I've been wondering which games would be suitable for a beginner whilst providing a good vista of the range of modern game types and mechanics. With new players joining or dropping into the club, it was time I put a list together...

fischertechnik is a toy construction system invented in 1965, still popular in Germany and the Netherlands, and easily available online in the UK and other countries. It is used in schools to teach mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering, and by top teams in robotics competitions.

The company has been running ...

This Christmas I received two game books on my wishlist and acquired, in the world's oldest bookshop, one more Portuguese game for my collection. It turned out to be quite uninteresting, but I nevertheless added it, some images and the publisher to the BGG database. Conversely, our club's ...

This week we had two new players, Matt and Dan, who joined me to try out the Carcassonne expansion The Plague, a free give-away in spielbox issue 2010/6. It turned out to be a good expansion that changes the game substantially (meeples can move and get killed!) and gives ...

This year's tournament ended with Bill blowing away the competition (Dan, James, Keith) by over 40VP in the final, a game of Castles of Burgundy, chosen by the league's winner, James.

I wasn't able to make the last league game (Caylus) and Bill took the chance to ...

On the 1st of November I went to BRICK, a large Lego show at the NEC in Birmingham. Among the hundreds of models shown, both by professional builders and fans, I spotted only two boardgame models, by coincidence both related to ancient Rome.

The first was a simple 8x8 board ...

The 2014 tournament final was last month, and we're already fully engaged with this year's edition. Last week the player groups and the game order was drawn; this week some of us had a practice of the first game: Princes of Florence, a classic I hadn't played ...

Three weeks ago we had our Christmas session. Less well attended than previous years, it was not less fun, with all the traditional bits: mince pies, David's picture quiz, Pete's miniature model game, my ...

This week the 2014 edition of our annual games tournament ended. In the league phase, 16 participants played 5 games in 4-player groups: Village, Caverna, Steam, Terra Mystica and Power Grid. Damen ended with 49 points, impressively winning 4 of the games and coming 2nd in the other. David H ...

Due to limited shelving at home, I've re-packed several games more efficiently, chucking the original game boxes and rule books to the loft. I put game pieces into business card boxes (BCBs), and put 9 BCBs into an A4 box, with boards and short rule summaries (written by myself ...