About

Sometimes when you are looking at a specific purchase it is hard to know whether the reviewers likes actually align with yours, so I thought here would be a good place to talk about what it is that I like and dislike so that you can make a better decision on my reviews. 

What I like

I tend to play a lot of my games as solo, two player or with family (primarily 2 kids and 2 adults). Having limited time, working full time, I tend to gravitate towards games that don’t require a massive amount of setup. I tend to not play games that are longer (3hrs plus), as time just doesn’t allow it for me. 

  • Worker placement – I love the worker placement family of games, especially games that have a hook or something different about them. Favourites in this genre include Architects of the West Kingdom and A Feast for Odin.
  • Lighter family games with plenty of room for strategy. Players can either play a simple game or strategise against other adults. Favourites here are Sheriff of Nottingham, Quacks of Quedlinburg and King of Tokyo.
  • Euro Games – I love cube pushing games and games of skill and strategy (although I am often terrible at them). Give me bland themes and low player interaction. Favourites here are Great Western Trail, Orleans and Castles of Burgundy. 
  • Thematic Games – I love a good miniature and I love theme, for the most part. Games like Star Wars: Imperial Assault and Lords of Hellas are high up on my lists. 

What I don’t like

  • Lovecraftian Mythos – it seems that this theme just hasn’t been done right. I love the idea of the Mythos, but it just seems that a lot of the games end up just making a few decisions, making a few monster moves, rinse and repeat.
  • Luck – games that rely too much on an initial drawn hand or dice rolls don’t do it for me. Games that have dice but mitigation against luck though are perfectly fine.
  • Party games and social deduction – I’m pretty quiet and reserved at the best of times, so I find that I’m not attracted to these games all that much and just don’t like the ‘lightness’ of them.
  • Trick Taking games – I don’t know what it is that I don’t like about these games, maybe that they all seem to be re-themes of one another? Regardless, I just haven’t seem to have found any trick-taking games that I have like over the years. 

About Next Player

The Australian board game industry and hobby is a rather small one. We still have relatively few stores and limited access to games, often due to high shipping and import costs. Next Player was started to review games in Australia (from both Australia and overseas) and start to grow the hobby further in Australia. Next Player is an independent Australian board game review site and is not sponsored or backed by any company or organisation As a result we are able to offer fair and unbiased reviews of the games that we play and review. If you have a game that you would like us to review please check out or Developers page for further details. We do not receive any payment for reviews and only receive review copies (when noted). We do have affiliate links for several stores, however there is no affiliation to these stores.