turn. When you lead or surpass in a trick (play a higher number of the lead suit), you get to use your card to its fullest, meaning all of the action pips displayed on the card are yours to fully use. If instead you are copying the lead suit or pivoting to another suit which provides different actions, you only get one morsel of an action to spend on your turn. That can feel like a huge difference when some of the cards display a whopping four action pips.

When other players are taking two or three or four times as many actions as you, you’ll feel an immediate urgency to seize control of the initiative (i.e. win the trick) as quickly as possible. But when you have the initiative, you’ll be tempted to lead with a weaker card because the lower values display more action pips. Arcs is ripe with tough trade-offs such as this, and thus it makes every single turn feel extremely important. 

Another tough decision comes in the form of when to declare an ambition. Declaring an ambition is how you determine the scoring objective of a chapter, and this can only be done three times per chapter. With five possible ambitions available to be declared, and the possibility of declaring the same ambition more than once, it is very possible that the area in which you are strongest simply won’t score out in a given Chapter. Only the player with the initiative can declare an ambition, and thus Arcs doubles down on the importance of gaining initiative. But declaring an ambition (I.e. tilting the scoring objectives in your favor) opens yourself up to a world of pain. You’re likely to lose initiative right away because your played card gets reduced to a zero. You’ve also put a target on your back where players will expend the rest of their hand striving to undermine and outcompete you. 

Under such circumstances, it is safer to declare an ambition late in the Chapter when players have much less time to counteract you. The only problem is that the ambition scoring decreases in value after the first and second time they are declared in a Chapter… it’s hard to score big if you aren’t willing to take risks. Arcs rarely makes things convenient, and nowhere is this more true than with the hand you are dealt.

One major feature that players must come to terms with is this: Arcs is a game of adaptation and pivoting. If you set out with a rigid strategy and hope to be dealt the perfect cards to fit that strategy, you will likely come away frustrated… much like a ruler is frustrated by the limitations of their power and influence. You have to learn how to make the most of the opportunities of each hand.

Fortunately, Arcs provides plenty of flexibility in how you use your hand, but that isn’t immediately apparent to newcomers. If you’re dealt a diverse hand of high-value cards, that is probably easiest to grasp — simply gain and maintain control of initiative, taking whatever actions you please when you please. If you’re dealt a hand of low cards, then you’ll need to seize the initiative one or more times — burning an extra card now to set yourself up for a big next turn. If you find your hand lacking in one or more key suits, then you’ll have to let another player take the lead so you can copy their suit, and you’ll have to make the most of each single action turn. Furthermore, it helps to store up on resources (either through taxing or raiding) which grant bonus actions when spent.

If your hand of cards isn’t already enough to keep you on your toes, then the court of Guild and Vox cards will certainly round things out. These powerful cards can trigger massive events or grant valuable abilities to help you outcompete your rivals. In our plays, they’ve proven to be hotly contested both in initially acquiring them and thereafter fighting over them.

Speaking of fighting, Arcs has one of the most satisfying combat systems I’ve ever seen in a game. Not only is it robust, but it’s also elegant. The attacker will simply choose as many dice as they have ships to fight with, and then the drama ensues. By providing three different types of dice to choose from, each with their own strengths and drawbacks, Arcs provides many delightful surprises with the results. With a quick selection of dice and a single cast upon the table, combat is over in the blink of an eye yet consistently delivers excitement. And thankfully, Arcs is a game that invites and entices you to constantly be at each other’s throats, even from round one.

Perhaps this comes as no surprise, but Arcs is easily one of my favorite releases of this year, or even of recent years. After four plays, and also thanks to the included Leaders and Lore module (which introduces a bit of asymmetry upon setup), I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of this game. There is undoubtedly plenty more depth to uncover and surprising new situations to enjoy. And that is all to say nothing of the Blighted Reach Expansion which layers a replayable 3-act campaign on top of this system (I hope to try it soon). Thanks to its relatively lower barriers to entry, Arcs looks to become my go-to Wehrle game for the foreseeable future, and I’m very happy about that.

Prognosis: Excellent

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Coming in October

Bitewing Games is launching a “Secret Epic Big Box Knizia Game” in October on Kickstarter. It may very well go down as the biggest Knizia game we ever launch, by a long shot (no, it is not Tigris & Euphrates). More details to come… In the meantime, be sure to subscribe to the Bitewing Games Newsletter so you don’t miss out on the grand reveal.

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Prognosis: a forecast of how the game will likely fare in my collection, and perhaps yours as well.

Excellent– Among the best in its genre.  This game will never leave my collection.

Good– A very solid game and a keeper on the shelf.

Fair– It’s fine. It’s enjoyable. But I’m not likely to seek it out or keep it around.

Poor– Really doesn’t fit my tastes; not one I want to revisit… but hey, that’s just me.

Hopeless– Never again. Run & hide. Demon be gone.

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Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.