Hellas – Thomas Wells
Playte has been putting out this “L-series” of games, which are basically small boxes with folding magnet boards that unspool origami-style. I’ve played a few of them, and I appreciate the publisher’s focus on bringing back oldies that are also goodies. Hellas isn’t that old, it’s from 2016, but it was next to impossible to get in the US, so this Stefan Dorra multiplayer resource generation slugfest has been on my list for a while.
Basically, you build buildings in various arrays to try and score points at the end of the game, but half of the actions in the game are shared—you build a house, and I get to build a house after you. There’s shared infrastructure in the form of quarries and point-scoring areas that players collectively develop. The best part though is the mining action—when it happens, everyone gets marble (game currency) at the same time, and then the three mines on the board degrade. Each has a number, and you draw new mine tiles—a higher number can cover a lower number, and if there isn’t something the newly drawn tile can cover, you close the highest number mine and open the newly drawn one. As mines get higher numbers, they have lower yields.
It’s not complicated, but the randomness allows for players to speculate in a way that’s immediate and exciting. Not every Dorra is a winner, but this and Intrigue are both superlative games.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★★★★★ – Will definitely play it again
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Duck & Cover – Justin Bell
Captain Games handed me a copy of Duck & Cover during our recent meeting at Gen Con 2026, and between the rules overview and a 20-minute play with my nine-year-old, Duck & Cover is exactly what it aims to be: a very light card puzzle driven by a deck of cards that creates a mild amount of excitement and a very low series of scores.
Players have identical decks of cards, numbered 1-12; the asymmetry arrives in the form of a 4×3 tableau sorted by each player’s individual shuffle. On a turn, someone (the Captain, which fits) flips the top card from a shared event deck, forcing all players to choose the numbered card in question for either a “duck” action—moving the active card adjacent to any other card in a legal space—or “cover”, allowing the player to move the active card on top of any cards adjacent to its current space.
Covering cards is good, because that kills a card’s ability to score, but ducking is also important to line up the cards in order to cover them later. The event deck has 28 cards: each number, twice, and four special cards that require a player to move different cards. If all players cannot play a number (because that number was covered by all players in a round already), they must say “quack”; a certain number of quacks kills the round, and players will score a small number of points for any cards not covered. “It was OK,” said my nine-year-old, after winning our first play…and that was the WINNER’S reaction, one shared by me. Duck & Cover isn’t bad as an activity, and I could see this being a little more interesting with more players. But it’s a solitaire puzzle across the board, one that exposed the entire pool of its variety in this first play.
Ease of entry?
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?
★★☆☆☆ – Would play again but would rather play something else
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
Pagan: Fate of Roanoke – Thomas Wells
I do not like deck construction. The idea of spending 5 hours constructing a deck only to discover that it doesn’t really work in 10 minutes of play is just something I don’t have much headspace for.
Pagan (I’ve heard) is spiritually (no pun intended) influence by Android: Netrunner, a game I always found neat but only ever played with pre-constructed decks. It’s a competent asymmetric card game where a hunter tries to catch one of nine NPCs doing witchcraft in flagrante. The witch is trying to get one of the NPCs to do said witchcraft, and they have the advantage of knowing which of the nine is their target.
It’s a cat and mouse thing, with some basic worker placement, card synergy, and fun powers. The witch tries to build up their ritual using one-shot cards, persistent negative effects for the hunter, and a special familiar “worker.” The goal is to not give yourself up until it’s impossible for the hunter to stop you. Conversely, the hunter is trying to limit the witch’s ability to manipulate the shared action space, exonerate specific suspects (so they know which one to eventually kill).
It was a reasonably tense affair, and the basic box seems to have some life in it, though I don’t get enough two-player time to really put it through its paces, but with the wealth of expansions, it seems like if you enjoy the Darkest Dungeon-inspired artwork, you’ll get a lot of milage out of this one.
Ease of entry?
★★★★☆ – The odd bump or two
Would I play it again?
★★★☆☆ – Wouldn’t suggest it, but would happily play it
Read more articles from Thomas Wells
Enchanted Ivy – Justin Bell
A solid entry in the solo puzzle format, Enchanted Ivy breathes life into a very crowded category (tile placement and pattern scoring games) with a campaign format illustrated with some of the best art I’ve seen in a game this year.
Players take on the role of Ivy, a new owner of an inn with what certainly seems like an array of cool secrets and interesting characters who cross paths with Ivy over the course of an 11-chapter story. When chapters only take 15 minutes to complete, it’s easy to get hooked on the journey…and, with a simple turn structure tied to flipping cards and placing cards as either balconies or ivy to build out a tableau that scores the most points, Enchanted Ivy’s biggest issue across my first three chapters (a prologue, plus the first two chapters) was the increasing mental load of trying to remember how each of the nine characters in my final play needed to be situated at the inn in order to score.
Here’s why I know designer Sarah Joshua is onto something: I did my first two plays before dinner, and found myself itching to do a third play as soon as I wrapped up doing the dishes. The game’s story is split across two storybooks and the challenge is already ramping up across just the first three scenarios, so anyone looking for a value-priced, easy-to-administer high score challenge will want to check out Enchanted Ivy. Plus, there are stickers and other unlockables just waiting to be discovered…and a mystery envelope at the bottom of the box!
Ease of entry?
★★★★☆ – The odd bump or two
Would I play it again?
★★★★★ – Will definitely play it again
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
Bear Raid – Thomas Wells
I love stocks, but only in games. My lack of savvy about anything money- or investment-related in real life translates into an almost monomaniacal obsession with games with share-d incentives.
Bear Raid is a stock market game where players buy and short shares in a player-count-number of companies whose share value rises and falls based on manipulation and rolling of dice. Each company, each round, has a table that predicts (if nothing changes in the game state) how the share price will change based on the sum of the dice allocated to it. Problem is? That game state is gonna change.
Players have hidden amounts of shares (smartly designed to not be hidden-trackable), and hidden quantities of dice behind their screens. You’ll buy, short, move dice around, and generally just be a butt to your friends. Sure, it’s a stock game, but do you notice that I’ve been saying “short”, not “sell”?
Yeah, baby, part of the fun of hidden shares is that you can sell shares that you don’t have. You get money, cool (it’s points), but all those shares are worth negative points when you have to cash them in at the end of the game. This leads to some wildly antisocial behavior, because if a company’s share price drops below $5, everyone loses all of their shares in that company. Which means you can wipe away all of those negative points. Which I failed to do, and ended the game with 20 points, compared to the winner’s 900.
10/10, no notes.
Ease of entry?
★★☆☆☆ – Not an easy onboard
Would I play it again?
★★★★★ – Will definitely play it again
