We loved this game as a whole. Part of the pleasure is recognizing how much it draws on other games we love: traveling the board to find people like Chronicles of Crime: 2149, location encounter decks like Star Wars: Outer Rim, a mythos-style phase and doom tokens on skill checks out of Arkham Horror: The […]
Quickstart Rules for Crowns and Cutthroats the Trick-Taking Game
Objective and Theme Crowns and Cutthroats is a two-player trick-taking duel about a royal chase through the kingdom. One player is the Monarch, trying to survive. The other is the Cutthroat, trying to catch them. The goal is simple: the Cutthroat wins the round by moving directly onto the Monarch. The Monarch wins if the […]
Lorzeno il Magnifico – Quickstart Rules and Objectives
Lorenzo il Magnifico just showed up on BoardGameArena and is right up our alley. Here is a quickstart guide that may improve the documentation on that site. What You Are Doing and Why In Lorenzo il Magnifico, each player leads a noble family in Renaissance Florence. You are trying to gain prestige by sending family […]
A Quick Guide to Playing Wayfarers of the South Tigris
Wayfarers of the South Tigris is a polarizing game. Some folks bounce right off it, but others, and we mean more than a few, call it their favorite board game of all time. After the recent Humble Bundle sale of Garphil games, and now with the appearance of an alpha version for this second Garphil […]
The Antique Game of Bezique, Reborn (and where to play it)
How to Play Bezique Most explanations of Bezique jump straight into scoring tables. The better starting point is this: Bezique is a two-player card game about turning cards into visible scoring combinations, then surviving the stricter trick-taking phase that follows. It also happened to be Winston Churchill’s favorite game of cards. You are trying to […]
Wispwood Review
Wispwood snuck in under the radar in 2025, skipping the usual hype parade and instead setting up shop in the shadowy corners of puzzle and solo gamer lore—a game whispered about in Discords and late-night forums. Reed Ambrose (with Czech Games Edition) created a mechanical chimera: think Cartographers’ semi-random scoring blended with drawing from five […]
Indie Dev Interview: Stone Fruit Salad
Orccon/Strategicon in Los Angeles this past February featured an indie room, which was one of the highlights of the weekend. A solid assortment of games and the designers behind them, all in one place, all available to play. More of this, organizers — please. TabletopQuester will be covering several of the games we found there. […]
Our Fave New Small Box Board Game Expansions for 2026 (so far)
Chester D Tabletopquester shares 5 small to medium sized board games’ expansion coming out in 2026 that we love.
Orccon 2026: Strategicon lands in Los Angeles this February
Strategicon’s first show of 2026 is Orccon 2026, running over Presidents’ Day weekend (Feb 13–Feb 16) at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport. If you like your gaming weekends packed wall-to-wall, this one’s built for you: the schedule is slated to include 900+ individual events, spanning board games, tabletop RPGs, miniatures, card games, party games, and […]
Speakeasy the board game – An Overview from the VIP Overlook
An overview and initial impression of Speakeasy the board game: Prohibition routes, patrol pressure, and cash on the barrelhead.
