Martin Wallace

Martin Wallace is a renowned designer of economic board games who has created over 40 games and has brought out some of the most popular games of the last 20 years. The following are a list of his games with BGG ratings in brackets. His first success was Age of Steam (7.8). Then came the extremely popular Brass Birmingham (8.6) and Brass Lancashire (8.2). The follow up, Tinners' Trail (8.2), which I have played, is a great game. London (7.5) is an interesting historical game and is highly rated. The latest, soon to be released, Daimyo: Battle for Japan (7.6), looks interesting.

2022 Games

Some of the new and yet to be released games for 2022 that have been highly anticipated are Virtù: The Art of Governing, Elite, and the card-based game Kompromat. Kompromat has a 7.1 rating on BoardGameGeeks, and Elite has an 8.5 rating.

Kompromat is available from Amazon, Virtù will be released in the spring of 2023, and Elite is available from the manufacturer.

PnP Games

Print and Play (PnP) games are simple card-based games that one can make oneself. The idea is to download the game card pages (usually PDFs) and print them at home or by using a printing service like Print & Play. The cards can then be cut out manually or with a programmable cutter like CriCut Explore Air 2. To get professional looking rounded corners on cards the Kadomaru corner-cutter works great.

Because of their small size they make great travel games. Many are for solo or two players, and many are free or cost only a couple of dollars. Typically there are only a few cards but there may be a dozen or more. Some of the download sites are Button Shy Games, PNP Arcade, PnP Paradise, Good Little Games and BoardGameGeeks. The site Solo Board Gamer also lists some PnP games. Pub Meeple has many resources for PnP construction.

Some popular free games are Black Sonata, Orchard, Empire, Ragemore, Rove, and Mini Rogue. 

Kadomaru corner cutter