Speakeasy (2025)

“Tabletop Info lauded Speakeasy as a stunning accomplishment, praising its seamless integration of intricate, interlinked systems with a rich Prohibition-era theme, offering a captivating blend of Area Control, Worker Placement, and Card Management that solidifies its position as the "Big Box Game of the Year" for enthusiasts of heavy, strategic Eurogames.”

“If you enjoy a heavy, satisfying Euro demanding your full attention for two to three hours and offering a true sense of theme-integrated strategy, Speakeasy is not just a contender; it’s the Big Box Game of the Year.”

The reviewer highly praises Speakeasy, calling it a stunning accomplishment and the Big Box Game of the Year for its seamless integration of theme and intricate systems, offering engaging decisions and strategic depth in a mob war setting.

The reviewer highly praises Speakeasy for its exceptional thematic integration and clever design, finding the high stakes and historical elements particularly engaging, and even considering it a contender for their favorite Lacerda game despite a minor early game progression quirk.

The reviewer describes "Speakeasy Blues" as a very excellent and puzzly dice placement game that provides ample strategic depth, with the only minor flaw being an initial learning curve for its iconography.

“Speakeasy is some of Lacerda’s best work, packaged in an incredibly well-themed game that felt timeless even during my first play. I am so excited to continue exploring its world, and it helps that Speakeasy has one of my favorite action spaces in a game I’ve tried this year.”

The reviewer praises Speakeasy as an intuitive and well-integrated game that flows nicely, making it a great entry point into heavier games, and notes its excellent scaling for two players.

The reviewer found Speakeasy Blues to be a unique and engaging dice-drafting game with an awesome theme, amazing art, and enjoyable mechanics like set collection, tableau building, and tough decisions involving currency and hidden majorities.

The reviewer, Shaggy from Totally Tabled, approaches 'Speakeasy' as a noteworthy and engaging new heavy Euro game by Vital Lacerda, offering an in-depth tutorial to guide viewers through its complex worker placement mechanisms.

The reviewers offered a very positive assessment of Speakeasy, finding it to be a highly enjoyable and well-executed board game.

The reviewer found "Speakeasy" to be a unique board game with satisfying planning and high-quality components, placing it as a healthy upper B-tier game and 52nd out of 275 games in his personal ranking. However, he expressed that he would not personally buy it due to its heavy nature and large table footprint, and found it difficult to teach.

The reviewer found Speakeasy to be a highly thematic and unique strategy game with satisfying planning and high-quality components, offering an engaging gameplay experience despite some initial icon confusion and its large footprint, which ultimately led them to decide against purchasing it for their personal collection.

The reviewer praised "Speakeasy" as a highly unique and thematic worker placement game set in the Prohibition era, ranking it as an upper B-tier game among their collection. Despite its strong gameplay and engaging theme, the reviewer noted challenges with its lengthy teaching time, large physical footprint, and high price, ultimately deciding against adding it to their personal collection.

The reviewer found "Speakeasy" to have excellent theme and production value with clever design elements, but ultimately felt the game micromanaged players too much and took too long to become enjoyable, making it difficult to recommend or keep in their collection.