The gaming magazine is dead. After all, when was the last time that you were able to purchase a gaming magazine at your nearest newsagent? Games Workshop’s White Dwarf is of course the exception, but it has been over a decade since Dragon appeared in print. However, in more recent times, the hobby has found other means to bring the magazine format to the market. Digitally, of course, but publishers have also created their own in-house titles and sold them direct or through distribution. Another vehicle has been Kickststarter.com, which has allowed amateurs to write, create, fund, and publish titles of their own, much like the fanzines of Kickstarter’s ZineQuest. The resulting titles are not fanzines though, being longer, tackling broader subject matters, and more professional in terms of their layout and design.
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Senet—named for the Ancient Egyptian board game,
Senet—is a print magazine about the craft, creativity, and community of board gaming. Bearing the tagline of “Board games are beautiful”, it is about the play and the experience of board games, it is about the creative thoughts and processes which go into each and every board game, and it is about board games as both artistry and art form. Published by
Senet Magazine Limited, each issue promises previews of forthcoming, interesting titles, features which explore how and why we play, interviews with those involved in the process of creating a game, and reviews of the latest and most interesting releases.
Senet Issue 6 was published in the winter of 2021. It has thus left behind the social limitations placed upon both it and us by the lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic that Senet Issue 5 was only just beginning to escape. It marks a return to the normality of the first few issues and allows editor Dan Jolin to talk about the pleasures of issue’s content rather than dwelling on the strange world we had existed in throughout much of 2020 and 2021. Even the cover reflects, a pair of anthropomorphised hands, one jumping for joy, the other thrusting a gaming piece at us, rather than the lock and key on the front of Senet Issue 5, which suggested both imprisonment and possible escape. However, with new found freedom, Join does get to belabour a food-board game metaphor, it being one of the themes of the issue. Sadly, the reader has little choice but to indulge him.
As is usual, the issue opens with ‘Behold’, a preview of some of the then-forthcoming board game titles. As expected, ‘Behold’ showcases its previewed titles to intriguing effect, a combination of simple write-ups with artwork and depictions of the board games. The standouts here are Spire’s End: Hildegard, a solo adventure that is the sequel to Spire’s End which displays its brilliant artwork and Forests of Pangaia, which has a real table presence as the patterns of the forest change and grow over hundreds and hundreds of years, the trees depicted by meeples ranging in shape from single cubes for seeds to fully grown trees.
‘Points’, the regular column of readers’ letters, follows, but very much without the focus of Senet Issue 5, which was very much the immediate post-COVID-19 world. Nevertheless, the raise some interesting issues, such as the possible shift to games made available to the customer via ‘Print & Play’ rather than delivery in the normal fashion given the then difficulties faced in shipping and delivery. As yet, there is not a sense of community through the letters column and whether it be developed is another matter. In ‘For Love of the Game’, Tristian Hall continues his designer’s journey towards Gloom of Kilforth. In previous issues he explored how the game became a vehicle for roleplaying and storytelling, used the mechanics to bring the game and its background to life, and marketing options, but in this issue, he examines how to handle feedback and criticism about a game’s design. There is good advice here and ‘For Love of the Game’ nicely tracks the history of game and its development.
Senet follows a standard format of articles and article types. One explores a theme found in board games, its history, and the games that showcase it to best effect, whilst another looks at a particular mechanic. In between there are two interviews, one with a designer, the other with an artist. The mechanical article is on dexterity games with ‘Feats of Agility’ by Matt Thrower, written in almost nominal deterministic fashion. This looks at games such as Jenga and Crokinole, and seems to focus on these to the detriment of others, making the point that their physical nature makes them less like a (board) game and more like a sport. The result is that the article is not really that interesting and it is certainly not helped by the fact that not one of the games is actually illustrated. Instead, the article is illustrated by abstract pieces like that on the front cover, which whilst very nice, do nothing whatsoever to bring either the article or the board games themselves to life. Given that so many of the other articles are decently illustrated, ‘Feats of Agility’ is a disappointingly frustrating piece that fails to showcase the physicality of the games themselves or explore more than a very few titles.
The undoubted highlight of Senet Issue 6 is ‘Full Steam Ahead’. This is the first of two interviews in the issue and is with Alan R. Moon, the famous designer of Ticket to Ride. This covers his early interest in games, his time at Avalon Hill—focusing mainly on the publisher’s family titles, and the genesis of Ticket to Ride came about. The whole interview could have been just about that, but it ranges through a few other titles as well as ‘The gathering of Friends’, the informal industry event he now runs. Notably, it does mention Ticket to Ride Legacy, which is due to be released next week. It is followed by the second interview in the issue, which is with artist Miguel Coimbra, best known for illustrating the mini-civilisation-style 7 Wonders and the fantasy wargame of variable races and powers, Small World. Coimbra talks about he turned his love of other worlds and Magic: the Gathering into becoming a full-time artist before talking about each of the major titles he has provided art for. Not just the aforementioned, but also Sea of Clouds, Mountains of Madness, and Fuji Koro. As in previous interviews with artists, plenty of room is given to showcase his art, including not one, but two pullout spreads! Along with his commentary, this extends the article beyond its eighteen pages, already the longest article in the issue. All of the art is crisply produced, leaving the reader wanting to go look at the games for the art itself, let alone the play.
The issue’s theme article is food with Own Duffy’s ‘Playing with your Food’, which at the very least does not make the error of not actually depicting the games being played. It starts off with quick discussion of an American introductory board game, Candy Land (which actually came out in 1949!), before rushing up to date with an examination of more recent titles, beginning with Sushi Go! It points out the universality of the theme and also how the theme can be used in other ways. For example, Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum from Hot Banana Games shows how games can explore the cultural side of food, whilst Consumption: Food & Choices looks at the balance between what we eat and what we do. With the inclusion of both Sushi Go!—inspired by 7 Wonders’ card drafting mechanic and conveyor-belt sushi restaurants—and Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum, inspired by dim sum being served on a lazy Susan, the article covers a spectrum of both lighter and more involved titles, both mechanically and culturally, and it also suggests a number of other titles themed along different foods. This includes pizza, chili peppers, salads, cupcakes, and mushrooms. Overall, Duffy serves up an interesting article on a theme which is not as readily recognised as such in the hobby as opposed to typically more mechanical or obvious themes.
If the earlier ‘Feats of Agility’ failed to showcase agility games, then ‘Unboxed’, Senet’s reviews section leads the way with its first review, which is of Crash Octopus, a flicking game of salvage at sea versus a giant octopus which actually looks fun in the exact same way that Jenga isn’t. This is not the only other game reviewed in the issue—that is the co-operative adventure game, What Next?—with a dexterity element, but the other reviews are a more traditional mix of Euro style games, along with the addition of a review of the solo roleplaying game, Apothecaria. There is a fascinating range of titles being reviewed here, including of Mind MGMT, based on Matt Kindt comic book series about psychic espionage; Streets, a tile-laying game of building and populating modern urban streets which is Senet’s Top Choice for the issue; and Roll Camera!, a thematically packaged co-operative game of movie-making. All of the reviews are well-written, informative, and as expected, give space show off each game and its components.
Rounding out Senet Issue 6 are regular end columns, ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. For the former, Dan Thurot pens ‘Flipping the table (and how best to avoid it)’, a look at the phenomenon of getting so frustrated whilst playing a board game that you stand up and flip the board and all of its components over the table and floor. Thankfully I have never done this, but I have walked away from a game in sheer frustration. Working from the concept of the ‘Magic Circle’ where we as players agree to interact using different rules, the author explores how the issue might arise and how to avoid it, primarily checking to if everyone is in the mood to play a particular game or type of game, know your foibles, and if you can, avoid your nemesis. The result is engaging and thoughtful, bringing to the reader’s attention a negative aspect of play, how we can take that play too far, and how to not do so, all without any judgement upon the part of the author, except on himself. For the ‘Shelf of Shame’, Rodney Smith of Watch It Played, selects Andean Abyss, a COIN or ‘counter-insurgency’ wargame set in 1990s Columbia. This nicely tells of how he could not grasp the game’s play upon first exposure, but through a friend and play of another COIN game, Cuba Libre, he was able to understand the concepts and then go back and play Andean Abyss, having to reacquire it, having sold it after the first attempt to understand it.
Physically, Senet Issue 6 is very professionally presented. It looks and feels as good as previous issues of the magazine.
As with previous issues, Senet Issue 6 offers a good mix of articles, interviews, and reviews—almost. To be fair, this reviewer is not a fan of dexterity-based games and thus for the most part, the ‘Feats of Agility’ is not aimed at me. Yet as with the magazine’s similarly mechanically themed articles, I was hoping for other options and ideas which might entice me to look at these games again, and definitely more than just Jenga. Unfortunately, the article failed to do so. Consequently, Senet Issue 6 is the most disappointing issue to date, if only because the standard has been so high otherwise. Now of course, tastes will vary and some may enjoy dexterity games and an article about them, but not this reviewer. ‘Feats of Agility’ could have been better and consequently, Senet Issue 6 could have been as good as the magazine usually is.
