Your time is precious.

At Roll to Review, we love board games and having fun, but when it comes to reviewing, we take it very seriously. Because this is when we help you decide whether a board game is worth your time and money.

While we’d love everyone to read every word of our full written reviews, these generally range from 1,000 to 3,000 words. That’s a big ask, but we hope it rewards you with a fun and informative breakdown.

If you’re short on time, or just want to get a quick feel for whether the game is worth more investigation, we also provide a brief one-paragraph verdict summarizing the pros and cons.

This won’t give you the full context of the review and isn’t intended as a replacement, but it offers a quick glance at our definitive thoughts and impressions.

The Roll to Review Scale

Reviewing art, whether it’s movies, paintings, or board games, is always a challenge. There’s no way to objectively measure whether a board game is good or not.

You could have a board game with hundreds of wonderful miniatures, beautiful artwork, and a great price point, but it could still be boring. Conversely, you could have a small deck of 21 cards, and it could be one of the best games of 2012.

Therefore, Roll to Review focuses less on the tangible attributes of board games and instead reflects on the experiences had while playing. As a result, our reviews, and their scoring, are rooted entirely in the perspective of our unique playstyle and taste.

But given you don’t know us personally, or how we prefer to play, as part of each review, we also rank the board game against all others we’ve reviewed. This provides additional insight into our specific likes and dislikes, helping you create your own informed opinion.

Another thing you can count on with Roll to Review is that each review is fair and honest. We make sure to play all the games we review as often as it takes to comfortably provide a deep analysis and our honest opinion.

For simple titles, this may only be a few times. For complex systems, we play them repeatedly until we’ve truly explored everything under the hood.

5 Amazing

While there’s no such thing as a perfect board game, these games provided us with the most enjoyable experiences possible. Whether that’s laughing hysterically with our friends or having every ounce of interest captured by the game’s core puzzle. Beyond that, these experiences tend to offer something unique or interesting. A special sauce elevating it above other board games. We eagerly look forward to playing these games and suspect you will too.

The mechanical market component of Merchants of the Dark Road
4 Great

These wonderful games usually have something that makes them stand head and shoulders above the pack. Whether that’s an engaging emergent storyline or a fantastic bluffing element. Playing these games will create memorable moments at your table and delight your playing group. We think most board gamers will enjoy these games and recommend adding them to your play list.

Metal pawns from Lacuna
3 Good

Playing a good game with friends is time well spent. Could it be better? Probably. But for most of these titles, you’ll come away satisfied with the game and the experience. However, at this rating, board games start to have caveats. For example, you’ll enjoy this game if you don’t mind games being mean. So, it’s worth reading more into the review to understand if it’s a fit for you and your board game group.

Treasure Island map board
2 Flawed

Flawed games may have something great about them, but it’s outweighed by something else. Be it a terrible rulebook, sloppy mechanics, or way too much bookkeeping. Approach these games cautiously as while some players still enjoy these titles, most will find other games more rewarding or enjoyable.

A played set of cards from After Us
1 Painful

We don’t like calling any game painful and would prefer no games to have this rating. However, some games fail at the one thing they’re meant to be good at; creating fun. These games are boring to play or lack entertainment value. So we recommend readers to stay away from these titles.

All components from Vampires vs Unicorns Floor War

Review FAQ

Why should I trust Roll to Review?

At Roll to Review, we’ve played a lot of board games. Over 500 of them. This gives us a lot of experience within the board gaming hobby, and insight into what’s in the market. Such a wealth of experience allows us to compare and contrast games against all the titles we’ve previously played. When it comes to reviewing, we make sure to play each game correctly and thoroughly before putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Our reviews dive deeply into the mechanics of each game to find out why it works, or why it doesn’t. We believe this exploration is the best way for you to know what the game is about and whether it’s right for you.

How do you decide on what games to review?

Most of the games we review, we pay for out of pocket. Just like you, we do our own research and determine if the board game is right for us. After all, it’s easier to sit down with a game you want to play, rather than one you must play. As a result, most of our reviews skew positive because of this pre-selection. Likewise, this happens with publishers who have asked us to review their games. If we don’t think it’s a good fit for ourselves or our audience, we will pass on the opportunity.

What is our Preferred Playstyle?

Every review group brings their own taste to the table. To help you map our critiques to your own game nights, here is a transparent look at the design elements we gravitate toward and the system mechanics that rarely click with us:

Our Soft Spots
  • Large, chaotic, game-changing actions — like Argent: The Consortium
  • Deduction-based titles like Cryptid
  • Emergent storylines that leap from the board into your imagination — like Root
Tabletop Turn-offs
  • Games with too many finicky rules
  • Designs that rely on emotional manipulation
  • Heavy administrative tracking or excessive bookkeeping

To us, there’s nothing more frustrating than wanting to play a game but having to spend most of the time making sure we got all the rules right or doing menial labour.

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