Short article today – the main event being an enjoyable game of Tianxia, the latest Board and Dice “T” game.

True to form this game has Tascini’s trademark paths to advance on, and pain if you fail to do something – in this case defend yourself from hordes of invading nomads. Set in ancient china, you will be governing various areas of China, by placing Meeples in houses which either give you income or some kind of discount to a certain cost. Turns costs of placing one of your three discs in a region to be able to install Governors;?different regions promote you up one of four paths which lead to bonuses, but also allow you to exchange resources, build defenses, or export finished goods on ships. Attacking hordes can be brutal if not taken care of; but it didn’t feel like a negative thing for me to have to build up defences since you earn VPs by doing so.

Resources are very scarce and the game feels very tight; your one relief being to sell objectives cards that you’d rather keep for end game VPs in order to get an essential resource. Like with many games, resources are exchanged for other resources to allow you to do those things.

I enjoyed the game a lot because I found it was possible to plan ahead pretty well. The game may not be to your taste if you dislike turns which have multiple actions, but otherwise it feels like a nicely designed tight game that I aim to play again soon! NB we only layer the first two rounds but saw all the mechanics including dealing with invaders.

The rest of my day was taken up with the launch of my two games! Lots of fun.