Magazine Madness 47: Senet Issue 19

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 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.

Having reached its fifth anniversary with Senet Issue 18, Senet Issue 19 goes one better by being bigger. It increases in length by a fifth from seventy-two pages to eighty-eight. Which means more previews and reviews, plus new articles, all along the usual mix of interviews, examinations of themes and mechanisms, and looks at game design and game culture. Consequently, it feels a little thicker and sturdier in the hands and provides a wider look at the hobby. Published in the summer of 2025, much of Senet Issue 19 adheres to its tried and tested format. Thus it opens with ‘Behold’, highlighting some of the then forthcoming games with a preview and a hint or two of what to expect. The most intriguing of the titles previewed here include Spokes, a game about bicycle racing in a velodrome that involves placing vibrantly coloured literal spokes of bicycles; Night Soil, about the nightly collection and disposal of ordure in Tudor London; and Habemus Papam, a timely title in which the players are electors of the Roman Curia, directed to elect a new Pope, but which they themselves are not candidates for the papal throne.

The first of the new additions in Senet Issue 19 is ‘Across the Board’. This will be ongoing series in which the magazine talks to the hobby’s ‘movers and dice-shakers’. For the inaugural article, Ruth Haigh of The Treehouse Board Game Café in Sheffield is interviewed. Given the rise of the board game café in the past decade, it seems wholly appropriate that the magazine actually talk to someone who runs one to find out why and what life is like running one in comparison to a café without board games. It is an engaging interview and it will be interesting to see who the magazine talks to in future issues. However, it does return to the tried and tested with designer Tristian Hall’s ‘For Love of the Game’. This time, it is the ‘Designer’s day off’, and here he stretches an earlier comment of his that inspiration can come from anywhere into a whole column by telling you exactly where. Essentially, a guide to what the designer does when not working on board games that ends with the question, “So, what will you discover on your next designer’s day off?”, to which the answer is, “Hopefully not another waste of time and effort like this” as the long running column reaches its nadir. The only plus to this entry in the magazine is that it shows how very good the rest of the issue, especially with the expanded page count, actually is. Sadly, whilst the extra page count does what it can to obscure ‘For Love of the Game’, it has not be used to expand ‘Points’, the regular letter column in the magazine. The letters here wonder how game modifications come about—as seen through the eyes of children, raise an issue with the use of the word ‘shame’ in the title of magazine’s end column, ‘Shelf of Shame’, and suggests some books about board games to read. It is a pity that there are not more letters because there are some interesting ideas raised here, certainly worth discussing, and the latter about books about board games certainly highlights an area that the magazine is not covering.

Every issue consists of two interviews, one with an artist and one with a designer, plus an article about a theme in games and an article about a mechanic in games, and of course, Senet Issue 19 is no exception. In ‘The Explorer’, Dan Jolin interviews the designer of his favourite game, Scythe, and publisher of the highly popular Wingspan, Jamey Stegmaier. The title of the interview is reference to his then latest design, Vantage, the open-world board game inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It takes him from his first steps into gaming from Catan to Agricola and beyond. In particular, the interview highlights the quality of the components in Stegmaier games and how some of the design changes came about when working with Jakub Rozalksi whose artwork inspired the look at design of Scythe. It is a good interview, as is Alexandra Sonechkina’s one with Sandara Tang. In ‘A Cute Above’, the reader gets to enjoy her ‘cosy-cute’ fantasy artwork as seen in Flamecraft, Critter Kitchen, and Tea Witches. The artwork is genuinely that and will be enjoyed by anyone who also likes dragons. Sandara guides through some of her pieces that have a wonderful storybook quality to them.

In ‘The Explorer’, Dan Jolin interviews the designer of his favourite game, Scythe, and publisher of the highly popular Wingspan, Jamey Stegmaier. The title of the interview is reference to his then latest design, Vantage, the open-world board game inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It takes him from his first steps into gaming from Catan to Agricola and beyond. In particular, the interview highlights the quality of the components in Stegmaier and how some of the design changes came about when working with Jakub Rozalksi whose artwork inspired the look at design of Scythe. It is a good interview, as is Alexandra Sonechkina’s one with Sandara Tang. In ‘A Cute Above’, the reader gets to enjoy her ‘cosy-cute’ fantasy artwork as seen in Flamecraft, Critter Kitchen, and Tea Witches. The artwork is genuinely that and will be enjoyed by anyone who also likes dragons. Sandara guides through some of her pieces that have a wonderful storybook quality to them.

‘Risky Business’ by Dan Thurot explores the ‘push-your-luck’ mechanism in board games, as typified by the recent Flip 7. The mechanism—and the article looks at several of them, including dice rolling, card-flipping, tile-laying, tower-stacking (a la Jenga), and even pig-throwing (a la Pass the Pigs)—has a problem in its association with gambling, but the honestly, there plenty of games that use this mechanism that are not Blackjack or Poker. All these games do combine the thrill of taking a chance which can be sweetened or soured by the result. Balanced against this the need to ascertain which result is more likely. From the simplicity of a game like Flip 7 the article looks at surprisingly more complex games like Quacks of Quedlinburg or in the Psychedelic wargame, Wonderland’s War. What is made clear throughout by talking to designers is that these games need balancing and adjustment to get right as well as the fact that there is more to them than most people think.

The theme in the issue is travel and holidays as Tim Clare puts us in ‘Holiday Mode’. The theme goes all the way back to the seventeenth century and continues to be popular today, with designs such as Globetrotting and Let’s Go! To Japan. Underlying many designs with this theme, is the wish fulfilment of visiting faraway places, that is, going on holiday to places you want to go to, but cannot. In other cases, like Tokaido—inspired by Utagawa Hiroshige’s The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido series—it is the journey that matters, not the speed with which it completed. The article balances these great journeys with five pocket-sized games that are both holiday themed and could be taken on holiday.

The other major addition to Senet Issue 19 is ‘The Classic’ which looks at a classic board game in the hobby’s hall of fame each issue. For the first entry in the series, the board game in question is, of course, Catan. It opens with the sad news that many consider the game to be past its sell by date, too old, a cliché even… Matt Thrower’s assessment does not shy away from comments made by its detractors and by the perceived wisdom, but puts up a sturdy defence of the game, pointing out its achievements over the last thirty years—millions of copies sold in forty languages, awards won including the Spiel des Jahres, and above all, popularising the hobby. It will be interesting to see what titles will be considered classics in future issues.

Senet’s reviews section, ‘Unboxed’ includes a look at The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game, highly regarded for the strong inclusion of its theme, whilst Power Vacuum, a game of household appliances living in a dictatorship, which is also a trick-taking game is also praised. The Senet’s Top Choice for the issue is Finspan, a piscine reimaging of the popular Wingspan. Unfortunately, Paranoia: The Uncooperative Board Game appears to suffer too much from being like the roleplaying game it is based upon, so it is best enjoyed fans of the roleplaying game. The selection is not quite as wide as in previous issues, the titles being reviewed all being hobby games than family or party games. However, there are more of them in keeping with the increased page count.

As per usual, the last two columns in Senet Issue 19 are ‘How to Play’ and ‘Shelf of Shame’. ‘From bored to board: falling for game night’ by John DeQuadros which traces his path from scepticism about board games to acceptance and finally proponent of the hobby as space for socialising. It is a rather engaging piece that highlights the participation rather than the winning—and sometimes the play itself. Lastly, the streamer and content creator, Beneeta Kaur pulls a game from her ‘Shelf of Shame’. The title is Firenze, bought in 2019 and ignored until now. She discovers a game that she thoroughly enjoys and regrets having ignored it until now, all due to the dangers of being distracted.

Physically, Senet Issue 19 is as good as you expect. It is well written and a pleasing read. The issue is also good in itself, the increased page enabling wider coverage of the board games hobby. The new article series are nice additions and the extra reviews are more than welcome, and it will be good to see the new format bed in with future issues.