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When it comes to board games I have played a rather extensive list over the decades and among the growing legion of games crokinole remains at the top of my list in terms of favourite games.

While not exactly a board game, Dungeons & Dragons -- at least the older version before the release of the watered-down, every one is the same fifth edition – rates quite high on my favourite list as well.

So how it happened that I had missed out on Catacombs which released back in 2010 is something I simply have to hang my head in shame over.

Fortunately a third edition of the game released in 2015, and I have my hands on a copy of this beauty.

The reason I mentioned crokinole and D&D off the start is simply that Catacombs marries the two games.

Now it might seem an odd couple pairing, a finger flicking dexterity game such as crokinole merging with adventurers on a dungeon crawl, but designers Ryan Amos, Marc Kelsey and Aron West managed the union flawlessly.

The result is a game which I suspect will soon be bumping something off my top-100 list as it skyrockets into the top-25. I say soon because I generally give games some sober second-thought time before altering the long term list.

But Catacombs really does hit a sweet spot for me.

I have always preferred games where skill wins out, and the luck factor with Catacombs comes down to the occasional card draw for treasure and the like.

As the game outlines; "players take control of four Heroes - represented by wooden discs - that must fight their way through a series of rooms filled with monsters controlled by the Overseer player. Battles are fought by skillfully flicking different types of wooden pieces across the game board.  The board and obstacles are setup according to the instructions on a series of room cards."

The meat of the game however is the skill to flick wooden disks in much the same vein as the aforementioned crokinole. This is a game you can actually practice to get better at.

If your barbarian wants to smite an orc with his sword you flick his disk into melee battle. Hit the orc and you do a point of damage.

If your elf wants to shoot an arrow, you flick a much smaller arrow disk to hit the target.

"Once all the heroes have completed their actions, the Overseer performs all the monster actions in retaliation. When all the monsters are dead, the Heroes collect their treasure and move on to the next room. 

"Items to upgrade your hero can be purchased from the merchant, if you get far enough into the dungeon.

"If the heroes have survived all the rooms, they will battle their most powerful opponent, one of the catacomb lords. The heroes win when the catacomb lord has been defeated."

Having a number of big bad guys in the set means good variety from game-to-game, and that is critical to keeping the game fresh. With the various catacomb lords come some very neat critters to deal with from tiny wooden disks representing rats and beetles to a huge gelatinous cube that is essentially a child's building block to flick around.

Once familiar with the game the overseer can customize what he puts in each room in terms of bad guys to up the challenge easily too.

The wooden disks all have stickers to apply which adds a Saturday morning cartoon look to things. Kwanchai Moriya, an artist and illustrator based in Los Angeles, provides the art. "Receiving a BFA in Illustration from Art Center College of Design, and working steadily illustrating a variety of projects since, he has a particular love for that space where art meets gaming," noted his bio.

His renditions here might not be for everyone, but I think they work perfectly.

Catacombs provide a bag full of disks representing monsters ranging from rats to orcs to owlbears, some poisoning player character when hit, some doing greater damage, some turning into walls of fire. It captures the feel of D&D well.

There are multiple, reversible boards, each with spots to add columns which mean most shots have at least some cover to deal with. Again variety here is high. And you could easily design a board on a gaming mat and go that route too.

The suggested entry level run through is a tad too easy, but it does teach the game.

The rule book is illustrated, but could use a page explaining some things such as how some wizard spells work. We had to go online and find at least one answer on our first run through.

And you do need some room for this one. Players have to move around the table to get the best angles for shots and since it will play five, you need space around the table more than table size itself.

As to playing five, Catacombs would be smoothest with two players involved, works nicely for three, and declines a bit after that because of room and lack of things to do.

That all said, as a game of skill for two or three players, this one has tons to offer. A gem from the Canadian company Elzra Corp (www.catacombs )

Thanks to fellow gamers Trevor Lyons and Adam Daniels for their help in running through this game for review.

As a game reviewer it is always best to have the actual game on the table to allow for a serious review, not just of game play, but all the other aspects of a game, from component quality to aesthetics.

But sometimes you get a sneak peek at a game that is just on the verge of being produced. Generally today that means a game being promoted on kickstarter.com, a crowdfunding website where many games find the dollars to be produced.

The miniature battle game Brutality is going through that fundraising process right now, raising its initial goal of $54,000 Cdn in just 29-hours. Of course they hope to far exceed that goal to allow for a range of add-ons and Kickstarter bonuses.

The game is by Game Devastation out of California, who were good enough to email me the rules as they exist at present, and a print 'n 'play version of the game components, sans the miniatures of course.

So a couple of caveats need to go here.

To start with a miniature game largely lives and dies by its miniatures. While the ones in Brutality look fantastic in representation on Kickstarter, that is not the same as handling physical pieces.

From the photos these are going to be large models with lots of detail, so miniature painters are going to love this one.

And, rulesets at the Kickstarter stage are generally living documents, which get tweaked at least a little by the time the game is produced, so again it's a bit of a guess on an early review like this one.

At its heart this game is best described as a game of gladiatorial battle, albeit with a darker, fantasy/medievalesque setting.

This particular type of game is quite popular at present with a few examples recently released; Aristeia is one that falls into the same general category, and a game which will be reviewed in this space soon.

In one-on-one play, each player takes two characters into the 'arena' to do battle. There will be a minimum of eight characters with the game, although since Kickstarter campaigns are notorious for adding neat things to the box based on money raised that number may grow, and if expansions are forthcoming the stable of characters will certainly grow. That is the best part of a game such as Brutality, the ability to vary the characters you play, which provides lots of replay with the game as a player looks to find the 'team' of characters with the greatest synergies.

The heroes are playable characters that have different movement speed, special attacks, health point values, and personalities, so each offers something unique in terms of in-game mechanics and the 'feel' of using them in battle. Once selected, the player will place one hero on the left corner, one hero on the right corner of their side of the board. The opponent will do the same. And the 'gladiatorial' battle is set to begin.

That is a huge part of the game, learning how to play your two characters as a true team where what they do on the board compliments the other.

The victory condition in the game is straight forward kill both heroes on the opponent's team by reducing both of their health values down to zero. The first team to do this wins the game.

The play area is a basic grid, but in terms of play, it is an ever changing arena, at least on a game-to-game basis.

So, why chose this one among the choices in terms of gladiatorial games?

It is rarely and either or, with games. Having multiple games on a favoured theme is never bad, and these sorts of games are tons of fun, and elements such as the large models, artefact cards, and replay potential certainly make Brutality worth a long look.

Players take turns choosing 'environmental hazards' to place on the board.  The hazards include things such as deadly spikes and fire to toss an opponent into, which of course is part of every post-apocalyptic b-movie fight arena.

From the rules, "Players have two actions per character on their turn, out of a few options they have to use. They can move, or use special attack. The order in which you perform these actions is up to the player. The player can also move two spaces, use a special attack, then use their remaining movement to move one more space."

The board is not large at 7X8, so movements are pretty limited.

Once an enemy is within a hero's attack range, the player can attack that enemy. Heroes have different abilities that they can use to attack enemies. The amount of damage their attack does to an enemy is listed on their character card. On a successful attack the amount of damage is deducted from the attacked hero's like total.

There are of course some twists beyond move and attack.

At the beginning of each turn, the player draws one relic card. "Some cards can be used when the player chooses, some are instant, some take place next turn, and some take place on the opponent's next turn. These are typically positive effects for the player who pulled it, or damaging against their opponent. There is no Action cost on cards and they can be played at any time on their turn. Players can only have three cards at a time, they can't draw a card until they have less than three cards. All three cards can be spent in one turn, if that is the player's desire," explains the rules.

These are the cards that players will find interesting in terms of learning when to use certain ones to best effect.

Before the game begins, players can select one artifact per character on their team.

"Artifacts are powerful items that players can use independent of an action. Each artifact has unique cooldowns (number of turns until they can use the cards again), so after the player uses an artifact, there is a time period where these cannot be used. Once that time is up, the relics can be used again," explains the rules.

These are the spice of the game, and because they have a cool down period before they can be used again, timing is everything with their use.