B-Rex Tage
New games from the B-Rex Group 2025 / Germany

But I didn't want to wait any longer for my well-known fellow players, so I looked for a table where there was still a free chair. I found what I was looking for at Grundstein von Metropolis, in principle a reimplement of the opulent Foundations of Rome.

The aim of this city planning game is to build the foundation stone of Metropolis within 3 years and gain the most prestige as a builder or architect during this time. Of course, the best way to do this is to plan and construct the largest possible buildings in the city centre and then align them as closely as possible with the neighbouring buildings.

Grundstein von Metropolis uses an easy-to-learn game mechanism for this. In essence, the first step is to secure attractive building sites from a constantly changing selection. The city area is divided into squares, which can be gradually drawn and secured using cards.

Residential, commercial or industrial buildings can then be erected on these building plots from the personal game board, with larger buildings requiring several adjacent building plots.

At the end of each year, a scoring takes place in which the surroundings of your own buildings - i.e. the neighbouring buildings - also play a role.

I have to admit that I have never played Foundations of Rome, so I can't make a comparison. Essentially, the older game was probably too opulent and therefore too expensive for its level of complexity.

This is definitely not the case with Grundstein von Metropolis. Nevertheless, the game material is convincing both in terms of its design and its quality (e.g. double-layer player boards). I certainly didn't miss anything and really enjoyed playing the game. A great, family-friendly game with addictive potential. If I didn't already have so many other tile-laying games in my shelves, I would buy this one straight away, but let's see what else the year brings...

After this great introduction, I entered the castle dungeon. Fittingly, the Hidden Movement game Terrorscape with its latest expansion "Grauenvolle Fäulnis" had been decoratively set up here. Can you imagine a more fitting setting? Unfortunately, no other player was willing to dive into the game with me and before I could be locked down here in the dungeon, I quickly escaped to the lower levels of the castle.

But there was also a lot of shooting up here and I found another Hidden Movement game here, which was already reviewed on our website two years ago (see our boardgame section). But I hadn't played it myself yet and here in Schkopau, there was also a new expansion:

Sniper Elite is basically a classic hidden-movement game (hello Scotland Yard). However, it comes in a modern guise and has much more depth and tactical possibilities than classic representatives of this genre thanks to the ability to locate the enemy and fire shots.

The setting is a World War II scenario, certainly not everyone's cup of tea, especially as one player takes on the role of the Allied sniper (who moves covertly behind the screen) and the other players are Axis troops. Dennis was immediately convinced that he had to play the sniper, which ultimately led to his first defeat of the day, but oh well.

I was impressed by the game right from the start, I have never experienced a more perfect hidden movement. The allied players are allowed to co-ordinate, but should not make their intentions too obvious, otherwise it will ultimately be too easy for the sniper. By skilfully manoeuvring the three defending squads (each consisting of an officer with special abilities and two ordinary soldiers), the Sniper's movement options are gradually restricted.

At least if you're on the right track, because the sniper only has to reveal himself if he triggers one of his three mission objectives. But time is running against him and so an interesting game of cat and mouse develops.

Here in Schkopau, the new expansion Adlerhorst was presented, which introduces four more Sniper characters, each with special abilities, and a new map. For me, the basic version was enough for now, but I'm pretty sure I'll be delving deeper into the game soon, especially as a solo mode is also available.

We continued with a larger group, with whom we played an entertaining trick-taking game after that:

Every trick-taking game has its own special features. I think there have been some really interesting developments in recent years that have added tactical depth to the classic trick-taking game, sometimes more, sometimes less. And often it is no longer the trick itself that is decisive, but what you can do with it as the winner of a trick.

In Power Vacuum, I think there are two interesting elements that I haven't seen before:

On the one hand, the colours of the cards are also visible on the back, meaning that each player can see which colours their opponents still have in their hand. However, there is a special card colour that takes on one of the other card backs, but is a colour of its own. If such a card is played in a trick, it takes the trick - but only if a trump card is also played in the same trick. Simple but ingenious, and it worked very well, at least in our round with five players.

The second interesting element is that the winner of the trick passes "electricity" tokens from one end of the power cable to the other. This power cable connects power containers or batteries of the individual players with each other. Whoever has collected a lot of electricity in their area at the end of a round also receives a lot of victory points for this. After the transport, however, one end of the power cable is connected to another area so that the power is transported between two other areas after the next turn.

Finally, at the beginning of each round we can also place bets on which areas will have collected the most and least electricity at the end of the round.

Power Vacuum developed into an entertaining game in our group. With this full line-up (five players), the game was definitely an enrichment of the trick-taking genre, whether it works just as well with fewer players (solo plays are also possible), I can't judge from this first impression. In any case, the table was almost always full, so that other groups could not really judge this. However, there were several players who played the game several times, which is certainly a good sign and proof of an interesting game.

Before we strenghtened ourselves for the rest of the evening with a delicious meal, I took a look at two tables with solo games, both of which take place in a dungeon.

One Card Dungeon is already a few years old, but here in Schkopau new expansions were presented for the game. The one card in the title of the game refers to the dungeon, in which new and stronger monsters have to be defeated every round. To do this, we have to skilfully use our skills like attack, defend and movement, which improve as the game progresses. This means that we can gradually run further, use our range combat and gradually do more damage. The monsters, represented by cubes, are moved automatically and we can actually predict the monsters' actions, so the game is very tactical.

If you like solo games, you should definitely take a closer look here. The 32 bit design does the rest to make it more than palatable to me as a former C64 player. Even though I have only mastered the first level, the game has won me over. Every now and then I feel like playing a little solo game and I want to get into the game quickly and not have to spend half an hour building it up.

Kassettenkerker is alos a solo fighting game, here the boss is the goal. The game comes in really funny packaging, namely a cassette box, as was common practice in the 80s of the last century.

The aim here is to use the available equipment and action points to survive battles and skilfully avoid dangers such as traps. Both games are ultimately optimisation games for solo players, and both games are definitely on my must-buy list.

However, I'm not so sure about the next game, not because the game isn't good - quite the opposite - but because I already have a few similar games in my collection.

Similar to Grundstein von Metropolis, this game is also about city building. Building sites in a cloud city are auctioned off in an bidding mode. To do this, the current player makes an offer for a neighbouring free building site from his personal supply.. In addition to a building height, each building has a unique value. The next player can then outbid this offer by placing a building with a higher value on a free building space next to the currently highest offer. Only when all players have passed the last offer is being built and all other players return their offers to their personal supply again.

The environment is also important here when building. Firstly, there are four islands, each of which is scored separately. Each building site is also assigned a colour, which is scored separately depending on the mission.

I particularly liked the spreading mechanism in Skyrise. The game looks really great and the game material is high quality. Compared to Grundstein von Metropolis, it is a little more complex, a little more tactical, but without being too difficult for casual players. Nevertheless, it is aimed more at connoisseurs and frequent players. It reminded me a little of last year's Sunrise Lane, but is of a higher quality and more opulent in comparison.

After this marathon, it was time for dinner. For me, this is always a highlight of the B-Rex days. My mouth starts to water a few hours in advance as the crew start to prepare the dishes over the fire.

Sometimes it's the barbecue, sometimes the Dutch oven, but it's always impressive to see how everyone is catered for here. The castle's inner courtyard is also the perfect place to enjoy the delicious meal and swap tidbits from the last game or game night.

And after dinner? What could be nicer than playing a game of milk with laxative?

Ok, nice is of course one thing when it comes to laxatives. You also need to know that one or two Funbot games have their own, often somewhat crude humour. Milch mit Abführmittel is about the well-known situation in a shared flat where your own things are always processed by your flatmates. Well, you want to get to the bottom of this and gradually add laxatives to the food - in this case milk - so that the flatmates don't notice.

The game is played in such a way that each player in turn adds a card with pure milk or milk with laxatives to the three compartments of the fridge in the centre of the table. The next player can then always decide whether to drink one of the compartments - and thus score - or whether to play another card to a compartment. Of course, the prerequisite is always that you still have a card at all, otherwise drinking is the order of the day.

Pure milk gives you positive victory points when drinking, while the laxative gives you a high number of negative victory points.

This fun, quick-to-learn card game is all about bluffing and having fun. It's certainly a very fun game to play in between meals and just the thing for us after dinner. Ideal as a nightcap, for in-between and as a game of chaos. Nothing more and nothing less.

For us, after this brief lightening of the mood, things got really serious:

Dark Quarter is rated 18+ (at least in the English version, the German version is expected to be available from 16). It quickly becomes clear why this is the case when the introduction to the app-based game is read out loud: the standard language here is quite violent with lots of explicit lyrics. The story takes place in New Orleans in the early 1980s. We take on the role of somewhat disreputable, sometimes occult investigators, the so-called Beaumont Agency, which also possesses superhuman abilities (vampires send their regards).

The game is campaign-based and the character development mechanism is very reminiscent of Destinies. The numerous trials in particular are very similar to the fantasy game. However, Dark Quarter is purely co-operative, which I liked much better than in Destinies. In particular, I found the setting in my first mission much more exciting and coherent than in the fantasy world.

I was extremely captivated by this dark, mystical real world and also by the strongly developed characters, who act very differently. However, you also have to like the narrative character, Basti seemed far less taken with it than Olli and me because of the many read-aloud passages. In Schkopau, the translation of the missions had not yet been completed, so we played the English version and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the hearty language with many special features of New Orleans is transferred into German. It's definitely a title that I'm going to take a closer look at, especially as I actually found Destinies quite exciting, but the story didn't captivate me at all and I didn't really have the feeling that my decisions had much influence on what happened next. That seems to be much more the case with Dark Quarter after the first test.

The whole thing definitely takes a long time and so although we probably played the longest game of all the visitors at the weekend, we only completed about half of the first mission after two hours. But we were here to try it out and so another test with lots of dice was scheduled for the day:

The title is actually unpronounceable. In any case, I don't know who can remember something like that. I only ever feel the same way about the titles from Board & Dice, but more on that later... Maybe it was the late hour, as it was already past midnight when we actually started the game.

In any case, the game is about excavating, assembling and displaying ceramic artefacts from some ancient Marajo culture. And this works by skipping coloured cubes on the main board. The colour of the dice determines the action you can perform, while the value of the dice determines the strength of the action. After skipping, the value of the die is then changed and the skipped die is placed on a "catapult" from which it is returned to the game board after some time.

I have to say that I generally like games with lots of dice. Especially when the dice - as is the case here - are not used for their own purpose, it becomes exciting for me. The skipping of dice reminded me a lot of the one or other game of Halma with my grandad, but here the traditional game takes on a very unique character. However, the evening was already well advanced, which is why I don't want to make a final judgement just yet. Our group, which had now grown to four players, was in any case divided, but perhaps this was also due to the increasing tiredness that was clearly visible on some faces.

Soon afterwards I went to bed, for me for the first time in my temporary flatmates with whom I shared a room. But after so many games, you definitely sleep well, regardless of snoring noises or other disturbances during the night.

Freshly showered, much fresher, but still looking forward to the coffee in the morning, we continued the next morning. On to the very same board & dice game that I was just talking about with the unpronounceable title:

Tianxia is definitely the next T-game. And that makes it clear: it is a purist Euro game by Daniele Tascini and, in this case, Antonio Petrelli. It should also be clear from this starting point that this is a connoisseur game.

This time, the setting is set in a pre-Christian era and is about the power struggles of noble families. In addition to the influence in the empire and through shipping, the game is about the defence of the empire against nomadic invaders from the north of the empire.

Classically, we find many aspects of worker placement here, especially the spaces for city defence were hotly contested in our game. Otherwise, as usual, there are numerous ways to score points and the game also offers plenty of opportunities for variation. What is really optimal here has to be worked out through play and changes constantly based on the structure of the game and the actions of our opponents.

After my first game, I definitely rate Tianxia as a strong expert game. Personally, I liked Tiletum and especially Teothihucan a bit more, but if you haven't tried any other T-game yet, you should definitely start with Tianxia. In any case, you won't get bored with this game.

So, that was really the end for me at this year's B-Rex Days. I think I could have played through at least three more days in view of the new products on show, but the best time comes to an end at some point. Once again it was great to be there, I hope you also got a good impression of the one or other game and will now try out a few more at the upcoming trade fairs to see what appeals to you. There's plenty to choose from.

See you soon,

Your Ralf

Copyright © 2025 Frank Schulte-Kulkmann and Ralf Togler, Essen, Germany