Why Tsuro was one of the first modern board games I purchased, I have no idea. I remember it intrigued me, but I don’t recall why. It’s simplicity? It’s box art? It’s price? It’s a fairly unique game, so maybe that had something to do with it. After all, the purchase was made well before my realization that uniqueness in the tabletop space is frequently out of alignment with quality. Case in point: Tsuro itself. This is not a good game, not even close. About the nicest thing I can say about Tsuro is that it’s inoffensive. But oh wait, it’s a game designed by a white dude that draws aesthetic and thematic ties to ancient Chinese philosophy for marketing purposes. And oh no, in the introduction of the rulebook it even claims the game “represents the classic quest for enlightenment.” It’s 2019 yo, some woke somebodies out there must be outraged! Personally, however, there’s another passage in the rulebook I find far more offensive: the one that declares Tsuro a “masterful blend of strategy and chance.” Which, this being a board game review and not a Twitter rant, is the passage I’ll be addressing today. Let’s cut to the chase, Tsuro is so shallow you can practically exhaust the depths of its possibility space after only a brief explanation of its rules. So let’s do just that. Tsuro is a tile-laying game played on a large square grid. Players are dealt three tiles each, then place their pawns on their chosen starting point around the grid. On these tiles…