Constructible Strategy Games are an interesting concept; they combine many elements of miniature games with Collectible Card Games with a, usually, simple punch-out and assemble construction method. The games are relatively cheap and take up very little shelf space, while most miniature-based games are notoriously expensive and take up lots of space. On top of that, CSGs tend to be fairly fun (even Raceday was pretty fun, though it never got a fair shake from the gaming community). So it comes as no surprise that Wizards of the Coast has decided to jump on the bandwagon, however, to this date only Wizkids’ Pirates line has done well in the CSG niche, and unfortunately Transformers 3d Battle-Card Game won’t be doing anything to extend the appeal of CSGs to gamers or non-gamers.

There is just something about Germans and great board games. For a country that lost two world wars you’d think their strategy gaming skills would be a little iffy. Yet somehow Germany got the company of Hans im Glück, which produces some of the best games in the industry. Their games come to the United States by way of the Rio Grande Games company which invested wisely in translators.

It’s been over a year since I sat down and wrote up any of my Heroclix teams, and the release of the new DC set Origins deserves the credit for me doing so. I was going to start with a team from that set, but realized that there were a few of my old teams I’ve never shared so I figure I’d start out with my favorite team I’ve ever built—and it wins, too, so it’s not a crazy concept team I sometimes tend to make (look for one of those in my next article). From reading my regular team builder articles a year ago, most of you know I like teams. When I create them I look at the actual character as well as the stats, and use both when deciding if I should use a figure; the actual character has to have some connection to the others in some way or another. I also like villain-based teams.

When the Star Wars Miniature game first game out back in 2004 one of the first questions asked was: “When are we going to see a space ship game?” Well, it took Wizards a few years, but they’ve finally released Star Wars Miniatures: Starship Battles to the masses. Apparently they’re not the only ones to release a Star Wars ship-based game either, so there might just be something to this Star Wars thing. Who’d a thunk?

For those who like Tic Tac Toe, or 3-D Tic Tac Toe. This is a semi-new product from Rubik. The game is played on a board of 4 by 4, with each player having 8 double sided pieces. At the beginnning of every turn, you first flip one of your opponents pieces either horizontally or vertically. You then place one of your pices. You only need to get 3 in a row but they have to be of the same color, and they also need to be surrounded in such a way that they can't be flipped. The game is only a tie if both players lose or win, for instance, on my turn I flip his/her piece making him/her win, but then I place a piece of my own making me win. The game is well made so that you don't have ties very often.