Nick Dubs
Nick plays and reviews board games to kill time while it cultivates the requisite mystique to become a cryptid that warns small towns of impending doom.





Convention season was very intense in 2024, with GamingTrend attending more tabletop cons than any other year prior. In fact, we went to so many conventions this year we still have content to publish on our Youtube channel from Origins and Gen Con (so keep your eyes peeled!). Needless to
by Mike Dunn & Chris Hinkes & Chris Wyman & Mike Case & Mark Julian & Nick Dubs & Eric Deutsch
You know how sometimes you sit down to a new game not expecting too much, only to be blown away by every little thing put in front of you? That was my experience with Keith Piggott’s River of Gold, a surprise masterpiece of delivering resources, sailing down, and building
by Nick Dubs
To me, “thematic” is a borderline dirty word. Playing too many early American designs that favored turning you into the DiCaprio pointing meme over fun or interesting gameplay has given me cardboard PTSD, so I generally shy away from games that are labeled as such. Harrow County, based on the
by Nick Dubs
It used to be that asymmetrical wargames were a niche part of the hobby, a subcategory of weird kids right next to those that played 18xx train games. To some extent that’s still the case, but on the other hand, one of the heaviest games you can find in
by Nick Dubs
In the near future, Silicon Valley has continued to only succeed in driving demand for their ideas, not actually bringing them to fruition. This is where the players of Tech Race come in: as CEOs of startups, they’re attempting to take advantage of that gap. I’m not quite
by Nick Dubs
My family’s from Kentucky, so I was fated to at least tangentially care about basketball. When I saw Basketboss on our review board, I was intrigued; the fast pace of the game doesn’t really lend itself to a tabletop adaptation, but then I saw that it was an
by Nick Dubs
Here it is, the long-awaited follow-up to my Kapow! Volume 1 review, the review for the aptly named standalone expansion Kapow! Volume 2. So what’s in a box? All the dice, faces, boards, and screens to play the game again, along with six new characters and components to play
by Nick Dubs
I’m bored to tears of playing essentially the same game over and over again. It’s easy to point the finger at Euros here, but it’s just as, if not more, prevalent in American designs; are you really gonna tell me that the base games of Firefly and
by Nick Dubs