Travis Monroe's board game and book reviews plus personal essays — small, specific, and never rounded up to be nice.https://traviswanders.com/en-UShttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/oathsworn/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/oathsworn/A boss battler with genuinely great writing attached, at the cost of an evening every time you want to touch it.Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/essays/the-week-i-downgraded-sleeping-gods/https://traviswanders.com/essays/the-week-i-downgraded-sleeping-gods/I gave this one a glowing first impression after one campaign. Two more campaigns in, I quietly walked it back, and I want to be honest about why.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/sleeping-gods/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/sleeping-gods/An atlas you sail across instead of a map you walk across, and a story that turns out to funnel you toward the same handful of endings no matter what you pick.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/essays/the-hotel-lobby-rule/https://traviswanders.com/essays/the-hotel-lobby-rule/If there's a table and a stranger with an hour to kill, I've decided that's basically an invitation. Not everyone agrees.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/essays/what-tulsa-looks-like-in-november-from-a-truck-window/https://traviswanders.com/essays/what-tulsa-looks-like-in-november-from-a-truck-window/I know my hometown mostly from a driver's seat these days, coming and going, never quite arriving in the middle of a Tuesday.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/lotr-duel-for-middle-earth/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/lotr-duel-for-middle-earth/A streamlined reskin of 7 Wonders Duel that trims exactly the parts I never liked and keeps me from wanting to relaunch a game the moment one ends.Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/essays/teaching-reyes-a-card-game-in-a-denver-layover/https://traviswanders.com/essays/teaching-reyes-a-card-game-in-a-denver-layover/Five hours, a grounded connection, and a deck of cards neither of us had opened before. That's the whole origin story, more or less.Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/manufacturing-consent/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/manufacturing-consent/A dense, thoroughly sourced argument about how media narrows what counts as sayable, and a book I had to read in chunks rather than sittings.Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/essays/three-weeks-out-one-week-back/https://traviswanders.com/essays/three-weeks-out-one-week-back/My apartment isn't lived in so much as it's visited, once a month, by someone who used to live there full time.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/inis/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/inis/A celtic area control game where nobody wins by killing everyone, they win by being agreed with. That took me a full game to actually believe.Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/essays/the-line-in-garden-city-that-never-runs-on-schedule/https://traviswanders.com/essays/the-line-in-garden-city-that-never-runs-on-schedule/I've spent more hours waiting for a plant to be ready for me than actually working on it, and I've finally made peace with that being most of the job.Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/essays/the-travel-case-i-keep-repacking/https://traviswanders.com/essays/the-travel-case-i-keep-repacking/One case, packed for the road, unpacked at home, packed again. I've started timing how long it stays empty.Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/essays/the-repair-i-signed-off-on-too-fast/https://traviswanders.com/essays/the-repair-i-signed-off-on-too-fast/A cold storage compressor in Wichita, a reading that looked fine, and a callback three days later that taught me something about how I rate games too.Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/cloudspire/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/cloudspire/A puzzle with no clean solution and a rulebook that wants you to earn every bit of it before it stops feeling hard to learn.Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/mage-knight/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/mage-knight/Four to five hours to finish a scenario, and I still think about the deck I built two years ago the way other people think about a good trip.Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-fifth-season/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-fifth-season/Second person shouldn't work for an entire novel, and then Jemisin makes it the reason the book hits as hard as it does.Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-stars-are-legion/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-stars-are-legion/A galaxy of living, decaying, birthing worldships, and I spent half the book not sure if I was disgusted or amazed. I landed on both.Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/2312/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/2312/The terraforming detail is genuinely thrilling if you're the kind of reader who wants it, and I found out partway through that I'm only sometimes that reader.Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-player-of-games/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-player-of-games/The best novel I've read about a game that doesn't exist, and I say that as someone who reviews actual games for a living, more or less.Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-secret-of-our-success/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-secret-of-our-success/A book about why humans aren't actually that smart individually, and why that's the whole point.Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/essays/why-i-still-carry-paperbacks-instead-of-a-tablet/https://traviswanders.com/essays/why-i-still-carry-paperbacks-instead-of-a-tablet/I own a tablet. It lives in a drawer. There's one specific hotel night that explains why.Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-grace-of-kings/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-grace-of-kings/A fantasy epic that reads more like a history book than a novel, in the best way for about two thirds of it.Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-master-and-margarita/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-master-and-margarita/The best book I've read where I'm still not entirely sure I understood the thing I loved.Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-old-kings-crown/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-old-kings-crown/A small bluffing card game that earned every bit of the crown I got to wear at a convention table for one very smug evening.Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/chaos/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/chaos/A history of the people who found chaos theory, more than an explanation of what it actually is, and I finished still not sure I could explain it back.Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/essays/why-i-wont-rate-a-game-i-havent-finished/https://traviswanders.com/essays/why-i-wont-rate-a-game-i-havent-finished/I've got three games on a shelf right now with strong opinions attached and zero completed plays. None of them are getting a number from me.Sun, 16 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTPersonalTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-cultural-origins-of-human-cognition/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/the-cultural-origins-of-human-cognition/A real, defensible argument buried inside more repetition than it needed, and a fight with the field it's picking on the whole way through.Sun, 09 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/twilight-imperium/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/twilight-imperium/Ten hours of galactic empire building, and about six of them are watching other people take their turn.Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/earthborne-rangers/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/earthborne-rangers/A campaign card game with no basic attack action, which sounds like a gimmick until you've spent an afternoon trying to coexist with a valley instead of clearing it.Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesTravis Monroehttps://traviswanders.com/reviews/unmatched/https://traviswanders.com/reviews/unmatched/Tactical combat with the rules explained in five minutes, which is exactly the problem once you've played the same fighter four times.Sun, 12 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesTravis Monroe