Inis

I don’t usually go for abstract area control games, tried Rising Sun and Blood Rage and didn’t stick with either, but Inis hooked me faster than I expected. Somebody described it as El Grande but more and honestly that’s about as accurate a one-line pitch as I’ve seen, tight card drafting layered onto a majority-control base, plus multiple win conditions and a combat system that doesn’t feel bolted on.

The action deck is small, maybe fifteen or so base cards, and I love that. Once you and your table know them all, the game genuinely opens up, you start reading opponents’ hands and passes instead of just parsing the cards themselves. That’s when it clicks. Before that it can feel a little opaque on a first play, I couldn’t even confidently rate it after game one.

Where the game earns its keep for me is the art direction, Christian Martinez’s illustration work is doing serious lifting here, gorgeous Celtic-myth linework on the box and every card, and it stays consistent all the way through instead of the game leaning on flavor text alone to sell the theme, the visuals actually match what’s happening mechanically. That said, the theme and the mechanism don’t always sit together as tightly as the art wants you to believe, it’s a majority-control engine wearing a mythology costume, and once the numbers start mattering more than the myth, that seam shows a little.

One real complaint that came up more than I expected, the clan pieces are made from a material that warps easily, more than one person mentioned a spearman’s weapon bending out of shape in the box. Mine’s fine so far, but I’d keep an eye on it. Doesn’t sink the game. This is a genuinely tight, replayable strategy game that rewards knowing your opponents’ habits as much as knowing the cards, and I’ve had it hit the table more than almost anything else I own this year.