It has been a busy week in board gaming.  With the Essen Spiel board game fair in full swing, many a new game has been announced, played, demoed, and muled back like a suitcase full of Columbia's finest. This means we have a bounty of board gaming news to share with you this week, including a mouse filled movie, the world Scrabble championships and a board game about constant rain and unspeakable mutants (but surprisingly nothing to do with a weekend away in Rhyl).

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From the box to the insert, from the score pad to the tiles, Spirits of the Forest, is quite simply enchanting.  You’ll quickly read the rulebook – don’t be alarmed, it's multilingual, the rules just about cover two pages and are very, very simple.  You’ll set the game up and take a moment to just look at it, it is, as one has come to expect from Thundergryph Games, very pretty.

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Here at Polyhedron Collider, we have been luck enough to try many a game before it gets released to the general public.  Whether it be via an early prototype copy, a media preview or Andy just barging his way into a demo at a convention, we've seen, played and passed judgement on quite a few of Essen 2018's hottest games.  

So that you, our dear listeners and readers don't have to traipse through page after page of content we have provided this handy and easily digestible list:

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News Collider is back! Yes folks, hot on the success of Jon Cage’s news ferreting in our regular podcast, we’ve decided to bring back our News Collider column, bringing you a hot slice of board game news every Wednesday. It’s not just board games, however, we’ll also be looking at RPGs, card games and miniatures, basically whatever catches our eye over the week.

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The first thing you notice about Monumental, the upcoming civilisation building board game from Fun Forge that's now on Kickstarter, is just how stunningly beautiful it looks. As I sat down to play a demo version of the game at this year’s Tabletop Gaming Live, I was overwhelmed by the splash of colour, the well designed and clear iconography, and the absolutely amazing looking miniatures, so much so that it took a few moments to draw myself away from the visuals to learn the rules, and it was then that I found that Monumental’s beauty was more than skin deep.

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According to my GCSE results, I speak better French than I do English. I’m not going to contest this because I’m from the North and my rough, no-nonsense accent will likely confuse the Southerners speaking with their plums in their mouths. A particularly awkward place to put one’s plums I might add.

One language I’m demonstrably not great at is Mesoamerican and I have two pieces of evidence to back up this outlandish statement. One; the well-travelled lads here at Polyhedron Collider struggled to pronounce Teotihuacan the first few (hundred) times, resorting to referring to it as “Twatty-Haduken” (anyone who’s played Street Fighter will get the reference) and two; David Turczi himself stopped me at UK Games Expo this year to give me language lessons on how to do it properly.

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It’s that time of the year again were our gaze is directed towards Germany and the Spiel game fair in Essen.  We look forward to some of the exciting games being released at the world’s largest board game convention and have a look back at our predictions from last year.

Let the rampant speculation begin!

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There are times in life when you say “screw it”, throw caution to the wind, drop all pretence of sensibility and just get stuck into something. Be it a new hobby, sport or simply just spunking a wad of cash so thick it could be used to prop up a skyscraper. With the notion of Kickstarter (other crowdfunding platforms are available), it’s getting ever easier to buy and back games with increasing production costs (and consequentially improved quality), timescales and grandeur. I’m not going to start a rant about the cost of games getting silly, there’s a time and a place for that and it’s not this review.

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It’s a desolate landscape with strange, offensive beasts walking around; stalking others, chasing them down and claiming territory for their own. You feel lost, dazed and alone as you wander in search of meaning and a sense of belonging in this lurid, post-apocalyptic wasteland.

But enough about Brexit.

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Steve goes to Tabletop Gaming Live and tells us about the games he played there, including Keyforge and Monumental. Jon takes on the role of new ferret and Andy just distracts us all with his usual nonsense.

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