Magazine Madness 32: Senet Issue 12

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 is also one of the very few magazines about games to actually be available for sale on the high street.

Senet Issue 12 was published in the autumn of 2023. It is, as the editorial notes, a post-UK Games Expo, and takes the time to highlight the pleasures of attending. It notes that the magazine is now quarterly, with the issue being its first autumn one. Then, as with previous issues, it gets on with highlighting some of the forthcoming games with its regular preview, ‘Behold’. There are two interesting titles featured here. One is Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaaan, a dungeon-crawler based on the Fateforge setting from Studio Agate, which is designed to be replayable, and tell a story in an hour, whilst the other is Fighting Fantasy Adventures. Designed by Martin Wallace, this implements the the Fighting Fantasy series of solo game books into a board game, with the base game adapting the first four. This is not the first time that titles in the series have been adapted into a board game, but this will be an ongoing line, with further releases adapting other books.

‘Points’, the regular column of readers’ letters, contains a mix of praise for the magazine and a discussion of gaming culture, including representation in the hobby and the appeal of co-operative games. Just four letters, so it does not seem enough. As with the previous issues, there is scope here for expansion of this letters page to give space to more voices and readers of Senet. One way of doing that is perhaps to expand it when ‘For Love of the Game’ comes to end. This regular column continues the journey of the designer Tristian Hall towards the completion and publication of his Gloom of Kilforth. In this entry of his column, he explores artistic instinct versus making a marketable game and making it marketable by giving a design a clear and easily grasped name. Surprisingly, the column is more interesting than those from previous issues, but the column continues to feel played out and flaccid.

The format for Senet is now tried and tests. Two interviews, one with a designer, one with an artist, and one article exploring a game mechanic whilst another looks at a game theme. The subject of the interview in ‘Ingenious’ by Matt Thrower, is the prolific Reiner Knizia, designer of titles such as High Society, Lost Cities, and Tigris and Euphrates. The interview handily covers Knizia’s time in the industry and how it has changed, how he developed the co-operative design with 2000’s Lord of the Rings years before it became fashionable, and how he likes auctions as a mechanism. It is accompanied by statistics that break down his games by mechanic used, themes applied, and games and awards by year. It barely touches upon the wide range titles that Knizia has created over the years, which would surely be worthy of a book of their own. It is solid and informative, though of course, some of the answers will be familiar from other interviews given Knizia’s fame.

‘Playing with Dinosaurs’ by Dan Thurot explores our fascination with dinosaurs and their being regularly featured in board game designs. The article has two ends of the spectrum to look at when it comes to dinosaurs and board games. At the one end is the ‘Rule of Scientific Accuracy’, whilst at the other is the ‘Rule of Cool’. Our fascination means that we typically want the latter rather than the former in our games, whilst at the same time being fascinated scientifically with dinosaurs, their evolution, and our discovery of their fossil remains. Dinosaur Island—an obvious nod to Jurassic Park—from Pandasaurus Games leans into the latter, whilst Dominant Species from GMT Games, adheres to the former. The games that stick to the ‘Rule of Scientific Accuracy’ tend to be drier and more complex, but also often encompass a second theme and that ‘evolution’. It includes a scale that measures various titles according to how heavy or light they are, and whether they are cool or scientific.

The issue’s second interview is with Vincent Dutrait. In ‘The Escape Artist’, Dan Jolin talks to the artist for board games such as Oltréé, Tribes of the Wind, and Museum, about his work process and how he approached the various projects he has worked. The article, of course, showcases Dutrait’s artwork as well, but without the trade dress for the particular games. The artwork is stunning and just shows how we as board game players have been spoilt in modern times.

Alexandra Sonechkina’s ‘Area of Conflict’ examines the theme of area control, pointing out that it is one of the most popular and most aggressive game mechanics. The starting for the area control mechanic is games such as Risk and Diplomacy, wargames by any other name, but beyond that, the mechanic allows for easy awareness of the state of play and who is in the lead and the potential for negotiation. Although the article begins with these designs and both their inherently combative and confrontational natures, it explores how designers have pulled away from those natures to make the mechanic less obvious or direct. For example, Martin Wallace’s Discworld: Ankh-Morpork shifts the winning conditions to secret objectives that differ between the players. However, as much as designers do pull away from the combative and confrontational nature of the mechanic, the article including a world tour of some of the most titles to employ it, they cannot truly escape it, something that the author makes clear. The result is not quite as satisfying a read in comparison to previous articles on game mechanics.

‘Unboxed’, Senet’s reviews section covers a wide range of games. This incudes League of the Lexicon, a particularly hard quiz and word game about language; Undaunted: Battle of Britain, which brings the the highly regarded World War II squad-level combat mechanics to defending Britain in 1940 in the air; the re-issue and redesign of the classic game of the Wars of the Roses, Kingmaker; and Library Labyrinth, in which a cast of fantastic fictional and historical women attempt to put escaped literary horrors back in their books! Which is an amazing theme. ‘Senet’s top choice’ is Moon, the Science Fiction hand drafting, Moon-base building sequel to Villagers and Streets. Once again, the reviews section of Senet shows off a wide range of different games for different tastes and play styles in just a few pages. The magazine could easily expand this section or do a whole separate publication of reviews of this quality.

As is traditional, Senet Issue 12 comes to a close with the regular end columns, ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. For ‘Confessions of a bad board gamer’, Alexandra Sonechkina’s ‘Unboxing Clever’ looks at the problems that come after unboxing a game and that is how to get everything back into the box. There are a lot of useful tips here. Efka Bladukas of No Pun Intended pulls an absolute classic off his shelf for ‘Shelf of Shame’. This is El Grande, an area control game already discussed in the earlier article on the area control mechanic. He discovers that it is an absolute classic, despite its theme of colonialism and worth his time having played it.

Physically, Senet Issue 12 is very professionally presented and shows off the board games it previews and reviews to great effect. Unfortunately none of the articles stand out, so unlike in previous issues there is nothing to elevate beyond a stolidly enjoyable read.