White Castle showed up on my Top 10 Favorite Games to Play on BGA list last week, and this little worker placement game has become something of an obsession lately. Today, I want to dig a bit deeper into what makes it such a special and truly unique worker placement game.
At its core, White Castle is a dice-driven worker placement game with a heavy focus on tight resource management and a healthy dose of engine building. In other words, it’s a pretty standard Euro game on paper. Nothing about that description should have veteran board gamers falling out of their chairs.
What’s interesting is that White Castle isn’t really the sort of game that normally lands in my wheelhouse. In fact, if you’ve spent any time reading this blog, or glanced at my Top 20 Games of All Time list, you’ll know that Euro games rarely make the cut. When one does, like Dune Imperium or Terraforming Mars, it’s usually because it has earned its keep at my table as one of the very best in the genre.
Terraforming Mars remains a gold standard for Euro games in my book. Through and through, it’s outstanding in every measurable way, the only complaint I have is I don’t play it as often as I would like to. Rich, deep, meaningful gameplay, it’s a masterpiece.
I realize that makes me sound like a bit of a board gaming snob. I promise that’s not the case. I’m perfectly capable of recognizing and appreciating a great game, Euro or otherwise, regardless of genre. It’s just that Euro games often leave me feeling a little cold. They’re usually clever, well-designed, and about as exciting as a tax spreadsheet.
When a Euro game grabs my attention, that says something. When it completely takes over my BGA play history, that says even more. White Castle has done exactly that. I genuinely believe it’s operating in the same league as the genre’s heavy hitters and deserves to be mentioned alongside some of the greats.
I’m still anxiously awaiting my physical copy, but it’s clear as day that this is a very pretty game, albeit a very busy game. I would definitely put it in the “gamers” game category.
There are two things in particular that stand out.
The first is its brilliant use of dice as communal workers that every player draws from. The second is the game’s razor-sharp efficiency. White Castle wastes absolutely nothing. Every action matters, every resource feels precious, and every turn leaves you wishing you had just one more action to pull off your master plan.
It’s a master class in game design.
The Dice Workers
Most worker placement games follow a pretty familiar formula. You have your own pool of workers, your opponents have theirs, and everyone competes for action spaces on the board. That’s the core of the mechanic and, in many games, that’s about where the story ends.
The more interesting examples tend to add something extra. Age of Empires gives players different worker types that create unique opportunities and decisions. Dune Imperium layers deck building and combat on top of its worker placement system, giving players multiple ways to approach the game and interact with one another.
That’s generally where I land on worker placement games. When the mechanic exists in isolation, I often find it a little dry. It’s not that games like Russian Railroads are bad. Far from it. They’re well-designed games with plenty of strategic depth. The problem, at least for me, is that the interaction between players often begins and ends with, “Well, you took the spot I wanted.”
I know that this is a worker placement fan favorite, but it did not fare well for me. It’s a game about railroads, yet they are barely featured in the game, and it’s just a plain, run-of-the-mill worker placement game with absolutetly nothing particularly interesting happening beyond that. It was, in a word, kind of boring.
As a result, many worker placement games start to feel a little one-dimensional over time. The better ones usually find a way to add some extra flavor, some additional layer that transforms the mechanic into something more engaging.
That’s where White Castle surprised me.
At its heart, it’s still a worker placement game. It hasn’t abandoned the formula. Instead, it takes the worker placement mechanic itself and twists it into something far more interesting through its use of communal dice.
The first thing that stands out is that the dice are shared by everyone. Just like the action spaces, the workers themselves are a limited resource. Suddenly, you’re not only competing for the spaces you want to use, but you’re also competing for the workers you want to use on them.
There are a lot of dynamics in White Castle, from the cards that make up the worker placement spots to the value of the dice, no two games are going to be the same, and there is no “base strategy” that is going to work. You really have to assess what is feasible and work with what’s on the table. It’s a new puzzle every time you play.
That alone would be clever, but White Castle goes several steps further.
Each die has three different characteristics that matter.
The first is its value. Depending on where you’re placing it, a high-value die might earn you resources (coins) while a low-value die could cost you precious coins. Sometimes the die you desperately want is also the die you can least afford.
The second is its color. Different locations on the board require different colored dice to activate, which means you’re not simply evaluating numbers. You’re evaluating colors, values, timing, resources, combos, and opportunity all at once.
Then there’s the position of the die on the bridge.
Dice on the right side generally have higher values, making them immediately attractive. Dice on the left, however, grant a secondary action that becomes increasingly valuable as the game progresses. The catch is that taking a die shifts the remaining dice along the bridge. Grab the wrong die, and you might accidentally serve up an incredible opportunity to the next player.
And that’s where White Castle starts to become fascinating.
Every decision feels loaded with consequences, for a worker placement, the interaction goes far beyond “you took my spot”.
Most mechanics are communal in White Castle, but each player does have their own player board where some of your engine-building elements are managed, including some elite spot you might, on occasion, be able to leverage.
Do you take the lower value die on the left to gain the bonus action? Can you afford the resource cost? Are you opening the door for another player to grab exactly what they need? Is there a chain of actions on the board that turns an average move into a great one?
These aren’t decisions you make once or twice during a game. They’re decisions you make every single turn.
What’s remarkable is how much depth emerges from such a simple idea. On paper, you’re just selecting a die and placing it on the board. In practice, every choice feels like a small puzzle packed with tradeoffs, risks, and opportunities.
It’s one of the most elegant worker placement systems I’ve seen in years.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this approach ends up influencing future designs. The idea of communal workers with multiple competing characteristics feels like a genuine step forward for the genre. White Castle takes one of board gaming’s oldest and most familiar mechanisms and somehow makes it feel fresh again.
I was trying to think of a game that White Castle might be compared to, and while it’s a bit of a stretch, it does remind me a little bit of The Red Cathedral.
It’s simply one of the most elegant and exciting worker placement mechanics I have seen come along in a board game in a long time, and I definitely think it’s going to become a thing. You are going to see this in a lot of worker placement games in the future. This is the next evolution of worker placement games.
Now, I should say that I don’t know that this mechanic originated in White Castle; there are tens of thousands of board games out there, so I don’t want to accidentally steal credit from someone by suggesting this is the first invention of its kind, odds are it probably isn’t. Suffice it to say, it’s the first time I have seen it in a game, and I think it’s fantastic.
The Efficiency
The other thing that makes White Castle stand out is just how unbelievably efficient the design is.
This game is tight. Not “Euro game tight.” Not “carefully balanced tight.” I’m talking about the kind of tight where every game feels like you’re attempting a speed run and constantly realizing you’re three moves away from greatness.
Most of the time, you’ll come up short somewhere. You’ll miss a resource, mistime an action, or discover that one seemingly harmless decision three turns ago has come back to haunt you. Then every once in a while, it all clicks together, and the result feels magical.
Without the expansion, you’ll take just nine actions during the entire game. Nine. That’s your whole game.
Nine opportunities to create the most efficient sequence of actions possible and somehow turn a handful of resources, workers, and bonuses into a winning score.
Despite having only 9 actions in a game, your first few play-throughs are going to feel very slow. There are a lot of interactive decisions; the depth here is pretty heavy. Once you get accustomed to the rhythm, though, this game can actually be quite fast. Analysis Paralysis however, is real in this game; people are going to get stuck.
At first, that sounds restrictive. In fact, during your first few games, it feels almost cruel. Some might bounce off the game for that reason, but stick with it because this game is so much more than what you discover on the surface. Surely nine actions can’t possibly be enough. And somehow they are.
What makes White Castle special is how many possibilities exist inside those nine actions. Every move has the potential to trigger another action, generate resources, set up future turns, or create scoring opportunities. The game constantly asks you to squeeze one more drop of value out of every decision.
It’s difficult to fully explain until you’ve experienced it yourself. White Castle is one of those rare games where you finish a session and immediately start replaying your turns in your head. Not because the game was frustrating, but because you can see the path so clearly in the aftermath. You can see where two or three tiny improvements would have transformed a good score into a great one.
That’s the mark of exceptional design.
Great game design isn’t just about knowing what to include. It’s also about knowing what to leave out. White Castle feels like a game that has been refined over and over again until every unnecessary piece was stripped away.
What’s left is a remarkably focused experience where every mechanism serves a purpose and every action matters.
It’s a design that’s elegant, balanced, and incredibly satisfying to explore.
Quite frankly, it’s a chef’s kiss.
Conclusion
I’ll be reviewing White Castle in the near future, but even before putting together a full review, I can already say this much with confidence.
This game is special.
In nearly twelve years of writing for Gamers Dungeon, very few games have seriously threatened a perfect 5 out of 5 score. In fact, only one game has ever achieved it: Blood Rage.
White Castle might just be the second. That’s not a statement I make lightly.
White Castle offers an expansion that is available on BGA called White Castle Matcha, and honestly, once you know the game and try this expansion, it will be hard to imagine playing without it. It’s one of those rare cases where it feels like this expansion probably should have been included in the base game. I didn’t think so at first, probably because I tried it too early, but it’s made me a believer!
If you’re a fan of Euro games, this should already be on your radar. If you’re a fan of worker placement games, it absolutely needs to be. White Castle takes a familiar genre and manages to make it feel fresh, challenging, and exciting again.
That’s a rare achievement.
This is one of the best worker placement games I’ve played in years.
People are always telling me that I should do more Top 10 lists. They’re a staple of the hobby, and to be fair, I used to write a lot more of them in the past. I get it, I like them too. The problem is that whenever I sit down to make one, I inevitably end up recreating some version of my annual Top 20 Games of all time list. After a while, it starts to feel less like a new article and more like I’m just changing the title and hoping nobody notices.
This year, however, I’ve spent a lot more time playing games on Board Game Arena, the digital board gaming site. If you’ve never used it and are a board game fan, you definitely should give it a go. It’s probably one of the best resources available for trying games before deciding whether they’re worth buying. The library is enormous, especially if you’re a fan of Eurogames, and there’s always something new to discover as games are added all the time.
One of the unexpected benefits of BGA is that it exposes me to games I would not ordinarily pick up and probably not otherwise ever try. Some of those games have turned out to be absolute gems. Even more interesting, certain games actually play better online than they do on the table. Some games are fiddly with endless bookkeeping, complicated scoring, or enough upkeep to qualify as a part-time job. When all of that is automated, a game can suddenly become a much smoother and more enjoyable experience online than it ever could offline.
In fact, I’ve caught myself saying, “I don’t really like that game… but I love playing it online.” Which, as strange as it sounds, I actually find to be true quite often.
So that’s exactly what this list is. These are my current 10 favorite games to play on BGA. Some of them are games I already loved, some of them surprised me, and a few are games that I enjoy far more online than I ever would around a physical table.
1. Great Western Trail
This is one of my favorite games of all time. It has appeared on my annual Best Of lists for years, and I do not expect it to disappear anytime soon. What’s interesting, however, is that unlike many of the other games on this list, this is one I actually play very often online but rarely offline. A big part of that is thanks to the excellent Board Game Arena implementation. This is a case of the game being a bit of a pain to teach, and it’s quite fiddly on the table and can be quite long. BBG kind of fixes all that for you.
It’s difficult to point to any specific mechanic in Great Western Trail that keeps pulling me back; There is a hand management element, resource management, and traditional victory point salad. Other than the way you move being a bit unique in the game, there is nothing particularly standout about the mechanics. I think it’s more of a general strategic options thing, everything put together at once. The sheer volume of strategic possibilities GW offers demands a lot of exploration; it goes quite deep. Even after 118 plays, I’m still discovering new ways to win and combo, but more often than I would like, new ways to lose.
A big part of your success in Great Western Trail is timing, landing on the right building at the right time, and doing that consistently is the puzzle and it’s not easy to unravel.
My history with the game is a little unusual. My original review was far from glowing. It took several more plays after this review before I really understood what the game was trying to do, and even longer before I truly appreciated just how brilliant it is. It is part of a very small number of games on this site that I have ever gone back on and re-reviewed.
At its core, this is a tight resource management game that rewards careful planning, efficient turns, and long-term strategic thinking. Success often comes from anticipating your opponents’ plans and finding ways to exploit the opportunities they create, an aspect of the game I adore.
My endorsement here is of the highest order!
2. White Castle
This was a relatively recent discovery for me, but wow, does this game deliver.
At its heart, White Castle is a tight worker-placement and resource-management victory-point salad game, a classic Euro formula. What makes it stand out is its shared dice pool. Players aren’t just competing for action spaces; they’re competing for the dice that power those actions as well, creating a sort of duality to the worker placement formula.
The result is a surprisingly interactive experience. Every turn feels like you’re making a multifaceted decision with significant impact both on your own position and denying opportunities to your opponents but on multiple fronts. It’s one of the more confrontational worker placement games I’ve played that doesn’t rely on cheap direct attacks or “take that” mechanics, like, for example, Lords of Waterdeep.
I love Lords of Waterdeep, but it can be a pretty mean-spirited game; getting slapped with a mandatory quest has a way of unraveling what is otherwise a pretty cordial and competitive worker placement game. I just don’t think it needed this mechanic.
What really sold me, though, is just how tight the design is. Every resource, every action, every position is part of a grand strategic design, and there is absolutetly no room for error. You literally will take 9 actions in the entire game. The game rewards careful planning, clever sequencing, and the ability to squeeze every last drop of value out of your turn. It’s the kind of game where you finish a session and immediately start thinking about what you should have done differently.
This game is challenging on several levels. The learning curve, getting your head around the strategy, unlearning all the stuff you thought was true, and then re-learning the game for real. It’s a brain buster, but absolutetly worth the effort.
In fact, this was one of the very few games I discovered on Board Game Arena that led directly to me buying a physical copy. That’s about as strong an endorsement as I can give.
If you enjoy deep, challenging worker placement games that reward smart play and punish sloppy decisions, White Castle is an absolute winner.
I should talk a bit about the expansion because this is also available on BGA. White Castle: Matcha introduces a 4th dice type and some new actions and cards that take this already pretty deep game and tight game and open it up a bit. It definitely complicates, and while I like I would not recommend it unless you’re playing this game on repeat and need something fresh. In that way, it’s a perfect expansion, as it does exactly what expansions should do: refresh a game you already like.
I’m generally very wary of expansions to games I already think are quite perfect, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In this case, however, as this game can feel pretty short with only 9 actions per player, it pushes that a bit as players get 4 actions instead of 3 per round. It remains a tight game with 12 actions in the game, but if you want more White Castle, this is the way to do. It does what it should as an expansion.
3. Shogun
Let me start with a confession.
I think Shogun is better in person, making this an exception to the general rule of this list.
In fact, if given the choice, I would almost always rather play it at a real table. The reason is simple: the dice tower.
That ridiculous contraption is one of the greatest gimmicks ever put into a board game. Every battle becomes an event. Players gather around it, cheer for impossible outcomes, groan at disasters, and generally make far more noise than any sensible adult should. It is glorious.
So yes, something is inevitably lost when you move Shogun online.
And yet, the Board Game Arena implementation is excellent.
The reason it still works so well is that beneath the spectacle, Shogun is also a fantastic strategy game. It remains one of my all-time favorites and one of the oldest titles in my collection.
So far as “Dudes On A Map” games go, this is one of my favorites. With a few exceptions, simply moving armies around and fighting is not enough for me, a war game has to have some strategic juice coming from somewhere else. In Shogun’s case, that is the action planning system, and in my humble opinion, it’s perfect.
At first glance, it looks like a straightforward dudes on a map conflict. Armies move around Japan, provinces are conquered, and players fight for territory. Simple enough, but the game is much more than that.
The twist is that, hidden beneath all that military posturing, is a surprisingly tight victory-point driven game. Scoring opportunities are limited, which means every point matters. Taking territory is important, but taking the right territory at the right moment is what actually wins games because, as the game progresses, players build point-scoring buildings in territories, dramatically increasing their value.
Then there is the action planning system. Every round, players secretly assign a whole series of actions in advance, often with incomplete information and only a rough idea of what everyone else is about to do. It is a brilliant mechanic that turns every turn into a mixture of strategy, prediction, and outright gambling, culminating in beautiful chaos.
You can devise a master plan worthy of a legendary daimyo. Or you can watch that plan collapse spectacularly because your opponent did something unexpected. Or because the dice tower decided it was feeling particularly mischievous that day. Probably both.
The combination of area control, hidden planning, resource management, and unpredictable battles creates a game that is constantly generating memorable stories. It is strategic enough to reward careful planning, chaotic enough to keep players humble, and interactive enough that nobody ever feels like they are playing a multiplayer solitaire game.
Shogun is one of those rare games that has stood the test of time for a reason. If you have never played it, you should. If you enjoy area control games, you should probably own it.
And if your gaming shelf currently contains Risk because you wanted a conquest, dudes on a map game, I would argue that Shogun is superior in every measurable way and solves that need far more elegantly.
4. Knarr
Knarr is one of those games that seemed to slip past a lot of people when it was released, myself included. It’s a shame because it’s a bonefied hidden gem and smash hit as far as I’m concerned.
Mechanically, it’s a straightforward tableau-based, card-driven engine builder wrapped up in a race for victory points. On paper, there isn’t a lot going on here, mechanically it’s simple and streamlined. In practice, however, the game offers far more strategic depth than its light rules would suggest.
One of the things I love most about Knarr is that it’s sort of a risk vs. reward style game when it comes to your strategy. Your options are to go for the slow burn and explosive end, hoping you will get to execute that final big turn for the win, or you race to finish to outpace people building proper engines, creating pressure on everyone. Once you commit to a path, you are largely along for the ride. The game is simply too short to completely change direction halfway through, so success often comes down to reading the table, spotting opportunities, and trusting your instincts in the early game.
Knarr is a fast-moving game, but whatever your strategy is in any given game, one thing that makes or breaks you is getting the right combination of trade routes and being able to execute them regularly. This requires a lot of planning and a bit of luck.
There is certainly a bit of luck involved. You can’t control what cards will appear, and part of the challenge is figuring out how to make the best use of whatever opportunities are currently available. The best players are not necessarily the ones with the perfect plan, but the ones who can adapt when the cards refuse to cooperate. Reading people’s options is also fairly important here.
Perhaps the biggest compliment I can give Knarr is that one game is rarely enough. Whenever my regular online group plays a round, it’s rare that someone doesn’t immediately demand a rematch. It’s addictive, occasionally frustrating, and consistently entertaining. This is a game that will keep your gaming group up late every time. I’ve had many painful mornings because of this one.
Knarr went straight from Board Game Arena to my shopping cart. It’s easy to learn, easy to teach, accessible enough for newer players, and still offers plenty of depth for experienced gamers. The expansion adds a lot to the game; if you get a chance to grab it, it’s a no-brainer.
An outstanding game and one that deserves far more attention than it’s gotten since its release.
5. Middle Ages
I should probably begin this entry with a disclaimer. I have only played Middle Ages three four times.
As a result, its appearance on this list may be a little premature. There is every possibility that six months from now I will discover some fatal flaw and wonder what I was thinking.
That said, based on what I have seen so far, I really like it.
What immediately stands out is how unique the game feels; it’s not a mechanic I have seen before. There are plenty of games that ask players to plan ahead, but Middle Ages builds its entire identity around that concept.
The core mechanic is a bit odd, but ultimately fairly simple. Each round, you choose the action you will perform next round while simultaneously resolving the action you selected during the previous round. The action you choose next round will determine the turn order and will determine which building you put into play, how you score, and what special action you can take. You can see what buildings will be available 4 rounds in advance. The trick to the entire game is knowing how to navigate a clean path that yields the most victory points through building combinations by predicting what your opponents are going to do and what will be available on your turn. Do that well consistently and you are going to wint his game.
If that explanation sounds confusing, it’s because it is, and this game will seem very complex the first time you play it. It’s really not; that impression fades quickly.
One of the tricky parts about Middle Ages is that it will punish you severely for not having a building of each type (each missing building is -10 points), so whatever your strategy is, it has to include completing your medieval town, else you’re kind of screwed.
In fact, learning and teaching the game is probably harder than actually playing it. I remember being thoroughly confused the first time I sat down with it. Thankfully, once you get over that first game hump, everything clicks surprisingly quickly. Beneath the awkward explanation lies a remarkably straightforward game.
The real magic comes from the timing.
Many of the actions are surprisingly confrontational, creating plenty of opportunities to disrupt plans, steal opportunities, and generally make life difficult for everyone else at the table. It creates a wonderfully dynamic experience where long-term planning is important, but short-term flexibility is equally valuable.
Of course, if everyone else is trying to do the same thing, things can get delightfully messy. Which is where much of the fun comes from.
Four games is hardly enough time to form a definitive opinion, but Middle Ages has already made a strong impression on me. It is clever, interactive, surprisingly tense, and refreshingly different from many of the other games currently making the rounds.
Ask me again after ten more plays…but yeah, for now, I think it’s good.
6. The Castles of Burgundy
This is another game that firmly belongs in my “great on Board Game Arena, probably not for my collection” category.
The Castles of Burgundy hardly needs an introduction. For more than a decade, board gamers have been singing its praises from every rooftop available. It remains one of the hobby’s most celebrated Eurogames and continues to sit comfortably among the highest-ranked games of all time on BoardGameGeek.
To be fair, I completely understand why.
In Castles of Burgundy, it’s not just about building that perfect hex board, but doing it in a timely fashion. When you do stuff often matters a lot more than what you do.
The game is incredibly clever. Every turn presents you with a simple challenge: here are your dice, now figure out something smart to do with them. It sounds straightforward, but the sheer number of options available creates a deeply satisfying puzzle, and a puzzle is exactly what this game is.
Unlike certain other famous dice games (fuck you Catan!) that I could happily launch into the sun, The Castles of Burgundy never feels like it is actively trying to ruin your day. Yes, the dice can be frustrating. They will occasionally betray you. They will occasionally mock you. But the game gives you plenty of tools to manipulate results, mitigate bad luck, and salvage a plan that has gone horribly wrong.
I’m not saying that Catan is a bad game; its popularity is clearly established. I’m just saying, “please trade with me so I can win” is a stupid concept, as is any game where you roll dice to get resources. Combined, I find the game annoying to play.
Success comes from finding opportunities, building combinations, and squeezing as much value as possible from every action. Like any great point salad game, there are dozens of paths to victory and just as many opportunities to accidentally wander off a cliff.
What I find particularly amusing is that, despite genuinely enjoying the game, I have yet to finish anywhere other than last place.
Normally, that would be a warning sign. Instead, I find myself wanting to play more.
Every loss feels less like a defeat and more like a challenge. Somewhere inside this elegant machine is a strategy that works. Other players seem capable of finding it with alarming consistency. One day, I intend to join them.
Until then, while I’m late to the party, The Castles of Burgundy remains a great BGA discovery. I’m not sure I will ever own a copy, but I can fully understand why people love this game.
It vexes me.
And I shall prevail.
7. Beyond The Sun
Beyond The Sun is another game on this list that falls firmly into the “I keep playing it because I find it fascinating” category, but I doubt I would ever buy it.
Whether I actually love it or not remains an open question.
What I can say with confidence is that it is… interesting in an academic, connoisseur of board games kind of way.
The best way I can describe Beyond The Sun is that it feels like two only vaguely related games somehow got stitched together and, against all odds, the result actually works.
On one side of the board, players compete over a sprawling technology tree through a worker placement system. Researching new technologies unlocks powerful abilities, creating entirely new worker placement spaces that only the player who discovered them can use. Much of your overall strategy is shaped by how you navigate this constantly evolving network of technologies.
On the other side of the board, there is a surprisingly aggressive little space conquest game taking place. Fleets move around the galaxy, players compete for influence, and planets are eventually colonized for valuable rewards and endgame objectives.
What makes it all work is that both halves of the game share the same economy. The actions you take on the technology board fuel your expansion efforts in space, while success in space provides resources and opportunities that feed back into your technological development.
This game looks super fiddly to me, I suspect that playing it on BGA is probobly takes considerably less time to play, which is the case with most games, but the fiddlier it is, the more valuable a BGA implementation becomes.
The whole experience feels like an enormous efficiency puzzle.
There is player interaction. In fact, the space board can become downright hostile at times. Yet somehow, despite ships moving around and players competing for territory, most of your attention remains focused on optimizing your own engine and finding the most efficient sequence of actions possible.
That contrast is part of what makes the game so interesting. It feels interactive without being overly confrontational. Competitive without being particularly emotional.
And fascinating throughout.
The funny thing is that I am still not entirely sure whether I would call Beyond The Sun “fun.” I know that sounds absurd, given the amount of time I have spent playing it, but there is a difference between enjoying something and being intellectually captivated by it.
Beyond The Sun falls into that second category for me.
Every game leaves me wanting to explore a different technology path, try a different strategy, or see how another combination of systems might unfold. It is the kind of design that keeps provoking questions long after the game is over.
That curiosity alone has earned it a place on this list. I don’t know if I would recommend it as a purchase, but on BGA you should definitely try it, especially if you have an academic curiosity about board game design.
8. Aquatica
Aquatica occupies a similar space on this list as Beyond The Sun, an academic curiosity more than a fun game.
I am not entirely convinced that I love it. I am not even completely convinced that I would describe it as fun or even a good game.
And yet, I keep playing it.
That probably sounds like a terrible endorsement, but hear me out.
Again, as a self-proclaimed connoisseur of board game design, I find Aquatica fascinating. There is something about its unusual approach to engine building that continues to pull me back in. I have logged over a dozen games so far, and I am still trying to fully wrap my head around what makes it tick.
At its core, Aquatica is a tableau-building card game where players are constantly trying to create temporary engines from whatever cards happen to be available at the time. The experience feels less like constructing a finely tuned machine and more like creating temporary boosts that you hope will have a domino effect.
This is a very pretty game; the artwork is fantastic. It may ultimately become the reason I want a real copy.
I think that is the unique spark here that your tableau, the cards you buy, is a temporary resource in your engine. Unlike many engine builders, where you gradually assemble a powerful machine that produces increasing returns throughout the game, Aquatica lets you use a resource once, and then you kind of have to start over. Your engine is constantly changing shape, firing off effects, collapsing, and being rebuilt into something entirely different.
The result is a game that feels surprisingly dynamic. Every turn becomes a puzzle involving the cards in your hand, the cards available for purchase, and the opportunities hidden within your tableau. Plans rarely survive intact for very long, and adaptation is often more important than execution. Other players can also alter the board state in front of you, which creates another uncontrolled layer to the puzzle.
It is a strange design that sort of skirts expectations.
One thing I have heard repeatedly, although I cannot personally verify it, is that Aquatica can be somewhat fiddly when played physically. If true, it is exactly the sort of game that benefits enormously from Board Game Arena handling all the bookkeeping behind the scenes. Though I have to say this is not the best interface on BGA, it can be a bit fiddly here as well.
Whether Aquatica ultimately becomes a favorite of mine remains to be seen. What I can say is that very few games have managed to keep me this curious after so many plays.
That alone makes it worth trying.
Give it a shot. It might not capture your imagination the way it has captured mine, but if it does, do not be surprised if you find yourself queueing up “just one more game” while trying to figure out what on earth makes it so compelling.
9. Harmonies
Harmonies is a perfect example of a game I would never buy, but am more than happy to play on Board Game Arena.
That is not a criticism of the game. Quite the opposite, actually. Harmonies is an excellent design. The reality is simply that it lives well outside my usual gaming preferences. An abstract puzzle game about building habitats for animals is not exactly the sort of thing that normally finds its way onto my shelf.
More importantly, I know my gaming group.
If I brought Harmonies to game night, everyone would give it a fair shot. We would play a game, nod appreciatively, make a few comments about how clever it is, and then immediately return to conquering empires, managing medieval economies, or fighting over cubes. The game would quietly disappear into the collection and never see daylight again.
Board Game Arena changes that completely.
Online, Harmonies becomes the perfect middle-weight filler game. It is quick, engaging, easy to set up, and delivers just the right amount of brain burn without demanding an entire evening. It is the kind of game I am always happy to squeeze in between heavier titles.
If it looks puzzly, believe it, it is very puzzly; it should come with a warning label, because this game will melt your brain.
The gameplay itself is wonderfully clever. Players build habitats using colorful terrain pieces while drafting animal cards that reward specific patterns and arrangements. Every turn feels like a small puzzle, with multiple competing priorities fighting for space on your board. There are animal objectives to complete, bonus scoring opportunities to chase, and just enough point salad sprinkled throughout to keep you second-guessing every placement.
It is thoughtful, satisfying, occasionally frustrating, and surprisingly addictive. The kind of game that makes your brain hurt just enough to remind you that you are having fun.
I may never own Harmonies, but I am always happy to see it hit the virtual table.
10. Lost Ruins of Arnak
I feel obligated to include Lost Ruins of Arnak on this list. I am doing so under protest.
Let’s get this out of the way immediately: it is a good game. In fact, it is probably a very good game. The design is clever, the decisions are meaningful, and there is clearly a tremendous amount of depth hiding beneath its relatively approachable exterior.
The problem is that Lost Ruins of Arnak and I are currently involved in a bitter personal feud. After eighteen plays, I have yet to win a game.
Not only have I failed to win, but I have rarely come close. At this point, I am less an explorer searching for ancient ruins and more an archaeologist excavating the remains of my own shattered confidence.
I’ve heard the claim that this game is like Dune Imperium, and while I can see why people might say that, it’s not nearly as streamlined, and this has a far bigger learning curve.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that the game does not appear especially complicated or novel.
Mechanically, Arnak is built from familiar ingredients. There is deck building. There is worker placement. There are tracks to move up. There is resource management. None of these concepts are new, and individually they are all things I understand perfectly well.
Yet somehow, when combined together, they form a mysterious puzzle box that my brain simply refuses to open.
I watch other players effortlessly chain actions together, convert resources into other resources, advance research tracks, discover sites, recruit assistants, and somehow continue taking turns long after I have passed and started questioning my life choices.
Most of the time I don’t even understand how I lost. I simply know that at the end of the game everyone else has more points than I do.
Repeatedly.
To be fair, I completely understand why Arnak has such a devoted following. It is one of the most celebrated games of the last several years, and an incredibly polished design. Every mechanism feels carefully crafted and intentionally connected to the others. It is easy to see why so many people consider it a modern classic.
I just happen to be standing outside the secret clubhouse, pressing my face against the window and wondering what everyone else is so excited about.
Eventually, I will return. I will once again venture into the jungle. I will once again attempt to decipher its mysteries.
And perhaps one day I will finally discover the ancient secret that allows a player to score points.
Until then, Lost Ruins of Arnak sits at the bottom of this list as punishment for being naughty and refusing to let me win.
Finspan is the third entry in the growing and rather oddly named “Span” series, following award-winning Wingspan and the more fantasy-leaning and complex Wyrmspan. This time, instead of birds or dragons, the focus shifts underwater to diving and collecting fish.
Before getting into it, a bit of transparency. I came into this review without any real attachment to the series. I had not played Wingspan or Wyrmspan beforehand, so I am not coming at this as a long-time fan or someone already invested in what these games are trying to do. For me it’s a new game and a first go at the series, open mind, no preconceived notions.
That said, I did spend some time with Wingspan while preparing this review. I felt it was important to have that point of comparison, a bit of context for this review, as clearly, fans of Wingspans are going to be eyeing this one. If I were to summarize that experience, I think the best review I could give it is that it left me…. wanting. I will talk a little bit about why that is later in this review, as we make some comparisons between Wingspan and Finspan.
Wingspan was a runaway hit in 2019, winning a laundry list of awards and rising to the status of “classic” in a short span of 5 years. (no pun intended). It is a bona fide success story in the world of board games and continues to be one of the most talked-about and often played games in the hobby.
Finspan, however, is where things get interesting, albeit only slightly. While Wingspan and Finspan share a lot of the same core ideas and structure, they do not necessarily deliver the same experience. For better or worse, Finspan is a much simpler game, focused on being a kind of more accessible version of Wingspan with its own unique theme, and this is quite obvious from the onset. In fact, it could arguably earn the label of a gateway game were it not for a couple of quirky elements.
There are, however, other more subtle differences beyond the simplified gameplay and approachability of the game; the most notable thing that stood out to me is why Finspan is not just simply a 2-player version of Wingspan with a different theme. I can’t stress how different the experience is between a 2-player game and a 3+ player game.
I think the strangest thing about my experience with Finspan is how vastly worse the game got with more players. My initial experiences with the game were a two-player affair, and I have to admit, while the game was simple and a little outside of my genre preference, I still enjoyed it. It was a pretty quick, fun little engine builder and victory point salad with a charming theme and colorful components. It was… simply put, kind of fun.
Then I tried Finspan with 4 players, and it was like being run over by an ice cream truck. I like ice cream, just not from this angle. It was a dismal slog that overstayed its welcome by nearly an hour, and there was quite literally no payoff to it, not just because there is virtually no interaction between players, but there was a ton of downtime, and it swallowed up a stupid amount of table space. It was just outright boring and slow.
One thing I can say is that when playing Finspan, due largely to the lack of interaction between players, one way you can expedite a game with more players like this would be to just have everyone do their turns simultaneously. Rarely will anything anyone does on their turn affect you, so there is no logical reason why you couldn’t do this.
That contrast is difficult to review because I want to tell you that I really like Finspan, my daughter and I have played it several times, we had a lot of fun, and it continues to hit the table long after my obligation to write this review ended. That said, there is absolutetly no way I will ever play this game with more than 2 players again, because that was a truly painful experience. So does that make Finspan a good game or a bad one? It’s tricky.
I think to tackle this review, we have to answer some questions here to put things into context. Does Finspan stand on its own within this series? Is it different enough to justify a place alongside the other games? And perhaps more importantly, who is it really for?
Spoiler alert! While Finspan does look a bit complicated in a screenshot like this, the reality is, it’s mechanically a fairly simple game, something you can teach to just about anyone.
Today, we sort all that out. Let’s get into it!
Overview
Final Score: (3.05) Good Game!
The first thing that struck me about Finspan was how bold and vibrant it looks on the table. The colors really pop, and once everything is laid out, the game becomes a genuine visual feast. It immediately made a stronger impression on me than Wingspan ever did in that regard.
Bright, colorful, beautiful! The importance and impact of eye candy as a part of a game’s appeal should not be underestimated. Finspan sticks the landing here without question.
Now, to be fair, I do enjoy fishing as a hobby, so I was naturally more drawn to the theme here than Wingspan’s birds. Drawing a fish card you have caught and eaten before adds a kind of charm to the experience. There is also the fact that my experience with Wingspan was digital, played on Board Game Arena, which I personally think is not a great way to get the right first impression of a tabletop board game, while Finspan was played physically at the table. That difference alone likely plays a role in how each game landed for me. Fortunately, I’m not here to review Wingspan; we are here to talk about Finspan, and while I think a comparison is a valid addition to a review in a game in a series, I don’t think it matters how much I did or didn’t like Wingspan.
In Finspan, each round you take one of two actions. Either you play a fish card from your hand into your player board or you go diving down one of three columns representing, I guess, different types of dives (reef, coast, and open ocean?).
When you play a fish card, you typically get a one-time “when played effect,” or you get an ability you will activate each time you make a dive in the zone that the fish is in.
Additionally, each fish is worth a certain amount of points and has a wide range of potential attributes that are sort of collected for certain types of scoring opportunities that are available each round of play.
When you dive, you activate all the fish in the column that you activated, gaining various rewards like drawing cards, laying fish eggs, and stuff like that. All the little point scoring levers.
There are, of course, a few other little auxiliary things to the game, but that is more or less the gist of it. A lot of this probably sounds very familiar to Wingspan players because it’s mostly the same routine.
Beyond the much-improved presentation, Finspan felt noticeably smoother to play than Wingspan. The game is more streamlined and easier to grasp, both when learning it yourself and when teaching it to others. It takes several of the core ideas from Wingspan, trims away some of what I feel were rough edges, and presents them in a cleaner, more efficient way. The result is a game that flows better and gets out of its own way. Perhaps more accurately, the game is a lot more newbie-friendly, being the lightest variant in the series.
That said, like Wingspan, Finspan is a very solitary experience. While there are occasional moments where another player’s action might give you a small incidental benefit, there is little reason to pay close attention to what others are doing. For the most part, you are focused entirely on your own board, your own cards, and your own engine.
For me, this is probably the game’s biggest weakness, especially when playing with more than one other player. Player interaction is extremely limited, but the downtime and the length of the game increase dramatically with each added player.
At three to five players, it often feels like you are playing a solo game where you simply wait for others to take their turns, even though what they do has no impact on your own decisions.
That may not be a flaw for everyone, though. In fact, I suspect this is exactly what fans of Wingspan enjoy. Finspan delivers that same kind of energy, a quiet race to build the most efficient engine and score the most points. As a 2-player game, a race to victory points like this, where you have quick back-and-forth uninteractive turns, makes sense, but in a 3 or 4 player game, it’s just painful waiting for your turn.
I recently discovered White Castle, an amazing worker placement game that utilizes dice, and this is exactly the sort of interaction-based victory point salad I’m talking about. This game has tension, moves, and counter moves; it’s a race, and it’s super tight. This is one of those games where something someone else did on the board can ruin your day or open an opportunity that might end up winning you the game. I love that kind of tense exchange.
Despite the simplicity of the actions you can take on your turn, the game offers a fair amount of depth as a puzzle. There is a huge variety of fish (cards), each with unique powers that create lots of interesting engine puzzles to solve. Figuring out how to make the most of what you are given is where the game finds its replay value; it’s a very addictive and repeatable experience.
One area where Finspan clearly improves on Wingspan is resource management. Wingspan uses a dice tower as a shared pool of food, which introduces a level of randomness that can feel out of place in an otherwise controlled system. Finspan shifts the focus to cards as your primary resource (discarding cards to play other cards), which reduces both luck and downtime. It becomes more about planning and decision making, and less about hoping for the right roll.
In Wingspan, I thought the dice tower, while cool aesthetically, was the weakest part of the game. The impact of randomized resources really shifts Wingspan from a deterministic strategy game to a bit of a gamble. I wasn’t a fan of it at all.
I prefer games with more interaction, a bit of tension, and at least some level of confrontation. When I sit down for a board game night, I want a reason to react to what the people around the table are doing. Finspan, for all its strengths, leans more toward a personal puzzle than a shared experience. That lack of impact of other players being at the table with you weakens the experience a great deal for me, especially in larger player counts.
Bottom line is that it’s an engine-building victory point salad game, with minimal interaction and zero confrontation. Because it’s easy to learn and teach, being a much lighter game than Wingspan, it’s kind of a perfect introduction to the series and a great introduction to board games in general.
Components
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Bright, colorful, and altogether a visual feast. Great rulebooks!
Cons: With larger player counts, this game takes up a lot of relestate
Finspan is a very pretty game. It looks fantastic on the table, and the components, especially the iconography, are exceptionally well executed. As a whole, it is a pleasure to lay out and play with.
I am a bit of a stickler when it comes to iconography. When done well, it is far superior to heavy text, making games faster to learn and easier to read at a glance. That said, there is definitely a tipping point where too much iconography becomes overwhelming. A perfect example is Race for the Galaxy, which remains one of my least favorite games to teach for exactly that reason.
Fortunately, Finspan finds the right balance. The iconography does a lot of the heavy lifting, but never feels cluttered or confusing. It makes learning and teaching the game remarkably smooth, supported by a rulebook that is clear, concise, and refreshingly easy to follow. I can comfortably teach this game in about five minutes and have everyone up and running without any friction.
Iconography can be a curse or a blessing. I really love playing Race For The Galaxy, but teaching it is a nightmare, and overkill on iconography is the root cause. Once you get it, it’s fantastic, but if you want to play it with me, watch a YouTube video!
My biggest gripe with this game’s components is their size; again, this applies only to games with more than 2-players, but the amount of table space it takes up is kind of insane. I shit you not to play this 5-player game; you will need about as much room as you would need for a 6-player Twilight Imperium game. I assure you, most people do not have a big enough table to play this game with a full player count. I’m not sure how this didn’t come up during play testing.
I’m not sure “taking up too much space,” however, is a rating-reducing offense. For the most part, this game is beautiful, as a gamer, that counts for a lot in my book.
Theme
Score: Tilt:
Pros: While marine enthusiasts and divers might not agree, I think Finspan nails a fun, gratifying fishy theme
Cons: The enthusiasm for the theme gets dragged down by larger player counts.
I was not expecting Finspan to be particularly thematic when I opened the box, and I am still not entirely convinced that it is in the traditional sense. That said, there is a certain charm to it that just works.
Every card represents a unique fish, and that alone gives the game a subtle collectible feel. Playing them onto your board and then activating them as you dive adds a layer of satisfaction that is hard to fully explain, but easy to appreciate once you are in it.
When it comes to theme, Finspan sticks the landing like an Olympic gymnast; I’m not sure how you would improve it, considering the subject matter, but it’s fair to say I’m no expert in diving or fish, so I’m speaking mostly to the aesthetic.
Whether that qualifies as “thematic” is up for debate. I am no expert on diving or marine life, but the combination of the theme and the simple, approachable gameplay creates an experience that feels cohesive and inviting.
This is also the kind of game I could comfortably put in front of non-boardgamers without much hesitation. It is easy to grasp, visually appealing, and does not come with the usual baggage that might scare people off. It feels like a family game, though probably best suited for a smaller group.
That is really where the theme feels strongest. At two players, and to a lesser extent three, the rhythm of drawing cards, diving, and scoring points flows nicely. The game moves at a pace where the experience feels engaging, and before anything becomes repetitive, you are already wrapping up and counting points.
Once you push beyond that player count, the experience starts to lose some of that charm. Drawing a card and being excited about the fish you got kind of loses its luster when you’re doing it once every ten minutes. The pacing slows so much at higher player counts that whatever thematic immersion the game builds begins to fade.
So yes, I would say Finspan does deliver a thematic experience, but much like other aspects of the game, it works best at two players, maybe three. Beyond that, the magic starts to slip away.
Gameplay
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Solid, easy to learn and teach engine builder with a very streamlined and satisfying game loop.
Cons: Lacks meaningful interaction and is an absolute drag at larger player counts.
Finspan does several things that I think are genuinely clever, but three elements in particular stand out as major improvements over the original concept established by Wingspan. Now, I have not played Wyrmspan, so I cannot say how much of that game carries over here, but it is very clear to me that Finspan aims to be a more streamlined and accessible version of the same core design philosophy, and for the most part, I think it succeeds.
After trying Finspan and seeing some potential in the series, despite my less-than-stellar experience with Wingspan, I think Wyrmspan is worth a go. Who doesn’t love dragons?!
The first thing that stands out is the sheer variety of beautifully illustrated fish cards. Every fish feels distinct, and there are countless combinations and strategic uses for them. Building your engine by carefully adding fish to your board is consistently satisfying, and watching those synergies come together is where much of the game’s appeal lives.
I would actually argue that Finspan handles this far better than Wingspan. The strategic role of each card is more intuitive and immediately understandable. You can glance at a fish and quickly grasp what it is trying to accomplish, both the short-term boost and how it fits into a long-term strategy. Wingspan’s cards are not necessarily more complicated, but I often found their place within the broader strategy less obvious and harder to piece together naturally. Admittedly, my experience with Wingspan is limited, but when playing Finspan, it was so obvious and easy to decode that it all just felt more intuitive. I did not have that experience with Wingspan.
The second major improvement is resource management. Finspan feels far more deterministic, which makes it feel like a strategy game first and a gamble second.
I do not mind randomness in games when it creates tension or memorable moments, but my experience with Wingspan was that the randomness often blocked me from executing the strategy I actually wanted to pursue. The dice tower resource system felt clumsy to me because the unpredictability existed in the worst possible place, resource generation itself. It constantly interrupted planning. It reminded me a little too much of Catan, and that is not a compliment coming from me.
I love dice towers, I’m using the word love here! But it has to be executed in a way that doesn’t undermine the game’s core decision-making. In Dirk Henn’s Shogun, the dice tower is used to determine who wins the fight. It’s used at a time when all of your strategy and planning is already in place; now it’s time to see if it works. That’s exciting, it’s fun. Rolling a die to see if you get the resources you need to execute a strategy you want is less strategy and more gambling. I just don’t think it works in Wingspan.
Finspan handles this much better. Your cards and your board effectively become your resources, and there is far less randomness interfering with your plans. You are making deliberate decisions instead of simply hoping things line up correctly. When your strategy works, it feels earned. It feels like good planning rather than good luck.
The third improvement is how the game handles scoring objectives and long-term planning. In Wingspan, I often felt that bonus objectives came down to luck. You could not reliably plan around them because card access and resource access were too inconsistent. Even when you got the cards you wanted, you still had to hope the resource system cooperated enough to let you actually play them in time for it to matter.
In Finspan, those same goals feel much more achievable and controllable. The bonus objectives are clearer, more direct, and easier to intentionally build toward. Because the game gives you greater control over your resources and a wider range of useful card options, planning ahead becomes far more rewarding. You are rarely forced into awkward short-term plays simply to chase points. Instead, your decisions feel connected to a broader strategy.
While fish cards score their share of points, one of the primary ways you are going to dramatically increase your score is by completing the weekly objectives (each round). This is a key to the game, and it’s what you are building your engine for primarily.
From beginning to end, Finspan simply feels more like a true strategy game than Wingspan ever did to me.
That was a lot of comparison, though, so let’s talk about Finspan on its own terms.
One of the game’s greatest strengths is its streamlined gameplay loop. On your turn, you are essentially making one of two choices: play a fish card or go diving, a strength it shares with the rest of the series. I love it when games with genuine strategic depth keep their core actions simple and easy to understand. It allows new players to grasp the structure quickly and start thinking about meaningful decisions almost immediately.
Finspan excels here. It is lightweight, approachable, and easy to teach, but those two simple actions create a surprising amount of depth over the course of the game. The pacing feels clean and efficient, and mechanically, I think the game absolutely sticks the landing.
That said, I have already touched on what I see as the game’s biggest issue, the lack of interaction between players. At two players, I find this much easier to tolerate because the game moves quickly enough to maintain momentum. But even then, what other players do on their turns rarely matters to you in any meaningful way.
The bigger issue is not just the lack of interaction, but the inability to affect another player’s progress at all. If someone builds a stronger engine than you, there is essentially nothing you can do about it. You cannot interfere, slow them down, block them, react, or force them to adapt. Everyone is simply building their own machine in parallel.
Because of that, playing with other people often feels functionally identical to playing solo, only slower. That is probably my biggest criticism of the game because it undermines some of the excitement generated by the otherwise excellent engine-building mechanics.
I also found the game strangely lacking in tension. Since scoring is mostly hidden until the end, you rarely have a sense of whether you are winning or losing during play. Combined with the lack of player interaction, the entire experience can feel a little too gentle and detached for my tastes.
Hidden scoring, I think, in general, is a bad idea in all games. Seeing the numbers go up is not only satisfying but also creates a natural tension between the players. In a game with so little interaction, having a score tracker on the board was one place the game could have benefited greatly.
That alone is not enough to keep the game off my table. I still enjoyed Finspan, and I do not mind playing it. But when I compare it to other games in the same general space, games with similar complexity and strategic depth that also include meaningful interaction, Finspan struggles to stand out for me personally.
At the end of the day, I think Finspan is a good game. In many ways, it is a very smartly designed game. It just never fully grabbed me because the experience feels so isolated. The mechanics themselves are solid, often excellent even, but the lack of interaction keeps the game from reaching the next level, resulting in a kind of average Euro.
Replayability and Longevity
Score: Tilt:
Pros: As a 2-player joust, it feels quick and dynamic, with plenty of strategies to explore.
Cons: This is a solo game you can play around the same table; there is so little interaction that there is no reason to play this in turn order.
This was probably the hardest category for me to judge when it comes to Finspan.
On one hand, the game taps into a very satisfying formula. There is that familiar rhythm of drawing cards, getting them into play, and watching your engine slowly come together and generate points. It is a system that is undeniably compelling, no doubt, while Wingspan is so popular. Many of my favorite games follow this variation on this pattern, and I have played some of them so much that I have quite literally worn out the components.
The difference between those games and Finspan is that those games usually include some level of interaction. Whether it is indirect pressure through shared spaces, like in worker placement, or more direct forms of disruption, other players create tension. They force you to adapt, rethink, and respond; they threaten your engine and your plan. Without that, a lot of the long-term appeal starts to fade.
With more solitary engine builders like Finspan, I tend to feel that the game gets “solved” over time. Even with variability from card draw, there is nothing actively pushing back against your strategy. No one is getting in your way, no one is forcing you off your plan. And for me, simply chasing a higher score, even with solid play like this, is not always enough to keep me engaged once the novelty wears off.
That said, I have seen the other side of this, probably something akin to what is happening with Wingspan in the wider community. My daughter really enjoys Finspan and regularly asks to play it. From her perspective, the lack of interaction does not seem to matter at all. She is fully engaged in building her own board and improving her score, and that is enough.
Finspan, I think, would have done much better as a two-player game, especially if you added some interaction between players with card selection and competition for point scoring, akin to something like 7 Wonder Duel. Trying to turn Finspan into a 4-5 player game, I think, was a bad idea; it’s clearly not a good fit for that.
My point here is that whether or not this game has staying power, that all-important replayability is not inherently a problem for this game. This puzzle has many functioning solutions, and it’s sufficiently dynamic for each game to be a unique experience. The absence of interaction, that’s a matter of preference as to whether or not that kills it for you. I recognize that my view, that a lack of interaction and contention hurts replayability, is not shared by everyone. In fact, quite to the contrary, Wingspan is proof of that. It remains hugely popular and widely loved.
For that reason, I do not see any obvious barrier to Finspan having strong replay value for the right audience. It may not be my personal preference, but if you enjoy this kind of low-interaction, engine-building experience, there is no reason to think Finspan would not hold up over time any more or less than Wingspan has. There is plenty of mechanical depth to explore a wide range of strategies, and it has the advantage of being an easier game to get into.
Conclusion
Finspan is a bit of a quandary for me. I genuinely like it, and I do think it is a good game, but it falls firmly into that category of “good, but flawed.”
The good is easy to identify. The game is simple, mechanically polished, visually appealing, and genuinely enjoyable to play. It is streamlined without feeling shallow, approachable without feeling dull, and there is a satisfying rhythm to building your engine and watching it come together over the course of a session.
The flaw, at least for me, is the near-complete absence of player interaction. In a board game, I personally want tension at the table. I want players affecting each other’s plans, forcing reactions, creating moments of triumph and frustration. That push and pull is a huge part of what makes board games exciting to me.
At the same time, I recognize that this is ultimately a matter of taste rather than an objective design failure. A lot of players don’t want confrontation in their games. They don’t want their plans disrupted or their strategies blocked. The very things I see as essential to a great board game are, for many people, the exact things they try to avoid.
So while I have to judge Finspan by my own standards, because this is my review and not a committee decision, I also understand why games like this resonate so strongly with such a large audience. This is not a problem unique to Finspan either. I often feel this same disconnect with many highly regarded Euro games.
At the start of this review, I asked three important questions, and I think now is the right time to answer them directly.
Does Finspan stand on its own within this series?
Absolutely. In fact, I think Finspan is probably the best entry point into the Span series. It feels like the most approachable and newcomer-friendly version of the formula. If you enjoy Finspan, there is a good chance Wingspan or Wyrmspan will appeal to you as deeper and more complex variations on the same core ideas. If Finspan does not work for you, I am not convinced the others will change your mind.
Is it different enough to justify a place alongside the other games?
I definitely think so. In fact, I suspect many Wingspan fans may actually prefer Finspan’s more deterministic style of strategy. The cleaner resource management and more controlled gameplay give it a very different feel, even if the foundation is familiar. I see no reason why Wingspan and Finspan cannot comfortably exist on the same shelf, and for some players, I could easily see Finspan replacing Wingspan entirely. Personally, I think it is the stronger game.
Who is it really for?
Unsurprisingly, Finspan is clearly aimed at fans of Wingspan and Wyrmspan, but I do not think that is where its audience ends. I think Finspan works very well as a light, accessible Euro game that requires no prior knowledge of the series at all.
It’s easy to teach, easy to learn, visually inviting, and mechanically satisfying. While I personally find the lack of interaction holds it back, I suspect that will not be a major issue for the audience this game is targeting. If anything, that relaxed and low-pressure style may be exactly why so many people will enjoy it.
At the end of the day, I think Finspan is a fun game. More importantly, my daughter enjoys it, and honestly, that alone probably guarantees it a permanent place on the shelf. Any game you can get to the table and entertain people with is a good game, and Finspan definitely falls into that category.
Full disclosure time. When it comes to Star Wars Unlimited, I need to lay my cards on the table. I think Star Wars Unlimited is one of the best collectible card games ever made. Full stop. No exaggeration. Which means doing an unbiased review of one of its expansions is going to be challenging, but we will take a crack at it.
When I put together my Top 10 Collectible Card Games of All Time list back in 2024, Star Wars Unlimited landed at number two. Yes, I did place The Lord of the Rings cooperative card game above it, but the gap between first and second place was razor-thin. The only reason one ranked above the other is that lists demand a winner. On another day, depending on my mood and what deck just crushed me the night before, the rankings could easily flip. Besides, even though my son’s name is Luke, with a middle name Skywalker, not joking, I tend to be more of a fantasy guy. I just couldn’t have a blond, blue-eyed Gandalf running around the house. Some sacrifices had to be made.
Now we arrive at A Lawless Time, the latest expansion for Star Wars Unlimited. While I could spend several paragraphs talking about the game itself, I generally avoid reviewing collectible card games as a whole. Trying to review a living card game is a dangerous business because everything changes over time. New sets release, metas evolve, balance shifts, and suddenly an article written six months ago feels like it belongs in a dusty Jedi archive somewhere.
Expansions are a bit different. A set exists in its own little bubble. You can judge the mechanics, themes, artwork, and overall experience without worrying that future releases will completely rewrite the conversation.
Before we go any further, though, I do want to address something that confused a few readers when I wrote my comparison between Star Wars Unlimited and Star Wars Destiny. In that article, I ultimately chose Destiny as my personal favorite between the two games. Naturally, some people looked at me like I had just claimed a stormtrooper was an excellent shot.
“How can Destiny be your favorite if Unlimited is the better game?”
Well, the answer comes down to the difference between quality and preference, objective review and “what do I want to play ?” These are different constructs, different ways to look at a game.
I don’t think Star Wars Destiny is a better game than Star Wars Unlimited, not even by a long shot, but I love it just the same. It was a chaotic mess, but it was really fun to play.
In my opinion, Star Wars Unlimited is the better-designed game, no question about that at all. I made that clear in the original article. It is tighter, deeper, and far more competitive. But Star Wars Destiny, despite its flaws, is just incredibly fun to play. You roll dice, ridiculous things happen, and the randomness creates moments that feel cinematic and chaotic in the best possible way.
Deck building matters in Destiny, but it does not completely dominate the experience.
Star Wars Unlimited is a different beast entirely. This game is a serious competition for Magic: The Gathering. The deck building is deep and meaningful, the gameplay is more deterministic, and the competitive structure feels extremely solid. The meta evolves constantly, with one dominant deck rising to power only to get hunted down by the next clever creation waiting in the wings.
Star Wars Unlimited is a traditional collectable card game in every sense of the word; it’s all about opening up those boosters, trying to find rare and powerful cards, and trying to build that perfect deck. Whenever a new expansion like A Lawless Time comes out, the game sort of resets as everyone scrambles to come to grips with how the game has changed as a result.
It is also much more of a traditional collectible game, complete with premium cards, hyperspace variants, showcase leaders, foil treatments, and enough ultra-rare cardboard to make collectors quietly question their financial decisions.
And it is a blast, pun intended, but I can’t explain why I would still rather play Star Wars Destiny on most days because it’s just silly and fun, for me, that usually trumps “good design”.
But this article is not about Star Wars Unlimited as a whole. We are here to talk about A Lawless Time, the newest expansion for the game, and whether this set deserves a place among the best releases the game has seen so far.
Alright, that was a lot of rambling right out of the gate. Enough nonsense. Let us get into it.
Overview
Final Score: (4.95 out 5) Near Perfect!
The focus of A Lawless Time leans heavily into the murky criminal underworld and rebellious fringe of the pre-Original Trilogy era. Characters like Saw Gerrera, Tobias Beckett, Jyn Erso, Director Krennic, and Enfys Nest all make appearances, drawing heavily from Rogue One and Solo. That also means we get younger versions of some familiar faces like Han, Lando, Leia, and Chewbacca, which gives the set a nice sense of timeline identity without feeling overly restrictive.
Cards like Tobias Beckett harken back to movies like Solo, but while that in itself is fun, the real trick is going to be coming up with clever ways to use new leaders like this in decks. The theme is awesome, but the real juice here is deck building oppertunities and A Lawless Time is chock-full of them.
There is also a healthy dose of material from the Disney television series, particularly Andor, which feels like a natural fit considering the expansion’s focus on spies, thieves, mercenaries, and morally questionable operators who probably have at least three bounties on their heads at any given moment.
At the same time, A Lawless Time continues Star Wars Unlimited’s habit of treating the Star Wars universe like an enormous toy box rather than a rigid timeline simulator. Expanded universe oddities make appearances too, including Lepi characters, the rabbit-like humanoids that still somehow feel less strange than some of the creatures hanging around the Mos Eisley cantina.
The set is technically rooted in a specific era, but aesthetically it plays much looser with the timeline. Jabba the Hutt, Bib Fortuna, and Boba Fett all make perfect thematic sense here, but several cards clearly use imagery and inspiration pulled directly from the Original Trilogy era. Characters like Malakili, the unfortunate rancor trainer from Return of the Jedi, and Garindan, better known to casual fans as “the weird elephant spy guy” from New Hope, are very clearly channeling classic trilogy energy.
Personally, this does not bother me in the slightest. If anything, it is part of the charm. At this point, I do not particularly care what exact slice of Star Wars an expansion focuses on as long as it delivers more smugglers, bounty hunters, shady deals, blasters, cantinas, and people making terrible life choices in space. Give me more of it. Always.
Mechanically, A Lawless Time introduces two major mechanics to the game, one of which feels almost guaranteed to shake up competitive play in a meaningful way. Credit Tokens.
Credit Tokens are essentially temporary resource acceleration, but unlike traditional ramp cards, they give players short bursts of explosive momentum instead of permanent growth. Cards like Unmarked Credits can generate a Credit Token for a very small investment, allowing players to effectively jump ahead on resources for a turn. Play it early enough and suddenly aggressive decks are threatening plays a full turn ahead of schedule, which is the kind of thing that tends to make control players stare nervously at their opening hand while reconsidering all of their life choices.
What makes Credit Tokens especially interesting is that they create tempo spikes rather than long-term economic advantages. That distinction matters. Traditional ramp permanently changes the pace of the game, but it works out as a sort of slow start to gain a resource advantage later. Credit Tokens instead create windows of opportunity, which feels very appropriate for a set themed around criminals and opportunists looking to cash in fast before things inevitably explode around them.
While credit tokens can produce a short-term burst, some cards like The Max Rebo Band can act as a slightly more permanent ramp. The art on this card is iconic!
The other major addition is the introduction of Multi-Aspect Cards, including the new Triple Aspect cards. Characters like Ezra Bridger and Zeb Orrelios require significant deck-building commitment, but they also reward players for branching into combinations that normally would never exist together.
Some of these cards gain additional bonuses depending on which aspects are present in your deck beyond their basic requirements, which quietly opens the door to something Star Wars Unlimited has only lightly touched until now: true cross aspect synergy and hybrid design space.
That may end up being one of the most important long-term additions in the entire set, or it might end up being a gimmick that doesn’t quite stick the landing; it’s really impossible to say at this point.
Multi-Aspect cards are either going to be a major part of the competative meta game, or irrelevant. Right now, it’s really hard to say which way its going to go.
Up until now, aspects have largely maintained fairly defined identities and playstyles. A Lawless Time starts poking holes in those walls. Suddenly, you can see the possibility for decks that blend mechanics, keywords, and abilities in ways that previously felt awkward or outright impossible. It rewards experimentation, and collectible card games are usually at their best when players are encouraged to become slightly deranged scientists in search of broken combinations.
Beyond the new mechanics, A Lawless Time also revisits many existing keywords and gameplay systems, often remixing them into new combinations. One thing I noticed almost immediately was how many cards feature “When Played” effects. They are everywhere in this set.
Is this a good card. I find it increadibly difficult to tell, it would require many….many games to make that determination, at least for me. From a simple reading though, this sounds awesome, but is it cost effective, that is the real question with multi-aspect cards.
That gives the expansion a very active, tempo-driven feeling where cards often generate immediate value the moment they hit the table. Even units that may not survive long enough to act can still impact the game instantly, which creates faster pacing and more tactical decision-making.
Of course, the real question with any new expansion is never whether it will affect the game. It absolutely will. The real question is whether players will use the cards the way the designers intended.
History suggests the answer is probably “not even remotely.”
This is the eternal challenge of designing a collectible card game. Developers can spend months testing interactions, balancing mechanics, and carefully tuning power levels, only for players to collectively lock themselves in metaphorical garages for two weeks and emerge with some horrifying deck combo capable of breaking the laws of nature by turn three.
And frankly, that is part of the fun.
Components
Score: Tilt:
Pros: Top-tier card quality, the best in the business.
Cons: The tokens included with the game have and continue to suck, and most people continue not to care, myself included.
I will keep this section brief because component quality in collectible card games falls into a very strange category. It is simultaneously one of the most important aspects of the hobby and also one of the easiest places for a modern publisher to score points because there is only one acceptable quality level. It’s an all-or-nothing deal.
At this stage, premium component quality is not a luxury in the CCG world. It is the bare minimum requirement for entry. If players are going to spend money chasing rare cardboard rectangles like bounty hunters tracking fugitives across the galaxy, those rectangles better feel fantastic in the hand.
And Star Wars Unlimited absolutely clears that bar with room to spare.
The cardstock is excellent, the printing is sharp, the colors are vibrant, and the overall presentation has that polished, premium feel you want from a modern collectible card game. The hyperspace cards, foil treatments, showcase leaders, and other premium variants continue to look spectacular in A Lawless Time. Pulling a high rarity card still delivers that little burst of dopamine that convinces your brain that opening “just one more pack” is somehow a financially responsible decision.
More importantly, the readability and usability of the cards remain excellent despite the increasing mechanical complexity of the game. Fantasy Flight has done a very good job maintaining clean layouts and visual clarity, which becomes increasingly important as more keywords, mechanics, and interactions enter the card pool.
As has been the case throughout the entire Unlimited run, the tracking components, like health, shields etc.. have and continue to suck. They are paper-thin cardboard pieces, something you expect to get from a cereal box rather than a CCG. No one actually cares because no one actually uses these, but if this is your first venture into Star Wars Unlimited, you will be disappointed.
Most avid fans of Star Wars Unlimited will tell you that the first order of business is getting some acrylic tokens. They are relatively cheap and an almost manditory replacement for the crappy tokens that come with the game, which coincidently are not worth the paper they were printed on.
Star Wars Unlimited meets all standards of quality effortlessly.
It aced the assignment. Moving on.
Theme
Score: Tilt:
Pros: A Lawless Time represents, in my humble opinion, the best parts of the Star Wars Universe.
Cons: I couldn’t come up with anything.
Getting the theme right in a Star Wars Unlimited set is incredibly important, but let us be honest, Star Wars as a setting does a lot of the heavy lifting here. Give me almost any vaguely thematic expansion title tied to this universe and I could probably brainstorm two hundred card ideas before my coffee gets cold.
That is part of what makes Star Wars such an absurdly powerful setting for a collectible card game. The universe is so rich with characters, locations, factions, ships, weird aliens, criminals, bounty hunters, and background cantina weirdos that the design space feels almost endless.
So naturally, A Lawless Time absolutely nails the theme. The real discussion is not whether the expansion succeeds thematically, but how it succeeds and which cards really sell the fantasy.
As the name suggests, the underworld side of Star Wars takes center stage here. Smugglers, mercenaries, syndicates, criminals, bounty hunters, and opportunists dominate the set both mechanically and aesthetically. This is the dirty back alley side of the galaxy where everyone looks suspicious, every deal feels illegal, and trusting anyone is generally considered a tactical error.
One of the things I really appreciate about this set is how strongly it leans into recreating specific Star Wars archetypes and scenes through deck building. You can build a proper Jabba’s Palace-themed deck, which is fittingly one of the spotlight archetypes for the set. There are strong hooks for Syndicate and Black Sun style builds, Rogue One-focused rebel groups, Solo-inspired underworld crews, and classic Original Trilogy infiltration themes.
From the art to the impact, everything about Star Wars Unlimited cards just oozes theme.
You can even recreate the entire “absolutely nothing suspicious happening here” sequence from Return of the Jedi with cards like Lando’s Underworld Disguise and Leia’s Disguise. The fact that these cards exist at all makes me irrationally happy.
In fact, I think A Lawless Time may be one of the richest sets yet for thematic deck building yet. There is a very noticeable focus on recreating scenes, crews, and faction identities from the films and shows, but importantly, the cards are also mechanically designed to work together.
That matters more than it might sound.
One of the occasionally awkward things about Star Wars Unlimited in earlier sets was that cards clearly inspired by the same scene or faction did not always synergize particularly well in actual gameplay. You would build a deck that looked perfect from a lore perspective, then discover half the cards were fighting each other mechanically like rival bounty hunters arguing over a contract.
A Lawless Time feels much more deliberate in this regard. The thematic decks are not just flavorful; they are functional. The set actively rewards players for leaning into those themes instead of accidentally punishing them for trying to build something cinematic.
That is a huge win for this guy who loves a good thematic deck!
This also feels like the perfect place to talk about a few of my favorite cards in the set from a thematic perspective.
The Triple Aspect Cassian Andor is fantastic. As somebody who absolutely loved the Andor television series, this card immediately jumped out at me. Making Cassian a multi-aspect card feels incredibly appropriate because the character himself operates across so many different worlds and moral lines throughout the story.
Mechanically, the card is excellent too. At four cost for a 4/4 body, Cassian already presents a legitimate threat, but the additional support he provides to your other units gives the card real presence on the board. It feels versatile, tactical, and quietly dangerous, which is basically the perfect representation of Cassian Andor as a character.
Then there is the new Jabba the Hutt leader card, which I absolutely adore and strongly suspect could end up being one of the sets defining cards.
The design here is brilliant because it captures the feeling of Jabba operating an entire criminal empire built on favors, debt, and recycling disposable employees. The ability to return Underworld cards to your hand while immediately refunding part of the cost with Credit Tokens creates this constant sense of greasy value generation where Jabba always seems to come out ahead somehow.
And that is before he even deploys.
Once Jabba enters play, things get ridiculous in the best possible way. Being able to play Underworld cards directly into play and potentially grant them Ambush if you spent a Credit Token opens the door for some genuinely terrifying combinations. Giving units Ambush is an enormously powerful effect, especially in a set already built around tempo swings and explosive turns.
The card feels dangerous. It feels manipulative. It feels unfair in that very specific way great villain cards often do.
Most importantly, it feels like Jabba.
This may be my favorite card in all of Star Wars Unlimited. I have so many deck ideas that I suspect I’m going to end up with multiple Jabba The Hut decks.
That is really the strength of A Lawless Time as a whole. The mechanics and themes are constantly reinforcing each other. The cards do not just reference Star Wars lore; they actively recreate the feeling of these characters and factions at the table.
There is far more happening in this expansion than I can reasonably fit into a single review, but thematically speaking, A Lawless Time absolutely sticks the landing.
Gameplay
Score: Tilt:
Pros: New mechanics introduced in this set are easy to use and impactful.
Cons: There is nothing revolutionary about these mechanics; in a way, they are overdue concepts we expected to get at some point.
It is very difficult to separate reviewing the gameplay of Star Wars Unlimited as a whole from reviewing a specific expansion like A Lawless Time. In many ways, they are inseparable. Every new set becomes part of the larger ecosystem immediately, like tossing another dangerous creature into an already overcrowded trash compactor.
That said, I do think there are a few ways to specifically judge what A Lawless Time brings to the table mechanically, particularly through its two major additions: Credit Tokens and Multi-Aspect cards.
Starting with Credit Tokens, I think this mechanic has the potential to significantly impact the game, both immediately and long-term.
What makes Credit Tokens interesting is that while they technically function as ramp, they do not behave like traditional resource acceleration. Previous ramp strategies in Star Wars Unlimited were generally about long-term advantage. You invested resources now so you could build toward massive late-game turns later. The goal was usually to outscale your opponent and eventually start dropping absurdly expensive threats while they stared helplessly across the table, wondering where everything went wrong.
Credit Tokens operate very differently.
As there are ways to earn credits, naturally their is a way to counter them. I love the image on this card, so bad-ass!
They create temporary bursts of momentum rather than permanent economic advantage. A card like Unmarked Credits can effectively push you one turn ahead on tempo, allowing aggressive or tempo-focused decks to accelerate into stronger plays much earlier than expected.
That distinction matters a lot.
Temporary ramp changes the pacing of the game in a completely different way than permanent ramp. Instead of slowly building superiority, Credit Tokens encourage explosive sequencing and pressure spikes. It is not about dominating the late-game economy. It is about kicking the door open early and throwing your opponent into survival mode before they can stabilize.
That alone is enough to create entirely new archetypes.
And while the initial card pool supporting Credit Tokens is still relatively small, there are already hints of where the mechanic could go. Jabba the Hutt is the obvious standout example because he does far more than simply generate temporary resources. He turns Credits into an engine. Bib Fortuna also plays in this design space, generating Credits in more creative and synergistic ways.
That is what makes the mechanic exciting. Right now, it feels restrained, but you can already see the future design space opening up behind it like a blast door slowly creaking apart.
As a gameplay mechanic, I think Credit Tokens are excellent. They are mechanically useful, strategically interesting, and thematically appropriate all at once. That is usually the sweet spot for a great CCG mechanic.
It is also exactly the kind of mechanic that sends players sprinting back to their old deck boxes looking for terrible ideas they are suddenly convinced are brilliant.
Now, the other major addition, Multi-Aspect cards, is much harder to evaluate right now.
Unlike Credit Tokens, which immediately slot into existing strategies fairly naturally, Multi-Aspect cards feel more experimental. Their true strength is going to depend heavily on how the competitive scene evolves over the next several months.
Still, their arrival feels almost inevitable.
The so-called “rainbow deck” has been a staple concept in collectible card games for decades. At some point, players always start asking the same question: “What happens if I ignore all reasonable deck-building restraints and jam everything together anyway?”
A Lawless Time finally opens that door properly.
It was inevitable that bases would play some sort of roll in bringing rainbow decks to life, there are a few different combinations of this epic base action.
Personally, I find the mechanic fascinating, though not necessarily revolutionary for my own playstyle. Most of my current decks already function primarily around two aspects, with the third aspect often feeling more like a light splash than a core identity. Going beyond that starts to feel increasingly unstable to me.
But that is preference, not criticism.
Because, from a design perspective, Multi-Aspect cards massively expand what is possible in Star Wars Unlimited. They allow abilities, strategies, and mechanics that were previously locked away inside separate faction identities to start interacting in entirely new ways.
That is a huge deal.
Even if the first wave of Multi Aspect decks ends up inconsistent or awkward, the mechanic itself represents a major expansion of the game’s design space. In the long term, I suspect A Lawless Time will ultimately be remembered as the set where Star Wars Unlimited fundamentally widened its mechanical horizons.
And if I had to make an early prediction, I would not be surprised at all if Multi-Aspect cards eventually become a dominant force in the meta. Players love flexibility. They love experimentation. Most importantly, competitive players love discovering combinations the developers never intended.
That combination usually leads to madness eventually.
As a whole, A Lawless Time introduces two mechanics that almost feel overdue in hindsight. I am actually a little surprised neither temporary ramp mechanics nor Multi Aspect cards appeared earlier in the game’s lifespan because both concepts are fairly classic territory for collectible card games.
But perhaps that timing is exactly why they work so well here.
Star Wars Unlimited spent its early sets establishing strong foundations and clearly defined identities. A Lawless Time feels like the point where the game finally loosens its collar a bit and starts exploring just how weird and creative things can become.
Replayability and Longevity
Score: Tilt:
Pros: This game is not only addictive to play and collect, but deck building is endless and amazing. A Lawless Time raises the stakes exponentially.
Cons: If you can find something to complain about here, leave a comment. I would be curious to know what it is.
When it comes to a collectible card game, replayability is not just important; it is everything. You can have great mechanics, beautiful artwork, and clever design, but if the game does not keep pulling players back to the table, it simply does not survive.
Fortunately, Star Wars Unlimited handles replayability with absolute precision, and A Lawless Time continues that trend without missing a beat.
There is almost something unfair about judging replayability in a CCG expansion, because the system itself is built for endless play. Once you are invested, the game becomes a constant cycle of tweaking decks, testing ideas, adapting to new cards, and occasionally convincing yourself that this next version is definitely the one that finally works.
A Lawless Time adds fuel to that fire in exactly the right way.
I’m not a huge fan of Magic: The Gathering anymore these days, I personally don’t think it has aged well but there is no doubt that I’m in a minority opinion here. Suffice to say that Star Wars Unlimited is a superior game in every measurable category, so if MTG has lasted for decades, I suspect there is a lot of hope of seeing Star Wars Unlimited have a nice healthy run. At some point however I suspect just like Magic: The Gathering they are going to start running out of ideas. Are we going to see Star Wars Spider Man cross-over at some point?
New mechanics like Credit Tokens encourage players to revisit older decks and rethink their tempo and resource curves. Multi Aspect cards open the door to entirely new archetypes that did not previously exist. Even if you do not build around them immediately, they linger in the back of your mind, quietly suggesting increasingly questionable deck ideas at inconvenient times.
On top of that, the strong thematic focus of the set encourages a different kind of replayability. It is not just about winning, it is about building something that feels right. You are not only asking “Is this deck good?” but also “Does this feel like the crew I want to play?” That combination of mechanical depth and thematic freedom is a powerful hook.
And of course, every new expansion reshapes the broader ecosystem. Existing decks evolve, old strategies get new tools, and entirely new approaches emerge. The game never really resets, it just keeps expanding outward.
That is the magic of a well-designed CCG.
There is no real ceiling here. Like Magic: The Gathering, this is the kind of game that can stay in rotation for years, even decades. As long as new sets continue to deliver meaningful additions, the replayability effectively becomes limitless.
A Lawless Time does exactly what it needs to do. It keeps the engine running, adds new layers to explore, and gives players even more reasons to come back for another game.
Conclusion
I have to admit, reviewing a CCG expansion is a bit of a strange experience. It is the first time I have done it on this blog and I am not entirely convinced I have done it justice. Part of me feels like I should have spent more time diving into individual cards, because that is really where this expansion shines.
A Lawless Time taps directly into the parts of Star Wars that I personally enjoy the most. Not just the characters, but specific moments and scenes. There is something very satisfying about seeing those moments translated into cards that actually work together on the table.
For me, the Jabba’s Palace sequence has always been a standout. There is a lot of nostalgia tied up in that whole section of Return of the Jedi, so being able to recreate that experience through themed decks is a huge win.
So I will just say it plainly. This is my favorite expansion for Star Wars Unlimited so far.
That is not purely because of the mechanics, although they are solid and interesting. It really comes down to the setting, the tone, and the sheer number of opportunities to build decks around some of my favorite parts of the Star Wars universe. That is what pushes it over the top for me.
If you are already playing Star Wars Unlimited, you probably do not need me to tell you to pick this up.
The more interesting question is whether this is a good entry point if you are new to the game.
My answer is fairly simple.
Start with the core set. It is called the core set for a reason. It lays the foundation, gives you the essential tools to understand the game, and offers a lot of value right out of the box. You can technically jump straight into an expansion, but you will get a much better overall experience if you begin there.
After that, expansions are largely self-contained in terms of theme and direction, so you can absolutely start with A Lawless Time. In fact, I would argue it is one of the more approachable sets. The new mechanics are easy to grasp and the themes are clear, which makes it a comfortable place to begin building decks.
I would also recommend Jump to Lightspeed alongside it, simply because it is another strong set with a lot of fun and interesting cards to explore.
At the end of the day, A Lawless Time is a great expansion. It brings meaningful mechanics, strong thematic cohesion, and a lot of personality to the table. More importantly, it captures a very specific slice of Star Wars in a way that feels both playable and memorable.
Over the past few months, I’ve been dropping not-so-subtle hints about my affection for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition across this blog. But my Top 10 Versions of Dungeons & Dragons article back in February didn’t just hint, it basically proposed marriage; it was my number 1 pick.
While I don’t think this is a big reveal, I have in the past kind of avoided simply stating it outright because that tends to draw… attention.
As expected, a few loyal readers have (politely) raised an eyebrow and asked me to explain myself. Now, I don’t usually feel the need to justify my tastes, this isn’t a courtroom, and I’m not on trial for “liking THAC0 unironically.” But the questions seem to come from genuine curiosity rather than thinly veiled judgment… mostly.
So the question is simple: what is it about 2nd edition AD&D that clicks for me? Why, out of all the editions of Dungeons & Dragons, would I pick one that, aside from the occasionally misunderstood Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, is often labeled as one of the least popular?
Now, I’m not entirely convinced that’s true. In fact, I’d argue 2nd edition is one of the more popular versions of the game. Do I have hard data to support that claim? Absolutely not. But in the grand tradition of internet discourse, I’m comfortable asserting it confidently anyway, and besides, no one else seems to have the numbers to contradict that claim either.
I suspect this “unpopular” reputation comes from the timing. 2nd edition was around when TSR, the company behind D&D, was heading straight toward financial ruin. Naturally, people connect the dots and assume the game must have been the problem, and in fact, it’s often blamed for TSR’s demise.
TSR’s demise is one of the great tragic stories in the legacy of D&D, with many characters, plots, and crazy events that have fascinated gamers for years. Several books have been written on the subject.
But if you actually dig into the history of TSR’s downfall, you’ll find something surprising: it had very little to do with the game itself and everything to do with spectacularly questionable management decisions. We’re talking the kind of business strategy that makes you double-check if it was actually real or a parody. Entire books have been written on this subject as an illustration of what not to do as a corporation.
But I’m wandering off into history-lesson territory, and that’s not why we’re here.
I came to answer a question.
And answer it I shall.
The Origins Of Ethos In Dungeons and Dragons
I touched on the “ethos” of Dungeons & Dragons in my last article, specifically in relation to D&D’s latest incarnation, D&D 5.5, but I feel the need to circle back and give it the attention it truly deserves in the context of 2nd edition AD&D. Because if early editions invented the ethos of D&D, then Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition took that rough idea, wrote it into stone as commandments, and formed the official religion. Everything we consider to be THE ethos of D&D largely comes from 2nd edition AD&D, even in modern versions of the game.
A big part of that comes down to one thing: 2nd edition AD&D is absurdly verbose, and I mean that as the highest compliment.
Pick up just about any 2nd edition book, and you’ll quickly realize something important, especially compared to other versions of the game: this game was created by writers, not designers, people who gave far more importance to the narrative weight of the game rather than its mechanics.
Until the 2nd edition AD&D Monster Manual, the concept of the monster book was about some basic information, a nice picture, and a clean monster stat block. Useful, yes, but inspiring? 2nd edition AD&D monster descriptions took up 1 or 2 pages, describing them in excessive detail. It was the first time monsters were more than just “things to kill”, there was a story behind every creature. Unfortunately, in modern D&D monster books, we have reverted to making monster entries stat blocks.
And it shows, mechanically, 2nd edition sometimes leaves a lot to be desired, which might hint at why many D&D players frown at its presence or mention, and I get that. There are balance issues, odd design choices, and plenty of “did anyone actually playtest this?” moments scattered across spells, monsters, and adventures alike. It’s the kind of system where you occasionally squint at a rule and just decide, as a group, to emotionally move past it because there is just no way to justify its existence.
I do believe when the 2nd edition was being designed, it was forced to work under certain constraints, namely backwards compatibility with the 1st edition, so I do believe part of the design problem stems from that, but for the most part, as a design, 2nd edition AD&D is just kind of meh… but with moments of brilliance that in my opinion make it THE best version of the game. We will get to that in a minute.
But the writing is phenomenal, of that there is no question. D&D is a game about stories, and writing trumps rules in my humble opinion. It’s the creative center of D&D, it’s where lore and mechanics converge to create the ethos, and it’s why, in my humble opinion, 2nd edition AD&D becomes such a critical part of franchise history.
Between the pages, you can feel the beating heart of D&D lore coming alive in a way it never did before or since. Not hinted at. Not loosely suggested. Fully realized and fully committed to Sword and Sorcery in all of its glory.
Spells don’t just tell you what they do, they invite you to imagine what they could do. Monsters aren’t just stat blocks; they’re given histories, ecologies, and so much more than you could ever ask for. You don’t just learn what an orc is, you learn how it lives, what it fears, and probably what it argues about over dinner.
And the sheer volume of it all is astonishing. The “Complete” series, the endless player and DM option books, the sprawling settings, the amazing monster books, 2nd edition didn’t believe in giving you just enough. It believed in giving you everything, plus a few extra pages just in case you were getting comfortable.
There is no question that the Complete book series for 2nd edition AD&D is, pun intended, complete overkill. It’s actually common to refer to this expanded content as “bloat”, but I find that to be an insane concept. It’s only bloat if you try to use everything at the same time, which there is literally no reason to ever do. These books are about inspiration, and 90% of the content in each book is narratively focused. These books are story juice!
These books were wildly creative. Deeply flavorful. Occasionally unhinged in the best possible way. There’s a richness to the writing that makes D&D feel distinct, lived-in, creating a deeply ingrained ethos in your soul. For me personally, 2nd edition AD&D defined what D&D is forever.
I, however, was not the only person who garnered such affection from the writing behind 2nd edition AD&D. This game inspired an entire generation of designers who created some of the most memorable D&D video games ever made, not to mention the volumes of books written with 2e as a backdrop. From the Baldur’s Gate series to the Neverwinter Nights games, from Planescape Torment to the Gold Box Era games. From the Forgotten Realms saga’s to the Dragonlance epics. Ask anyone what their favorite D&D PC or video D&D game adaptation is or their favorite D&D book, and I will show you how 2nd edition AD&D writing was the primary influence.
What 2nd edition really did was bring the core ideas and growing ethos of the game into sharp focus. Things that felt a bit blurry in earlier editions suddenly became established constructs of the game. The identity of D&D, its tone, its style, its voice, was no longer implied. It was spelled out for you, in loving, excessive detail.
Later editions leaned heavily into the idea that “D&D can be whatever you want it to be.” And to be fair, that’s a perfectly valid philosophy. The game has always relied on DMs and players to shape it into something personal, even in the 1e days, perhaps specifically in the 1e D&D days.
But 2nd edition took a different approach. It didn’t just hand you a toolbox, it handed you a fully furnished house and said, “You can redecorate if you want… but you really don’t have to.” More than that, it anticipated player desires and offered solutions to some of the deepest and often most convoluted questions. It was, in a word, excessively thorough.
In my view, that’s where 2nd edition truly defines the ethos of Dungeons & Dragons. It answers the question: What is D&D? in no uncertain terms. Where modern D&D would say “Here is what D&D could be, it’s up to you though, don’t take my word for it, I just want to make you happy, I don’t want to tell you what to do, in fact, never mind, do what you want, any D&D at your table is real D&D, we don’t actually have an opinion.” I don’t want to say that the alternative approach is wrong, it’s not, but if you want to play D&D within its core ethos, explicitly defined and gloriously written, 2nd edition AD&D is the only version of the game that comes even close to doing that. By comparison, everything else is intentionally vague at best.
This is 100% complete information in 5.5 D&D regarding what a Dwarf is. This is it. Three paragraphs describing a Dwarf in the most static, inconsequential way possible. If you didn’t already know what a Dwarf was before reading this, it would be utterly useless. As it stands, the core information is brave people who sometimes have beards who live in the mountains. The text doesn’t even commit to them being short out of fear of offending someone. At best, I would describe this as ZERO effort from a writing perspective.
2nd edition D&D was not just a set of rules, but a culture. A tone. A shared understanding. A very real “thing” that you can recognize instantly, and even people who weren’t fans of the edition would ultimately be influenced by its existence.
When you hear a 2nd edition AD&D player describe D&D, it will always be with confidence, arrogance even, but this stems from the simple fact that they didn’t invent it, it’s not some version in their head or homebrew, they read it, straight from the horse’s mouth in exceedingly, almost painful detail.
Mode Switching and Execution Complexity
Two of my biggest gripes with Dungeons & Dragons, both before and after Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, are what I call mode switching and execution complexity. And yes, I realize those sound like terms stolen from a software engineering meeting, but stay with me.
Let’s define them before we wander too far into the dungeon.
Mode switching is that very obvious shift in playstyle when the game goes from “we are telling a story” to “everyone grab a miniature and roll initiative.” Combat happens a lot in D&D, but to me, a fight is still part of the story. It’s the climax, the tension release, the cinematic payoff. It shouldn’t feel like you’ve paused the movie to boot up an entirely different video game.
But that’s often exactly what happens in all versions of D&D after 2nd edition.
A fight breaks out, and suddenly the roleplay screeches to a halt. Outcome the miniatures, the grids, the measuring tools, and we transition, sometimes dramatically, into what is essentially a tactical combat mini-game with its own rules, pacing, and logic. It’s like switching from a novel to a board game mid-sentence.
There is no question that a beautiful tactical board in full color and mini’s is a fun experience, and I don’t think it’s hard to understand why people like tactical combat. The problem is that the rest of the game takes place in our imagination, and the switch alters the perception of what the game is. Story mode and combat mode are two very different things, often in direct opposition to each other.
Closely tied to this is the execution complexity is the moment combat begins, time compresses into 6–10 second chunks, movement becomes squares, and actions start to feel like selecting abilities from a hotbar. Attacks, spells, effects, they’re no longer described; they’re executed. Press the button, resolve outcome, next turn. The rules stuffed into these systems are complex and intertwined with exceptions and sub-sections. Even in a well-designed game its a coma-inducing experience with the pace of continental drift, hardly the stuff of cinematic combat.
Now, I get why this exists. There’s a certain appeal to tight, tactical combat systems. But for me? That level of depth and mechanical layering pulls me out of the story rather than deeper into it. It’s the antithesis of role-playing. I expect to do that when playing Warhammer 40k, but not D&D.
And this is where 2nd edition AD&D quietly does something brilliant mechanically. I can’t say if it was intentional or not; we don’t know that much about the design thinking behind 2nd editin AD&D, other than being a derivative of 1st edition AD&D, but it nails it just the same.
It sidesteps all of this, not by removing tactics, but by embedding them inside the narrative.
Combat in 2nd edition is fast, brutal, and dangerous, but it never stops being part of the story. It doesn’t switch modes. It just intensifies the cinematics; it asks for more adjectives, not less.
First, a combat round is about one minute long. That alone changes everything about the dynamics of battles in the game. Suddenly, there’s room for description, for dialogue, for actual acting. Your character isn’t just swinging a sword or executing power X, they’re circling, shouting, reacting, and making choices that feel like part of a living scene.
Second, and this is the real magic, all combat actions are declared before they are resolved, and before initiative is rolled. This is a crucial dynamic shift, it’s the key design decision that transforms 2nd edition AD&D combat from a tactical mini game to a strategic narrative game. It switches the game from a sport to an actual battle.
The DM describes what the monsters and NPCs are doing.
The players describe what their characters intend to do.
THEN the initiative is rolled, and actions are resolved in that order with narrative adaptations made on the fly.
That sequence fundamentally changes how combat feels. Instead of reacting to a mechanical order of turns, players are asked a much more interesting question:
“Here’s what’s happening, what do you do over the next minute?”
It’s proactive, not reactive. Narrative first, mechanics second.
While describe then execute is a strange concept in modern D&D, largely due to the nature of how tactical combat systems must be executed, in the overwhelming majority of RPG’s, especially those that don’t directly try to emulate D&D, this is the standard. The normal way is the way 2nd edition AD&D does it, initiative tactical combat, is the outlier in RPG mechanics.
Even initiative itself, while technically a simple d10 roll, is influenced by real in-world factors, weapon speed, number of attacks, whether you’re using ranged weapons, what armor you’re wearing, and so on. It’s not just a number generator; it’s a loose simulation of physical reality, stuffed in one place, yet defined by the decisions players made in how they equipped themselves and their style/approach to combat. All of the realism and factors are bundled up into a single mechanism that gets out of the way of the narrative play right after it’s executed, but has a tremendous impact on how combat ultimately resolves.
There’s enough granularity to keep things tactically interesting, but not so much that it strangles the flow of the story. The system isn’t obsessed with rigid operational execution; it’s trying to interpret what’s happening in a believable way in a story about a battle, rather than being a mini-battle game.
Compare that to earlier editions, like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, which aimed for something similar but got buried under mechanical weight and was overall focused on Dungeon survival as a core feature of the game. Or later editions, 3rd, Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, and 5th, which lean heavily into structured, tactical execution. Those systems work well if what you want is a combat-focused miniatures game, but they undeniably shift the experience into a different gear.
I want to be clear on this point, in my mind, the 1st edition AD&D Dungeon Master Guide by Gary Gygax is a masterpiece, it is the definitive work that breaks down the work of a DM. This is an important book, but it does very little to inspire writing, narrative creativity or the premise of creating adventures. It’s really a book that is more about problems and solutions of being a DM and how to referee the game. That is a critical part of running D&D, but when you sit down to create an adventure, this book offers very little to the creative process; it more helps you understand the conceptual principles.
And just to be clear, I’m not saying that’s bad. Plenty of people love that style, and I don’t fault them for it, but to me, it’s actually always kind of a fresh hell. It trips up the narrative in incalculable ways and resolves stories in an almost silly mockery of reality, dirtying the waters of storytelling. I just don’t like tactical combat in my RPG’s, any RPG’s, least of all my beloved Dungeons and Dragons.
What I love about 2nd edition is how seamlessly it connects combat to the rest of the game. The act of saying “this is what I do” is the same whether you’re negotiating with a king or fighting for your life. The way it plays out, how the story shakes out, is pretty much the same. Some dice rolls to determine success and failure, and an attached collaborative narrative to those results.
That consistency matters to me a great deal. It’s really why I play RPG’s in the first place. I want it to be a movie in my head, not a game that I try to win at the table.
It also gives real meaning to choices that might otherwise feel purely mechanical. Weapon selection isn’t just about damage; it’s about speed and timing. Armor isn’t just protection; it affects how you move and act. Spells aren’t just “strong” or “weak”, they’re fast, slow, risky, or reliable.
It adds an extra dimension without adding unnecessary friction.
The result is a system that feels tactical within a narrative framework, rather than replacing the narrative with tactics. Combat becomes a vivid, flowing scene instead of a start-and-stop simulation.
And perhaps most importantly, it’s actually simple to run, it gives players and DM’s room to be creative, dynamic, to adapt as they go, and combat is described, rather than executed. The one main difference between 1st and 2nd edition AD&D is the rules weight associated with bringing these dynamics to the table.
There’s a rhythm to it. A cadence. Describe, declare, resolve. Repeat.
It just… works, and no wonder, as this is the core rhythm of role-playing in general. This is how most RPG’s work today, that tactical depth and mode switching is largely a product of modern D&D, not really of modern RPG’s. Modern RPG’s function actually function as 2nd edition AD&D, which oddly makes 2nd edition AD&D the most modern version, from a design perspective, ever made.
Storywriting and DM Inspiration
I’ve already sung the praises of the writing in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, but there’s an important side effect worth calling out: what it actually does to the people sitting at the table, especially the DM.
Because inspiration isn’t just a “nice to have” in Dungeons & Dragons, it’s the fuel the entire game runs on.
For DMs in particular, inspiration is everything. Your first duty isn’t to the rules, or balance, or whether that goblin encounter is “appropriately tuned.” Your first duty is to the story and to the world the player characters inhabit. You’re building something that needs to feel alive, believable, and flexible enough that players can meaningfully interact with it (and, inevitably, derail it).
And here’s the thing, when you’re given rich, detailed, and thoughtfully written material to work with, that job becomes less of a burden and more of a joy.
2nd edition AD&D is, quite frankly, a goldmine for inspiration.
You can crack open the Player’s Handbook, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, the Options books, or, perhaps most dangerously, the Monster Manual, and within minutes you’re spiraling into ideas. Not “oh, that’s neat” ideas, but full-on campaign arc ideas.
I’m not exaggerating when I say you can open the Monster Manual to a random page and accidentally invent a three-month campaign before you’ve finished your coffee.
The level of detail is sometimes overwhelming, sure, but it’s purposeful. There’s intent behind the words, a sense that someone really sat down and thought, “How do I make this creature feel like it actually exists and make it a worthy addition to a narrative game?” And that effort shows. We haven’t seen such dedication in D&D books in a long time. Modern D&D books, have fallen out of this habit.
It feeds the creative monster in your brain. Constantly.
With 2nd edition, I never feel like I’m running out of ideas; I feel like I’m trying to keep up with them.
And honestly, I can’t say that about most other editions of D&D.
You could make a case for 3rd edition; it had its moments, no question, but when I look at later editions, like Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition and 5th, I personally find them… lacking in this department. Not bad, necessarily, just flat.. vague. The writing feels cleaner, more structured, more “accessible”… and somehow far less inspiring. It’s like the difference between reading a rulebook and reading a story.
Everything works. Everything is clear.
But nothing grabs you by the imagination and refuses to let go.
Now, to be fair, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition had flashes of brilliance. I have often spoken about the mystic nature of that game. Especially buried deep within its Dungeon Master’s Guide. There are sections in that book that are still among the most inspiring things ever written for a DM.
But they’re exceptions, not the rule, and AD&D 1st edition, I think, is a very difficult game to run unless you ignore most of the rules.
Overall, 1st edition often feels more concerned with telling you how to run a game, how to manage players, enforce rules, and maintain control. Useful, yes. Inspiring? Less so. It can feel a bit like being handed a manual for operating heavy machinery when all you wanted was to tell a story.
2nd edition strikes a different balance. I think at the time it was written, there was a general understanding that role-playing was more than Dungeon Crawls and rules management.
It gives you structure, but not shackles. Guidance, but not micromanagement. And layered on top of that is this constant stream of evocative, flavorful writing that makes you want to create.
It doesn’t just support storytelling. It encourages it.
And that’s not something you can easily design into a system… but somehow, 2nd edition AD&D pulled it off.
The Perfect Game For Me
If I were to describe my ideal version of Dungeons & Dragons in abstract terms, it would come down to four core ideas: Sword and Sorcery, narrative combat, fantasy realism, and a wide but grounded range of character customization, though each comes with some caveats. That probably sounds straightforward, but, as with most things in D&D, the devil is in the details.
Sword and Sorcery
When it comes to general preferences as to the type of fantasy I want, Sword and Sorcery is the clear winner. I want more Baldur’s Gate grittiness than Final Fantasy power fantasy. I want a sword to be a dangerous weapon, a monster to be a legitimate threat, and I want the life of an adventurer to be hard.
I want rarity to matter, spells to be special, and magic weapons to have character. I want the world and the rules to support each other, rather than support the wacky ideas of an anything-goes fantasy. I want being a Dwarf to mean something, not just a “shorter human”.
Sword and Sorcery is based on classic fantasy, and while I can appreciate modern high and power fantasy from a distance, I find it excruciatingly boring. Most of all however, I don’t want to run or play in a game that favors the players; I want the zero to hero story, I want the game to have stakes and not through a veil of pretend stakes where everything is engineered to give you the illusion of danger, but is balanced for your level, but real, objectively, and observable stakes.
Sword and Sorcery is a different type of fantasy. It’s really kind of about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances that become extraordinary people as a result of the experience. In a Sword and Sorcery fantasy, the story is about how the adventures go from zero’s to hero’s. Once they achieve that legendary status, the game is over. They retire.
In a game of Sword and Sorcery, when a fight breaks out, I want the players to feel their characters are in imminent danger and the decisions they make over the next few minutes to be life or death.
Narrative Combat
I’ve already talked about this at length, but it really is the cornerstone for me, so it’s worth revisiting in this context. Combat needs to feel gritty, dangerous, and just a little bit terrifying. Not in an over-the-top, grimdark noir sense, but in a way that makes players stop and think before they draw steel. In my ideal game, combat is not the default activity; it’s a consequence with potentially terrible risk. It’s something that happens when plans fail, negotiations break down, or risks are taken too far, and at best, a part of a well-laid plan. It should never feel routine; players should always fear that this time, their character might die.
That danger feeds directly into the narrative and tension of the sort of fantasy I want to create at the table. When combat is lethal, every decision carries weight. That wizard with a single Sleep spell suddenly isn’t underpowered; he’s the reason the party survives the encounter. Victory stops being an expectation and becomes something earned, something the players feel at the table. That sense of “we barely made it” is, to me, one of the purest expressions of what D&D is supposed to be narratively.
At the same time, I don’t want combat to bog the game down. This is where things get a bit paradoxical. I want it to be fast and simple to execute, but still rich with meaningful choices. Not so simple that it becomes a repetitive dice exercise, but not so complex that players have to pause the scene to decode their character sheet. The decisions should come naturally from the situation, from the character, from the story, not from scanning a list of abilities for the “correct” option. This is all about syncing the activities in the game as a matter of practical execution with the narrative of the story.
Class and equipment play a huge role in this. A fighter shouldn’t just deal more damage; they should feel different in how they approach a fight. The same goes for equipment; what you carry should reflect how you fight, not just how much damage you can output. A lightly armored duelist and a heavily armored warrior shouldn’t just have different numbers; they should create different moments at the table.
More importantly, I don’t care about balance. An Amazon with no armor and a spear should be weaker than a knight in full plate mail. I don’t believe in the equalization of power. Your character choices should not be driven by trying to be good at combat, but by the narrative you want to bring to the table. I don’t care if the game is fair; I don’t need it to be.
Spellcasters, in particular, should stand apart. Their identity shouldn’t come from raw power alone, but from preparation, timing, and intent. The spells they choose shape how they interact with the world, and that should be visible in play. Two wizards with different spell selections should feel like entirely different characters, not just variations of the same template. I don’t need 30 Wizard sub-classes to create distinct “wizard types”, a magic-user is a magic-user, just like a fighter is a fighter. What makes them distinct is how they use those powers.
When all of this comes together, with lethal stakes, fast resolution, and meaningful choices, combat naturally becomes narrative. Players stop thinking in terms of mechanics and start thinking in terms of actions, risks, and consequences. The fight becomes a story in motion rather than a separate game layered on top of it, more importantly, what comes before the fight has an elevated level of importance.
Fantasy Realism
The second pillar is what I think of as fantasy realism, though it’s less about realism in the traditional sense and more about internal logic. The world doesn’t have to mirror reality, but it does need to make sense on its own terms. What happens mechanically should reflect the perceptions of the characters and make sense to the players.
This is where the idea of associated versus dissociated mechanics comes into play. A mechanic is associated when it makes sense within the world, when it represents something the character is actually doing. The character and player can lean on the reality of the world and know that the mechanics work to reflect it. A dissociated mechanic, on the other hand, exists purely for gameplay purposes, disconnected from the logic of the setting and player character realities.
A simple example would be something like tripping an opponent. In a grounded fantasy world, that’s just something anyone can attempt. It’s part of physical interaction. But if it becomes a limited-use “ability” tied to an abstract resource, it stops feeling like an action and starts feeling like a button you press. The moment that happens, the player’s focus shifts away from the situation and toward the mechanics.
That shift might seem small, but it has a ripple effect. Once players begin thinking in terms of “what can I activate” instead of “what would I do,” the connection to the world weakens. The game starts to feel less like a lived-in reality and more like a system to be navigated.
Fantasy Realism is a rather odd thing, it’s about normalizing weird things that never existed, but still tries to establish them within the context of that fantasy as a real thing. In a sense, many weird things can’t exist in a fantasy for it to be a realistic fantasy. It’s a bit of a circular argument, but for example, a Light Spell does certain things, but there are many things it can’t do. Why? Fantasy Realism. Try to make sense out of that!
This isn’t about rejecting mechanics or demanding strict realism. Fantasy, by definition, isn’t realistic. Magic exists, monsters roam the world, and none of it needs to align with real-world physics. What matters is consistency. The world needs to have its own logic, and the mechanics should support that logic rather than constantly breaking it.
When that consistency is maintained, players naturally engage with the game in a narrative way. They act within the framework of the world because the world makes sense to them. When it isn’t, they fall back on the rules as written, and the experience becomes more mechanical than immersive.
For me, maintaining that sense of fantasy realism is critical. It’s what keeps the game grounded, even when everything happening in it is entirely fantastical.
Character Customization
The final piece of the puzzle is character customization, and while most editions of D&D handle this reasonably well, I still have a couple of preferences that shape what I consider ideal.
First, I want customization to stay grounded in a gritty, low-fantasy tone. I’m not looking for an endless stream of increasingly exotic options that need to be retrofitted into settings. I prefer something closer to the original feel of settings like the Forgotten Realms, where the world has a clear identity and the available character options fit naturally within it.
When I say I want a wide range of choices, I don’t mean anything goes. I mean a variety of options that feel like they belong to the same world, drawing inspiration from classic fantasy rather than constantly expanding into something more abstract or exaggerated. There’s a tone to it, a kind of grounded fantasy aesthetic that I find much more compelling.
The second aspect is that I want character options to emphasize narrative identity over mechanical power. A small bonus or a unique ability is fine, but the real value should come from how those choices shape the character as a person, not how effective they are in combat.
This ties back to the idea of starting from zero. No matter how interesting the concept is, I want characters to begin as relatively ordinary individuals and grow into something greater through play. The journey matters more than the starting point. If a character feels fully formed and mechanically complete at level one, something is lost.
What I’m looking for is that moment where a player understands who their character is, not because of a build they optimized, but because of the choices they’ve made and the experiences they’ve had in the game.
Bringing It Together
When I look at these four ideas together, they describe more than just a set of preferences. They describe a particular feel, a way the game unfolds at the table.
For me, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition captures that feel better than any other edition. Not because it’s perfect, but because it aligns with these principles at a fundamental level. It doesn’t need to be bent or reshaped to fit this style of play. It already lives there.
And that, more than anything else, is why it remains my personal gold standard.
Problem Mechanics
Now, before anyone accuses me of wearing rose-tinted glasses the size of dinner plates, let me be very clear: I am fully aware that Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition comes with its fair share of… let’s call them quirks. Some of them are dated, some of them are clunky, and a few of them make modern game designers visibly uncomfortable.
I get it. I really do, I’m not making a sales pitch for THAC0 here.
Whenever 2nd edition comes up in conversation, the same usual suspects tend to be dragged into the spotlight like they’re on trial for crimes against game design. So let’s address them properly.
Class and Race Limitations
The Player’s Handbook outlines various restrictions, race/class combinations, ability score requirements, and so on. These are often presented as a major sticking point, but for me, the solution is almost laughably simple: I ignore them, always have, and I’m yet to sit at a table in all my years of gaming where things like this were enforced. In fact, in the 80’s it was unanimously agreed that this sort of thing was generally stupid; it was the OSR that brought them back. Actual old school gamers didn’t really do this, or at the very least, it was understood that it wasn’t important in most cases. It was used when it was relevant to the game and ignored when it wasn’t.
Unless I’m running a very specific setting where those limitations serve a narrative purpose, they don’t really add anything meaningful. They’re not essential to the mechanics, and they certainly aren’t critical to the storytelling. More than anything, they feel like artifacts of a different design philosophy, one that hasn’t aged particularly well nor was particularly well thought out to begin with.
If someone wants to play a paladin with a strength of 8, go for it. You’ll just be… a very underwhelming paladin. And honestly, that sounds like a character concept with legs.
To me, these “restrictions” read less like hard rules and more like suggestions from another era, perfectly safe to ignore without the system collapsing into chaos.
Rolling for Ability Scores
This one tends to divide people, but I’ve always been a fan of rolling ability scores. There’s something inherently fun about not knowing exactly what you’re going to get. It adds a bit of unpredictability to character creation, a sense that you’re discovering the character rather than engineering them.
And importantly, starting with less-than-perfect stats isn’t a problem in 2nd edition, it’s a feature. Characters grow over time, both mechanically and narratively. Beginning with average or even mediocre abilities gives the game texture. It creates room for development.
Not every hero needs to be born exceptional. Some of them can earn it the hard way. In my experience, the most forgettable characters are always optimized characters.
THAC0 and Descending Armor Class
Ah yes, the infamous THAC0. The mechanic that launched a thousand internet arguments.
Here’s my honest take: I’ve never actually used it in any variant of D&D.
The very first DM in the very first game I ever played with flipped the math, turned everything into ascending values, and we just… kept doing that. Problem solved. No confusion, no headaches, no existential crisis over subtraction.
If your THAC0 is 18, congratulations, you have a +2 to hit. If your armor class is 7, that’s AC 14. Done.
Some things are just objectively true, and it’s crazy to me to think that there are people out there who still make the argument that THAC0 and Descending AC are better. It’s not, it wasn’t in the 80’s, and it never will be. Just because something is modern doesn’t mean old school players have to come up with cacamany ways to justify shitty mechanics. THAC0 sucked… PERIOD.. END OF STORY! I can understand that some people still use THAC0 because they are used to it, perfectly fine, but if you’re arguing that it’s better…let’s just agree to disagree because you are objectively wrong.
This is one of those debates that has always puzzled me. People act like THAC0 is some insurmountable barrier to entry or defend it like it’s a meaningfully different construct, when in reality it’s just a different way of expressing the same numbers. If you don’t like it, change it. The system doesn’t break. The dice don’t revolt. Everyone survives.
It’s a non-issue masquerading as a major flaw, literally the most inconsequential mechanic in all of D&D, yet it has prevailed as the most common debate. It’s absolutely bizarre to me.
Thief Skills and Non-Weapon Proficiencies
This is where I start to get a bit more opinionated.
I really struggle with how skills have evolved in later editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Earlier systems, even into 3rd edition, kept things somewhat grounded. But by the time you get to Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition and 5th, skills often feel less like character traits and more like mechanical levers you pull to bypass situations.
And that’s where it breaks for me.
At its core, a “skill” is supposed to represent something your character is good at. It’s part of who they are. But in practice, it often becomes a gamble, “I invested in this, now let’s see if the dice agree that I’m actually competent today.”
That disconnect is hard to ignore, and it’s also what has led to the dice odds slowly over time favoring the player more and more, arriving in a way back to where the whole concept started. A representation of what you can do, rather than what you can sometimes do if you’re lucky with the dice.
Take knowledge, for example. If your character has spent years studying the arcane, why are we rolling dice to see if they remember something about magic? Either they know it, or they don’t. That’s a judgment call based on their background, training, and abilities, not a coin flip.
The same goes for physical capability. If you’re strong enough to lift something, you lift it. If you’re not, you don’t. Rolling dice doesn’t suddenly make you stronger, it just adds randomness where it doesn’t really belong.
Now, there are exceptions. High-stress situations, sneaking past a guard, spotting a hidden trap, those make sense as rolls. Pressure introduces uncertainty. That’s where dice shine but it is also a great place to put a class with specialized abilities for that purpose, aka, The Thief!
And this is why I’ve always preferred the way 2nd edition handles it.
Thief skills, in particular, are a great example. They’re specialized, class-based abilities that reinforce identity. If you’re playing a thief, you own that space. You’re the one finding traps, picking locks, and moving silently. That’s your role, it’s a specialization, and no one should be as good at it as you, and this makes sense within the logic of a fantasy world.
And roles matter.
When someone chooses to play a fighter, they expect to be the best warrior in the group. A wizard should feel like the master of magic. A thief should be the undisputed expert in stealth and subterfuge. When skill systems flatten those distinctions, something important is lost.
Non-weapon proficiencies, on the other hand, strike a nice balance. They represent additional talents and areas of knowledge, things that define your character beyond combat, without turning every interaction into a dice roll. They’re more like declarations of capability than lottery tickets.
And that’s really the core of it for me.
Your character’s abilities should be something you can rely on. They’re part of your identity, not a gamble. The dice come into play when circumstances are uncertain, when stress, danger, or chaos make success less predictable.
An archer doesn’t miss during practice. But in the middle of a life-or-death battle? That’s a different story.
Stress changes things. That’s where randomness belongs.
Outside of that, I want the game to trust the character, and by extension, the player, to simply be good at what they chose to be good at.
Conclusion
To be frank, I could probably keep talking about Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition all day. There is so much about this version of the game that resonates with me that I could easily write an entire series of articles. In fact, the biggest challenge with this piece has not been finding things to say, but figuring out where to stop.
At the end of the day though, I think the simplest explanation for why I love this game is also the most honest one.
I love how it feels.
I love the rhythm of it, the atmosphere of it, and the way the mechanics and writing align with my personal vision of what Dungeons & Dragons should be. The game feels dangerous without being oppressive, imaginative without becoming absurd, and narrative without abandoning mechanics entirely. It occupies this strange middle ground that no other edition has quite managed to capture for me.
Now, the point of this article is not to convince you that 2nd edition AD&D is the definitive version of D&D. I think far too much energy online is spent trying to persuade strangers that their preferences are somehow objectively wrong. Preference is preference. We all come to this hobby looking for different things, and that is perfectly fine.
What I wanted to do here was explain why this particular edition speaks to me the way it does.
The truth about D&D and any RPG really is that whatever sort of D&D you’re having fun playing and creating for, is the best kind of D&D. Period. It might not be for me, but that doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it bad for me.
If this article has sparked your curiosity, though, I would offer a couple of pieces of advice before diving into 2nd edition AD&D.
First, focus on the writing and the experience at the table rather than the myths that have grown around the game over the years. A lot of people judge 2nd edition purely by reading isolated mechanics on paper or the perceptions of keyboard warriors with a cause, and I honestly think that gives a very misleading impression of how the game actually plays. This is a fantasy writer’s version of D&D, designed for fans of reading fantasy books. That is the game’s secret.
The experience of playing it is very different from the way the rules read in isolation. There is a narrative rhythm to the game that only really reveals itself after some time with it. The flow of play, the pacing of scenes, the structure of combat, the emphasis on storytelling and atmosphere, all of it comes together into something that feels genuinely distinct from every other version of D&D, even from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, despite how much DNA they share.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, explore the settings and expanded material. Read the Complete books. Read the setting guides. Read the monster entries in full instead of just scanning stat blocks. The more you explore, the more you begin to understand what I mean when I talk about the game’s connection to sword and sorcery fantasy and narrative storytelling.
These books are unapologetically verbose. They want you to sit down and immerse yourself in the world. They want you to imagine things. Sometimes they feel less like rulebooks and more like someone desperately trying to infect you with enthusiasm.
I will also say something about modern D&D that might come across as a bit controversial, though I genuinely mean it fairly, and it’s directed at Wizards of the Coast more than the fans.
Modern editions of D&D have actually done a pretty good job of achieving their design goals. Personally, I find them too high-powered and too tactically focused for my tastes, but that does not mean they failed. Quite the opposite. If your goal is to create a more mechanically balanced, tactical, character-driven fantasy combat game, then modern D&D absolutely succeeds at that.
It would be unfair to criticize the designers for accomplishing exactly what they intended to accomplish. Besides, for me, lowering the power levels, adapting the game to be less tactical and more story-focused, these are things within my power to adjust. Modern systems are flexible enough to achieve this. There are even 3rd party source books that help achieve just that.
Where I think modern D&D struggles, however, is the writing.
And here I will admit my bias and disappointment openly.
Personally, I find the writing in the latest material, particularly 5.5 core books, to be painfully sanitized and overly simplistic. It often feels less interested in sparking imagination and more concerned with flattening every edge and sanding away every rough corner. There is very little mystery to it, very little atmosphere, and almost none of the rich, excessive enthusiasm that defined older editions, especially compared to 2nd edition AD&D. It has no style or reckognizable theme of its own; it is, in a word, bland and generic, in the worst and unappealing way. From a writing perspective, it’s a complete catastrophe.
Older D&D books felt like they were written by eccentric fantasy nerds who desperately wanted to pull you into their worlds.
The latest core books coming out of Wizards of the Coast feel like they were reviewed by a corporate committee whose primary concern was making sure nobody anywhere might misunderstand a sentence.
That sounds harsh, I know, but it is genuinely how I feel when comparing the two.
That said, I have not completely given up hope. I’m glutten for punishment, and foolishly, I am actually quite excited about the upcoming Forgotten Realms books. I would love nothing more than to be pleasantly surprised. In many ways, this feels like my first and final real attempt to reconnect with modern D&D on its own terms.
Because at the end of the day, I do not want to dislike modern D&D.
I want to fall in love with it again. I want to be part of it, I want to look forward to new books and be excited about using them, and I want to be inspired by them.
I can always fall back on my beloved 2nd edition AD&D, but I’m always hoping for a better future.
